Brace yourselves.

This is far from a Wordless Wednesday. Wordful would be more appropriate.

We're going to take our BFF relationship to the next level here today.

You can totally make fun of me, and I can already hear my husband, sisters, mother, and IRL friends laughing at me. I'm okay with that. I'm putting myself out there and that's that.

Ignore the ums and I really mean hear your voice when I talk about picture your voice. You know what I mean.

I don't know if Enjoy! is the appropriate way to introduce my first ever VLOG, but ENJOY!!!

Q & A for Babbling A

I've seen lots of Q & A on blogs lately. And since my brain is stretched to come up with material lately, let's do one. Or try to do one. Maybe no one will ask any questions and then I'll just feel like a big bloggy loser, but I'll prepare my pride now.

I'll answer try to answer them on my birthday, which is in - gasp - 8 days. It's kind of scary being in your late twenties. Eh.

So, ask away. Whatchu wanna know????

PS. I am having a lot of trouble with comments lately (i.e. it will say I have 1 comment on my dashboard, but really I have 4; or they won't show up until days after the comment was left). If you've submitted one and haven't seen it post, would you mind emailing me at babblingabby(at)gmail(dot)com? I have noted the problem with blogger, and it's apparently happening to other bloggers too. Thanks!!!

My head says lesson plan, my heart says blog. Toughie.

Gah. I just can't bring myself to sit down and type out the next week's worth of lesson plans. Even though there are a mere 5 days left until the highly anticipated Christmas Break, I just can't do it. Instead, I'm wanting to plan for what I will do with fourteen days off. FOURTEEN DAYS. My Ugg-ed out feet break into the Charlie Brown shuffle at the thought.


Also, the Christmas Spirit took hold of me last night, and now my brain is just a big mushy mess of tinsel, glitter, and good cheer for young and old. Becks has completely undecorated the lower half of our tree, and shattered an ornament or two, {cheap, Dollar Tree ornaments at least} but I don't care because it's Christmas and cuteness trumps naughty at Christmastime on occasion.


Apparently, blogging trumps lesson planning too. If I were as smart as Becks looks wearing his Papa's glasses, I'd get off of here right now and start planning something related to The Polar Express, which is our weekly reading selection. Instead I will just keep right on blogging. I think wearing the glasses scared him. So serious.

The weekend was low key. Besides attending our church's musical (in which my momma sang), we went to Target (for diapers only; it was boring), watched football, and ate lasagna at Nana M's house. We also helped decorate their tree. And that's it until tomorrow. G'night.

My husband can never take a normal photo.

Lesson learned.

I know that whoever coined the phrase Lord, have mercy definitely had children. Because I said this phrase under my breath for the hour and a half that we subjected Becks to the Christmas musical at church last night. Armed with a baggieful of Lucky Charms and a sippy of juice, I figured we'd make it through with ease. Our kid likes music, so this should have been cake. Nope, not at all.

He was in my lap. And then he wanted down. He was in my lap. And then he wanted down.

He was in his daddy's lap. And then he wanted down.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Repeatedly. At about a 12 second interval.

I kept glancing at the programme, thinking only four more songs until intermission...only three more songs until intermission...PLEASE GET HERE INTERMISSION. Despite the constant movement, he was surprisingly quiet until the last three songs of the entire production. Then he wanted to loudly pop his paci in and out of his mouth saying BAH! every time. {That's what he calls a paci.} Then he'd giggle. Also loudly. So I took him to the foyer and we finished the musical from the flatscreen out there where I let out an exasperated, non-whisper Lord, have mercy!

Patience was invented for parenthood.

PS. My little sister, Aubrea, turned 21 over Thanksgiving break and then I got sick and forgot to mention it. Happy Birthday, Aubbers! Love you :) This is me and her after our delish dinner at Bonefish. We are modeling her signature picture pose. Similar to the Tori-tilt, no?

Cheerio, mate!

It is downright frigid here. My toes were cold all the way to school this morning, though that is largely due to the fact that it was snowy and I opted not to wear socks with my flats. The reason that I did not wear socks is mostly because I don't think it looks cute and that I couldn't locate a pair of black socks if my life depended on it since I haven't been caught up on laundry in weeks.

