Changing Routines

Evenings are always hectic when I have to commute to work, which isn't often, but often enough to be inconvenient. My normal office is 10 minutes from my house, but occasionally I have to drive to a location that is about 30 minutes from my house without traffic, closer to an hour with traffic. After a long day and longish commute, I am always tense and exhausted when I walk in the door.

However, I am greeted by my two little boys who are always so happy to see me. Nick practically starts dance in his joy to get picked up by Mommy. Unfortunately I don't have much time to play with them, because there's dinner to be fixed, baths to be run, and two little boys that need to get ready for bed.

Last night was one of the good nights. Gabe ate pretty well and with little resistance. He even wanted more of his main meal (leftover Hamburger Helper beef stroganoff). He took a little too long to get ready to get in his bath. He decided he wanted to crab walk into his bedroom ("Mommy, I'm doing my exercises".) Nick was in a giggly cuddly mood. After his bath I put him on our bed and he was rolling around and giggling and begging to be tickled. A baby's laugh is one of the best sounds.

Story time was Halloween-themed. I pulled out all our Halloween books last weekend. So we read Little Einstein's: Halloween Surprise, which comes with lots of sparkly stickers. We followed that with a favorite - Go Away Big Green Monster, which is a fun story to read. Both the boys were giggling. It's educational too, as it identifies colors and parts of the face. You gradually add different features to the monster's face and then you take them all away. Finally, since Nick still loves both dogs and touch n' feel books, we read Biscuit's Pet and Play Halloween. I thought the retro Halloween costumes the children were wearing were cute.

After stories, Oscar tucks Gabe in and I go feed Nick a bottle before brushing his teeth. I know he's too old to be getting a bottle before bed, but I love the routine. So he gets his milk, and then his teeth brushed. When he wakes up at night looking for a drink, we just give him water. I try to read while he's drinking, which sometimes work. Other nights he gets irritated with the book and will bat at it or kick it until I put it down and pay attention to him.

He's really fascinated with facial features, especially eye brows. Every night he points to both my eye brows and waits for me to identify them. Then he'll point to his eyebrows. Sometimes he moves on to eye lashes and nose. Other nights he's just focused on the eyebrows. When he's done he wants me to wrap both my arms around him and cuddle, which I gladly do.

Gabe is usually still away when I'm done rocking Nick, so I'll usually go in there to kiss him good night again. I really do love being a mom. The amount of love I have for my boys is amazing.

After their in bed it's time for exercising or homework, often followed by TV. Last night we caught up on last Friday's Psych, which is one of my favorite shows. We go to bed between 9 and 9:30, so we rarely watch shows live. Tonight we'll probably watch last night's Glee (so cute), and tomorrow we'll watch the season premier of Bones (which I'm super excited about).

:::

In other non-related news, I recently (over Labor Day) cut and colored my hair. I had really long light brown hair with highlights that were way grown out. I hadn't done anything with it in quite some time. So I cut it just below my shoulders and dyed it a dark reddish brown (I know, I know, where's the picture).

I've been getting a lot of compliments at work. And a lot of comments about it making me look older and more professional. Apparently I didn't look old enough to be out of high school, let alone a working professional with two children. I get that a lot. I've been in the workforce for almost 10 years, including 5 in the military, and get discredited a lot because I look so young.

It's nice that people think I look young in most situations, but at work where most of the people are much older (like my mother's age), it's a liability.