THE burning skin belt.

{almost 37 weeks}

every night i put my icy cold bottle of smart water on what i've lovingly deemed 

"the burning skin belt."

and then i let it sit there for 20 minutes of relief until i feel nothing but cold numb skin.

it's glorious.

sometimes in the middle of the night lately i wake up and have to do it then too.

b/c the skin there is just BURNING SO TIGHT!

like i feel like my skin is going to rip.

but it's numb.

except it hurts.

it hurts so badly it's numb.

do you know?

i've had this with every single one of my babies.

the only other person i've ever heard of having this is my very own mother.

any other burning skin belts out there?
bueller? bueller?

it doesn't even go away after.

numb forever.

but the burning does stop.

reckoning time {kind of like coffee i guess}

chase is my slowest waker upper.

i've never seen a child love to nap like him either.

if i let him, he would go 3 hours every day.

it is his full time life's hobby i tell you.

this of course is just not conducive to going to bed at any sort of normal time of the night now that he is 3 {even 6 months ago he would nap for 3 hours and then sleep another 12 starting at 8pm at night. it was a good long beautiful ride my friends. BEAUTIFUL beautiful ride.}.

so now every day i put this little baby man down for a nap in the crib he loves {b/c we just haven't had time to get the toddler bed crib put together with all of our flood catastrophes--it IS on the list. the long list. it's just that it's at the bottom of the list b/c it's a non catastrophe issue. you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it non catastrophe list. that one.} 

so anyway,

every day after about an hour or an hour and a half i go into his little cowboy room,

complete with all of max's hair bows.

i turn off the fan,

open the curtains,

and crack the blinds.

and then for about half an hour he lays awake in his bed,

just slowly waking up,

while i rock in the nursing chair we put together for the littlest gibson who's about to change us all.

sometimes the house is quiet.

sometimes it's loud with neighborhood kids or max and brennan fighting after school.

it's the slowest part of our day right now,

and i treasure it.

the afternoon sun comes in,

or lately, the rain pounds the windows from outside.

sometimes i sing to him, rocking in my chair.

or i ask him which cowboy or horse picture is his favorite--anything to engage his little peepers open.

usually he yells at me to stop,

and to go away b/c he's not done "sweeeeping!!!"

he always switches laying from one side to another at some point.

he will sit up,

then lay back down at least once,

just trying to decide if it's worth it to him to leave the binky behind and get out of his bed for the rest of the night.

finally when he's fully awake he's climbs out of his little crib,

comes over and yells at me to "GET UPPPP!!!!" like i'm the one he's been waiting on the entire time,

and then we go downstairs,

get his sippy full of milk,

and i take on homework, dinner, and the balancing act of neighborhood friends in and out of our door until bath time.

it's the part of my day where i look myself in the eye and say,

you can do it em.

you're in the home stretch!

a daily reckoning of sorts.

some days i need it more than others.

but every day i need it still the same.

if we don't have time for it,

hell hath no furry like a chase that doesn't get to wake up slow.

also,

it messes with my reckoning time,

and that just ain't pretty either.

usually we cope with suckers,

and peanut butter scoops,

and trips to grandma's house and stuff like that on those days.

kind of like coffee.

i guess.

LONG LIVE THE NAP!

like when you realize your kids have started bribing their friends

my bribery methods of parenting have reached EPIC proportions.

there's just no other way to get the small people to move when i need them to move.

and since i can BARELY move, i can't make anyone else move unless they wanna move.

this will probably continue through summer.

as i will hopefully be tethered to a small little animal that requires me to not move,

and makes me unable to make anyone else move unless they wanna move too.

it's the greatest thing on the planet until it's not.

like when you realize your kids have started bribing their friends to get them to do what they want,

and you think,

hmmm, maybe this is a bad habit?

but then you're like,

nah, it DON'T MATTER!

cause ain't nobody got time to coax a toddler into his carseat,

when "i'll give you a bag of popcorn when you get in your carseat!" works so great.

so fast!

so efficient!

such a great little bandaid.

and so much immediate gratification for all involved.

popcorn!

there's nothing that gets kids to move like a bag of popcorn.

totally worth the kernels all over the floor of the car.

bahahahaha.

