Sleep? Who needs that?

I'm one of those people who completely falls apart if I don't sleep for a MINIMUM of 8 hours. It's the truth! In fact, speaking of falling apart, if I don't get enough sleep, eat enough protein, exercise for enough minutes, drink enough coffee, get enough "me" time in and/or take enough "driving down the coast" joy rides, I morph into the creature from the black lagoon. I'm just an externally sensitive soul, what can I say?! Anyway, Chadly is literally the complete opposite. The dude doesn't have to eat breakfast until 3:00 in the afternoon (something that perturbs me, for some weird reason), and can run off of 3 hours of sleep, just to give a few examples.

Anyway, here is a nice story from the other night, a night almost free of sleep, the result of which being a horrible next-day:

Around 4:00 am or so, I woke up with this horrid headache, which has never ever happened to me, despite the outrageous amount of migraines, etc. I've dealt with. Anyway, I rolled over, grabbed a drink of water and tried to go back to sleep. Instead of drifting off into slumber, though, my mouth was super dry about 15 seconds later. So I took another drink. And another. And another. And another. And then I got up to cut the middle man out: I went straight for the sink. Again, and again, and again.

It was so weird! After about a half hour of this madness, I concluded that I'm an extremely dehydrated individual who should probably be more conscious about her liquid intake (read: less coffee, more water). Anyway, after I FINALLY felt that my insatiable thirst had been satisfied, I laid back down for some shut eye. 

Well, wouldn't you know it? The ole' hubby decided to sleep face down with his arms up over his head like a hooligan, resulting in what I'm pretty sure were two dead arms. TWO DEAD ARMS. In HIS sleep, he rolled over, lugging his arms to MY side of the bed! I tried to push them over, but they wouldn't budge! Then I tried to wake him up, which was a lost cause. 

Finally he came to, and tried unsuccessfully to relinquish control of his limbs, but apparently got over it, going back to sleep. Alright. So after some repositioning of the ole' hubster, I finally got a few feet of my own space, sans Chadly's dead arms . . . an hour and a half after I had woken up for my initial drink of water. The good news was that my headache was gone, but the trade off was Monday's psychotic state of mind. It was great. So awesome.

Thank goodness I woke up today feeling motivated and a heck of a lot better than Monday. Don't you hate days like ones where you got no sleep the night before? I sure as heck could do without them.  

Wednesday's forgetfulness

Today I'm as forgetful as forgetful comes. No joke. I keep thinking it's Tuesday, so it's one of those type situations. Here are a few of the major things run a'slack in this house so far, and it's only the early afternoon!

1. Upon waking up this morning, I totally forgot that we were taking our family holiday pictures, even though I was prepping until 11:30 last night! I just laid there relaxing for a good 15 minutes, then realized that if I didn't hop-to, we were all going to be hungry grouches because breakfast would have had to have been skipped - which, if you know me, should NEVER happen.

2. I started having our milk delivered (reasonable price with no hassle? Um, yes please.) during the wee hours of Wednesday mornings. This particular morning I completely forgot about the lonesome jug waiting for me on my doorstep until about a half hour ago, when I found the note our awesome neighbor left informing me that he had my milk in his fridge so it wouldn't go bad. We love Mike around here!

3. I completely forgot that I should have sent in a piece last night to the wonderful website I write for! What?! That's a whole new level of forgetfulness entirely, one that is not okay! Thankfully I've since corrected my horrible mistake. What is happening to me?!

4. So during our glorious family photo shoot this morning, I had the bambinos take their 1-year-old and 3-year-old pictures individually in different outfits than what we used for the Christmas card picture. Welp, in regards to Kota's outfit, I forgot something. Something kind of important - like her ONESIE! Yes! Just left it right there on the floor in our bedroom. Anyway, I was lucky because, surprisingly, her outfit worked without that all-important undergarment, but really, what the hell? (In all seriousness though, I think the photos will look cuter without it . . . thank goodness I've found a fair amount of pinterest pictures with baby girls wearing nothing but a good ole' fashion tutu!)

So yay for forgetting EVERYTHING today! Let's hope this trend doesn't continue into the rest of the week, for goodness sakes!

A night for the ages

Here's a fun fact: Chad and I wanted to skin ourselves alive and jump out of a second story window this last Sunday.

Yes, yes we did. We had THE wildest, most unexpectedly fun night on Saturday. In fact you couldn't even classify the outing as one of the "night" variety, it truly was a "wee hours of the morning" type of event. Here's how it went on the night that our parenting duties ceased to exist . . .

