a day in my life (03.26.08)

This is a post I did for a day in the life community I'm a part of. :) I'm putting it here too by request.

Gammaw was visiting from out of town, but I didn't get permission to put her pics in here, so I'm going to go the conservative route and not post them.

I forgot it was the day to So far to this point, I've probably peed, had coffee, and nursed/changed the baby.

Adia and her Gammaw are making a giant cookie pizza. Yes, it was as disturbingly sugary rich as it looks.


ditl sure makes you feel accountable for chores, so I do the laundry switcharound (dry/wash/fold.)



Gammaw and girlies settle on the couch to read for a bit, so I grab the opportunity to do dishes. (Otherwise I get waaaaay too much help from Francesca.)


Everyone is still happy, so I decide to get ready for the day. Quick temperature check, brush teeth and hair, and looking much less rough!





D'oh. Guess the trash needs to go out. Silly flash magnifies a stain on the floor that I hadn't noticed, so I scrub that. While I'm down there, I notice the toilet needs a scrub. Ahh, much better! (Well, at least cleaner from a germy standpoint.)

Nurse Francesca, check Blackboard.

Bribe the baby with Just Strawberries (best snacks ever) and cut into the pizza for the rest of us.


Lucky us get to have leftover grilled steak (big girl) and salmon (me and the little girl.) I make some dilly butter to put on mine. :)


Review the to-do list and look at fabric online while the little sleeps in my lap.


"Do I really have to wake up, Mommy?"


Adia rearranges the spools of thread while Gammaw sews.


We experiment with the placement of kitty's button eyes. We call this look "crazy eyes kitty."



Diaper laundry. I forgot to take a picture after the water became what we call "unholy colored."


Spritzing water on and fluffing up the kitty's chenille.



A requests black bean quesadillas for dinner. Our skillet died, so we have to broil them in the oven. I over-crisped the first one. Oops.


Dinner and a show! We were playing Dinner Games and "Family Idol" came up (someone names a subject and everyone has to make up a song about it. She made up a number of songs. :)


Adia also takes pictures of all of us. The one of Charles is her photography (she's pretty good!) Checks eats salsa off of her fingers.


Gammaw wants a family portrait to use for wallpaper on her computer.. we're mostly successful.


Adia poses in the finished product. This is one of Gammaw's photos, because I'm running out the door.....


to take a Sociology test! No pictures of that, because I figured I might get in a teensy bit of trouble over it. :P Look, they left a light on for me!


I put the baby to bed and surf a little while I wait for hubby to finish putting the big kid to sleep. Gammaw goes to bed shortly after I get up here, so there's just one thing for hubby and I to do.... Wii! I'd been so swamped with school this week that we hadn't gotten to play it at all.


pj's and bed... g'night!

(As a side note, blogger's interface annoys me.)

Improvement?

Dare I say it? She's been in a good mood since I got her settled in to watch the movie. Francesca took an extra long nap, and things are pretty calm at the moment. In a little bit we're going to go out to dinner with some friends, so let's hope that we don't turn back around.

(She kept telling me that she was "so mad and so sad" when we were leaving. I asked her a little while ago if she wanted to finish her project from the library, and she said not right then, but she wasn't sad or mad anymore.)

The preschool mom's walk of shame

I got to do the walk of shame today. The one that moms of preschoolers get to do when their child loses her mind at the end of the library story hour and has to drag both crying (and screaming in Adia's case) girls out of the library while everybody wonders (a) why they are crying and (b) why their mama hasn't disciplined them yet.

The drama? She wasn't ready to finish putting together her windsock, so I backed off and let her do some more. She decided she was done, so I put it together. At which point she decided she was not done, but it was too late. She freaked out the whole way out of the library and the block and a half to the car. And then the lone streamer we'd put on it blew off down the road. Double drama. And then she remembered the snack she hadn't finished at the library. Oh, the huge manatee. She's eating lunch and watching Dr. Seuss here now. I thought the library might be a good distraction from Gamma leaving, but apparently it was just too much change for my little Pisces.

