Can't sleep

So, it is two o'clock in the morning, an hour which rarely finds me awake, let alone out of bed. But as it happens I couldn't sleep. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it had something with a hidden desire to sneak downstairs and finish off the last of the super-fattening and yummy apple dip in my fridge (which I did of course). When sleep still refused to catch up with me I entertained myself with reading past blog posts. I realized that I have gotten lazy when it comes to recording the happenings our our lives. My recent posts have contained little more than the captions under each picture. So, here is the rest of the stuff that I will be glad I wrote when I am up at 2:00 a.m. sometime next year!

1. Oliver informed me this past week that he wanted to be a tiger for Christmas. I guess he just isn't ready for Halloween to be over yet. He was absolutely insistent on putting on his costume but as we were headed out the door to view a live nativity I did not think it would be appropriate. Instead we had a talk about what he could be for Christmas and he decided that being a reindeer would suit him just as well. After a quick trip to Dollar Tree for a pair of antlers we were on our way. He wore the antlers all night and to breakfast the next morning. As to the live nativity, it was great but they ended up with one narrator too many as Oliver loudly explained the entire scene to the audience while perched atop my shoulders.

2. Ruby has reached the stage where she doesn't talk but still has no problem communicating what she wants. She has had the hang of shaking her head for no but this week she has branched out and now nods as well. I find it to be rather convenient. When she points to an area I just go over and hold up individual items until she nods. Her nod is so cute though, she doesn't just nod with her head, it is a body nod from the waste up.

3. Oliver loves to have his little friend Braden over to play. It is so fun for me to watch them because they have both left behind the days of parallel play and now use their imaginations and play together. Most of the time they are workers, building roads and picking up garbage but they like to imagine other things as well. Usually I am not allowed to be in the room with them (mostly because they want me to take Ruby away so she doesn't wreck their towers and stuff). Ruby loves to do anything that her brother is doing; the other day I had a vision of her in the future tagging along behind her big brother and his friends and driving them all crazy. I have no doubt that will one day be the case, but as for now they are great friends. They love to play together and no one can make Ruby laugh like Oliver can. They can of course get on each other's nerves as well, but I have noticed that they never act jealous of each other and are not at all territorial (unless we are talking about their respective pink and blue blankets to which they are both unashamedly attached).

4. I hate to say it, but I really hate Sunday's. I know that they are supposed to be a wonderful, spiritual and uplifting day meant to prepare us for the week ahead but for me they are sheer torture. To begin with our church starts at 1:00 p.m., exactly naptime at our house. I can't understand why I can have us all ready and the house picked up by 9:00 a.m. every other morning but am always rushing to get to church on time and leaving my house in a state of complete disarray. I guess I do know the answer to that riddle, the reason I don't get ready fast enough is because I am not motivated to go. Once I go to church it is all I can do to keep my kids entertained and contained within our pew. Even after my greatest efforts we only last a few minutes in there and then it is out to the hall. Oliver actually isn't so bad, he will play with his toys and is always excited to go to nursery. But Ruby is a wanderer and refuses to stay put. Once she is out Ollie thinks he should be as well. I have every bulletin board, relief society announcement and missionary plaque in our whole building memorized because I have stared at them all so much while wandering the halls. Unfortunately things don't improve after Sacrament meeting as Ruby has discovered where the piano is in the Sunday School and Relief Society room. She knows how to open the lid to the keyboard and makes a bee-line for it every time I go into the room. As she still has four months before she is old enough for nursery I don't plan on things improving much for a while. I don't know why I am venting about this on my blog, it almost brings tears of frustration just to write about it. I guess I am hoping that in twenty years I will be able to look back at this and sigh because I actually miss those insane Sundays when I learned nothing and hated everything. Maybe the reason I can't sleep is because my heart is filled with dread for the day ahead. Forget missions, the true test of a testimony is parenthood. I guess I have one because torturous as it is, I still go to church.

5. Sam turned on the Christmas music before the Halloween decorations were put away. After hearing them so many times Oliver has started to pick up on a lot of the lyrics and I often hear him singing little snippets. My favorite is when he dances around singing "Jingle bell time is a swell time!"

I just yawned, maybe that means sleep is on the way. I think I will head to bed and let it catch me!