One of Chadly's friends from work was having a going-away party up in LA at what we thought was going to be a club (which made me nervous! A club? What does one wear to a club when they are going to be surrounded by their husband's work friends?! Jeans? A dress? WHAT?!), which luckily turned out to just be a bar. So we made the 45 minute drive up the 5 freeway, exited Fairfax (FAIRFAX!), drove another twenty minutes and finally arrived, only to find all of the familiar Wells Fargo people standing outside due to overcrowding. Welp, they sure as heck were right about that. We took one step inside to say sayonara to his pal and were immediately bamboozled by young bar goers. I mean, I've literally never been in a more crowded place in my life. It was outrageous.

While all of this was taking place, we had in the back of our minds that our friend was celebrating his birthday in none other than Newport Beach, a good million miles away from where we were. However, after surveying the current situation at the nice hour of 10:45 pm, we decided to forget about LA, throw our inhibitions to the wind and jam down to Newport!

So! We only arrived in bar-town at the decent time of 11:50 pm. Totally normal. We immediately jumped in line to get into the madness that was Rudy's where our circle of awesome friends were hoot-hollerin' it up, and had a little out-of-body experience: There we were, two bambinos down, possibly more to go, waiting in line to go into this raucous bar with people who were either our age or younger! It was outrageous in an awesome, weird sort of way!

Anyway, we made it in and found our people who were, in that moment, the most wonderful portrait of amazingness THIS lady has ever seen. They were EXACTLY what the doctor ordered: our crowd! Chad and I were immediately showered in those wild things called "beers" and talking a thousand miles a minute about what the heck everyone has been up to over the last few months! We all discovered that virtually no one has met Kota and that Carter will be more of a junior groomsmen by the time the men of the group hit up Harry Winston, which had me laughing like a hyena!

Anyway, we . . . stayed until . . . the bar . . . closed! Yes! It was 2:00 am when we left and then guess what we did. GUESS! We piled into a cab with a humongous crew and got dropped off at our friends' apartment! What?! Yes! That's what happened! Chad and I spent the night out! Isn't that outrageous?!

Now in regular world, this would signify bed time, but oh, no! Conveniently there was a good ole' fashion bottle of almond champagne waiting to be opened. So, naturally, we continued the merry making, advice giving in the form of "now wait, let me get this straight. You have work tomorrow morning? And you're still awake? What?! What planet are we on?", and more catching up.

Finally, I took a quick glance at the clock and realized it was 4:20 in the morning! IN THE GOSH DARN MORNING! At that point I put the kabosh on the still-lively conversation I was having in the interest of getting some shut eye.

Waking up can be likened to the Grimm Reaper paying me a visit.

But here's the thing: It was so much fun, I wouldn't have traded in that hellish, multi-hour-long hangover for anything! It was a night not of alcoholism run rampant, although it would have appeared that way, but of reconnecting. It left me feeling lucky beyond all doubt to have met such a great group of people, supportive to no end.

Anyway, cheers to Grandma's who offer to babysit, driving all over Southern California, consuming more liquid in one night than in the previous 4 years, chatting with our Fullerton wonderfuls and then wanting to gauge our eyeballs out for all hours bathed in sunlight! Woohoo!

A dead-end of sorts

I feel like a major weirdo for thinking this deeply about my blog, but since this thing is here to collect all thoughts categorized under the heading of "weirdo," here's the deal:

1. I think I've hit a sort of dead-end when it comes to inspiration on this blog. Every time I sit down to write a post, I get this sick feeling like the people who followed me once for the reasons of a giveaway or follow-fest would never want to read it. It's quite the restricting sensation, let me tell you.

2. When I created this blog, I had no clue that there was an actual world of bloggers out there. Who knew, right?! So it became a sort of "let me get to know what this thing is all about" type deal, not a "let me write what's on my mind" thing.

3. Here's the thing though: I don't want to put this blog on death row just yet! I love it here! But I do think it's time to write under a new "name" type thing, one that defines us C's more accurately (more of a we've come of age and this is who we are now type deal...?).

See, I told you I'm a big weirdo! Who thinks this much about their leisurely, nap-time activity? Apparently I do. I want to keep writing as a creative, fun outlet for myself, and if Three's 4 Me has transformed to mean the opposite, then steps must be taken, my friend, steps must be taken.

Anyway, I will be switching blogs very soon, but will of course keep this baby around for my own enjoyment. At the end of the day, I just want people to read who are genuinely interested in what's going on in our lives, and maybe not for the reason that I was offering a free giveaway at one point (even though if that's how you found me, I love you for it!). Are you catching what I'm throwing atchya?

So cheers to "finding yourself" within your creative avenue!

(...And by the way, I still feel like a bit of a freak for taking myself so seriously, but you know what? It's what's on my mind, so what can I say?!)

