The Sperske’s

Well, friends, as is custom when Jason goes out of town, I don’t sleep.  I stayed up super late last night folding clothes and getting children back to a sleeping state.  I ended up only getting an hour and a half of uninterrupted sleep.  This means that my mind is numb and I can’t think of anything to blog about.  Actually, I can think of what to blog about but I just can’t make it come out in word form.  So you, my lucky friends, get to watch a video of Miles cracking up every time Jason hits the balls on the pool table. Enjoy!

Another thing that is customary when Jason goes on a trip is for someone to get sick. Until now it has always been Piper. Well, it looks like MIles is coming down with something. He threw up almost everything that he ate today and then ended up having a low-grade fever tonight. Poor little guy. Oh well, the snuggles are nice.

Good night, my faithful readers. I think I’ll at least attempt to sleep tonight.

A very exciting package arrived at our house today.  In it was the skeleton pajamas that I ordered for Piper and Miles.  As you may recall, Piper is very interested in skeletons and the human body lately.  So, when my friend, Jill, showed me that Old Navy was selling glow-in-the-dark skeleton pajamas online (the bones glow) I had to get them for Piper.  And I had to get a matching pair for Miles.  Of course, I ordered them just a few days before Pajama Day at Piper’s preschool class and, sadly, she couldn’t wear them to school last Thursday.  Piper has been looking forward to these pajamas.  And they came today!

This is Piper wearing her jammies.

Here are 2 pics of both kids.  In the first picture Miles is holding a piece of paper.  The paper makes him happy.  In the second picture I have been a mean mom and taken the paper away in attempts to see his skeleton jammies better.  Miles is no longer happy.  A few minutes after calming him down from this (by returning the paper to his hot little hands) I hit his head in the door jam.  I’m terrible.

And finally, we have Piper in her skeleton jammies, cuddling up with her dear model skeleton.

The sweetest part of the night was when I asked Piper if she wanted to pray for daddy (who is probably still flying to Sweden as I type) and she got super excited.  She started praying a super long, adorable prayer about whatever came to her mind.  Her format for praying is to say “And thank you for ____ .”  Even when she’s praying for something that she wants to happen, she fits it into her “thank you” format.  I don’t remember the whole prayer, but here are some of the parts that I remember:

“Thank you, Jesus, for Daddy to be safe in Sweden…and thank you for Daddy to come home and stay with us and not to be gone….and thank you for Daddy to be on the plane and his train doesn’t get smashed…and thank you for my pajamas that somebody bought me and they’re mine now….and thank you that Halloween is after summer…and thank you for to make all the kids safe and comfortable…and thank you for Miles to not wake up and to sleep all night…and thank you for Miles not to cry if I wake up and talk…Amen”

There was actually a lot more in the prayer that I don’t remember.  It was pretty sweet.  And just when I was about to suggest that she wrap it up she said “Amen.”

Then, as I was laying Miles down she asked, “Why are we talking to God when we pray.”  I told her that that’s what praying is, it’s talking to God.  She said, “Yeah, if I pray that Daddy is in Sweden, God will say, ‘Oh, Daddy’s in Sweden?’”  That just made me laugh and I explained to her that God knows where everyone is even before we pray to him. Then she had some questions about how God is everywhere but she can’t see him.  And some questions about heaven and if it has magical doors and windows.  So, we had a lot of spiritual things to talk about during bedtime tonight.  Oh, the 3 1/2 year old mind!  I love it!

So, it was a good night.  The first night of Jason’s Sweden trip was a smashing success.  Mostly due to glow-in-the-dark skeleton pajamas.

We just returned home from a weekend at Jason’s Dad’s house.  His house is always relaxing.  We don’t have anything we have to do except relax and spend time together.  It’s just what we needed before Jason goes to Sweden for a week.

I really enjoyed the drive home tonight.  I don’t often get to talk to Jason when we’re in the car with kids unless Piper falls asleep.  So, tonight we had the brilliant idea of leaving a while after dinner and driving home with the kids in their pajamas.  (We were going to leave tomorrow morning and go straight to the airport, but Jason’s dad wisely pointed out that I’d be in the car with the kids for about 4 hours.  Not my idea of a good time.)  Miles was asleep before he even got in his car seat and Piper was asleep about 15 minutes into the drive.  Then I got my alone time with my favorite man.  We talked about a whole bunch of things from parenting to the Berlin Wall.  I guess one of my love languages, if I may be so cheesy as to write about love languages in a blog, is quality time.  And I’ll take that quality time however I can get it.  Even if it’s while driving in a dark car with sleeping kids in the backseat.

The car is where I end up having some great talks with Piper, too.  I like how the car traps people and they can’t get away from me until we reach our destination.  I look forward to many more great talks, and probably some fights, with each family member in the car as the years go on.

