We get to celebrate two of our favorite boys being born on this day, Daddy and Uncle Jeff.
Here’s a pic just in case you are having trouble remembering how old you are – because you know. That is what happens when you get old, you forget stuff. Or so we are told….
Hope you have a fantastic day and the best year yet!
(Daddy we have all kinds of birthday celebrations planned for you if you would just hurry up and come home!)
Love you!
C, E & A
Aha! So there are other nerdy, geeks out there who think all this sleep cycle stuff is kinda interesting, too.
So, now to answer all those questions I keep getting…
How does the app know what phase you are in?
Since you move differently in bed during the different phases, Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movement to determine which sleep phase you are in.
That same accelerometer that lets the girls play MonkeyBall (where you tilt the phone this way and that to get the ball to go somewhere – I don’t know. I’ve never played it…) can sense your movements while you sleep. You put the phone at the top of your bed, right under your fitted sheet so it holds it in place and can detect your movements.
Are you afraid that the cell waves are going directly into your head?
That was my first worry. But you put the phone into airplane mode – so the wireless is shut off. So no waves. Nowhere near my head. So it is fine.
So…how are you sleeping? Without J. home?
Ha! The first night…miserably. Remember my nice deep sleep when he was home? Well, the first night he was gone looked like this:
Went to bed / woke up: 11:10 PM / 5:51 AM
Total time: 6h 40m
Just enough little deep sleeps to make it so I wasn’t exhausted on Wednesday morning, but I certainly did not wake refreshed.
So I figured the next night I would be really tired and sleep really well:
Went to bed / woke up: 11:05 PM / 6:39 AM
Total time: 7h 33m
A much nicer stretch, but it took me 2 hours to fall asleep! I finally had to resort to reading. Still woke up before the alarm. And also woke up with a wicked head cold. NOT feeling refreshed.
So last night, I went back and forth trying to decide whether I should take some Nyquil or not before going to bed. I almost felt flu-ish, fever, chills, just all around horrible. But then, I HATE Nyquil. It makes me loopy and gives me horrible dreams. And especially didn’t want to take it knowing that I didn’t have backup if one of the girls got up or needed me. In the end, I felt just bad enough that I took half a dose knowing that if it just helped me sleep and stopped my runny nose, I might feel better in the morning.
And check last night’s graph out:
Went to bed / woke up: 11:16 PM / 7:08 AM
Total time: 7h 52m
There isn’t even a line for going to sleep. I think I was asleep in 30 seconds. My “awake peak” was when I had to get up, blow my nose and get a drink at 3. Em didn’t have school today so I didn’t set an alarm and slowly woke up right before 7.
So there you have it. Just need to self-medicate with Nyquil when you are worried about sleeping, I guess. And I did wake up feeling pretty good, but there have been a few other Nyquil side effects today.
We made cupcakes this morning so we could get them in the oven before Addie’s playdate. I put them in and then wandered off to change the beds and pick up the house. Our kitchen is in the back of the house and you really can’t hear a thing that goes on back there. So I didn’t hear my timer. And remember I have a wicked cold, so I can’t even smell the cupcakes baking.
I wandered back into the kitchen with water glasses and such and looked at the oven and thought, “Why is the stove on? I didn’t make eggs this morning, did I?” And as I was about to shut it off remembered that it was on for the CUPCAKES! That were most definitely done.
I’m totally blaming it on the Nyquil…or maybe I got too much sleep last night?
Nah. Definitely the Nyquil.
Yeeeehaw! It is Thursday.
I wasn’t really sure about doing a T&T Thursday as we charge into Team-Up Thursday today, but I really do like my little download post for the week. It lets me get all my thoughts and photos of the week documented and out here on the blog. Maybe I’ll just move it to Friday. Kinda makes more sense. But, since I’m writing it now, and it is going to be Thursday in a few minutes, I guess we get one more T&T Thursday.
So updates to earlier happenings…
The storm ended, and we had a sun-filled, peaceful weekend along with some really pretty views.
The sunsets have been incredible this week and I am always without my camera. You’d think I’d learn, but no.
