Busy, Busy, Busy

Now I know why the lead secretary in our department takes off two weeks every year. Since I have been doing her job last week and this week, I have a new found respect for all that she does. There are so many little things that I never knew about.

On the other hand, I feel really good about myself. It's a self-esteem boost to take care of all the little things so that she doesn't have to do much to catch up when she returns. Next week will be bad if she has to correct all of my mistakes. I hope there aren't many. I have tried very hard to make sure there aren't.

Therefore, I haven't had much time for blogging. And I've wanted to. I've really started to feel the baby moving around. About once a day or so. And yesterday after lunch, I felt about 4 or 5 good kicks in the course of an hour. My husband assures me that's because there are two in there. Haha, honey, not funny.

He is absolutely certain that this baby is a girl. I am just as certain that the baby is a boy. Here's his logic. His father was one of 4 boys. And I think his grandfather had only brothers as well. So, he thinks things have swung the opposite direction, and that now there's going to be a girl reign. He has a brother and a sister. So, before I started making fun of him for such crazy logic (I mean, really, we're basing this on family history and his predictions for the future?), I had to think about my "proof" of a boy. My logic? The pencil test said it's a boy. How's that for scientific? Oh, plus the three dreams. Further scientific proof. And my general feeling that I'm having a boy. I'll never hear the end of it if it's a girl.

My daughter is a nature lover. Or at least an animal lover. Even bugs. When I dropped her off yesterday morning, her teacher informed me that the day before they had been playing on the playground. She saw a group of kids huddled around my daughter. She was busy showing off a bug. Her teacher told her, "Ewww, put it down!"

Well, being the only girl and growing up on a farm, bugs don't bother me. Neither do snakes or any other little creatures. My sixth grade bug collection for my science class was out of sight. Way better than anyone elses. Plus I had grubs. Beat that. I had them before they were "yucky bugs."

Anyway, I digress. A couple of weeks ago, while at my parents' house, my daughter and I were on the front porch, and I saw a roly poly. I showed her how they curl up when you mess with them. I don't want my daughter to be afraid of bugs. And she's not. I had to teach her that we don't play with all bugs when she decided that she wanted to pick up some ants nearby. Ooops.

If I had been her daycare teacher, I would have taken it from her and launched into a lecture on what it is and such, but I'm not, so she put the bug down and her teacher obsessively washed her hands for the rest of the day.

Well, last night, at 5:13 AM, my dogs started howling. They howl at ambulances. It is rather annoying in the middle of the night, but since all of the people who live within earshot have dogs as well, and all of their dogs howl as well, I assume we all lie in bed cursing the dogs and hoping the stop soon. I have two dogs, Shadow and Buddy. Shadow is a champion howler. He sounds very good. Very wolf-like. Buddy, well, he tries. But, his "howl" can hardly be described as such. It sounds sick. Very unpracticed.

So, they start howling at 5:13 this morning, and I hear my daughter start crying. She never wakes up when they howl, so I get out of bed telling my husband, "If those f---ing dogs woke her up at 5:15 AM, I am going to kill them."*

I went into my daughter's room, and picked her up. "Puppies cry, Mama. Puppies crying." Oh, I'll give them something to cry about if my daughter doesn't go back to sleep at 5:15 in the morning.* "Yes, sweetie. They're okay. Go back to sleep." Fortunately, she did.

I thought it was cute that she was so worried about the dogs. She really loves animals even our two big dogs.

*Just to be perfectly clear, I would never hurt my dogs no matter how much I am tempted at 5:15 in the morning.