Monday Musings

• It's been a REALLY hard week, in regards to parenting. Eleanor has been cranky, I think from teething and a tiny cold, and Avery...oh I am missing age 2! We are battling defiance and disobedience in the worst of ways it seems. May God give me grace and wisdom to work through this one with her. 
• I broke my left pinkie toe on Friday, or seriously fractured it. It's swollen and throbs at the end of each day and I can't bend it. I broke this same toe one summer in college. 
• We went out of town this weekend for a niece's baptism (sweet Lucy!!) and had some good cousin time. This was also a good remedy for Avery's current antics, since it provided a change of scenery and some fun.
• I wonder how much of Avery's attitude is due to moving, and how much due to the stress of the past year. All I want to do as a mother is protect her from hurting, but too much protection doesn't equip our children for the life ahead.
• Trader Joe's has recently opened a store in The Woodlands, near our families, and I am SO.EXCITED. We used to shop at TJ in NYC, with one just a couple blocks from our apartment. We have been waiting for years for one to open near us in Texas, and finally! My mother-in-law and I went and stocked up and I came home with some fun treats that didn't require refrigeration. Next time I'll go prepared with a longer list and plan to stop on our way out of town so I can bring cold items back in a cooler. 
• I leave on Friday for a week long vacation, BY MYSELF. No kids. No husband. For the past year my mom and her female cousins have been planning a houseboat trip. One of my sisters and I are going as well. It's going to be, wait for it...legendary.
• I'm also really super nervous to leave the girls for that long. They will be traveling with Luke to visit his parents for the time that I am gone, and I know that they are in good hands. But, it's the first time for me to leave Eleanor, and the longest I'll have been away from Avery. Plus, I'm still nursing Eleanor. I plan to pump while I'm gone and pray that she doesn't wean herself in that time span. I'm enjoying these next few days of nursing, just in case they are my last. :( Thankfully she likes to snuggle, unlike Avery. Once I was done nursing Avery, that was the end of snuggling. 
• On the way to Houston this weekend, we stopped at the pharmacy drive-thru to pick up a prescription. Avery was crying and yelling in the backseat, just outright screaming at one point, and as the pharmacist handed us the prescription through the window, she couldn't hide her laugh anymore. What was the prescription? Birth control pills.