Midweek grind...

Wednesday:

Lino's back to school and Mike is back to work...busy busy busy. 

Shaun was not interested in sleeping in his crib last night which sucked but it wasn't that bad since we have our bed now :-). Otherwise a pretty good night of sleep...although I still feel tired. Lino popped in the bed around 6:30 and we all got up around 7:30. Mike had breakfast and I got Lino dressed. I made breakfast but for some reason I turned the stove on really high and scorched the sausage links a little...and made it pretty smokey in the house...oops. I hate cooking sausage links, I'm totally a patty kind of girl. Anyway after I smoked the family out and we got Lino to eat we raced out the house. I forgot that I needed to pay Joan and that Mike had the medical papers at his job so I was stressing out...I was suppose to have all that for today...oops. We were running late so I just dropped Mike of and took Lino to school then went back to get the paperwork from Mike and get money to pay Joan. So busy this morning...you think I would have done some of this over the weekend or Mon or Tue while Mike was home. Then back to the house to try and unpack a little but first clean myself up!!!! Using the electric shower is different but efficient I guess :-). I tried to unpack a little but Shaun wanted some attention so instead I sorted thru all the boys clothes and got rid of the small ones in put in the bigger sizes. That freed up some space and boxes so I guess it was useful use of my time. I had a little time left before I had to get Lino so I started to cut up the onion for dinner but when I finally looked at the time it was 5 min from when I was suppose to get Lino...shit!!! Going to be late again...even tho we live close to the school we are not that close and I was late...Joan was nice and understanding with me but she reminded me of the drop off and pick up times...I better not be late tomorrow. After all that I still didn't have the right change to pay her...so all that running around for almost nothing. Lino seemed I have had a good day and he was excited about the sand castle that he built which was cool. Once we got home I made Lino a sandwich for lunch, I finished dinner and started a load of clothes. Lino went down for a nap...with little resistance and I tried to figure out how the heck to use the drying rack when you have sheets from the bed???? It's pretty impossible not to have the sheets hitting the ground...what the heck am I suppose to do????  Does this mean I have to use the crappy dryer for sheets and stuff???  I don't really want to fight with this drying rack and a huge sheet but I don't want to have to pay a huge electric bill at the end of the month because I had to use the dryer for 6hrs in a day in order to dry one set of sheets...oh the drama if washing clothes in Ireland. Anyway, I ended up with some sort of Picasso sculpture once I was done...don't think anyone will pay me for it but its worth millions to me :-)  

Then I decided to take a few min to enjoy the beautiful day and view so Shaun and I sat outside for about 20min and just relaxed...what a beautiful day & view. 

Break time didn't last long...back to house work until Lino got up which was a good wake-up. Once Lino woke up we made a cake, the apple and date cake that Mike & I love. Lino helped a little but mostly ate all the apple pieces. I wanted to test out the oven because I was told things would cook quicker so I wanted to see how quick. Plus if I burned the cake it wouldn't be as bug of an issues as burnning dinner...we don't need cake anyway. Then we played the rest of the afternoon until Mike got home. Mike actually jogged home from work and he said it wasn't very bad...lots of hills but he made it home in good time and in one piece so I guess he will try it again tomorrow. We just need to get a reflector vest for him to make sure the cars can see him. I think he will try out his bike next week but the jogging is a better workout so maybe he will save that for when the weather gets bad.  The cake was done in 30min vs the 1.5hrs it took in the apt...I wasn't expecting that. I thought maybe the top was just brown but the inside was raw but nope it was all cooked...cool!  So dinner, a slice of cake (super good) then bath and bed. Mike finished unpacking the boxes in the garage and putting away some stuff while I did bath with the boys...I guess I could have done it but its kind of hard with the boys...anyway he's more efficient than I am so I guess it all works out.  Lino was really tired for some reason but not in the mood to go to sleep so we had a little fight before bed...just a little one. Then shortly after Lino Mike and I called it a night.

Thursday:

