Snack Time

Now that Alaina is able to climb up on our dining table chairs by herself I figured I let her take a turn at the table. She loved it.

Listening to the girls read books. Lovely.

St. Patrick's Day

I didn't have anything green to wear (that currently fits), so I painted my nails. Ahh, sandal weather. I also didn't have festive shirts for the girls, but Alaina was able to wear Lizzie's from last year. Go figure.

Like last year Liz raced into our room, all excited about what the leprechauns might have left her and like last year, we weren't prepared. She raced from room to room looking for chocolate gold coins and was predictably disappointed when she didn't find any. Andrew explained that the leprechauns are not like Santa or the Easter Bunny who come at night. Leprechauns can come any time of day. While Liz was at school the little green men visited us leaving gold-wrapped chocolates (some ferrero rocher Andrew gave me a few days ago) and a box of Lucky Charms (I went to two stores and they were completely out of coins). Lizzie was particularly impressed with the cereal.We continued my mother's tradition of green meals. We also added rainbow cupcakes (from Family Fun magazine). The girls loved helping with these though Alaina had a hard time taking turns.

Dinner menu: salad, cauliflower soup, & bread.

Alaina pretty much just ate the dressing off her salad. Liz, on the other hand, tried lettuce and cucumbers with minimal whining.

Dessert: rainbow cupcakes!

Liz felt bad for Alaina because Laines didn't get any whipped cream on her cupcake, so Lizzie gave her little sister a spoonful of the stuff. Needless to say Lainey liked it.

I'm sure the additional sugar attributed to Laina's hyperness the rest of the evening.

Oh, and then Alaina topped off the night by pooping in the tub (green poo, naturally) during her second bath of the day. Awesome. Final tally: 3 baths for Alaina, 2 for Elizabeth, 1 for me.

Music

Instead of the usual Sandra Boyton or Junie B Jones, I've been playing my music in the van lately. Mostly just one mix CD. I'm glad Liz likes it, but sometimes it is kind of weird to hear her singing grown up lyrics like "blood makes noise . . . " (by Mary's Danish). The other day we heard her singing, "all the single ladies, all the single ladies" under her breath. Drew turned to me and was like, since when does she listen to Beyonce? Lizzie's current favorite is "My Sharona" by the Clash. I think we listened to it 10 times yesterday.

Daylight Savings

The time change is killing me. Yesterday we all slept in till 8:10--in large part because we changed every clock in the house, except the one in our bedroom. Oops. We need to leave around 8:20 to get Liz to school on time, but somehow we made it.

Things went slightly better this morning though it took three tries to wake up Liz (it finally worked when Drew lifted her out of bed). I wish it was the weekend and we could actually take advantage of the sleepy kids and sleep in ourselves.

Last week . . .

Lainey turned 18 months! She's still little. At 21 pounds and 13.something ounces she's in the 15% for weight (15% for height as well). She has started walking up stairs instead of crawling up. She is still a "good eater" (had a bowl of hummus for lunch last week). She pinches us when she is upset (she actually did it to herself when she was in the hospital). She answers "no" to nearly every question.

She started nursery with no incident. Actually, her first day in nursery was in another ward with complete strangers. She didn't cry at all, just happily waved goodbye when I left. When I picked her up the workers said she did wonderfully. I hope it's the same this Sunday in our ward. Alaina asked me to put two dress-up skirts on her, and then wore them all day long. It was adorable.

Lizzie used a hammer for the first time. She made a "rain gauge" at Home Depot's monthly kid's workshop. Alaina enjoyed her class in the soft play room, as usual. Mostly she likes the slides and tunnels. She's not a big fan of the ball pit.

Lizzie celebrated her 100th day of school and I celebrated hitting my 100-prego-days-to-go mark. Hurray! Now my countdown is in the double digits.

Alaina had her first experience with Play Dough. She also ate pistachios for the first time (and loved them).

Liz tried to keep us (her parents) out of her room. She made a point of putting the sign at our eye level. Alaina enjoyed multiple visits to a local bounce house (two were for Lizzie's friend's birthday parties--same day, same place, almost same time).

Liz went to the bounce house too. She just moved too fast for pictures (and for Andrew too--she beat him down the slide).

I let Alaina have a cupcake at one of the parties. Of course she made a mess, and of course Andrew was annoyed. In the following picture he is demonstrating his frustrated face.
And, we said goodbye (more of a "see you later") to our good friends, the Lines. We miss them already.

What Liz wore to church yesterday:

She originally had on a purple dress (and pink leggings, lime green knee-highs, and scuffed gold shoes of course). The dress tied in front, but Lizzie refused to tie it. She planned to just go to church with the ties dangling in back. Drew told her that would look too sloppy. He said tie the bow or change the dress. So . . .

She changed into what she thought was a little red dress. I explained that it was a long shirt, not a short dress and told Liz to either put on a skirt or change into another dress. Naturally she found a super short black skirt that that barely peeped out from under her shirt.

So much for our fashion interventions.