Weekly Review 94

Hello, readers! Welcome to the 94th edition of my Weekly Review. The previous week I’m going to cover was a fun one. There has been an ongoing war with ants, Mr. O gave me the best compliment a dad can get, and we celebrated the Fourth of July all weekend! As always…It started on Monday.

I woke up in the morning and tiredly stumbled into our bathroom to splash some water on my face. Then, once the crust on my eyelids washed off, I saw them. The tiny, black, annoying little ants that were previously driving me crazy downstairs had finally made their way upstairs and into our bathroom. After crushing five of them and seeing more appearing out of thin air, I went downstairs and into the garage to grab my bug spray. Then I walked to the side of the house to see where they were all coming from and, sure enough, they had three trails along the side of our house. It looked like they were getting in through a slit in our siding. Naturally, I doused them in bug spray and sprayed all around the house and where I thought the entrance was. It slowed them for a long while, thankfully. 

After work I played “tag” with Mr. O upstairs. I say “tag” because it wasn’t really tag. It was more of a cops-and-robbers kind of game. He was the police officer and I was “the bad guy”. He chased me all around and then put me in “Plop” (jail) and then waited for me to escape so we could do it all over again. I have no idea why he calls jail “plop”, but he does and I just rolled with it. After I escaped plop for the last time, Mr. O wanted a change. Now we went into his playroom and played with a Jurassic Park action figure man he has named Jeef. I asked, “Do you mean Jeff?”, to which he replied, “No, Jeef.” So Jeef it is. We brought out one of Mr. O’s big climbing steps that is shaped like the letter U and turned it upside down so he could crawl through it. Then we turned it into a “mountain garage” for Jeef’s vehicles. 

It was fun using our imaginations and creating this little pretend world for this action figure. Before we knew it, it was time to take a bath and go to bed. After Mr. O fell asleep, I met Lea back downstairs to watch whatever World Cup game was on that night. 

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Mr. O came to sleep with me. When we finally got out of bed for the day, we went downstairs to pack the rest of his bag for daycare. Mr. O then spotted these new black Spiderman sandals that Lea bought him over the weekend. He had to wear them. “I show Rara my new shoes”, he said. Rara, of course, is the woman who runs the daycare. When he came home in the evening, we played upstairs in his playroom with Jeef and Jeef’s new friend, “Construction worker guy”, who is a lego construction worker. About an hour later, Lea was done making dinner. She made us steak and potatoes in the oven. It was great! Once Mr. O was down for the night, I played my own personal Baldur’s Gate Campaign. It was nice to hop back into it this week.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. O slept in and the war in my bathroom continued. I squished and flushed whatever ants I could catch within the ten minutes I was upstairs. I also looked it up online and Google told me they were trying to come in because it was so hot outside, so hopefully when it cools off they stop. In the meantime, we bought some traps. In the evening, Mr. O gave me the best compliment I could have asked for. He said I was the funniest person he knew! Ugh, my heart! I love hearing that. I try so hard to make him laugh all the time, Lol. While we ate dinner we were watching a World Cup game, then I vacuumed upstairs quickly before the U.S.A game started. It was so fun to watch our country advance in the tournament!

On Thursday morning it was time to take the little man to daycare again. When we arrived, all the kids were outside playing. Mr. O had no objections to me leaving this time. He gave me a hug before we even made it up the driveway and then ran away and said bye. In the afternoon, Lea picked him up early and he passed out on our couch while I finished up the workday. When I was done, we gave him a quick bath upstairs before we went to my grandma’s for dinner. My aunt and cousin are in town from Florida so we went over there to spend some time with them before they leave. We ordered Portillo’s. I had an italian beef (it was amazing) and Mr. O had french fries and a little bit of my italian beef. Then he had a popsicle, some grapes, and some chicken nuggets. What a spread. An hour or two later we went home and wrestled before laying down in Mr. O’s bed to read. He was a little afraid of the fireworks and asked me to stay in his room longer than I normally do. It was so sweet. Of course I did! While he dozed off, feeling safe and secure with his big, strong Dada laying next to him, I wrote a short blog on my phone. 

Eventually, he woke up again and ended up sleeping with Lea in the guest room. So when I woke up Friday I had a lot of time to myself because they slept in after being up for a while in the middle of the night. After I ate breakfast, I did the dishes and put away my laundry. It was sitting there for way too long and I have been avoiding it like crazy because I have been so lazy lately. When I logged into work, I was greeted with a great email informing us that we were leaving early today due to the Fourth of July holiday on Saturday. Woohoo! When the clock struck 3:30 PM, I couldn’t click “Shut Down” fast enough. Mr. O was so surprised when I came out of my office and told him we could play now (even though I told him all throughout the day I was getting off early, Lol). Later in the evening I made burgers on our little griddle because it was supposed to rain. When it didn’t rain at all, I felt very dumb! The burgers were okay, but they would have been so much better on the grill. 

We did bedtime a little differently on Friday night. Instead of putting Mr. O to bed, and because it was a holiday, we decided to have a sleep over with him in our living room! He was so excited.

We brought down our air mattress and blew it up. Lea slept on the couch behind us, while Mr. O and I slept on the air mattress. He loved how bouncy it was, Lol. We watched Moana and then eventually fell asleep. When Mr. O and I woke up around 6:30 AM on Saturday, we turned around and realized Lea had left us in the middle of the night. She went to sleep on her comfy bed! Apparently, when Winston the cat wasn’t cuddling Mr. O and I on the air mattress, he was bugging Lea all night and not letting her sleep. So she went upstairs and locked him out of our room, Lol. 

Hours later, we all got dressed for the Cedar Lake Fourth of July parade! It was Mr. O’s first parade, and before we left we took some pics. I highly recommend having your toddler take your pictures for you. Seeing ourselves from his point of view was so sweet and he actually took really good pictures, Lol.

When we got to the parade, which was right around the corner from our neighborhood, we parked in the Sweet Pea Designs parking lot, and set up our chairs on the sidewalk right in front of the store.

The parade was great and Mr. O loved picking up all the candy they were throwing and seeing all the cool floats and trucks drive by. It was so hot, though, so going back home to air conditioning felt incredible. Mr. O and I cooled off with a couple of popsicles while we sat under our ceiling fan. In the evening, we were going to go to the festival on Cedar Lake, but it ended up thunderstorming. Instead, we picked up Culver’s for an early dinner and hung out at home. It was a great 4th of July 

On Sunday morning Mr. O and I played before we had to get ready for a baptism. While Lea and I decided on our outfits, Mr. O went into his room and said he “has to do something”. We didn’t think anything of it. Minutes later he came back into our room with a big smile on his face holding a little bottle of Vicks Vaporub. He said, “I put lotion on my legs”. Lea took him to the bathroom to wipe it off and then we got him dressed and made our way over to the church. The baptism was beautiful and Mr. O had fun with the other kids. 

Currently, Mr. O is in bed while Lea and I watch Mexico play England in one of the knockout round games. It was a great week! 

A Moment I’m Still Thinking About

I absolutely loved giving Mr. O the happiness of having a sleepover downstairs. I hope it’s something we can continue to do. We all had so much fun!

Peter

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