The weekend ended up being a mostly good one. Friday I left work early for Kate's speech therapy appointment. The therapist was pleased with her progress and recommended some more toys that could help with encouraging speech. We did some structured play so she could see how Kate picked things up, which went very well. We scheduled out the appointments for the whole of October, so we're finally going to be getting into the actual weekly meetings that we originally discussed. 

I took the rest of the day off of work, and spent the afternoon making a batch of pumpkin bread, which made the entire house smell good. We picked up tacos for dinner, and all of us got to bed a little too late in the evening, but eh, whatever.

I woke up on Saturday feeling both mentally and physically good, which hasn't happened in a hot minute. The baby was also in a good mood, so I took advantage of it all to get some chores done. I conquered dish mountain, the baby watched Ms. Rachel, I made us both breakfast. M got up around noon to the news that the background check for New Job was finally complete and accepted, and he was good to start on the 29th. Hooray! He put his notice in at Old Job immediately, and felt much relief.

The plan for Saturday had been that I'd take the baby with me in the morning to do some German food shopping at Aldi, but when I got up I realized just how long it'd been since I'd showered, so that didn't happen. New plan was to shower while the baby napped, but she kept fighting her nap every time I tried to put her down. She eventually was so tired that she ended up falling asleep on my lap at around 3:30, so I gently moved her to her crib and I finally got in some time to wash. 

Then it was a quick trip to Aldi to scope out German foods, and I was pretty disappointed with their offerings this year. I picked up a couple of packs of pastaroni-style spaetzle, a package of dried spaetzle, some frozen strudel and cakes, and some cookies, and that was about it. It also felt very disorganized - items were scattered all over the store and not put together in any sort of display, or even marked with any signage. I finally asked someone where all the German stuff was and they said it was "just sort of all over." 

I stopped at home to unload the frozen stuff so it wouldn't melt in the car, with the plan to then go on to Central Market for their German Passport offerings, but M requested that we go as a family on Sunday instead since there were some things he wanted to pick up, too. So, I called it a night and started on dinner, which was just ham, green beans, and a box of fettuccini alfredo. M went out with friends to go try and new wing place that his foodie group was raving about.

Sunday wasn't as good as day, mostly because I was extremely light-headed and achy all over. Blah. I tried not to do too much in the morning since I was pretty woozy, so it was just an easy breakfast for me and Kate. Everyone sort of faffed around the house most of the day, and thankfully, Kate finally took a decent nap. It seems that sleep regression is common at around the 2 year mark since there's just so much going on at that age, and Kate's going through all of it - language acquisition, molars coming in, potty training, the works. So she's fighting bedtime, fighting her naps, and waking up all through the night. This all means that she slept for nearly 4 hours during her nap on Sunday, since she was so exhausted.

Once she was finally up, we packed up the car and headed to Central Market, which was an absolute madhouse. They were leaning much harder into the German Passport theme than Aldi was, which was fun to see. They had carved wooden signage over all their different departments with the German names for those departments in big bright letters, paper signage pointing out all the German products, and displays of the German items within each department so they were easy to find. We ended up bringing home so much more than we went in for, and M declared that the spending limit was gone, let's just have fun and pick up what we want, so we got a big bienenstich cake from the bakery, lots of good bread, lots of good meat and sausages and cheese, some marzipan and other sweets, and some imported sodas. We spent about double the budget we had originally set but we had a good time and now we have many yummy things in the house. 

Kate did very well on the shopping trip, though she started getting restless toward the end, which, so was I honestly. Too many people, too much chaos, no one seems to know how to follow the flow of traffic, everyone blocking lanes with their carts, it was all a bit much. It was enough of an adventure that she was ready for bed not long after we got home, so it was a quick dinner of some leftovers, then right into bed, where she fought sleep for a good hour before finally passing out. 

I can't believe that October starts next week. It looks like it's going to be a busy month for us. Lots of speech therapy appointments for Kate, M has a trip to Chicago for a friend's wedding, Kate's 2nd birthday, OB appointments, just the works. 

