insomnia induced post

I've had trouble sleeping lately.  I don't know why.  I'm definitely tired.  This morning I woke up before 4 AM in order to scratch my thousands of mosquito bites (okay, so I'm exaggerating....I maybe have 10?  But they really, REALLY itch like a thousand!  The other night this ONE mosquito decided to bite me over and over and over and I was never able to catch him in the act in order to slap him and kill him!  Ugh!  He's probably been bragging to his mosquito friends at how many times he was able to get the same unsuspecting woman!).  That's probably not why I woke up, but that's what I did as I lay there, trying to go back to sleep.  I finally decided to get up and scratch them instead.

I'm sitting here yawning, but I can't sleep.  I know that Rebecca will likely be waking up in a half hour, so it's kind of useless to try anyway.  Might as well go make some coffee and get on with my day.

We just found out last night that our bus stop will be right on our corner (and we live on the corner, so it's just steps away from our door!).  Woo-hoo!!  It used to be down several blocks, which means I would have had to bundle up both girls every morning to walk down and wait for the school bus, and then right before lunch I'd have to bundle up Rebecca again and walk down to wait again to pick Rachel up.  But a year and a half ago my neighbor gave birth to twin girls in the middle of winter, and petitioned the bus company to PLEASE move the bus stop closer to her house so she didn't have to cart two tiny preemies down to the bus stop in order to take her older daughter down to the bus.  They agreed to do it temporarily.  Last year at the beginning of the year she convinced the bus driver to talk to the bus company to please move it again for the year.  Even though the babies were older, it was still a huge hassle for her to have to walk four kids (including two babies) down to the bus stop, so the bus driver did a lot of work to move it down to our neighbor's driveway.  Well, yesterday I looked online because the bus information has just been posted, and found out it's not in our neighbor's driveway this year, because the bus is coming from the opposite direction, which means it's across her street, on our corner right in front of our house!  So my neighbor won't have to bundle up her 18 month old twins, and I won't have to bundle up Rebecca, either!  I can just watch for the bus and run out quickly with Rachel when it comes.  Rebecca will be fine looking out the window for 30 seconds while I get Rachel on the bus (or off the bus).  Yay!

Wednesday is Rachel's "gentle start" day at school.  She goes with about 5 other children for a couple of hours.  (She doesn't ride the bus that day.)  It's actually the first day of school for everyone else in the district, but kindergarteners don't officially start until the following week.  They're supposed to do some assessment and it's just a chance for her to see her room and the school, get to know her teacher a little, and hopefully feel more comfortable the following week when she has her official first day of school.  I'm anxious to see how it goes!  This day doesn't bother me too much.  The first day will be hard for me, though, putting her on that big yellow school bus.  :(   But I'm also looking forward to getting into the swing of things with our new schedule and everything.

Last night we went for a walk in the little "downtown" area of our suburb.  There are fountains, a creek, and a nice trail and boardwalk.  We don't go down there very often, because it's sometimes hard to find a place to park, but it was a beautiful night, and we all had fun.  Enjoy the pictures from our outing.