Fall! it's here!

Some general life things happening lately, in no particular order of importance or relevance but things I wanted to write about.

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I've had a weekly nanny for about 6 months now, and it has been life-saving in my mental health and survival week-to-week with two generally-good-but-still-toddler toddlers around, especially now being pregnant. Working full time from home is a battle every day, and I've been taking on some additional freelance to build experience and expand my resume, and I could not have been able to without our lovely nanny. The girls absolutely love her, she comes on Wednesday mornings from 9-1 which is the perfect break in the middle of the week, and it is 100% worth the cost.

If you're in a similar boat, whether you're "just" a stay-at-home mom (no! such! thing!) or you do some work at home or what have you, if you're surrounded by littles all the time and crave just a few hours a week where no one is yelling/screaming/pulling at your leg, I really really recommend getting a regular nanny. Budgeting for it is not without its struggles, of course! We are lucky enough to be able to afford one. (I mean, I wish we could afford a full-time nanny, but that ain't happening anytime soon unless we win the lottery.) Even if finances are tight, I would sacrifice a lot for those 4 hours every week. Including my ridiculous expensive coffee habit, and that is saying something because I am #addicted. (Well, since pregnancy it's been tea, since coffee seems to instantly make me nauseous. But you get what I mean.)

Heck, maybe just start with 2 hours a week. I found our nanny through my sister (who is college age), but other good places to ask: your local college, the Nextdoor app, Facebook friends, relatives who live in your same town and have neighbors, etc. etc. I know some people have really good luck with Care.com as well, although I haven't actually used it before.

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The leaves in our neighborhood are insane. We had an early snowfall, which pushed a lot of leaves off earlier than they would have dropped normally, and to keep up with everything it's practically a once-every-48-hours-chore, which is exhausting.

The girls, however, hope it NEVER stops because they love jumping in the piles. And it's pretty cute mostly because Cora can't figure out how to jump into it so she just hops on the ground in front of the pile, and then steps in. It's just as cute as it sounds and I wish I could get a good picture of it. I'm sure we'll be raking again in the next few days so I'll have a chance.

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This song is a great fall song. Sufjan, I <3 you. (Thanks for the rec, Lucy!)

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We went to visit said Lucy, my sister, in Fort Collins a few weeks ago for a girls trip -- aka the girls and my other sister and my mom. The 7 hour drive was peppered with "are we there yet?" every 20 minutes from the 4 year old, but in reality it was pretty good overall for a short trip with a lot of driving and two toddlers.

We did a whole lot of nothing except be outside and eat food, aka the perfect sort of vacation. Now I'm ready for a real vacation, though, sans children -- and dreaming of where we could maybe take a babymoon somewhere in January/early February. Trying to get David on the Hawaii train but so far he's not going for it. I'll keep working on it. ;)

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Links below are Amazon affiliate links. But I am a huge fan of your local library! It's just easiest to link specific books straight to Amazon. 

I'm working my way through another fantastic scifi series, The Themis Files series by Sylvain Neuvel -- the first one being Sleeping Giants. The very shortened premise is that aliens left a giant robot buried on Earth thousands of years ago, and suddenly we discovered it.  It's fast-paced, seems totally realistic, written in a unique interview way which sometimes bothers me but I really enjoyed here, and full of incredible detail and a truly fascinating plot. It's only 3 books long and I'm already on the last one, which is very sad - I haven't been this excited about a scifi series since I started The Expanse forever ago.

I also read Force of Nature by Jane Harper recently, the second detective/crime novel in the Aaron Falk series she's written (first one was The Dry). Aaron is an Australian FBI agent (or whatever the Australian version of the FBI is, I can't remember what they call it) and it's a great change from the Britain/US focused crime novels I usually read. This one was hella creepy, too! Loved it.

I also have An American Marriage and Gunnar's Daughter in my possession from the library right now, so those will be my next two. Just a tad different from a futuristic scifi. What can I say, my reading interests are varied! (Oh, and I'm on book #57 of 2018.)

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Ending on a laugh: this has been making me snort for three weeks now. (Sorry to whoever I found it on Twitter from, can't find it now.) Nothing like a good Catholic joke in these dark times.

How has your fall been? I'm hoping to write a little more frequently here now that nausea has somewhat abated from the first trimester, but no promises, of course. David and I are headed to my all-time favorite artist's concert on Friday night here in Omaha, Gregory Alan Isakov, so the weekend can't come soon enough.
HG