My Posts Don't Have Unified Themes Anymore

This is probably a reflection of the inside of my head these days.

Monday mornings are one of those times when I am so glad to be the one who does not have the full-time job that keeps us in mortgage payments and health insurance. It is a good time to be a stay-at-home mom, as the world starts up its workaday routine and the gears of a new week start turning. Grace has walked across the street to our neighbors who will drive her to preschool and Violet (who slept freakishly late) is sitting at the dining room table munching on blackberries and a waffle with honey on it and I am glad to not have anywhere to be immediately.

Monday mornings are also when we get our delivery from a local dairy and I just put it all away. It is a bit of a luxury, I will admit, but it is so, so nice to have some things that I know we always need just show up in the cooler on our porch every week. Their milk isn't organic but it is hormone-free and is produced locally. And it comes in glass bottles! I like that the glass bottles get re-used and not recycled (we rinse them and put them back in the cooler for them to pick up and take back). I get some other things like cheese regularly, and then occasionally other treats. They deliver a lot of regular grocery items in addition to the dairy products they produce themselves but the milk and cheese are our staples from them.

Grace only has 8 days left of preschool for the year, which seems somehow impossible. I am happy about her being finished for the year; I always like when she has time off and we get to spend more time together and we don't have to rush around in the mornings to get someplace at a certain time. She is fun to be with. Both girls are, actually. Violet is deep in the throes of two-year-old adorableness, all little sentences and pretending to be an animal or a letter of the alphabet (she is usually D and I am usually W, I believe) and sweet smells. How do small children manage to smell so good, especially their heads? And also, why do two-year-olds have such a terrible reputation? They are not strong on logic and reason, I will grant you, and sometimes seem like an uncontrollable force of nature that one can only hope to restrain, but they are so full of charm and funny speech and blooming personhood.

We have had such lovely gorgeous spring weather over the past few days-- our first 70-degree day! We've been taking advantage of it and eating outside and visiting some of our favorite warm-weather restaurants, because today we go back to cooler weather and rain for a while. I don't mind going back and forth like that because while the warm weather is utterly wonderful, it has been causing me to SWELL UP and hopefully this cooler weather will calm things down. Both girls were winter babies and I didn't really have much swelling until the last month; this new baby will be my first time to be very pregnant in the summer and I am a bit apprehensive about how bad it might be. Just those few days of warmth made my hands and feet noticeably puffy, especially if I did a lot of walking (which I have been-- see lovely spring weather mentioned earlier), and I think it quite likely that I am going to be a swollen mess by July or so. I have an engagement ring and a plain wedding ring and I already cannot wear them both at the same time; I bet within a month I won't be able to wear either. I know a lot of women buy a replacement ring to wear while they're pregnant (not actual real jewelry, mind you-- just inexpensive costume jewelry) and I can't decide what I think about that. On the one hand, yay for pretty things that make you feel pretty! Jewelry is fun! On the other hand, why exactly would it would be bad for me to go ring-less for a few months? Surely the vast majority of people do not care if I am married or not? Are there really that many strangers who would make an uncharitable character judgment about an obviously pregnant, obviously hot woman? And surely I am not going to base my actions on the opinions of such a hypothetical stranger?