Weekend Confessions & Lessons

Remember that Sexy Sailor Dress I had to buy for Maggie's musical?  Here she is in it:

Photo from my friend, Laura.  And yes, Maggie is a giant :)

Doesn't look soooooo terrible on her, but it sort of lived up to the name when she sat on stage with her legs wide open for the whole song!  Eeeeek!  I took a video of the performance, and luckily, the director's head was protecting Maggie's innocence.  Lesson learned: You get what you pay for and Judge not yet ye shall be judged.

~

We were at a church cookout last night, and all the lovely ladies, upon seeing my ginormous 27ish week belly, asked me how I was feeling.  They were just being nice, and I was just plain old exhausted from a busy weekend, and instead of replying "Great!" I heard myself complaining about how big I was, how tired I was, how uncomfortable I was, how done I was with this pregnancy already.

You know when you're PMSing and you can hear yourself being so witchy but you can't stop it?  Yeah, that was me last night with all the pregnancy complaining.  The worst part is that I know the people who were asking me had suffered miscarriages, had medically needed hysterectomies, and were past childbearing years.  Why couldn't I just smile and be grateful?!? I was answering their questions honestly, but I know the "How are you feeling?" pregnancy question should just be treated in the same regard as a "Hi, how are you?" passing question.  Ain't nobody got time for a complainer when you're merely trying to make small talk.  Lesson learned: Be grateful and gracious and save the complaints for close friends who actually want to know the nitty gritty.

~

John-Paul had to make a video for science class on the pectoral group of muscles.  Apparently they could have had a partner to work with, but he said he went to the bathroom and when he came back everybody had a partner and he was the odd man out.  (Isn't that what the last kid picked for dodgeball always says?)

I was actually happy about it because trying to coordinate working with another kid gets too hard.  He did great and wrote the script and filmed himself and did all the hard work, then handed it off to me to edit together into a video using iMovie on my Mac.  I put it all together in about an hour, then spent the next THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE I WILL NEVER GET BACK trying to finalize and export the movie so he could actually show it to his teacher/class.  It was so frustrating that I had done this 42 times before (quite literally) but the one time it was for a school project, it wouldn't work.  Phil finally figured out that I had to make a copy of the project, then delete clips one by one, each time trying to finalize after until it worked.  I guess small clip sizes won't allow you to finalize the project???  Anyway, lesson learned: Don't wait until the day before a project is due to finalize it.  (I added the video below in case you want to waste five minutes learning about pecs and laughing at my kids)

~

Between the late nights for the musical this weekend and the full moon, our kids were driving us absolutely bonkers on Sunday.  I'm sure this is shocking to you, as you think we have the perfect family.  

{Insert maniacal laugh}

The boys wouldn't stop wrestling and fighting, Maggie and Declan wouldn't stop crying, and everybody needed a nap and a stiff drink.  Ahem.  Since that wasn't going to work, we packed them all up and went to my nephew's lacrosse game where the kids could just run around outside for 2 hours, and boy did everyone's moods improve.  Lesson learned: When in doubt, head out!  Vitamin D and free spaces make for happy kids.

~

Do you follow blogs or Instagram or any social media of someone and feel like it's always you making the effort?  Like how come I always comment on your posts, but you don't even follow me or comment if you do?  Yeah, I hate that feeling, and I realized that I have so many nice commenters here that I have good intentions of replying to, and then...life and stuff.  So I really want to try and respond to each commenter in the combox because I love hearing from you so much, but how would you ever know that?  Lesson learned: Be a good friend to have a good friend.

Now for a slow and hopefully uneventful week, followed by a nice long three day weekend!  And all the people said Amen.  Especially this cranky mama :)