Lino Lino Lino...I love my son but he has got to find a way to sleep in his own bed...and his brother!!! Lino was in and out of the bed a couple times during the night. Mike took him back to his room and he would come back, the last time Mike didn't feel him and I was tired so he stayed...but it wasn't a nice stay. He just tossed and turned the whole time, it's like he has to be touching, kicking or pushing one of us at all times...there is no way to sleep with that. Eventually we were up and getting ready to go. Mike got Lino together while I got ready. We were able to get our stuff together and get out of the house in descent time. I dropped Mike off at work then stopped by the Spar for some milk, actually I needed change to pay Joan, then we headed to school. I'm still getting use to the "traffic" or better yet, congestion on the way to Lino's school. There is a primary school down the street from Joan's and barely any parking so all the cars line up on this little 1.5 lane road to walk their kids in...lets just say its a bit of a cluster f#*^!!!!  Still, no excuse for me being late...again but I was. After the drop off I went to get me some breakfast and take care of Shaun. I decided to go to the coffee morning in Midleton because I wasn't going to be able to get much done with Shaun anyway. So I left out a little later than I wanted because I was only going to stay a hour, got gas then got completely lost. I have no idea what I was doing but trying to read directions and drive in Midleton or anywhere in Cork is crazy. There are no street names just land marks and if you don't know the town you kind of don't know the landmarks either. Anyway I finally make it there but by that point it was about 5min before the time I said I was going to leave. I debated about going in since I didn't have much time but I decided to go in anyway...just for a few min I said. About 10min later I leave and I knew I was going to be late...I drive as fast as I could but still didn't make it there until about 5 min after 12...I scooped Lino up and ran before I could get another talking to...I'm horrible. Well it seemed like Lino had a good day, he told me that 2 + 2 equals 4 so that was exciting!!! He also talked about riding the bike and building a train track...he loves his trains. Thankfully he didn't talk to me about being late...I'm sure he is saving that for next year :-)  Back home for lunch, we don't have a microwave so I had to create something on the stove so Lino wouldn't get to use to having sandwiches for lunch. He's already a peanut butter sandwich junkie (he gets that from me) so I have to keep him guessing on what he's going to eat. Most days he asks for a PB sandwich and I tell him no and 50% of the time he eats what I make him anyway.  My GG alwyas told me that if they are hungry they will eat...I believe her but sometimes I worry that he would live on PB sandwiches, eggies, sausage and French fries his whole toddler years if I let him. After lunch I had to convince him to take a nap...I knew he was tired especially since he was up around 630 this morning.  Once he actually laid down it was only a matter of minutes before he was out. Shaun and I worked on dinner and folded some clothes then Shaun finally went to sleep so I closed my eyes too thinking I was going to sneak a little nap in too...wrong! The timer went off for Lino probably only 10min or so after I closed my eyes...oh well. So I laid Shaun down and waited for Lino to really wake up...he needs a min or two. Finally he was ready to get up and we watched Thomas on the iPad until Shaun woke up. I decided to go get a microwave when he woke up so that's what we did...the cheapest one I could find was freaking €100...craziness.  Once we made it back I let Lino and Shaun play in the play room while I put dinner together. One of my missions for while I'm here is to perfect my risotto...so that means I first have to cook one. So I decided tonight I would try my had at it so I looked up a couple recipes and I have about 1/2 of what they call for and I'm missing the critical white wine...do I abort mission or go Robert Irvine mission impossible on it????  I'm not one to back down so I went with what I had. That's another thing I said I was going to try to do...be more resourceful in my cooking like GG is. Hahahaha. So even without all the ingredients my semi rice risotto ended up turning out pretty good. Mike had a nice jog home and we talked about the fact that we were not going to have Internet or cable set up until the 16th and Mike told me that someone from the relocation office was going to bring us a modem to use in the mean time, so that was nice.  Right after that our land loard showed up with our modem!!!!  And to look at the leak under the sink. So we can have Internet set up today...at least that's what we thought. After he left we ate dinner, it was pretty good, then Mike got started on putting the modem together...or connecting it or whatever you have to do to get Internet.  He said it would only take a few min to put it together but 1hr and 45min later still no modem installed and no Internet. He pulled out almost every tool he brought to try and get this cord to fit thru a hole in the wall...so basically there is no phone line in the room we have the computer set up in. Instead there is a small phone cord that has been threaded thru the wall thru a small hole from the other room. Well that's ok except the computer is on the total opposit side of the room from this little cord...so my idea was to take the long phone cord from our room and switch it out with the small one. Good idea right??? Sounds pretty easy yeah???? Hahahaha...that cord was laughing at us all night. Mike tired everything from drilling a bigger whole, hammering a screw driver thru the wall, using a clothes wire to  guide the cord and even using electrical tape to help guide it thru the whole. In the end the end of the phone cord broke off (from all the abuse I would assume) and we still had no Internet. Hahahahahaha...too funny. The issue was that he couldn't get the cord to go thru the hole, it was like something was blocking the path so we gave up. But by before I got a few pics of the "work in progress"

So he gave up for a while and helped me put Lino to bed. Then he had a good idea that we could just hook up the modem to the phone line and bypass the computer...Genius!!!! Eureka....Internet at last!!!!  So we thought we might stay up a little to watch one of the football season opening games on the sling box but the Internet was so slow it was just super choppy. NO!!!!!!!!  We just knew once we got to the house the sling box would work perfectly because we wouldn't be sharing the network with anyone so what is the deal???  Mike tried adding the filter to the line and it only helped a little...so after all that we finally had Internet but it was too slow to use for the sling box. Oh well, we will try it again tomorrow... praying for better results!