Erin Akin Carroll

Have y’all ever looked at this website, Dead Malls?

TC is kind of obsessed with it and has a fascination with abandoned malls. He says it’s because he spent a good amount of his childhood in many of our local malls and it’s sad to see such large, sprawling structures turn into empty parking lots and empty retail space.

I spent lots of Saturdays growing up at the mall, shopping at Limited Too, eating Chick-fil-A or Sbarro in the food court, and sticking around to see a movie in the mall movie theater. Family Saturdays were spent at the mall.

Now you see empty food courts. And in one case in Columbia, even the Chick-fil-A has closed! What up with that?

We have two dead malls in Columbia and one that’s on its way to being dead. In one of these cases it doesn’t make any sense. The mall is located in one of the most prevalent parts of town and just can’t succeed. I don’t understand it.

this particular mall is lucky enough to still have a Dress Barn keeping the place afloat

the Richland Fashion mall– with a great Barnes and Noble keeping the place afloat– sort of

These days, though, I’d rather avoid malls and spend my time in local boutiques, supporting local business owners. We feel the same way about restaurants. We rarely eat at chain restaurants.

Walking around an empty mall makes me feel like I’m in a ghost town and that’s just a creepy feeling.

Do you think it’s creepy? Do you have dead/abandoned malls in your city?

Hudson had his first week of swim lessons this week. We went every morning starting on Monday and each lesson was 30 minutes. The instructions asked that if your child was visibly upset then you should probably wait in the car or come back at the end of the lesson. I chose to wait in the car with the windows rolled down so I could hear Hudson if he got hysterical.

The worst part was the hand off when I gave Hudson over to his instructor every morning. But that’s normal. Kids always do better when their parents aren’t around. It was a private lesson and the parents were invited to take pictures and video on the last day of the lesson.

My pictures came out kind of fuzzy because my camera had a hard time adjusting going from the air conditioned car to the 90 degree humid outdoors.

So as soon as I walked into the pool area at the end of the lesson today Hudson saw me and lost it. Just boo-hooing. But his instructor just had him keep on with the lesson. His name was Coach Ryan and I asked him later if he ever got Hudson to smile. Ha! Hudson was just so serious at the end of every lesson as if he was saying, “Mom, thank goodness you’re here. I’m tired!”

This week he learned to hold his breath, how to float on his back, and learned how to kick and hold his arms out until he touched the wall.

He just looks so little in there. Every time I came to pick him up I nearly cried just looking at his little body doing so much in the water.

And guess what! At the end of today’s lesson, Coach Ryan was able to let go and Hudson kicked his way all the way to the wall on his own. Coach Ryan was close by so he could grab him if Hudson started to struggle, but I’m just so proud of how much progress he made this week! In the pictures you can see that Coach Ryan was holding Hudson’s head down. That’s to teach him to hold his breath and try to reinforce that it’s much easier to move yourself forward to the wall if you’re completely horizontal.

I think we’re going to try to do another week of lessons in a few weeks so Hudson can stay confident in the water and not forget everything he learned. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to try swim lessons with him this year, but I figured if there was someone who was teaching infants and toddlers how to swim, Hudson could definitely learn. And we’ve spent a few days at the pool already, so I’m eager to help him practice some of his “tricks” when he’s at the pool playing with us.

I love that he’s learning new things and especially love that he’s learning how to keep himself safe in the water. But it is so bittersweet watching him do such big boy things.

1. I can’t stand for the skin on my thighs to touch. Blech! For this reason, I sleep in pants every night. This is part of the reason that we sleep with our thermostat on 67.

2. But I’d be sweating more not wearing pants than I do when wearing pants. Skin on skin grosses me out.

3. I also sleep with my feet hanging out of the covers. Gotta keep my feet cool.

4. I’m afraid to admit this on here because when I admitted it to Mojito Maven on G-chat last night she laughed at me. Anyway, here goes. I have strong desires to be a part of a book club, a bunco group, and a supper club. Does that elevate me to a new SAHM status?

5. So I still need to lose 16 pounds to reach my wedding weight, but I’m currently 2 pounds away from pre-pregnancy weight. And a lot of my size 6 pants from back then are fitting perfectly. But I just saw a nas-tay picture of me that was taken this weekend. Oy.

6. My “Crime Girl”, Nina, sent me an adorable surprise in the mail!

7. She sent me this fun surprise because I have a huge issue with stationers misspelling the word stationery. Okay, I have a huge issue with anyone misspelling the word stationery. Or anyone misspelling any word.

