The Weekend... on the Weekend

I know - amazingly it's a weekend post!  I just have the girls down for a nap and Mr. Darcy is working on a project in our living room/breakfast nook and after 4 hours of Target, lunch, and the grocery with the girls, I needed some quiet time by myself.  Don't get me wrong - overall I had a good time with the girls.  It's just well, Angelfish is in this stage where she is trying to get away with not listening and it is very trying to deal with that while shopping in a public location without a 2nd parent along for the ride.  And it didn't help that she decided to be particularly mean when I asked her why she wasn't listening and she said, "Because I wanted someone else to be my Mommy."  Not much is able to reduce me to tears in a short order, but that did.

All the groceries and items from Target are put away, I've had some dark chocolate (just an ounce), and a few minutes to read Blogs and emails and am feeling more at peace - despite Mr. Darcy's banging away to hang some dry wall.  Our house is a very open floor plan in the more public spaces, which is one of the reasons we love our house.  But it also makes it a little difficult for painting because you have to stop in odd places to delineate where one room "ends" and the next begins.  To end the breakfast nook, there is a small divider (about 2 1/2 feet wide at most) with a column on the outer end that starts the new space (along with a change from tile to carpet... which we'll end up replacing with hardwood at some point probably).  Well that's great if you want your breakfast nook and kitchen to be the same wall color as the family room, but we don't. We like creating the division with color and such without breaking up the space.  But in this particular spot, Mr. Darcy felt we needed to make a more defining space with another column so that we can avoid a change in color mid-wall.  And I pretty much agree.  So he's framed it already and is now adhereing the dry wall, to which he'll add a wall texture like we have already, and then paint it to match the green we painted the bar and the divider, and then paint the wall the bisque cream color we painted the rest of the kitchen and breakfast nook.  Thus, my removal of the small people from the house so this could have some semblance of starting.  Of course, my fear is more related to the finishing of the project than the starting as we tend to have things start and then take months or longer to finish.

Yesterday's workout was decent.  There were a large number of swimmers at Lucky's this weekend, but unfortunately the large majority of them were kids from a swim team who definitely were having issues swimming in open water.  They swam just fine... except for the fact that they would swim over anyone and everyone in their way because they didn't seem to see them or care if they did see them, and they couldn't sight worth sh#t and were swimming at people head on, or forcing you to get out of the way and getting yourself off line or on the wrong side of a buoy from time to time.

So, our 2,000m swim took me 51:42 to finish.  I wasn't overly happy with the time, but I reminded myself I want to peak on race day not the weekend before, so hopefully all will be well.  The 10 mile bike ride afterwards was nice and easy, although the traffic was tough.  I had to laugh because at one point I held the group up because I didn't make it through the light after we had been stopped at it because I almost crashed when my bike shorts got caught on the nose of my saddle on the way up and wouldn't get unstuck.  Luckily the people behind me had been paying attention and laughed with me, especially after I said "now that's a new meaning for not being able to get your ass in gear..."  Turns out the guy who picked the route for us used to live in NYC and biked everywhere... so his definition of "heavy traffic" and the rest of the teams was a little different.  But we all made it in one piece just fine.

Afterwards I headed home in time to see the girls a few minutes before Mr. Darcy took them to a football game at UCF.  I had thought to warn him that at 2 months shy of the age of 4, they might not be quite ready for it yet but he seemed determined to go and meet the other guys from his fraternity alumni association, so I kept quiet and thought to myself that I hoped someone brings a girlfriend who likes kids.  Turned out that only one other person arrived and he was an older gentleman in his mid to late 60's that had grandkids... so he didn't mind when Angelfish decided to sit on his lap to watch some of the game and seemed to understand when Mr. Darcy left at half time because the girls weren't exactly being overly good listeners and were getting wild because they were like pent up little animals.

I on the other hand spent time volunteering at Baby Basics, where I counted and packaged diapers for a bit, chatted with the other volunteers, and helped deliver the diapers to the women who participate in the program when they arrived to collect them.  I helped one Mom who had an infant and a little boy who was about the girls' age.  He was having a bit of a fit because he wanted to play on the playground but Mom needed to go to get her glasses fixed so she could see.  I chatted with him, tried to get him to laugh and tried to destract him, but he wasn't having it.  In the end I told him he needed to be a good example for his little sister, and ironically it seemed to work... it reminded me of the girls.

Then back home where we cleaned up the playroom and I got a nap in while the girls were napping.  Then Mr. Darcy and I went to dinner at Outback (which was a bit ironic because in the movie we saw, they usually go to a steakhouse) and then saw "Date Night."  "Date Night" was hysterical.  We were laughing about scenes in the movie a good 40 minutes after it ended.  The premise is exactly as they show it in the commercials - longtime married couple with kids decide to try to spice it up by going to dinner in the city and get wrapped up in this crime situation.  It was so funny that even the couple who was on a date and not married were laughing hard.  Mr. Darcy and I were laughing our butts off throughout the entire thing.  If you're married (and not in the 1st 2 years of marriage) and especially if you have kids, you can't help but think it's funny.  Go see it.  It's the first time in awhile that I wasn't sorry to have paid $20 for the two of us to see something in the theatre!

This morning, the girls let us sleep until almost 8 am when Ladybug entered the room and shouted "Get up and play!"  It was loud... and ironically, not the usual climb into bed and jump on you that we normally get.  That's painful sometimes, but at least it's not loud.  So I started the day by making breakfast, straightening, and having a nice cup of coffee and reading my newest installment of "Southern Living" that arrived this week while sitting on the tile and watching the girls play in the playroom. (We have a house rule that drinks aren't allowed on the carpet, and that includes the parents.) Then we had a nice party that the girls put on with a lot of "candy" and "cookie" and "cakes" (all fake food - actually most were plastic vegetables that they pretended were made of those sweet things) and pretend tea before heading out to Target, Davis Bakery (we were all ready for lunch) and Publix.  The girls lost their ability to get a cookie at the end of our Publix trip because they were already on 2 for not listening and I hear them tell each other they're "going to break your teeth"... granted, I realized that they were saying this because they bumped teeth and thought it was funny instead of being some sort of mafioso youth but I had to lay down the law all the same.  Ladybug burst into tears and started a fit, but Angelfish decided to make her feel better (thank goodness because I really was at the point that I had already waited 15 minutes to get lunchmeat from the deli counter and I didn't want to leave to have to discipline someone in a bathroom) and it was very short lived.  I thought they were going to fall asleep on the 5 minute ride from Publix to the house, so I checked the mail too, but it was not to be.

Before the crazy behavior in Publix (they were manhandling each other in the cart - didnt' know you could wrestle in the space of the seat in those car carts did you?), we had a really fun time though.  They were sweet and funny, except when they were being crazy about bathing suits in Target and going around and around in circles in and out of a crowd of people who were fixated on bathingsuits and came up while we were looking at them.  I was having visions of child abductions, so they ended up in the shopping cart.  And lunch at the deli was enjoyable too.  I have a lot of fun with our kids, but as I said to Mr. Darcy last night... it's like 95% of the time it's fun and sweet, but the other 5% can just be very, very trying.

We've had about an hour of quiet now, but Angelfish is shouting something... so I'm guessing nap time is officially over. I may have to go see what they are up to... wish me luck!