This blog is about my best friend. His name is Jason Sperske. He also happens to be my husband, which is cool because I get to see my best friend every day. I could go on and on, listing his merits and extolling his virtues. But I’ll just say that he makes it very easy to love him and to be his wife. He always tells me that he’s lucky to have me. But I feel like I’m lucky to have him. If you know him, you know that he is kind, gentle, honest, humble, funny, hard-working, devoted…oh, right, I said I wouldn’t go on and on. But I feel like I talk a lot about how wonderful my kids are and I need to tell everyone how wonderful my husband is.

I’m going to miss him next week. He’s going to be in Sweden for work. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not jealous. I totally am. But I get to stay home and hold down the fort. When he’s gone I usually don’t get much sleep. I don’t like going to bed without him. It feels weird. And I remember when we first got married, 5 1/2 years ago, and it felt weird to have someone else sleeping in my bed. Now I often end up in bed with Miles next to me, Jason on the other side of him and Piper laying on my feet. Sadly, next week he won’t be there to keep Miles from falling off the other side of the bed.

Baby barricading is not his only parenting skill. Like many dads, he is the “Explanation Parent.” He never misses an opportunity to teach Piper something. When she asks a million questions about the same thing, he attempts to answer all of them. And he’s getting better at making it age-appropriate. He is so patient with her many questions. I’m so glad that he’s the father of our kids. I hope Piper and Miles appreciate how wonderful he is and how much he loves them.

So, I will be missing my sweet husband next week. But I’m excited for him. He deserves to have an exciting trip, doing exciting computer science stuff. So, to end this blog I’m going to give you a picture from our honeymoon and a recent picture. He’s cute!

I’ve always excelled in procrastination.  You may have been able to guess this by the fact that I always write my blogs in the wee hours of the night/early morning.  Well, right now I’m blogging at 4:00 in the afternoon, not morning, because I’m using it as a procrastination technique.  I’m putting off packing to go to my father-in-laws house for the weekend.

I hate packing.  Especially, now that I’m packing for the kids and myself.  And whatever Jason forgot.  There’s the clothes (and you have to make sure you have multiple changes of clothes for my poop-tastic baby), and the diapers, and the baby food, and everything you need for sleeping (pack and play, baby monitor so we can roam the house while they sleep), toys, swimsuits and swimming stuff, things to keep them entertained in the car, bath stuff, you get the idea.  There’s a lot of stuff.  And I have to be ninja-like while I gather all of these things from different rooms in the house because at least one child is sleeping and I don’t want to ruin a good thing.

So, I guess I’ll get back to the packing.  But I don’t wanna!  The blogging is not only a distraction from the reality of all that needs to be packed, but it is also an attempt to get at least one blog in while we’re on vacation.  I may not get to blog while I’m at my father-in-law’s house.  I think I actually can from my phone if there’s not easy internet access, but we’ll see how easy that is.  So, to make it a good one I’m giving you a video to watch.  Your faithful reading has been rewarded with a video of the super cute Miles Alexander Sperske trying to change his own diaper.  Okay, so he probably wasn’t changing his own diaper. But I left him on the floor and when I came back he had his diaper open and a wipe in his hand, so I figured he was taking care of things for me.  See what you think. Don’t worry, you don’t see anything.

P.S. I had Project Runway playing in the background while I was gathering clothes and Miles was kinda watching. Every time Heidi Klum came on his face lit up. Little Dude has a thing for German super models!

Yes, friends, this is another “too tired” blog.  It’s 2:17 a.m. (of course, I’ll be changing the time to reflect the day that I intended to write the blog) and I’m falling asleep as I write this.  Again.  This has been a common theme.  I’m just exhausted lately.  By the way, I just deleted about 10 rows of lower case ds  because I fell asleep with my finger on the d key.  So, I’m giving you one of those short and sweet blogs that I write just to get it done.

Here’s a picture that Piper took using the photobooth program on my computer.  I was trying to get things together to leave the house so I let her entertain herself by taking pictures on the computer. 

Sorry friends, I must hit the hay!  I can barely function.

Today we went to my friend, Monica’s, parents house which is on a bunch of acres with a whole bunch of almond tress and some peach trees.

I am, literally, falling asleep while I write this.  So, here’s a video of our “Mule’ ride through the almond grove….jhjhgdf4 <- my head hitting the keyboard

making cookies.  I’m going to write a really great blog another day about some of today’s events.  But it can’t happen right now.  I’m just too busy making cookies.  That’s the honest truth.

This is what I did today, just so you have something to read and you don’t say, “Genoa was supposed to write a wonderful, witty, inspiring blog every day for 30 days.  And she didn’t.  She copped out on Aug. 17th and gave us an IOU blog.  She was busy making cookies.  I want my money back.”  So, for you readers who always want something for nothing, here you go.  This is close to nothing for something (your time).

