I'm going to completely ignore the fact that I haven't blogged in almost a year.

We're slowly getting our Sunday schedule down for the rest of the time we're here in Virginia. We have the awful privilege of going from 1 to 4 so by the time we get home Pearl Pepper is absolutely beyond done for the day. Part of the reason our routine was not so easily cut and dry is the fact that it takes me a little bit to, I don't know how to say it- come down? after meetings are over. We (read I, Papa Pepper has to take the Pearl Pepper to the foyer or else she's a cranky distraction) were switched from teaching 9 year olds in primary to teaching 5 year olds- 9 of them. My mom said that when she was in the primary presidency in Colorado, that was the average and I'm sure that for those used to wards in Utah, 9 is laughable but for me, it's a lot. It's a LOT. Octomom has another thing coming when she has 8 5-year olds to take care of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Come 4 o'clock, I'm so jittery from two hours of what I can only describe as the Caterpillar Room from Toy Story 3 but with pictures of Jesus and no toys, that I can hardly sit down to cuddle my Pearl Pepper. It seriously takes me a good 30 minutes to achieve normal muscle tension .

Anywho. We get home from church and then, because it's too late for Pearl Pepper to take any sort of nap, we have to do our best to keep her awake and happy for another hour or so until we can put her in the tub and send her to bed. This is where I've given up all the pious ideals I was so sure I was never going to break before I had a baby: When we get home, we cuddle up with Pearl Pepper and turn on Toy Story 3.

In the immortal words of one, Joy Hickey. "Don't you judge me!"

After the post-church collapse, I'm done. If Pearl Pepper wanted to play (and she doesn't because she's already started to resemble a zombie more than an actual human being), I don't know that I could. I'd just have to lay down on the rug and let her beat me with whatever she had in frustration that her mama was such a lame-o. As it is, we both kind of slump down, and wait in droopy-eyed anticipation for the toys to confront Lotso at the dumpster- it's a convenient stopping point because the rest of it is almost too intense for me and I'd rather not subject Pearl Pepper to all-encompassing bad-parentage just yet. We'll save that for when she's at least 2.