The never ending porch project

Ah..... Here I am, sitting out on our mostly screened porch, enjoying the first non-sweltering night in over 2 weeks (or something like that), sipping on a vodka-cranberry and listening to the crickets and frogs... and the barking dogs...and the traffic. Just enjoying the evening with Scotty. Its been a long journey to this point. Scott's been working on this screened porch/deck for two summers now. He's a self-proclaimed perfectionist and won't accept much help. He's finally got everything done on the porch portion except for two section without screen - and its looking pretty dang fine! Its just sundown now and so far we haven't been swarmed by mosquitos. We'll see how long we last out here. This porch construction process has been a long time in the making. Scott's sick of working on it every spare moment, and I'm sick of being a single mom most weekends and many evenings. Plus, we both just miss hanging out together, like this. I have a feeling we're going to spend many evenings out here. I, of course, have all these schemes for how I'm going to decorate it. Scott will fight me on many of them, but in the end, he'll like what I end up picking out.

The girls are asleep. Clare should sleep soundly through the night like she always has since she was 8 weeks old. Super sleeper. God love her. Cate is a different story. Generally, she's a great sleeper too. But she goes on jags where she wakes up in the middle of the night for a few weeks. Its usually when she's making a new cognitive leap or adjusting to a big change. Like when we moved her to a big-girl bed, she had a hard time for a couple weeks - afraid to go to bed, lots of crying, waking up at night scared and crying. But once she adjusted, she slept great. Until last week. It started with one of those crazy middle of the night insomnia attacks. Woke up at 2:00 and couldn't go back to sleep until 5:00. And of course, she couldn't be alone - had to have one of us (mainly me) with her. And since that night, she's woken up every night. But she's going back to sleep quicker and quicker and with less and less fuss. The strange part is, she's decided she needs to get out of bed by herself...in the middle of the night. We knew it would happen sooner or later. After she moved to the bed, it took her over 2 1/2 months to figure out she could get out whenever she wanted to. The first time she did it, I was on a walk with Attley and Scott was working on the porch. He had the monitors on so he could hear the girls if they woke up. He started hearing a faint cry/calling. We've been having a lot of interference on our monitors from all the new neighbors so he thought that's what it was at first. But then the more he thought about it he decided he'd better check it out. Just as he opened the sliding glass door to the kitchen, he heard the front door click shut. The faint calling he had heard was Cate who had gotten out of bed and was looking for us so she decided to head outside to try to find us. The very first time the kid decides to venture forth from her bed, she heads all the way outside. Nice. That was last week and since then she's gotten outside 2 more times. We finally put up a gate to keep her upstairs which has helped me sleep better. Anyway, I'm hoping this phase pans out pretty soon and she gets over her late-night meanderings.

Okay, the blood sucking beasts found their way into the two huge open sections and are trying to feast on my feet (its always my feet!!). I've gotten 5 bites in less than 2 minutes. I'm heading in. Scott just told me I should get those screen sections up - he's on hiatus until the fall. Sorry buddy, it ain't happening. This is your baby.

Better get me off to bed. Cate will be up in a couple of hours.