We, and half of our neighborhood, hit the park this weekend for some fresh air. This is Addie’s little friend, Jessie. She is the cutest! My girls could care less that I’m in their face with the camera and she is just hamming it up in every photo.
Let’s see…what else is up with the buttercups?
Addikins is out of her mind with excitement. She pretty much sounds like this…
“OHMYPEAS!ONTHISDAY?WHENAREWEGOINGTOSEEMARYPOPPINS?ANDTHENEJISGOINGTOCOMETOOURHOUSEFORA
SLEEPOVERANDAFTERTHATI’MGOINGTOGOTOHERHOUSEFORASLEEPOVER!”
Translation: We get to go see Mary Poppins, the Musical with EJ (BFF, remember!) and her mom, B. on Friday.
And then we are having EJ over for a sleepover this weekend so her Mommy can go visit EJ’s Nana (please think good thoughts for B.’s mom – she is in the fight of her life, working on kicking cancer!). And THEN, the next weekend, Addie is going to stay at EJ’s while this Mommy travels down to Miami to the SuperBowl.
YEAH! THIS Mommy. Me.
My lovely friend B. is taking Addie, and my other lovely friend Jamie is taking Em for the weekend so I get to go hang with J. and see the Colts win a SuperBowl. (You heard it here first. Well, maybe not first…but you did hear it here!)
So besides getting to see the SuperBowl, I also get TWO six-hour plane rides. By myself. Do you have any idea what a treat that is? A big coffee. My iPod. A few magazines. A few books. And nobody asking for snacks, the DVD player, crayons, bubblegum…oh. I can hardly wait.
I mean…oh, I’m going to miss my girlies so very much! Yes. That is what I mean.
Emmy decided tonight that we really had to try to take a photo for Daddy (he is already in Miami) because “he is going to be gone for so long (two weeks) and he might need a new photo of his girls.” (Because he doesn’t have 20,000 photos already!) So she decided to try to take a few, and she snapped this.
You don’t even need to ask me how much I love that photo, do you?
But we need to try again on the timer photo of the three of us…
Gee…do we all have the same cheesy smile? Yes. Yes, we do.
Last week the talented ladies at Hip Momma and Mental Inventory threw down the Team-Up Thursday challenge. Always up for a new challenge and hoping to push my new camera just a little further, I asked my friend, Kimberly from Altering Life, to join up with me, and now we are team! You can call us Altering Chaos, or Barely Controlled Life.
Or you can just call me a dork and enjoy what we come up with each week.
The challenge is to pick a “theme” and each of us will shoot a photo to fit it. Then we’ll merge our photos together to make a diptych (a photograph that uses two different or identical images side by side to form one single artistic statement).
Pretty cool, huh? Each week we are going to pick our theme (taking turns) and we’ll shoot from opposite corners of the country and see what we end up with.
Here is Dipy #1:
Kimberly threw out NUMBERS as our first theme and this is what we got.
K.’s is on the left, mine is on the right. It is a little harder than it sounds, I must say. I kind of drew a blank for the first few days, but it did force me to really start looking at everything more closely.
When I opened K.’s photo this morning after I had processed mine, I was surprised (well, not really – we seem to think a lot alike on a bunch of stuff) to see hers in black & white, too. Must’ve been this week’s subject just warranted the cut-and-dry b&w.
Stop over to see some more Team-Up Thursdays.
Yeah, so when J. told me two years ago that it was time to upgrade our phones and we “needed” iPhones, I scoffed at him and told him “I don’t even like to talk on the phone, why do I need to spend money on a nerdy gadget like that?”
And then I got my hot, little hands on one and well, let’s just say I’ve been happy to hear J.’s “See I told you so’s” ever since.
I love having my updated calendar, contacts, email, and Scrabble always with me. Yes, I am kinda addicted to my stupid Scrabble game on there. But playing it does somehow make me feel s-m-a-r-t-e-r (hmm…only an eight point word, but if you could get it on a triple word score….).
Anyhow, J. is forever finding new apps and telling me I should download them. And I usually kind of half-heartedly say ok, and then wait until it is in very high rotation on his phone before I take the time to dump it on mine. The other night he told me that he had downloaded this Sleep Cycle app that figures out what your sleep cycle is and how much quality sleep you get, and so on. YAWN, (no pun intended) right? I ask him, “Why do you need a nerdy app like that?”
