This Month

Just realized this is my last chance for a February post, so squeaking this one in at the eleventh hour (literally) will bring me up to 19 posts for a 28 day month.  I didn't quite post every day, but 19 sure blows away any other monthly total, so I will consider my challenge a success.

I've really enjoyed writing and sharing more regularly and will try to keep up a more steady rhythm in the months ahead.  The exercise of capturing a moment has been a huge help in keeping me focused during a month that might otherwise have gotten long and tedious (more details on why another time).  The kids grow and change so rapidly, and it is easy to think that a phase or joke or favorite pastime of theirs will last forever or that I'll always remember it, but that's not the case.  I do my best to write down little bits in their "baby books" but there is something so usefully spontaneous about just pairing a picture with a few sentences here that I'm finding I've more captured here than any where else.  And to write about projects or accomplishments helps remind me that there is more to my days than simply entertaining my children, that I am continuing to develop hobbies and interests for myself, even if only in small doses.

So speaking of capturing moments, I've been meaning to report on an excellent discovery made a few weeks back, tipped off by a fellow blogger.  This website turned out to be the very thing I've always wanted: a way to turn my virtual log into a real, touchable book of memories.  I ordered the first two years of my blog bound into a 100 page book (which took only about 15 minutes of effort on my part) and it is just lovely.  Highly recommended!

And that's about all I've got for now - it is bedtime.  Thanks so much for hanging around this month.  See you in March!

Rain, Rain...

 

We've been Somewhere Else for a few days, but the rain seemed to follow us.  I can't quite bring myself to say Rain Rain, Go Away, because I know that ultimately this area still needs to get caught up. But yeesh, I would have rather had some more sunshine for our little mini-getaway.  

At least the umbrellas are proving to be money well spent! 

An Open Letter to My Children

Dear Amy and William,

I love you like crazy, but we need to have a little talk, about bedtime. Tonight, for example, it was nearly 10 o'clock before you both conked out.  I enjoy your company all day long, I really do, but all good things must come to an end, and preferably before such an hour.

Now, I understand, I really do.  You had a nap today, William, a nice two-hour long one in the afternoon.  You needed it, desperately, because you have not been napping every day like you once did.  We were up early this morning, and it's a long day for a little guy to stay awake for.  But part of the reason we are trying to lose the nap is because it makes it SO hard for you to fall asleep at night.  And Amy, I know you have more energy than the rest of us combined, and a mere three hours of preschool twice a week is not putting a dent in it anymore.

And I know sometimes I don't help because really, I do so love your company.  You are both the coolest kids in the world.  You are getting so grown up and have so many interests and interesting ideas and thoughts to share.  Especially after the lights go out.  You are both so endearing in the dim glow of the dinosaur nightlight - hair combed and shiny, glow-in-the-dark jammies illuminated.  I can't help but listen a little while longer.  And I know you probably ARE hungry.  Dinner was hours ago, and honestly, as soon as you're asleep, I come down and have a bowl of cereal.  So I can't really deny your requests for a pretzel and a drink of water.

We all love reading together, a lot, and I think it's so cute that you both like to continue reading in bed by flashlight.  I wouldn't mind you doing that until you fall asleep, except that half the time you call me back with requests for another book, or to share an idea.  There's just got to be a cutoff, guys.  My only hope is to go take a shower and become Unavailable for fifteen minutes or so, and hope you'll sort it out and maybe even be asleep by the time I'm done.

See the thing is, I need a certain amount of Mommy-time, just me and the computer/book/yarn/tv.  I simply can't go right to sleep, so if you go to bed late, I go to bed late, and we all sleep late, and this silly cycle continues.

So kids, help me help you.  How can we reclaim a tidy bedtime that is fun, relaxing, and unhurried, and still gets us all to sleep at a decent hour?

Thanks guys.  Love you tons and tons.
xoxo,
Mommy

Monkeys on Ice

 

Successful first ice skating trip for my little monkeys!  I will be adding "skating at full speed while holding two-year-old by the armpits between my legs" to my personal list of Mommy Feats of Strength.  There was excitement, there were tears, but we are all looking forward to doing it again soon.  

Growing Up

 

When every day is more or less the same as the one before it, it can be hard to remember that these little munchkins are, in fact, growing up.  Changing and learning and doing new things all the time - sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once.  William is so much my little boy, my baby, that often I don't think consciously about him growing up until I see a picture.  Something about the way a moment in time is flattened, frozen, makes it so striking how much he (they both are) changing and growing. 