Just two more months of being pregnant. I simultaneously can't wait to not be pregnant anymore, and am nervous about having two kids. Definitely not something I ever saw happening in my life. 

Yesterday was an awful, exhausting day, and I'm glad it's over with. After the early morning with the baby, and M being crabby all day, I was relieved to finally go to bed. The baby went down at around 7:30, and I immediately went to bed myself. 

At around 9pm I was awoken suddenly by the sound of a crash and then something howling/screaming. Sleep brain told me that it was Kate, so I ran straight to her room, where she was sleeping soundly and was none the wiser. After I got my heart back into my chest, I got back into bed. M and I never found the source of the noise, but we figure it was one of the dozens of dogs in the building getting into something it shouldn't have and then getting scared about it.

Kate was up again at 4AM. I thought I could get her back to bed easily since it was just a missing pacifier, but when I took her out of her crib to do a thorough search, she grabbed her blankets and ran off to the living room. I found her on the couch in a nest of her stuff. She pointed to the TV and said "Ms. Rachel", so I put on a short episode. She ate some cheese, she danced to some songs, and half an hour later she was ready to go back to sleep, thank Zod. Back to bed for both of us. 

Still feeling a bit sluggish today, but nothing as bad as yesterday. 

Speech therapy appointment for Kate this afternoon. Considering taking a half-day from work rather than just taking a long lunch to cover the appointment. I'm worn out and could use an afternoon off. 

Aldi's German week just started, and since we got paid today I'm thinking of making a trip tomorrow morning for some goodies. There's a severe lack of spaetzle in my life lately, and I miss them. 

Got home to M being very stressed about his college transcript not arriving yet. He left as soon as I was there so he could go down to the school in person and hopefully expedite things. After talking to the registrar's office, the short answer was, "no, we can't expedite electronic transcripts, and we haven't even processed your request yet." But, in a stroke of luck, he went down to visit some of his old professors, and one of them, who is now a dean, said, "screw them, I'll do it," and wrote him a letter of verification on the spot and sent him his transcripts. So, hooray! As soon as he was back home he sent everything over to HR, so hopefully that is all over and done with now.

I had finished cooking dinner by the time M got home, so the rest of the evening was pretty quiet overall, with the exception of being headbutted like a goat while trying to change Kate, and her biting my finger when I wouldn't let her get into the silverware drawer. -_- She didn't go down for bed easily, either, and was finally asleep after 9pm, which is way too late for her. And for me. 

And then she was up at 4:30 this morning. -_- We did our morning routine, I changed her and fed her breakfast, she played for a little while, and then she wanted to go back to bed at around 6. At that point there was no reason for me to go back to bed just to lay there for an hour before my alarm went off, so I had some breakfast myself and watched some YouTube. I made her a second breakfast plate for when she woke up later, took out a ham to defrost for dinner, and then left for work. 

Today is going to be very, very long. Thankfully, dinner is just going to be a bunch of really easy stuff, so it shouldn't be too much work. Fingers crossed that the baby goes down easily for bed, so I can get some decent catchup sleep tonight.

Tomorrow is Kate's second speech therapy appointment. Hopefully things go well.

Feeling the pinch this week before our paycheck on Friday, so it's back to cooking until we get paid. Ingredients in the house are low, so dinner was hamburgers. I had planned some roasted sweet potatoes as a side since we didn't have fries or regular potatoes, but when I pulled them out of the bin I discovered they all had foot-long sprouts coming out of them, so they went into the trash instead. 

Kate ate all the cheese off the top of her hamburger patty and then ignored the meat. XP I supplemented her and M's dinners with some frozen potstickers, which seems to satisfy them both. 

Serbian pork for dinner tonight, since I have all the ingredients for that. 

Besides cooking dinner, the rest of the evening was pretty quiet. Kate was in a much better mood, except for a few small fusses about wanting to brush her teeth, which is her new favorite activity. She went down easily for the night, which was a relief. 

M heard back from HR at New Job, and all they need is a verification of employment letter and his college transcripts, and all this should be done with. The letter has been obtained, we're just waiting on the transcripts now. I know M will be massively relieved when all this is over with and he can put in his notice at Current Job.