The circus and other craziness

Wow, the circus. What a crazy thing. I had only been to the circus once, I think, when I was a kid. And I've decided I should probably not go back to the circus again. Don't get me wrong - it was pretty cool. But they do very dangerous stunts without any kind of safety net that I can see, and I had to look away for half of it because I was so scared for the performers.

Here's an example - man and woman are on a trapeze-like thing, except instead of swinging through the air, they do crazy stunts. Their finale was this (picture it if you will): Man is hanging from the bar by his TEETH. His teeth. No lie. He is flexing his feet, and the woman is lying perpendicular to his body and to the ground across the tops of his feet. And then they spin really, really fast. He's holding up both of their body weight with his teeth, holding her up by the strength of his foot flexing, and they are spinning! And this was only the second act. I also sat through crazy motorcycling on tightropes, running around a big spinning wheel wearing a blindfold, and a guy being shot out of a cannon. I was terrified; Romelie loved it. And she got to ride an elephant, which is kind of cool.

Romelie's been a little off the last couple of weeks. Her sleeping patterns have been weird (she's had a couple nights where she wakes up repeatedly - very unusual for her - and she's had days where she doesn't nap), she cries throughout diaper changes, and she throws more fits that last longer than usual. Not really sure what's going on there. It didn't help that a lot of this happened last week, which was an incredibly difficult week for both Chason and me at work. I had to teach four different lessons at five different schools AND perform our newest play on energy (this sexy picture shows Thomas Edison - me - and Nikola Tesla. I did the costuming, by the way. You're impressed, you know it). So I was pretty sleep deprived and stress-y. But hopefully this is just a phase or something. We have our 2-year well-kid check up in a couple weeks, so I'll mention it to Dr. Dukinfield if it's still going on.

Also, Chason and I had an extended weekend without Romelie. It was very strange. My mom took her up to her home from Friday through Tuesday. Chason and I didn't know what to do with ourselves! We did go out for lunch one day, but we mostly just sat at home and relaxed. Which is okay, right? We missed our kid, though, and we're both glad she's back. Granted, she totally hurt our feelings by refusing to let either of us hold her on Tuesday night and crying when we did. So mean...

And now we're just getting back into our regular routine. We've got some fun plans for the weekend. Romelie and I are going to go to BSM's Varsity volleyball sectionals match Friday night, and then Chason and Romelie are going to a Halloween party Saturday morning while I'm at my last volleyball tournament of the season (we won again and we're in pool 2! My team rocks). Then our neighborhood is doing a Halloween party in the evening, so I think we'll just go to that and skip any actual trick-or-treating (since no one in our neighborhood seems to do it...). I'll take pics of Romelie in her costume. This pic, by the way, is not her Halloween costume. She's going as a duck this year, but there are some dress up clothes at the church nursery, so a couple Sundays ago, I dressed up the four kids that were there and took a few photos. It was pretty cute. At any rate, I'll take more pics of Romelie in her duck costume and post them before we go to HOUSTON next Thursday!!

Finally, a few more cute photos and a video for you to enjoy. Romelie has started to do some creative play or whatever you want to call it. She does things like put diapers on her stuffed animals, feed sthem, cleans them, puts them to bed, etc. So here's Romelie taking care of her "friends" (as we've started to call everyone).

And here are two videos. In the first, she's waking everyone up from naptime and letting them play and bounce. In the second, she's singing Twinkle Twinkle. And not listening to her mom. That's not too unusual, though.