 

And there's moments like this, when scribbling with markers (or better yet, launching them one at at time off the side of the table) is no longer just something to do while Amy draws.  It's taking a break from making Hammer Soup ("it's chocolatey!") in order to draw some trees.  Can you see them?  

Crazy fun stuff, this growing up. 

Another World

I'll lose my momentum if I miss too many nights in a row here but alas, I have very little to report.  I have spent most of my free mental energy of the last 24 hours on Downton Abbey. Seriously. Haven't you?

Anyway, I will try to get my creative ducks in a row for tomorrow and have something worthwhile to blog about.  I actually spent a good amount of time sewing in the last several days but mostly out of a desire to get a project out of my way and on to something else, not terribly enthused about what I've been working on... I'll try to get some pictures of it tomorrow.

Until then, how about these? So cute!  Doubt I'd have the patience.  Anyone want to make them for me?

Planets

 

A few weeks back I bought Amy a cheap paperback book about the planets from her Scholastic book order.  It contained practically zero information, just a nice picture of each of the planets, in order. 

Though it has been in our reading pile all week, she only discovered it last night, and was launched into a late night, impassioned frenzy of interest in learning all about the solar system. 

So this afternoon we went to the library for some more substantial books on the subject because, "Mommy, I just NEED to know what Neptune is made of!" 

That was followed by a trip to AC Moore because I had a coupon and we needed supplies.  We procured a large piece of black poster board, a bottle of blue paint (that happened to be just the right color for Neptune - later sidelined in favor of her trusty markers).  Also found a overpriced set of glow-in-the-dark plastic planets complete with fishing line and star-shaped pushpins to suspend each from the ceiling.  

Returned home and began project, a collaborative effort which turned out quite nicely (shown above, in progress).  I traced assorted circles on heavy paper, she colored each in, accurately.  I cut, she arranged them, we glued.  I made the sun, tomorrow we'll draw in the orbits.  She added a few robots and space creatures just for good measure. 

Hung plastic planets before bathtime tonight (with a splitting headache, thankyouverymuch). Gotta say, they are pretty cool.  Last I checked, Amy was flat on her back staring at them and narrating her journey to each one.  She told me, as I said goodnight for the tenth time, that if I needed her, she would be in the hotel on Pluto, sixth floor, room 22. 

Good to know. 

On Mothers

I've had a line of thought jostling through my head for the last few days and I want to test it out on "paper."  Want to come along?  Okay, good, here goes.

So as most of you know I've been doing some serious thinking about where to send Amy for school next year.  Up one side of the discussion and back down the other, if you know what I mean.  All very useful of course, in making a good and informed decision, but when I read a friend's facebook status on a completely different subject, I realized exactly what I was doing:  Obsessing.  What a luxury of a modern mom, to have so many options available, and time and resources to research and ponder each one, that we each can obsess over whatever part of child rearing we are concerned about at any given moment.

Now here's where this idea got bigger the more I thought about it:

Toward the end of college I completed a course entitled "Senior Thesis in History".  I loved this class - the research, the resources, the historiography, the chance to delve into a tiny slice of American life that particularly interested me.  I don't remember precisely what my thesis was; most of what I remember was typing it up at the eleventh hour before it was due.  But the jist of it was: Changes in Housekeeping and Homemaking at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century.  So much of history classes always seemed focused on how women "progressed" outside the home, feminist revolutions and the like.  I was interested on the role of women in the home.  No one else ever seemed interested in studying that.    

Anyway, the take away soundbite from all my research was very simply this:  At a time when modern conveniences were popping up left and right (washing machines, vacuums, etc), they were marketed as time-savers for the housewife - devices to free women for other pursuits.  However, this didn't really happen - instead the only thing that changed was that standards of cleanliness increased and the amount of time spent on housekeeping remained about the same as it ever was.

Skipping ahead to more or less present time, moms can freely choose full-time work, part-time work, working from home, staying at home, or any imaginable combination of family and employment.  We have every modern convenience and time-saving device at our fingertips.  It should be easy now.  But now we have even more choices - we are thoroughly saturated with information on our children's education, their diet, and on the environment.  I can't stop thinking about these little fudge-striped cookies my kids love.  The kind that has a rather long ingredient list for a rather small cookie.  The kind that come packaged in crinkly wrappers in 100-calorie portions.  Six packages per box, ten teeny tiny cookies per package.  My kids are absolutely crazy about them.

