Wow. A lot has happened in 2 months!

Ami has started school (two days a week, 9-1, at an Mother’s Day Out program, that is). Her first few weeks went really well, but then we were gone for a couple of weeks, and ever since we got back dropoff has been a nightmare for the poor bean. Fingers crossed for this week. She loves talking about her classmates and her teacher!

On Labor Day weekend, we took our first vacation, just the three of us, to South Padre! We saw the sea turtle rescue facility, spent several hours on the birding boardwalk (yes, really, hours – someone likes birds, apparently), swam lots in the pool at our rented apartment, and were afraid of the big waves in the Gulf. Plus, I stepped in a tar globule for the first time ever. Gulf beaches are weird. It’s so wonderful that Ami is of an age now where she can really understand and appreciate going new places!

My freshly retired aunt Ellen came to visit us for three weeks. For two of those, Ami, Ellen, and I were up in Arkansas visiting GeekaPa (Yes, Ami still calls my inlaws GeekaPa, and it’s adorable). Ami loved going for rides on the lake in their new barge, feeding goldfish crackers to ducks, swinging in the green disk swing, throwing magnolia seed pods into the water, and just generally having a good ol’ country-girl time. And Geeka gave her her first hair cut!

And Ami and I had our first weekend alone! Logan went on a fishing trip this past weekend, and Ami and I stayed home and vegged out and accompanied friends to the Austin Zoo. We had a lovely time, actually, though I was pretty exhausted when Logan got home yesterday. And unfortunately he’s working 14-hour days and had to be at work at 4 AM today.

So, that too-long intro aside, here’s a day in our lives right now! Ami turns 23 months tomorrow. 2 is just around the corner!

3:40 AM Logan kisses me goodbye. I get up to make sure all the doors are locked. No noise from Ami’s room, where she’s now been sleeping in a twin bed for the last several months.

5:30 AM crying. Crap. I give her a couple of minutes, but she’s truly awake, so I go get her to bring her into bed with me. She wants to nurse a lot, and I never really get back to sleep. The 2-year molars are on their way in.

8:15 She’s up, and we’re now in a bit of a rush to make it to gymnastics. I hurry her through her diaper change and getting dressed. Dressing has been a fight for us lately, but today she’s willing to put on the first shirt and third pair of pants I offer her. Breakfast is frosted flakes and grapes. I know, I know, but she saw us eating them and now they’re a favorite. Almost every morning she asks for cereal (“See-dough, mama?”).

9:05 we leave for our 9:15 class. I’m so thankful it’s here in the neighborhood (Jump! gymnastics). Until the kiddo is 2, her class is donation-based, so I’ve been taking advantage while we’re in town and we’ve gone twice a week most weeks. Ami loves singing, bouncing on the trampoline, climbing the ladder, and swinging on the rings.

After gymnasics, she doesn’t want to leave. I give her a snack, which she devours, and she sits at their craft table to draw for a bit. After almost 40 minutes of this, I’m getting antsy, so I explain we have to go in a couple of minutes. She’s not ready. I tell her we need to go buy coffee and I need her help. Still nope. I ask her if she can show me how fast fast she can climb into her car seat, and thankfully that intrigues her, so we head outside. Phew.

11:00 we’re at the coffee shop. Man, is there a lot of breakable stuff in here.

I get my coffee and we’re able to leave without breaking anything, thank goodness. After this weekend (and a very long last week), I am not in the mood to worry about lunch, so we go to get a burger. Ami asks to eat in the restaurant instead of going through the drive-through (“no home, mama! Inside eat!”) so I figure what the heck.

So, toddler dawdling is a thing, right? Because I eat my food relatively quickly, thinking Ami will be DONE soon and we will need to rush out… but no. She eats fries, asks for more fries. Asks me to cut her burger into tiny pieces. Chews on her straw for a bit. Eats some burger. Jumps on the banquette. Eats a fry.

I am trying to repeat “live in the moment, you have nowhere to be, live in the moment, live in the moment…”

45 minutes later, selfie!