so we're going with it folks,

b/c my body can barely carry itself around right now,

and the little people know it.

they are in complete control.

and i'm pretty sure they know it.

the tiny army that controls my life that we created.

they run us!

but let's all just pretend to live the illusion that we run them.

mmmK.

i'm still trying to figure out if i'm the smart one,

or it they're the smart ones.

clever little creatures.

good thing i've got two more bags of popcorn.

stay tuned for THAT story later.

it's a real gem, and it involves the splits.

winning:)

rerouted, redug, rehosed

the window well that won't stop flooding.

or the memorial day gift that won't stop giving:)

rerouted,

redug,

rehosed.

max wanted to know why we didn't go to the place with all of the dead people and flags in the grass?

trenches my dear.

trenches.

we think we got it this time guys.

here's to not bucketing water out of the flower beds at 1am in your robe anymore.

my neighbors almost saw me in my underpants.

the towel i wrapped around myself is still laying in the yard.

there's only so many clothes i can have on at this point,

and i'm down to underwear bottoms in the middle of the night.

i seriously considered going out there in them too.

good thing there was a towel handy last night right by the door,

cause who knows what i would have been brought to do otherwise.

THAT could have been embarrassing.

phew.

IN like FLYNN {the garden of 2015}

sean's cousin tiffany 

{we joke she's MINE b/c i see her more than he does} 

came up last thursday to help my heavy with child self get our garden in the ground.

god bless tiff!

it was sunny and the redheads all needed sunscreen.

she's a redhead.

her little boy is a redhead.

and then there's my redhead.

so with our three of our preschool aged children 

we passed out bowls of seeds 

and told them which holes and little trenches to drop them THEIR seeds into them.

after about twenty minutes of that

tiff and i sent them all off to the tramp and sandbox 

and spent the next half an hour thinning out the corn they planted all in one row, 

to make it become corn of four rows.

all over some good old fashioned girl talk.

{we were having such a ball in fact, that at the end tiff was making pb&j's for the road for my kids while i was SCRAMBLING to get max in hair and makeup for her dance pics in 15 min flat. 

great team effort believe me YOU, and all thanks to tiff we made it. phew.}

tiffany is my go to garden EXPERT, so i love having her around this time of year,

helping me decide where the sun is going to hit the right stuff the best, 

and what parts of the day it's going to do it.

thrilling!

we did edgy things this year like planted pumpkins into the grounds without their little mounds,

and didn't soak our corn seeds the night before.

stuff like that.

just to see if it even really matters.

i'm telling you, we are garden ladies that live on the edge.

the most scandalous thing that happened in my garden this year though 

is the {ehem} kale/broccoli plant.

let me whisper this next part, because apparently,

last summer when i planted the broccoli next to the kale,

they got a little naughty down under the dirt,

without ANY of us knowing,

and have now rebirthed as the kaleBROC,

as i've started to call it.

usually i would have pulled my kale plant out with the rest of the garden in the fall,

but this year was so warm that it just kept producing WELL into december, so i left it there.

then when we had a week of winter after christmas,

and 7 days of a frozen tundra,

it finally turned brown,

and i just never got around to pulling it out.

well, to my surprise, sometime in february, i don't know really,

it started back producing kale again,

and throughout the spring i've watched it become a full blown kale producer!

let me tell you, i was bursting with gardener's pride over this entire thing.

never will i pull a kale plant ever again!

then, with what did my wondering eyes did appear 

over the last month but BROCCOLI sprouting out of its top.

BROCCOLI OUT OF THE TOP OF MY LAST YEAR'S KALE PLANT!

i know, i know,

i can barely believe it myself.

SHOCKING!

and all going on in my very OWN yard without me knowing it.

their roots did the tulsa tickle all secret like under there,

and gave birth to this amazing little red headed green headed illegitimate garden child.

ladies and gentlemen,

i give you...

THE kaleBROC:

kale at the bottom,

broccoli coming out the top.

it's like the mullet of garden produce i say.

{insert angel choir singing here.}

stay tuned this summer for this excitingly new cross pollination 

of the most unexpected of couples!

to be continued...

i'm so ready for juicy ripe tomatoes, towering sunflowers, 

slip and slides and baby pools, and 500 Popsicle sticks all over my grass,

i can almost taste it:)