So why am I, as a twenty-first century mother, required to feel guilty about giving them these cookies?  The packaging waste?  The scant hydrogenated-something ingredient?  Too much sugar?  Why do I feel just a little guilty about the thought of sending my daughter to public school?  Do I get mommy-points off because I used disposable diapers on two kids for a 2.5 years each?  Buying organic eggs is great, but really, it would be better if I personally knew the chickens, right? 

My point in all this (and God bless you if you're still with me), is not to poo-poo homeschooling, cloth diapering, organic food, local farming, or any of the rest - on the contrary I am a big fan of all those ideas and hope to take part in many of them as we journey along here.  My point is rather that we women, and mothers in particular, simply do not know how to give ourselves a break.  The washing machines didn't mean less time washing, it just meant cleaner laundry.  Freedom from the "drudgery" of housework just sent us out to find drudgery in an office somewhere.  What is it about mothers that makes us not simply enjoy conveniences, but rather question them, move beyond them, find other ways to make life challenging?

As my favorite Mom often says "In a hundred years, it's not going to matter".  I think we are all collectively caught in an over-achieving mom culture, and I'm not really sure why.  We are all outwardly supportive of each other's choices - there is no nasty, imposed guilt anywhere that I see.  But since there are simply so many choices out there, and we have such exposure to them through blogs and other media, we can't help but compare ourselves.

I realized, with regards to the homeschooling conversation, that I needed to make the decision for Amy - not for myself, not based on how I'd feel if I were doing kindergarten again, not based on what other moms are choosing for their own children, and most definitely not out of any sense of trying to earn perceived supermom points.  I know throughout history moms have always wanted the best for their kids, but I am beginning to think that these days we are obsessing over it, when really, we could probably use to just grab a package of cookies from the box and kick back a little.

Or maybe it's just me :-D

Happy Closet

 

A few nights ago I was struck by some unexpected motivation to redo "my" two upstairs closets - the small one in the playroom/sewing room (shown above) and the big one in the hall. These two closets have seen a lot of action in the scant year we've lived here.  Probably because of my awesome sewing closet in our last house, I immediately assumed that the big hall closet should be the place for my fabric/yarn/art supplies.  However, the lighting is poor, and it is not large enough to actually work in like the other one was, so I found myself constantly fighting to keep my reasonably well-organized materials from being overrun by the dumping ground-nature of everything else in there (empty luggage, gift wrap, Christmas presents, stuff to sort, stuff to give away, etc).  The little closet had been mostly for toys, since it was in the playroom.  But the toys in there were definitely second stringers, and in recent months we simply don't spend as much time playing up here as we did a year ago. So a few months ago I had moved most of the toys out - keeping some more accessible in the playroom, incorporating others in other parts of the house, and giving away still more.  That left the small closet as a repository for... uh, pretty random stuff.  

So, that's where we were.  Until I was standing around waiting for the kids to finish playing in the bath the other night, and I decided to change it all.  After they went to bed I hauled all the miscellaney out of the small closet, and moved my nice sewing stuff in (utilizing a set of plastic drawers that has been stored, empty, in the garage).  I finished sorting everything today, found a place for the last box, and did one big happy dance.  

I'm trying to cut back on the amount of stuff we have... everywhere.  That big hall closet was one big pit of bad vibes.  Now, all my well-vetted fabric project materials take up a much smaller amount of space, in a room with much better lighting, right next to the sewing machine.  It's all very inspiring.  The big closet has been purged, with one whole side of it destined for a tag sale or eBay or Goodwill. 

Happy Closets. 

Just for Fun

 

Hi folks, I have zero energy tonight, but rather than skip out on my everyday posting challenge (I know, I missed the weekend - shhhh!) I present some miscellaneous items from the past few days. 

Yes, Darth Vader has painted toenails.  It happens sometimes, usually when Amy wants her toes painted, and especially if Darth spotted BLUE nail polish at Target.  Sorry. 

 

Saw this at Kohl's the other day, would have bought it for the kids' room if the price was right (it wasn't).  Daddy sings all kinds of songs to them. Mommy sings just one, and this is it: 

 

Gotta pat ourselves on the back here: 

 

Our housing company is beginning to implement a program that will track residents' utilities each month, calculate an average for all similar homes, and charge those who significantly exceed the average, and refund those who fall well-below the average.  (Heat/electricity/water have been fully included in our rent until now).  The thought being, that if families have to pay for utilities, then they will use less!  Wow, I wonder how many brilliant minds it took to figure that one out.  Maybe put them to work on healthcare.  

