I did my first Blogathon three years ago when Hayley was only a year old (and change). I enjoyed it but wasn’t able to do it again for a couple of years because each time it coincided with a gig that George had to play. Since he would be out until 3 or 4 in the morning I knew it would be difficult for me to get any sleep on the Sunday so I didn’t participate.

Now I’m finally doing it again and although he has to go out for a little while tonight to work on some music at a friend’s house it’s much more reasonable to expect to get some sleep tomorrow morning when this is over.

Still, I’m seeing how much harder it is to do this with two kids. Each of them needs or wants something different at different times so that I find myself fixing up snacks for each of them, playing trains, reading books, and five minutes ago we were all dancing together to some Shania Twain. It makes the time pass quickly which is good, of course, but it also makes it so that I suddenly look at the clock and realize I have three minutes to post!

I have a feeling I’ll miss all this crazy passing of time in the middle of the night though. At least George and I can watch a movie together tonight if he can’t sleep when he gets home.

George came home from the grocery store with everything we need to make tacos. It’s only 3:30 and I already want to make (and eat!) supper now. I love those taco kits.

He also brought me home some cookies, two Mars chocolate bars, and an Aero bar for later. He forgot to get coffee (!) but I can probably cover myself for this afternoon and one later tonight anyway. Either that or I’ll walk down and get some, if it’s not raining.

I had planned on getting out the Rubbermaid container again and letting the kids play in it on the balcony this afternoon but the weather doesn’t seem to know what it’s going to do. We get occasional sunshine, but it’s mostly overcast, there was a light sprinkling of rain a few minutes ago, and ForecastFox is still predicting possible thunderstorms this afternoon. I don’t really mind, as long as the storms bring the humidity down a bit. Yesterday was better but we had too many days in a row of stifling heat and soul-sucking humidity. Even just cooking on top of the stove brought the apartment temperature up by three degrees and it was disgusting until about 10 pm each night.

The heat is also wreaking havoc on our air conditioners. The one in the window over the dining room table is having a hard time keeping it cool out here and the one in the main bedroom keeps icing up for reasons beyond me. I’ve tried vacuuming the filter but it’s really not clogged at all and it makes no difference. In fact, although I did have a pretty decent sleep last night, the one thing that did wake me up was the sound of running water. In mid-dream the scenery suddenly switched to a waterfall until I realized that the sound was real and I woke up to discover the A/C had iced up, then started to thaw, and water was streaming down the wall. Luckily it hadn’t gotten anything all that wet yet, just some laundry that needs to be tossed in the washing machine anyway.

Bring on the rain storms, it’s not like I can go anywhere anyway!

Getting Breanna to go to sleep was mostly uneventful, though these days it’s somewhat heartbreaking. Almost every nap time now, Breanna will wail while I take her away and for the first few minutes that I’m attempting to get her to go to sleep. She cries, “Where ‘ayley? ‘AYLEY!” over and over because she loves her sister so much. Bed time is usually better, I guess because they’re both going to bed at the same time so at night she asks “Where ‘ayley?” without the sobbing.

It’s sad, yet cute.

Since I got her to sleep in under five minutes, I also got the dishes washed and the table cleaned up a bit. Housework sucks for the most part. I like how it looks when it’s clean but I dislike the process for the most part (I do like to vacuum for some reason) and it’s discouraging to clean up only to have the kids mess it up later on. I did find a fairly entertaining way to go about housework though.

If you go to the Chore Wars site, you can create a role-playing game for yourself. You start as a peasant and you enter in the various household chores you have to do. Assign them experience points, add in bonus treasures to find, and possible dangers. For instance, for scrubbing the tub, I get 75 experience points, I can win between 75 and 100 gold pieces, I have a 2% chance of finding a chance to take a bath, and an 80% chance of being attacked by Evil Soap Scum.

Whenever you do one of your real-life chores, you can claim that chore in the game. Like any RPG game, you will either have an uneventful success, or you will have to battle some sort of monster. Then, you fight as you and the “monster” fight it out. I very nearly got taken down by rogue Cheerio monsters while making breakfast this morning, but I slayed them all and got several gold pieces to boot.

It doesn’t make the actual work more fun of course, but I like claiming them once I’m done to see what happens. You can add other members of your family as well but I’m doing it solo since the kids are too young and George would just find it really lame. Because I’m a Harry Potter dork, my adventure party is called Scourgify.

I’m starting to feel much more awake than I did this morning, thank goodness. Seeing as how 24 hours is a long time, starting out exhausted was not a good sign.

I didn’t have my second coffee yet, I’ve decided to space them out a bit, drinking lots of water in the meantime. And I’m going to avoid anything like chocolate or whatever until tonight. The last thing I need is a sugar crash or a stomach ache from too much.

And now Breanna is pulling my leg and saying “night night” so I guess it’s nap time for someone!

While I’m eating lunch (the chicken and fries ended up being a great choice), this is what the kids are doing.

Hayley has taken over my desktop computer to play a few of her favorite games (such as those on the Nick Jr. site).

Meanwhile, Breanna is playing trains.

Actually, what she ended up doing was taking the entire track apart and putting it back together her own way. I was a little surprised at how well she can put the pieces together all by herself. Every time she put them together she would applaud herself and say, “Good giwul” (girl) and “Oh woooow”.

The kids have already eaten – Hayley wanted a peanut butter sandwich so that was easy, and Breanna ate some alphabet spaghetti. At least they’re taken care of now.

I, on the other hand, have not eaten yet due to a lack of inspiration. I hate lunch. It’s my least favorite meal. I don’t mind breakfast (though I’m not big on MAKING big breakfasts, I usually just have a bagel or toast), and supper is fine. Lunch is always a giant pain in the butt because I really don’t like to cook in the middle of the day for some reason.

I think I’ll just have some of the leftover chicken and fries with gravy that we had for supper last night. Thank goodness for microwaves!

Step 1 – Set up the MegaBloks princess castle.

Step 2 – Get the Prince and Cinderella.

Step 3 – Send the Prince and Cinderella up to the top of the castle for a romantic view into the gardens.

Step 4 – Pick up a foam basketball.

Step 5 – Make the Prince scream, “Oh my god, it’s a meteor from outer space heading straight for us!”

Step 6 – Pitch the ball at the castle (flames and smoke not included).

Step 7 – Have the Prince and Cinderella jump into the lake below to escape the meteor.

Step 8 – Mass destruction as the couple swim to safety.

Step 9 – Block your ears as your pre-schooler shrieks with hysterical laughter.

The end.

(The fairy tale never tells you the craziness that happens AFTER “happily ever after” right?)

You know what’s a lot of fun? When you’re doing the Blogathon where you have to post every half hour for 24 hours and your computer suddenly decides NOW would be a good time to act up and slow way down.

Thank God I have another one. Desktop rebooting. Which sucks because I had a great post ready to go but I have to wait for the next one to put it up since it involves photos and stuff.

Dear technology,
Do not screw with me today!
Thanks,
Sherry

Since I didn’t exactly plan ahead and come up with themed ideas for my posts, don’t forget that you can help me out by asking me questions (I reserve the right to not answer) or by asking for photo requests (keep in mind I can’t go too far from home, so indoor photos are better today!).

It will definitely come in handy later tonight when my brain starts to melt out of my ears.

In the meantime, I’ll make a bit of an effort to tray to make more interesting posts than this! Good thing my pledges are based on whether I finish the ‘thon and not on how entertaining my posts are!