(You see where this is going, right?) The morning after he used it for the first time he showed me his results and…then? I had to have it on my phone! Would it work if we were both using it? Would the data be corrupted? Who has a better sleep cycle? Who REALLY gets more sleep? I think I have become a nerd. I know. But I think it is kinda fascinating!
So I downloaded and ran the app last night. I’ve told at least three friends about the app today. And I cannot wait to get in bed and try it again. (Well, who am I kidding? I just can’t wait to sleep period.)
So check out my sleep chart from last night!
Went to bed / woke up: 10:50 PM / 6:03 AM
Total time: 7h 12m
Check out how crazy hard I sleep! For hours straight! That peak at about midnight was because Addie’s alarm/cd player inexplicably turned on for no apparent reason. But you can see I didn’t quite wake up allll the way. Now compare that with J.’s. (He actually did wake up, went in to shut off the unexplained alarm, and then helped Addie get back to sleep.)
Went to bed / woke up: 10:52 AM / 5:42 AM
Total time: 6h 50m
He just sent me his, and he is Miami now, so his phone has already shifted to EST. Just subtract 3 hours from his graph, and holy cow! No wonder the boy is so tired! He only gets little tiny bits of deep sleep – and never all at the same time!
The alarm part of the app uses a 30 minute window to wake you up when you are in the lightest sleep phase. Supposedly it is easier and more pleasant to wake up this way. I was wide awake at 5:30 this morning, so I didn’t even get to my alarm, but I’m sure that is only because I had some serious deeeep sleep!
I attribute all my hard sleeping to day 1 of hard training and just an all-around long day yesterday. It will be even more interesting to see tonight’s since J. isn’t here (and I sleep horribly when he is not here) and compare it to J.’s when he isn’t worried about getting to the airport or being jolted awake by blaring cd-players and children.
Stay tuned…and we can supply you with all the nerdy-ness you need.
I don’t have a ton of craftiness to show today, nor very good photos, but (cue the excuses…) I have two very good reasons for my lack of crafts this week. (And as usual my excuse for poor photos – waiting til the very last minute to take them, and not a ray of natural light to be found.)
So, first of all, J. is leaving for two weeks this morning for the ProBowl and SuperBowl. Which means that a bunch of the past weekend was spent hanging out with Daddy and packing him up for his trip. It was more extensive than it sounds, believe me.
And secondly, I started training in earnest again for the triathlon season. I was a bit slacking last year, but I have already signed up for the Pasadena one in March (in.eight.weeks!) and I’m planning on finding at least two others this summer to keep me motivated and training this time. So I found myself a sucker, training partner, my friend B., and we have been mapping out our workouts, most of which we try to do in the morning. Which pushes my errands, laundry, day-to-day stuff into the afternoon. Which pushes other stuff (PTA, work, blogging, photo-ing, etc…) into the wee evening hours. Which? Leaves not very much time for crafting. And also hasn’t allowed me to put anything up in the store, which I had hoped to do after the first of the year.
But, well…February is still “after the first of the year” now, isn’t it? So there is always hope.
After I did all that complaining that I was SuperCape’d out, I did make another one for Addie & Em’s dear little friend Frankie. She turned 4 and her mom said she has taken to running around yelling, “Frankie! Flower Power!” So this special edition flower cape was created just for her.
I actually really liked the color of this cape. It was a nice change from the blue, pink and purple I ususally do.
I also made a little blanket for Maverick. It looks suspiciously like the burp cloths I made for him, no? Well, come to find out Meesh was using the cloths as little blankies for him. But, as babies are prone to do, he went and started growing and stuff and the burp cloths are not cutting it any longer. So this should hold him for a year or two…
I have another baby gift ready to go out to my cousin, too. But it hasn’t actually been put in the mail yet – and I don’t want to ruin the surprise, so I’ll save it for next week.
How about all of you? Have you been busy bees?
The rainy days were a nice change from the endless, sunny LA days.
They also provided a good excuse for some cozy, movie-filled afternoons.