Anyway, pretty pleased with ourselves that we are 29% below the average for our neighborhood.  

And lastly, grabbed this piece of kitty furniture on sale last week - I've had my eye on it for awhile.  Hoping it will deter the awful back-door scratching, and I am tentatively going to say it's working.  Humphrey (who has been the worst offender) loves it, it makes him growl and roll and do all sorts of silly things when he gets to the top.  Ollie, with his little short legs, hasn't conquered the top roost but has been happily napping on the middle shelf.  Pleasantly surprised with the attention this has gotten in a short amount of time. 

 

And.... that's all folks, time for some R&R, which might or might not involve 

re-watching Sunday's Downton Abbey. See ya tomorrow! 

Singin' in the Rain

 

Asking "Please try not to get too wet" before taking a child out to stomp in puddles is probably one of the more stupid things a parent can say. I said it, and realized the stupidity about five minutes out the door. 

We may not have any snow down here but we are (almost) making up for it with wet-winter fun.  Lots of rain in the past few days has meant lots of puddles, and new kid-sized umbrellas purchased this weekend meant we didn't even have to wait for the rain to stop today to go exploring.  A puddle adventure walk, I think Amy called it.  

 

Wet pants for some, good fun for all. 

 

Treasure

Today was a pretty standard, busy Friday.  The kids talked me into going to Chick-fil-A after dance class which for some reason an exhausting place to have lunch.  Plus it was late and by the time we got home from our long outing the afternoon was half gone and I was spent.  But before dinner we went out for a little fresh air, and Amy was pretending she was tending all her farm animals and doing the evening chores.  The last thing she needed to do was check on the ducks, which were naturally down by the pond.  (The pond being the large flood-puddle which has been featured here and here, and was filled up just last night with some much-needed rain.) 

Anyway, the farm chores were soon forgotten when the kids started finding things to throw in the water - sticks, rocks, etc.  I joined in, remembering there is something very calming about the nice little sploosh a rock makes when it hits the water.  The setting sun was back-lighting the Spanish moss on the oaks just perfectly.  It was really lovely.

While picking rocks out of the mud I noticed deer tracks - deer!  I've only seen deer once, maybe twice since we've been here, but there were tracks everywhere, fresh as can be.  Then, just as we were about to walk home something else caught my eye - words, totally pressed into and mostly covered with mud... 

This rather hefty brass medal says only "Honor Graduate" with a torch underneath.  I thought such a little treasure was oddly fitting to my weeks-long mental exercise about school in all its forms. It was a calming moment. 

On Building

I have to dedicate this post to my dad, who, even though he doesn't think he did, spent an awful lot of time teaching me how to build things.

I grew up in a house built in 1970.  My family moved there when I was nearly four, in 1987, and my parents are still there.  In all those years, my parents have remodeled, and re-remodeled nearly the entire house.  My dad has always had a workshop in the basement.  On a huge bench he made himself is a big rusty-green vice. On the wall hang hand tools, under the bench is scrap wood, and on the shelves is everything else.  As far back as I can remember, my brother and I were always allowed to play there.  Somewhere along the way we learned how to use a hammer, screwdriver, saw, and sandpaper. When other kids our age were watching MTV we were in the workshop, hinging together little pieces of wood into pretend phones, computers, and yes, even a homemade teleporter.  

We followed Dad around as he painted walls, laid floors, constructed a deck, sidewalks, and garden walls, and built a whole room on the end of our house.  Somewhere in all that he found time to humor me when I wanted to build my own playhouse.  I was ten, and more or less came up with the plan for the frame, but he made it happen and bought me the two blue tarps to cover it.  Some say about parenting that when it comes to time spent with one's kids, it's all about quantity over quality. Everything I remember about weekends with my dad, working around the house, was quality time, but I think it was simply the shear quantity of time that helped me learn my way around a tool box.

One of my biggest bugaboos about this roaming military life is the absence of permanence and sense of place for my kids.  We've been fortunate to live in nice houses with nice yards to play in and I do think we've made the most of it, but every once in awhile this lack of "ownership" (for lack of a better way to put it) boils over inside of me and I do something crazy like decide to build my kids a (really heavy) playhouse out of WOOD, darn it, because that's what real playhouse are made out of, and what I'd build two of if only we had a yard to call our own.

