A Day in the Life

During the last three years, Audrey and I have been inseparable.  Her and I.  Running errands, park, playdates, everything.  She has been my sidekick during the day and I've enjoyed every moment and feel very blessed that I've had the chance to have so much one on one time with her.  I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by a military community where 95% of the moms are stay at home moms, meaning I've kept this little social butterfly very busy.  I've had the chance to work from home and have a pretty flexible schedule.  Before July, Nick had not deployed except for the occasional week long field ops.  We've been able to travel and be on the go whenever we please.  We've had it good for the past three years and I look back at it all very very fondly.  I've loved this part of my life.  

I realize everything will change once a new baby enters the picture, so I want to take a minute and document for myself what Audrey and I do on a typical day so when my memory fails me, I can remember what we did when she was three years old.

Let's start with yesterday, Thursday.  The weather is cooling down so we woke up, had breakfast, and jumped in the stroller to get a 3 mile speed walk in to get my body progressing.  We came home and while I quickly showered, Audrey rearranged her pajama drawer and took out every article of clothing. Awesome.  We jumped in the car and headed to the library's storytime, only to find out I once again got the times confused and we were 30 minutes early.  We checked out new books and got to spend some  time catching up with the friends we plan to see there every week.  I packed a lunch so we could immediately drive straight to Wilmington, where the closest decent mall is 1.5 hours away.  Nick called during the drive and we got to talk about all the fun stuff we want to do when he gets home: "Ride ponies, hold baby chicks" - Audrey.  Since clothes shopping for me is pointless at this point, I did my big fall/winter shopping spree for Audrey (I LOVE shopping for her probably even more than I do myself) since a 1.5 hour trip may not be feasible for the next few weeks.  We dined on Asian noodles:

And rode the mall train.

We stopped for dinner at a friend's house on the way home and arrived home exhausted WELL past bedtime.

Today, Friday, Audrey went to Northwoods for three hours while I came back home to work.  I'm telling you, Pandora has been my saving grace during these last few weeks.  I set up a "deployment clock" that is set to Afghanistan's time and hearing the second hand tick has been driving me insane.  Plus, I feel kinda cool that I know what the current music is.

I picked up Audrey and darn it, will I ever stop tearing up every time I pull the car around and see her waiting for me in her pink backpack?  We came home, had lunch and read some books.  I tried to get her down for a nap before a conference call at 1pm but since that didn't happen, my colleagues had to listen to "cheese stick, mommy!" and "here Wayne, here Stanley" and "mommy I have to pee" and "mommy wipe my hiney" and of course her sweet guitar music in the background.  Awesome.

Her naps last only an hour and a half these days so I finished work, and walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes (I'm trying to squeeze in as much walking as possible right now).  Once up, we dropped off work, hung outside with the neighbors (there is always a minimum of 15 kids playing on street at any given time of the day), Audrey and her friend collected dead cicada bugs (?), we walked the trails with some friends, then ordered pizza and had a neighbor and her girls over whose husband deployed yesterday.

Audrey was down for the night at 845 and here I am, updating this blog and reading Texags, my current extremely guilty pleasure.  Oh and I also finished the chocolate chip cookies said neighbor brought over for dinner.  Now, at 945 at night, I will do what any cool 31 year old, 38.5 week female does on a Friday night:  go to bed.