But, I think we all (kitty included) were a little relieved to have a few days reprieve from the rain.
And a chance to open up the doors and feel the crisp, fresh air on our faces, er…whiskers.
If you are in the LA-area, (have come down from your Christmas high and need a quick sugar fix) will you pop over to my friend’s place tomorrow and buy some treats? ALL the proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders to help the Haiti earthquake victims.
And our Daisy troop is collecting gently worn shoes for the Soles 4 Souls program as well. We need to drop them off next weekend (1/30-31) so they can be sent to Haiti. If you have some shoes clogging up your closets (and live reasonably close!) give me a call and I’ll come take them off your hands.
It has been the strangest week. I think it is due to the weird weather we have been having. I must say, at first it was extremely funny to listen to the weather/news casters out here. I should tape some of the broadcasts for you midwesterners to watch and you will just laugh and laugh!
“And then it we will have 100% chance of rain every day. For five days straight! Heavy rain!”
Needless to say, the “storm” has been the only topic of conversation around here since last Friday. Even over the weekend when the sky looked like this…
I think that the forecast must have kept a lot of people away from Disney, too. We had a very casual, fun weekend in a much-less-busy-than-normal park. And even when we had to wait for a ride, it wasn’t very long, and we found ways to keep ourselves occupied…
But, at the end of Sunday (thankfully just about the time we were ready to leave), the clouds started to roll in.
See? There’s one…and another…
And by the time we finished up it was pouring. Our sweet Daddy ran to get the car while we found a dry spot and sugared up for the trek home…
We said goodbye to Disney, and hello to the rain.
But whereas the rain was a nice change at the beginning of the week, it has been a little scary at times. Along with the rain we’ve had thunderstorms, crazy winds, tornadoes, mudslides, and water spouts off the coast. Most disconcerting though is the flooding. For 50 weeks of the year the earth just pretty much bakes around here, so when we do get rain, it just cannot soak into the ground fast enough. And the storm drains cannot keep up with the runoff, so we just have floods. Our entire front walk was under about 6 inches of rain today and our driveway’s puddles came well up to the middle of my calf. That is a lot of water!
So yesterday the girls and I were in our jammies, with popcorn and hot cocoa, hunkered down watching movies. Right after school. At 4pm. There was no way we were fighting the storms. Plus it was just a really nice pause in our weekly chaos.
In other news around here, we are on tooth-watch. Again. Em tells me at least three times a day how “wiggly” her tooth is.
And besides the start of cookies sales, the Crazy Daisies also had a field trip to the firehouse…
And they earned their Strong & Courageous petals. Our Daisy on the zipline…
When we first walked up she was so “not going to do that rope thing, Mama,” but she changed her mind after she watched her friend Kelli do it. That is my girl. Hang back and survey the situation, then cautiously proceed. I was very proud of her.
Meanwhile, Addie just charges ahead with life. Her friend EJ turned five a few weeks ago and I believe that Addie thinks they can’t be friends if Addie isn’t five as well. She keeps trying to tell me, “I’m five too, right Mama?” “I’ll be five in a few days, right?”
I finally told her that she will be five soon enough (too soon enough!) and it was okay if EJ was already five. And they would both get to go to kindergarten in the fall. (God-willing, EJ will get into our school, or there might be some seriously depressed little best friends around these parts.)
And after the Haiti earthquakes, and a few others up in Northern California too, J. and I have renewed our quest to be fully earthquake-ready. I think I’m going to battery-up our flashlights, we may need them today if you believe the weather forecasts, as today is supposed to be even stormier than yesterday.
Hope you are all having a good Thursday.
…Girl Scout cookies, my friends. Would you like to buy some from this sweet, little Daisy?
I remember selling cookies when I was a Brownie, or…rather, I remember my Dad selling boxes and boxes for me at his office. So I coached Em into flashing her puppy-dog eyes at the breakfast table this morning while she asked her Daddy to take her order form to the office. Of course we were successful on that front. And now she and I have to hit the neighborhood streets, too.
And be prepared Grandparents, Aunts & Uncles – Emmy will be calling to read you one of her famous scripts.
(Wait for it…it is pretty funny but might be hard to resist!)