So anyway, that's the back story on the crazy playhouse.  It seems to be working out so far.  It is a bit of a parallelogram, honestly, but I think I have cheap lumber to blame more than shoddy workmanship.  It was great fun to plan it out (I love graph paper) and swinging a hammer all afternoon was enormously satisfying.  I really hope it can last through a few moves, and I hope the kids are not too old or too big by the time we get somewhere permanent that I can use it to make a real, permanent, honest-to-goodness playhouse in the backyard for them.

Thanks, Daddy, for giving me the tools - of all kinds - to make this happen.

I might be crazy

 

Today's project... I might be crazy... attempting to build a playhouse for the kiddos... which would be easy, but I'm also trying to make it something I can take apart and put away easily... as we don't have any yard to "visually" call our own and would risk a nastygram from housing if large playhouse remained erect in our backyard.  I gotta say I'm pretty pleased with my construction skills, but not so sure about the sturdiness of my engineering vision.  More tomorrow on this one! 

Lunch...

 

... always tastes better when eaten outside. 

PS - Thanks a million to everyone for your thoughts on yesterday's post. Don't stop, if there's anything else you like to add; I love comments.  You all brought great perspective to my internal dialogue and I really appreciate that.  This topic will be a recurring one here, I'm sure.

Thoughts on Kindergarten

Okay, I've been wanting to get all this out in one place for awhile, so here it goes, and please forgive any lack of organization to these thoughts.

Miss Amy, as the older child, has and will always bear the brunt of the majority of my parenting angst.  I spent what seemed like ages deciding whether or not to buy her a baby jumper (I did not).  I charted her breastfeedings and naptimes, fretted over weaning, fought over bedtimes, deliberated over pretty much every hurdle or milestone she was approaching.  Not that she has been a difficult kid, and I don't think I've been an overly anxious parent, but let's just say that I've always taken my job seriously, and since these kids are my job, I take it all very seriously.  William, being of a slightly more relaxed disposition and the younger child, has not required quite so much analysis, since each new thing with him is not quite as new as it was once.

Therefore, as Amy's kindergarten year approaches, I have been giving the subject an excruciating amount of thought. There are three, maybe four options on the table.  Briefly, they are:

- Homeschooling.  I keep tripping over people who are taking this route these days.  It is highly appealing, very convenient, and Amy likes the idea.
- Private Kindergarten.  This would be a continuation at the same Christian preschool Amy is attending now. They offer kindergarten that is basically half-day plus lunch (8:30-1:00).  Costs as much as a nice car payment, but the familiarity, small class, and religious education are big factors in its favor.
-Public School.  It's right up the road, and is apparently very good.  It also, as far as I can tell, has no windows.  School starts early and kindergarten is full day.
-Public School, but making myself a squeaky wheel and creating an arrangement where Amy only attends part-day, or cherry-picks activities, or some such highly persnickety situation. I have heard of it being done.

Also worth noting, as background for those who may not know me or her that well:
- I attended public school.  A very good public school.  I never moved as a child, never had to change schools.  I can't say I really liked school, but I didn't dislike it either, and on the whole it was a positive experience.  It was also a stressful one, and sometimes I feel like I'm still recovering.
- Amy will be an old kindergartner.  Her birthday is at the beginning of November, missing the September 1st cutoff for school by a good margin, but nevertheless, she will be going on six by the time this rolls around.
- Regardless of what we do for this coming year, the following year will be completely different, as we will be moving in the summer of 2014 and the whole thing will be up for evaluation again.

So.

Around Christmas I think we were all really tired, and when we took a couple weeks off to go to CT I found myself really wanting to ditch the school routine all together.  The biggest hang-up for me, regarding school in any institution besides home is the resulting enslavement to The School Calendar.  We do not live near our families at all and don't get many chances to see them.  I love the idea of being free to travel when convenient, rather than having to wait for school breaks.  I also live in fear of The Alarm Clock, and there is a part of me that hates the idea of having to wake up children and rush them through the morning to get to school on time.  Perhaps that reflects a larger time management issue I have, but nevertheless, that's how it always feels.  And lastly, public school?  eh??  It's not what it was, even when I was a kid.  What on earth do kindergartners need to do for 6-7 hours away from home?  There will be time enough for friends and school and independent lives... must that all start at age five?

That's my homeschooling argument.

I have full confidence in my ability to bestow a kindergarten education on my daughter.  She already knows how to read and we are covering math concepts at home that she wouldn't even touch till later in kindergarten.  I have books, I am a smart and organized person.  We have a chalkboard.  Amy loves worksheets.  We live near a big city with lots of resources.  All this I could do.