A few of the favorites

I don't know what's going on, but my computer isn't letting me upload any new pictures! It's saying that I'm at 100% capacity, whatever that means. Anyway, until I figure it out, here are a few favorites from the bloggular over the last few years :)

Wine tasting in Paris with the hubs. :)

After I got my Canon, I was really obsessed with taking all of these artsy-like pictures and guess what? I actually like them! So even though I'm a far cry from the editing master I hope to become, here is one of them!

...and another.

The first baby girl onesie I ever purchased. :) It hung up in our room for a good three months!

Little man having a moment last year when we were decorating our tree in the good ole' apartment. I was pregnant with Kota here!

A product of nesting in 2011...

...which appeared in Carter's old room right before we brought home girly-girl.

And this preciousness :)

Anyway, love these pictures. :) 

Yay!

And so...

It's sad to me that I haven't blogged in so gosh darn long. Truly! And the only reason I'm writing this post is because I decided to check up on the ole' site to poke around a little bit and got lost in my archives. I've just been sitting here, reading all about the days when Carter was taking two naps per day, when Chad turned 23 and that wonderful night Kota was born. 

This blog, my friend, is a keeper of our young family life. I used to sit down every day to document whatever the heck was on my mind, the result of which being a diary of sorts. The posts I've been sorting through bring me back to silly days and lovely feelings. 

The real reason I've faded out was because I got weirdly wrapped up into my stats. It became depressing! Every single morning I would check to see how many unique visits I got, what pictures people were clicking on, etc. etc. etc. Did I have any emails from people who were interested in working together? If there wasn't, why not?! Hmm... It looks like my main blog peeps didn't like my last post as much as the one before, I wonder why? - were a few of the usual thoughts. Anyway, in no way do I have a monstrously large following or anything, but for a small amount of time I wanted to build, build, build - so I forgot about how much I enjoyed just sitting here and talking (to myself) about how awesome my family was.

So there it is! Of course there are other reasons why I haven't been blogging, the main reason being that if I'm going to take the time to sit down and write, it has to be for one of the websites I'm working with, therefore leaving me with no me time. However, busyness is never going to go away, in fact it will only increase, so I don't want that to be the reason why I can't remember what sort of outfits I dressed my darling 11-month-old little missy in. I hope that I will write again consistently just for the love of it instead of for the "gain," you know what I mean sista? 

Anyway! Cheers to documenting young family life and to remembering what it was like to write about the everyday - and not feeling bad that the everyday can be considered boring to other people! Yay!

(Reposted, super old pictures from my pal Jenanae - I think fall of 2010?)

Everywhere

Alright, my mind is all over the place! One second I'm content, the next I'm bored. Deep cleaning the kitchen sounded nice but then sounded horrendous. Swiffering ran through my mind, but nah. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

1. Carter is on the stairs and he's supposed to be in bed, but tonight I'm just going to let it go. I'll just let him think I don't know he's there, playing with his cars and saying, "Boom! Crash!" It sounds cute, so hey! What can you do?

2. Speaking of bed times and the fact that Carter isn't actually in bed asleep, every once in awhile I'll think, So really, what is this whole "strict" thing all about, anyway? Why can't I just let them do whatever they want, like watch 19 Kids and Counting with me? Why do you actually have to enforce rules to raise model citizens? Can't we all just stay up until midnight together and eat s'mores? It would be fun and oh-so easy! Surely that would require much less will power and strength than "getting down to business!" But then I'll remember that I'm not hanging out with purse-sized chihuahuas, I'm raising my kids! Kids that need to know boundaries in order to learn respect, etc., etc., etc. Anyway, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to bend the rules every now and again because we've definitely done that (EXAMPLE: Chad watching the Avengers with Carter until 11:30 when I was down in San Diego for a few days), it's just one of those random let me question the universe and why I do what I do type things.

3. Speaking of me spending a few nights in San Diego, therefore placing Chad on two-child-daddy-duty for the longest stretch he's ever gone, here's a nice little fact: he let Carter go COMMANDO for almost 4 days! Yes! When I was reunited with my crew I saw that Chad was putting Carter's pajama pants on sans underwear so I asked, "Woah, what's going on here? Aren't you forgetting his underwear?" To which he answered, "Oh no, babe, it's totally fine, he doesn't need underwear." He doesn't NEED underwear! What the heck?! It was one of those unbelievable holy moly daddy has been alone with the kids for the past few days moments!

4. I started buying organic milk and I have to say, it's tasty. Like milk shake tasty. In fact, I'm going to go relieve Carter of those evil peanut-bearing candies he raked up last night with a big ole' glass of the good stuff. Until tomorrow (hopefully)!