Alright, I admit it: I'm going to pat myself on the back for the second time this week. What are you going to do about it? It's my blog, neener neener.

So Madalyn's class is putting on a play about the Oklahoma Centennial today. All the classes at her school have participated but they have broken it down into multiple performances so only a couple classes do the play at once. For the play the kids are supposed to wear either an Oklahoma Centennial t-shirt (there's an official Centennial logo that is available on various types of clothing) OR an outfit that people may have worn a hundred years ago when Oklahoma became a state.

I have know about this for a couple of months but, as usual, I managed to dink around and find myself with only five days to go till the play and no costume in hand. I didn't want to take the cop-out route and just do the t-shirt if i didn't have to (plus I'm not sure where to get one around here). I had looked on eBay at pioneer costumes and found them unreasonably expensive (we're talking $60 range for something she'd wear once) not to mention I'd have also had to pay to get someone to express ship and I was dead broke this week. My ultimate backup plan was for her to be a cowboy, which would be pretty easy to manage -- just need a Western shirt and a cowboy hat and we already have jeans. to go with the jeans we already have.

First, however, I decided to go scour the local Salvation Army. Much to my surprise and delight it yielded everything I needed to turn Madalyn into a pioneer lady. I found an old-fashioned style blouse, a long skirt and a pair of boots. The skirt was too small in the waist but it has one of those overlapping-closure waistbands, so I simply moved the outer button to expand the waist and the fabric from the overlap covered where the gap would've been had it been a single-button waistband.

I still wasn't sure how the complete package would look until Madalyn got dressed this morning. Once she had the outfit on I thought, "You know, that looks pretty good!" -- especially considering it was purchased at the last minute for a grand total of (drumroll, please): $8.

Incidentally, when JZ first saw Madalyn in her costume he said, "You look like Georgia O'Keeffe" which, first off, OMG, did my four-year-old just say that? And, secondly, that's about the time period we were aiming for, so I guess I did okay, after all!

Now some pictures of my pioneer lady. The outfit:

And the following two because she is totally incapable of being serious for more than 0.7 seconds.

I'm watching Super Nanny right now and the family has two preschoolers and then six-week-old twins, and my palms are literally sweating and my stomach is knotted up watching those babies cry and watching the parents trying to get them to sleep and feed them and all the other stuff. I am just SO not a newborn person. I know that, in the grand scheme of things, it covers a really brief period of time. But it goes by really slowly for me and it's just never enjoyable, as sad as that sounds. I honestly start feeling vaguely panicky when I start trying to envision myself going through that again. It kind of bums me out that that will be the bulk of my experience having tiny babies....I'm kind of envious of (though also completely baffled by) people who adore and revel in the newborn stage. But, it is what it is, and I can't change the fact that I'm simply not suited to be a newborn mom. I've given it three tries now and have had the same results, more or less, every time. I think it's safe to say that, if I ever get the 'baby bug' again, it will not be that I truly want another baby but that I'm wishing maybe mine weren't quite so big. And since I'm aware enough to realize that I don't foresee any regrets in the future.

Now if we could just get that last one sleeping through the night I'd be 100% satisfied with our current stage in life. (Hell, at this point I'd be thrilled to get her "only" waking up once!)

My regular readers will know that I usually have more bad to say about myself than good but today I'm feeling quite studly so I'm going to give myself props. I got a lot accomplished this morning, and all on my own, of course.

This morning I:

*Packed two lunches
*Made two lunches
*Took a shower
*Gave JZ a shower
*Rinsed Madalyn from the neck down in the shower
*Got all four of us dressed and groomed to walk out the door
*Took the trash out to the curb

This was all before we left the house at 8:40 a.m. Then I:

*Got both kids to school on time.
*Went to the health department and got Eliza's shots (which I hate and dread doing).
*Went to my FIL's house and borrowed some money so I now have cash to get snacks for JZ's class on Wednesday, pick up my drycleaning and various other things. (We have bunches of money due to come in over the next couple of weeks but, while we're waiting, I'm a bit short).
*Picked myself up some breakfast.

Now I'm back home. I've eaten and changed into comfy clothes. Eliza has had her Tylenol and is sleeping off the trauma of being stabbed in the leg three times and I'm feeling smugly self-satisfied. It's not really the quantity of things I got done, since I know lots of people do that much stuff every morning; it's the fact that I did it all by myself and did it pretty well. A lot of the time I feel like I'm in survival mode around here, where I'm just doing the absolute basics to get us through the week till Robert comes home. So when I break out of that it reminds me that I truly am self-sufficient and that I CAN do this, and I feel pretty proud of myself. And since I can't often say that I have to revel in it when it does happen. I think I do a pretty good job around here handling things on my own.

Most of the time I think I get along pretty well but occasionally I'll have a day, like today, when I just don't feel like dog-paddling any more. I'm TIRED. I was sick all last week, then got better, but today it seems like I might be having a bit of a relapse. I've been chilled all morning and I just feel like I'm dragging. I've got some aches and pains. I really hope that this is just a last-gasp from my previous illness and not that I've picked up something else while my immune system was weakened. I almost never get sick so this is really ticking me off. I guess it's a testament to what exhaustion and stress does to your body.

I would love nothing more than to do the afternoon school run and then hole up here for the rest of the day but I have already promised Madalyn she can go to her after-school club today, so that means picking her up from school at 3:30, dropping her off, then going back out to get her again at 5:30.

It's really tough not having anyone to whom I can hand off the baton, so to speak. If you're reading this and you don't think your husband helps out a whole lot, try having him gone for the week and see if you notice or not. I bet you'd feel a difference.

Hopefully before mid-year we will be able to find a solution to get Robert back with us full-time. That would be very, very good for all involved, I think. For now....Eliza has finally gone to sleep after messing around in there for twenty or thirty minutes, so I'm going to sign off and take this opportunity to curl up on the couch under a blanket and maybe get some rest.