1.  Got the two munchkin-heads out of the house and dropped Piper off at preschool.  God bless preschool!

2.  Dropped off my car at the auto-body shop to get my bumper fixed (got rear-ended).

3.  Got a nice big rental car and then returned to the auto-body shop to get the other car seat, stroller, and junk out of my sweet little Rav 4.  I’m now driving a Dodge Journey.  Piper wants to keep it.

4.  Ate lunch and realized that I really didn’t have time to do anything else before I had to go get Piper from school.

5.  Returned to the auto-body shop to get my garage door opener.

6.  Came home and put Piper down for a nap.  Miles, who has been asleep in the car wakes up just when Piper goes down.  I attempt to learn some line dances from youtube videos.  Yes, this is what I do in my free time.  (I’m teaching line dancing tomorrow.  I don’t just do this for fun.)

7.  I have to wake Piper up to go to a Karate trial class.  We go to Karate trial class.  I die of sticker shock when I find out how much this would cost.  Note:  The IOU blog will be about Piper’s trial karate class.

8.  Go to Safeway and get some stuff for dinner.

9.  Go home and make dinner, eat dinner, begin digesting dinner.

10.  Put on swimsuits and go to the tennis club to take Piper swimming while Miles flirts with the girls working in the nursery.

11.  Go to the drive-thru ATM to deposit Jason’s paycheck and decide that since we’re near it we should stop and get milk at Safeway.  And since we’re getting milk we need some cookie dough to go with it.

12.  Put Piper and Miles to bed.

13.  Make cookies.

So there you are.  That was my day.  Not too exciting.  But it ended with cookies in the oven so it was a good one.

Well friends, my cookies are now done and cooling and I must go make sure that all evidence of their existence is gone before Piper wakes up tomorrow morning.

Today I got to visit with my dear friend, Katie, who is home for a visit from New York for the first time in 3.5 years.  Katie and I were friends from community theatre, and along with another friend, Allison, we had some good times during those high school. It’s been about 16 years since we first met. Today we ate lunch with her parents (who I’ve also known forever, of course) at Eddie Papa’s in Pleasanton.  The restaurant happens to be in the building that used to be Lyon’s.  Anyone remember Lyon’s?  We used to go there after performances (that we were either in or went to see together) and talk about the show, talk about people in the show and pretty much just stay out late being goofballs.  We often had strange stage make-up on our faces and busted out in random song and dance.  I’m sure the staff and anyone visiting Lyon’s thought we were nuts.  Well, we kinda were.  But we had a good time.

It was good to see Katie.  She’s pretty much awesome.  She now manages Broadway shows.  She’s working on Phantom of the Opera on Broadway at the moment and always has great stories of The Great White Way.  Katie got to eat some good California food today and not melt from the heat.  She also got to meet Miles and see Piper for the first time in a long time.  Piper may have been about a year old the last time she saw Katie.  Katie definitely got in Piper’s good graces by handing her a bag of costumes and costume pieces upon our arrival.  Piper loves costumes!  So, here’s a picture of Piper wearing her sparkly mask that Katie gave her.  It’s definitely a favorite!  Thanks, Katie!

Yesterday we got to see my dear friend, Vickie, marry her cool man, Tony.  Vickie was beautiful and Tony was dapper as ever.  I’ve been excited to see them get married, but not nearly as excited as Piper was.  She couldn’t stop talking about it all morning.  On the way to the wedding she was telling us who her flower girl would be in her wedding (her friend, Kira, who is 8 years old.  We tried to explain the aging process but it didn’t stick.)  When she found out that the ceremony would be outside she told us that she wanted to get married outside.   Then later that night she was talking about Jason and I being married and worriedly asked Jason, “But who am I going to marry?”  She decided that she would marry her friend, Izaak.  Not Kira’s brother, Isaac, but “her Izaak.”  She wanted to make that very clear.

I was never the kind of little girl that thought much about weddings.  I didn’t start planning mine until June 27th, 2004 when Jason proposed.  Okay, maybe a little before that.  But Piper clearly loves all things beautiful and fancy.  I guess we’ll have to start saving for her wedding now.

I hope she spends as much time thinking about the man she wants to marry as she does the wedding.  I pray that she grows up to be a strong woman who doesn’t settle for anyone less than perfect for her.  I hope she uses her brains, talents and gifts to become a confident woman and not dumb herself down for any man.  I want her to bring her friends and boyfriends around to meet us and she had better care what we think of them.  I think she’ll make someone a good wife someday.  Hopefully, one day she can say she learned her mad wife skills from watching me.

(The beautiful bride let Piper hold her flowers   for her.  This made Piper so happy!)