On the plus side, she and Mason had a nice little pre-storytime snack at the coffee shop. And a pleasant walk to the library.

I love toddlers

In a stunning twist of fate

Potty Elmo just got peed on while he was asking to go to the potty. Poor Elmo. (Or eh-MO as Francesca is fond of calling him.) She has a really bad diaper rash, so we're having diaperless time. I fail at EC. (Elimination communication, not emergency contraception. Although if I had to choose one to fail at, the pee-related one is the one I think I'd choose.)

Happy Birthday Adia!

She's four! :) It was a bit iffy yesterday as (a) she had a fever, and (b) she was insisting she wanted to remain 3, but she managed to tough it out and she's mostly fine on both accounts today. She's still a little warm, but she's been cheerful and swinging from the rafters all day, so I think she's alright. (And she's been exhausted, but at least three of us were awake for 2.5 hours last night when she decided she was hungry at 2am and did not like the choices presented.)

I made blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning, and we just hung around and played all day. Gamma was the first to call and wish her a happy birthday. When I got around to putting the phone on the charger, it rang within minutes and it was J checking to see how Adia was feeling and to wish her a happy birthday. Then Adia's best buddy S beeped in and sang her happy birthday. The immense cuteness of a four year old calling another four year old and singing happy birthday cannot be described. Oh my goodness!

This afternoon we baked the cake. That was almost a disaster. I used my beloved box mix from Trader Joe's (which I think makes us officially out of TJ's goodies from the run last May!) and thoroughly read the directions before we started. I melted butter in one mug and put water and three eggs in another mug so that Adia could pour them into the mixer. She did, I turned it on and mixed it all up. Then I read the next step and looked up to notice it needed two eggs, not three. D'oh. It came out okay, luckily. I iced it, and Adia did the sprinkles honors.

When Charles got home, we had spaghetti (Adia's request) and garlic bread. She wolfed it down so we could get to the fun part -- cake and presents! Francesca took two bites of garlic bread and licked the sauce off of the spaghetti. Eh, at least I can count on her making up for it by nursing. All night.

The cake was a hit for the three of us who ate it. It was orange chocolate (which we were expecting to be chocolate with a hint of orange... reverse that and that's what we got) with chocolate icing. And sprinkles, let's not forget those. Adia just ate the "outside" which means anything with frosting touching it. Francesca just got oranges. It's rough being the baby. (She didn't seem to notice or care, so it works.) I used the nifty color flame candles I'd gotten for Charles' birthday. I used the white ones on his, which just had standard candle flames. Adia's were far more colorful (although you can only really see two of them in the picture.

Adia opened Francesca's present first -- a copy of Candy Land. She didn't ask for anything specific until the end of last week, but we managed to pull it off. We got her a box of fairy tale creatures. There was a dragon, a prince, and a princess. And something that I thought was a fairy godmother, but Adia was quick to point out that "she doesn't have any wings, Mo-mmy." (Like, duh Mommy.) Then came two books from Gamma, a card with fairy stickers from K, K, and P, and two stuffed animals from Grandpa, C, C, and M. The biggest hit was Candy Land, as she wanted to go play it right away. All four of us "played" the first time, and I won. (And felt crappy about it.) She and Charles played another game, and she bounced all over the house when she won.

Now she's off in bed with Charles reading "Horton Hears a Who" and "On the Night You Were Born" and a Winnie the Pooh book from when he was a kid. :) Oh, and she's having some toast, because she's still hungry. Maybe that'll lead to a quieter night tonight. I hope so, because we're heading for Farmville tomorrow for party #2. We're stopping along the way for organic strawberries to top her cake, as that's been her request.

Happy Birthday my big girl! You've grown from baby to toddler to preschooler, as I realized today I must refer to you. So far, four's been okay. (The last few weeks of three were particularly trying.) I hope that four is better than whatever it is you're fearing. I hope it's your best year yet, even!