15 minutes after that, I ask Ami again if she’s done and if she’d like to go play in the sandbox outside. Finally she agrees. She ate half an adult cheeseburger and probably 1/3 of an order of fries. This is unusual for her (she skipped dinner last night entirely).

Yes. We sat at a table in a fast food restaurant for an hour.

She enjoys the sandbox, but when she starts dumping sand outside and throwing toys, I have to tell her it’s time to go. Home!

1:15 home and nap time! Ami isn’t ready to nap, so I give her 15 minutes of play time in the living room and then we head to her room for a diaper change and milk. She’s still nursing 3x/day right now, if you count the marathon early morning nurse/flop she does as one session.

She wants to play. She wants to talk. She wants to nurse intermittently and not go to sleep. After almost an hour, I tell her I have things I need to do and I will come back to check on her. She doesn’t like this.

I go start some prep for dinner, throw laundry in to wash, empty the dishwasher and clean up from breakfast, and she’s still talking to herself and occasionally crying “mama, dada, mama, dada, mama! come! here!”. After 35 minutes of this I go in and she asks again for milk, so I lay down to nurse her and she’s asleep within 5 minutes.

I hope this is a blip and she isn’t dropping the nap.

So now it’s 4:05 and she’s been asleep for 40 minutes, and I’m not sure what to do. Wake her up? Let her sleep? Blergh.

5:00 on the dot – cry from her bedroom. I go in to get her and she seems happy to see me. I’d planned for us to go to the park after nap, but it looks like we won’t have time. She brings me a few books (a puppy counting book she loves, and a old golden book called Baby’s Birthday that belonged to her daddy). We read on the couch for a bit, and then play with Snapchat and look at the pictures I took of her today.

At 6, I decide it’s time to go get dinner started! I’ve just cut into a sweet potato when Ami says “Mama! Potty!” We aren’t toilet training yet, but she does have access to a little potty when she wants it. I want to encourage her, so even though I’ve just started dinner prep I drop it and we go sit on the potty for a bit while I read her potty book to her for fifteen minutes. Sigh.

We wash hands and head back into the kitchen. I’m making a meal from the Marley Spoon subscription box tonight – “roasted sweet potatoes with crispy beans and creamy tahini”. Vegan! I get about halfway through when Logan gets home (6:30, another 14-hour on the dot work day) and I beg him to take over. Luckily he has a little kitchen helper, because this radicchio won’t toss itself.

Since Ami didn’t finish her nap until late, she didn’t have an afternoon snack, so she is SUPER hungry. This means she actually eats some of the radicchio (!!!) while helping prepare it. And she says “YUM!” Like, several times. Wut?

We have dinner at 7:00. Ami actually sits in her chair for most of the meal, and is willing to try the beans and the sweet potatoes. Mostly, though, she eats grapes. I count the meal a win.

7:40 Ami and Logan head to the bathroom for Ami’s bath. I clean up the kitchen and put away the toys. at 8:00 Ami is ready for milk, so we lay down on the bed in her room and nurse, talking about the day. She especially wants to talk about gymnastics and her favorite part, the goodbye song (bye bye guppies, it’s time to say goodbye!).

At 8:10 she decides she’s done with milk and ready for Dada. We go out to the kitchen to find him (he’s packing her lunch for school tomorrow), and she gives me a huge open-mouth kiss and heads back to the bedroom. At 8:45, Logan comes out, and there’s a little crying (maybe because of the late nap? Dammit) but it stops within 30 seconds and she’s out.

Logan and I sit on the couch trying to relax. I type away on this post and he tries out another episode of Nathan for You, a comedy central show. The show is super uncomfortable, and neither of us is really sure how we feel about it.

He heads to bed a little after 9:30, and I follow at 10. Another day down! Logan will be home this weekend, so I’m hoping for some good family time. Fingers crossed.

At 3:15, she begins to cry. Perhaps because she knows that she is now exactly 23 months and 45 minutes old? Of course Logan’s alarm was set for 3:22. He goes in to settle her before heading into work, and I get another couple hours of rest before she comes into bed with me at 5:30 again.