The laundry issue here is out of control. I am really thinking about hitting up Target after Becks gets up from his nap so that I could just wear a brand new top to work tomorrow rather than actually do a load of laundry. That is very selfish and the logic is completely irrational, I know, but it makes complete sense to me since I wouldn't have to produce clean clothes by the morning. And a Diet Coke and popcorn from the snackbar sounds pretty good right now.

Moving on...

I finally addressed all 4000 or so of my Christmas cards, which I plan to mail en route to Tarjay. Actually, there are 61 cards which equals around $26 in postage. Oy. I ended up opting to self-address rather than print from my Excel spreadsheet when I found I was having a decent handwriting day yesterday. Which is crucial if you're going to sit and pen out 61 addresses. Some people have bad hair days - I have bad handwriting days. Is that completely bizarre? Probably so, but I couldn't bear to mail out something with my family name on it with sloppy penmenship. It's a sickness.

In other news, I'm so sad that The Hills and The City are over for the season. Though I have found that Jersey Shores and Teen Mom will tide me over with enough drama until they resume sometime in 2010. Pathetic? Yes, maybe. But I need some entertainment when Beckham is sleeping from time to time and now I have Schnooks and The Situations to keep me laughing with their self-proclaiming guido-osity (ha!) and unbelievable egos. And I'll keep rooting for Maci and Ryan to make it and for Farrah to, um, get over herself. Caitlin is my favorite, if you wanted to know. Make me feel better and admit that you, too, are tuning in...

Lastly, I cannot seem to get through Eclipse in the Twilight saga. I'm a hundred or so pages through it and basically read a page or two before I fall asleep because I just want Bella and Edward to get married. For many people, this was a favorite. Have I just not reached the good part of the plot yet? What's the deal?

T-to-the-ired.

I wish I could explain to you the exhaustion. The absolutely dire lack of sleep. The immenent need to crawl back into bed and sleep until tomorrow. I. Am. Tired.

{The Backstory}

So, we're eating last night. It's about 6:30pm. Groceries are strewn haphazardly across the kitchen table and sink, and dinner was some kind of microwavable pasta that I got on sale for a buck. Becks is shoveling yogurt into his mouth with one hand while holding a perfectly capable spoon with the other. I guess it's only for show, since his hands are his utensil of choice. B and I are conversing about the day's events and suddenly there was a flicker. The lights.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

No electric. Streetwide. Citywide.

I made a couple of phone calls to the energy company, reported our outage and prayed that this wasn't a repeat of September 2008 when we lost power for the entire work week. The automated machine said that we'd receive a phone call when power was restored. The difference between having a major power outage in September versus December is obviously temperature. Our poorly insulated 1950s cape cod was losing heat faster than you can say shiver me timbers, and we could barely hear each other over all the teeth chattering.

An hour later we were still powerless, so we gathered all the candle power we could and started packing our things to stay at my parents' place where heat and cable TV were abundant. Pending that promised call from the energy co., we'd planned to stay there all night.

So we end up sleeping over and all is peaceful and wonderful until Becks gets up wailing at 3am. We pull him into bed between us and head back into dreamland. Except not. Because Beckham was wide awake, and performed TWO AND A HALF HOURS worth of acrobatics between me and B for the duration of the night.

He repeatedly tossed and turned, headbutting me all the while in a futile attempt at getting comfortable. He smothered me with G (his lovie), and laid his head on my face. Then he would alternate between my stomach and face. Then he pivoted around so that his feet were by my head or B's stomach and he would start to kick. When I went to the bathroom at 4am, he insisted on accompanying me and asked for a drink and to brush his teeth. This went on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. If you didn't catch that earlier, I thought I'd bold and underline it again. Because that's a long darn time. All in all, there was a whole lotta non-sleep going on.

At 5:30am, I gave up. And now I'm basically a zombie.

Oh, but lest my neighbor inform me - the power returned at 9pm last night.

Never got that phone call. Arrrrrrrgh.

Robeez Giveaway Winner!

Hey y'all! Will add a more detailed post later, but the winner of the Robeez shoes is Heather from Variable Clouds! Heather, please email me at babblingabby(at)gmail(dot)com so that I can discuss details with you :)

Thanks everyone for playing along!!!!