But what does Amy spend most of her time talking about these days?  Her classmates, and the games they play on the playground at recess.

I can't provide her that at home.

There are networks, I know.  There are classes, there are neighbors, there are activities.  We can do all these things but when I assess my own introverted personality and our family's light social calendar, I wonder if day upon day home with Mom would really be in Amy's best interest, even if she professes that to be her favorite place (as it was mine).

So that brings us around to school in an institution, of some kind.  Since I still can't quite get excited about shipping her out from 7:30 to 2:30 every day at a public school, I find myself most often returning to the option of private kindergarten, at the same church-based children's center she attends now.  It is a hefty chunk of change, but taking into consideration what we are already paying and Don's upcoming advancement this summer it wouldn't present a hardship. And it would represent an opportunity for continuity  - should could return to her familiar school for another year and complete kindergarten, with their graduation ceremony at the end and everything, before we move off to someplace new.

I wish one could choose part-time school.  I want to try homeschooling, I really do, but I don't want to do it at the expense of the experience of school, with all its ups and downs.

What do you think?  I would really love feedback here.  Enrollment for the private school is in one month, so that decision at least needs to be made soon.  Anyone else spend as much time as I do thinking about all this?  Let me know what your thought process is like.

Thanks a bundle for listening :)
 

Boot Oops

 

Saturday: Two kids, two parents, two hats, two jackets, four boots, all go "fishing".  A good time is had by all.   About five minutes after when we really should have gone home I look up from my magazine after hearing a peculiar thunk-sploosh, and since both kids are still on the pier nothing can be too wrong... except... 

 

Oh no! Blue boot overboard! The Christmas boots! That were so hard to find! To replace the blue boots that William wore until they literally fell apart at the seams!  Oh no! 

 

It's down there, Daddy!  Except it wasn't... it floated, barely, for ten tense minutes, drifting far under the wide pier, languishing behind the pilings, threatening to go down in water to deep and dark to retrieve it from.  But then! the wind shifted, it came back toward the spot where it fell!  Don grabs a fishing pole and snags the loop and as he's shouting for me to reach through the rail to grab it - glug glug, down it goes. 

 

But this is a relief.  Two feet of water, two feet below the pier, resting on the mucky bottom - rescue will be possible.  This time the business end of the fishing pole gets involved...

 

And the soggy boot is safely back on dry land. Phew.  

 

Here's the proud angler with his only catch of the day: 

 

Everyone was very happy.  It would have been a big bummer to lose a blue boot. 

Favorite Things

 

My dear little boy loves to carry his favorite toys around with him.  Not necessarily out of the house, but certainly up to bed with him and back down in the morning.  I made this little blue bag for him awhile ago and thankfully he's taken to hauling his treasures around in it - prior to that he'd get frustrated for lack of hands to hold it all.  

Contents may vary, but today's assortment is pretty standard:  A pretend cell phone, two tiny little books and most importantly his "wittle back book" - a little black address book that Don discarded long ago.  Assorted light sabers, flashlights, walkie-talkie that doubles as a gun (just in case).  A compass that he calls his Clock.  Little wind-up motorcycle man.  Three monster trucks, the most recent favorite segment of his car collection.  A least one bouncy ball (extra special if it's the blue one).  A tiny wooden toy I made for myself a looong time ago, which he calls his Computer. Most importantly, his little tiny Puppy.  Puppy is a most definite favorite, and nothing gets a bigger smile than finding Puppy after he's gone missing under the covers or gotten into some sort of mischief.  Too big for the bag but just as important: "Buddy" - W's blanket. He's had it since he was a baby, but really only got attached (and named it) about a year ago.  Best thing ever?  When Buddy is "all fresh and clean", straight from the dryer.  

He's the sweetest boy in the world, and his affection for all his little treasures makes him pretty much the cutest thing ever.  But perhaps I'm biased. 

 

Another Chair

 

Just poppin' in to share a pic of our newest addition, arriving later this month. This will be the last time I talk about a chair for awhile, I promise.  The kids and I went furniture-looking earlier in the week and I've been thinking about this lovely stripey lady ever since (the polka dot one is pretty cute, too).  

Went out by me-self today and browsed around another store just to be sure, then went back to Rooms To Go for my stripey friend.  Not cheap, but not too expensive either.  When Don and I got our first apartment we spent a good chunk of money on a couch and I've been glad every day since that we did, because it continues to wear so well, almost eight years later. I am hoping this will be another satisfying investment. 

Can't wait for it to be delivered!