8. I’m definitely too critical. But I’m embracing this quality.

9. Nina has also requested the “curl down” for her rehearsal dinner hair. I’m pretty excited!

10. My 2010-2011 MomAgenda arrived and I’m getting my life back on track. No more random Post-Its stuck inside my old MomAgenda.

11. I cooked twice this past weekend. As in big, time-consuming recipes. I made Paula Deen’s Twice-Baked Potato Casserole for a Sunday school gathering. And I made the Red Hat Society’s Chicken Tetrazzini. Both are delicious!

12. I am constantly amazed by people’s strength. I’m reading about blog friends of mine who are dealing with loss and reading about (and talking to) my mom as she battles melanoma. I know it sounds cliche, but these things really make me want to shut the heck up and stop whining about stupid stuff.

13. We played Nertz for two hours the other night and now I can’t stop thinking about playing again. I wonder how many nights I can convince TC to play with me.

14. Hudson has been taking swim lessons every morning this week. I’ve waited for him in the car every day because they suggest that you wait out of sight– especially if your kids look a little sad and are clearly upset. I don’t want Hudson to think I’m coming to rescue him and I want him to learn stuff. But on that first day I could hear him screaming. Apparently he doesn’t like to learn to float on his back. I told the coach not to take it personally because Hudson doesn’t like to lie on his back to have his diaper changed either.

15. I paid an electrician way too much money to do way too little work today. It’s like he came in and robbed me. Except I willingly wrote him a check. For too much.

16. TC is going to read this and he’s not going to be happy about #15.

Update: TC was not at all happy about it. Basically, we’re working to build shelves and cubbies in the future playroom and the carpenter referred us to this electrician so we could add a cable outlet and an electrical outlet. The electrician was at our house for 1.5 hours and charged us $425. I was floored and then I paid him. And then I cried to Todd after he asked me how in the heck all of this happened. I had to call our carpenter and explain to him that I’d used half of our money for this project to pay the electrician and we didn’t have enough left in our project budget to actually have him build the shelves. That carpenter jumped all over the situation and called that electrician and got us our money back! Hallelujah!

Shelf project will commence tomorrow!

17. So I’ll post something else to take his mind off of it. I took this picture and posted it to Twitter back in April. I have to recover a piece of my furniture with this fabric. Love it.

When Hudson was an infant, TC and I avoided taking him restaurants as best we could. We didn’t accept invitations to get together with friends and bring Hudson. He was on a great schedule, but wasn’t the most content child when it came to sitting still in his infant seat in a restaurant.

I always figured that the other diners in the restaurant were hoping to enjoy their meal when they went out that night and I didn’t need to ruin that by bringing my discontent baby there to scream.

Meal time out at restaurants with Hudson was also not so much fun for TC and me. We couldn’t spend a whole lot of time talking to each other because we were both focused on keeping Hudson happy and by the time we left to go home, we were exhausted. It was just always easier and much more relaxing to eat at home

Now that Hudson has gotten so good at entertaining himself with books and is eating table food, we’ve been able to do the restaurant thing a lot more often. It still gets a little stressful and I know our time limit is tight and I can’t keep him in the high chair for too long without expecting him to get irritated and loud.

I also know that there are days when I already know that Hudson and restaurants aren’t going to mix well. Somedays are better for just staying at home and working through the bad mood/tiredness.

Last week, though, Hudson made it to a lot of restaurants.

My girlfriends all got together on Friday for lunch and I brought Hudson along. It was a birthday lunch, so chocolate cupcakes were involved. Hudson loves cupcakes, but his little grabby hands made their way to the chocolate icing before I could break him off a little piece. There was chocolate icing all over him. His hands, his face, his mouth, his shirt, his legs even! What a mess!

While the pizza lunch with the chocolate cupcake mess was fun, we ended up rushing out of the restaurant as quickly as we could.

The next night, TC and I decided to have a fun little family supper at a local deli. Hudson was very well-behaved and I have a feeling that it had something to do with having his Daddy there.

Even with toys, the fun sticky place mat, and lots of finger foods to keep him occupied, Hudson still has the occasional trip to a restaurant that gets a little loud.  And that makes me want to crawl under the table– or get out of there as quickly as possible!

How do your kids do at restaurants? Do you enjoy going out to eat or do you prefer to play it safe and stay home as a family?

In other news… The Naturally Caffeinated Family came to visit us for a couple of days and we had the best visit. I just love their boys and spending time with their family. Hudson loved playing with the boys and TC and I had fun playing Nertz with the Mrs. and Mr. We can’t wait to visit them soon!