TGIF

Today is Friday.

Friday is lots of things.
First and foremost, Friday starts the weekend. Which means anticipation of a Saturday where maybe life slows down a little bit. Or if not, at least is different. It does not mean sleeping in...because weekend or no, Brandon will still have gymnastics.

Sometimes Friday means date night. But only if it is an early date night...because, gymnastics. Did I mention that already? And I drive carpool Friday nights.

Friday means I stay up late. Not because I get to sleep in on Saturdays (see above). But because usually Julianne is out on a date or at a party and I feel like I should wait up for her as a good Mommy is wont to do.

Friday is garbage day. So after sending Lilian off to catch the school bus, I run around the house in a mad dash to get all the house garbages emptied and into the big, black garbage can and out to the curb in a race against the garbage truck's arrival. Sometimes I miss it. Sometimes I purposely decide the big, black can isn't overly full anyhow so I'm not going to worry about it. Sometimes I think I really ought to deal with it all on Thursday night but usually I'm not that organized.

Friday used to be Winder Dairy delivery day and oh, how we would look forward to that chocolate chip pumpkin bread that was on our standard order. But then Bryan decided that paying $2.99 for a half gallon of milk when you could pay $2.50 for a whole gallon at the grocery store down the street was just ludicrous...my protestations of taste, quality and convenience notwithstanding. We put a stop to our Winder Dairy deliveries. And it was for the best, it really was. But I do miss that pumpkin bread.

If I'm really on the ball, Friday means dry cleaning pick-up. Or drop off if I've left something out on Tuesday.

Friday is early-out schedule for Lilian. Which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Early-out throws my schedule all cockeyed what with having to remember that Lilian comes home two hours earlier that day. I'm always worried that I'll forget and be having a lovely lunch somewhere with a friend, only to get an indignant call from my 2nd grader wondering where I am and what she's supposed to do in the meantime?

But most importantly? Friday is P-DAY! At least for these next couple of weeks while Rebekah is at the MTC.
P-Day means an email. And if I'm lucky and happen to be on-line at the right time, a little back and forthing with the emails which kind of, sort of feels like texting? Hey, I'll take it. Because once she gets to London we'll have a 7 hour time difference. Which means I'll be up in the middle of the night if I want to back and forth email with her. And really, I'm not sure how often it will happen. Oh, I'm most definitely willing to give up sleep for it...maybe just not every week. Realistically, I'm not entirely sure what time she'll be on-line today. So no guarantees really, of anything more than a newsie little email from my missionary girl. But when you are really missing that missionary girl....an email is worth its weight in gold. (Well, emails don't actually weigh anything...but you get the idea. Just go with it.)

So, TGIF!

Lost Lilian!

At first, I didn't think anything was wrong. Lilian is well known for her tenacity in searching out friends for play. When I came home and Julianne told me she didn't know where Lilian was, I was more irritated by the fact that she had fallen asleep on the job rather than the fact that Lilian was missing. In fact, so certain was I that Lilian was doubtless just down the street, I didn't immediately try to track her down. I had been home a good 10 minutes before I instructed Brandon to find and bring his younger sister home.

But he arrived home empty handed after knocking the doors of the most likely candidates. I was surprised but still not too worried. I called both Rebekah and Julianne, each of whom had left for the evening to be with friends....Rebekah earlier, Julianne shortly after I arrived home. I grilled them, trying to get clues as to where Lilian might have gone. Think hard, I told them. What had she been doing, who had she been with, what had she said? They didn't shed much light on the situation. In fact, if anything I just became more irritated with them for not taking better care of their sister. And so with that irritation dissolving into the first pricks of worry and fear, I gave Brandon more suggestions for houses to check while I started the rounds of text messages and phone calls.

Time passed. Brandon made the rounds on his bike. Texts came in from neighbors by the dozens expressing concern and offering suggestions of houses to check. Lilian's primary teacher drove his car to check the park and other areas throughout the subdivision. Other neighbors came out to help me search on foot. It was cold and getting dark. We had been pounding the pavement for a good 45 minutes with no luck. And with each knock and the subsequent, “No, we haven't seen Lilian...she's not here” the grasp on my emotional control would slip a little further. I was settling uncomfortably into panic and despair, trying desperately not to cry when my friend Mirissa made a comment. “You know,” she said, “we once lost my niece. We looked all over and were so panicked. But it turned out she had hidden under a bed and then fallen asleep there. Is there any chance Lilian might have done something similar?” In my head I doubted it. Lilian doesn't nap easily...and she had slept in this morning. But the emotional side of me grasped onto that idea like a life line and I hoped...oh, how I hoped! 

We joined up with Brandon who was coming back on his bike and told him we were going to check the house. The three of us walked in the front door and Brandon ran down the hall to Lilian's room. “She's here!!! She's asleep in her bed” he yelled triumphantly. I could see the little lump of sleeping Lilian and my legs wouldn't hold me anymore. I slumped against the wall in the hallway and slid to the floor, my head in my hands while I bawled out of sheer relief. Mirissa let me cry for a minute or two, then gave me a hug and slipped away. I made the necessary texts and calls to let the concerned neighbors and searchers know that Lilian had been found and to thank them.

Lilian seemed a little confused as to why I wanted to love on her for so long. Sleep befuddled notwithstanding, she knew she hadn't been lost. Why was mom so freaked out? Apparently she had been cold. And when she found Julianne asleep on the couch, she took matters into her own hands...put on her pajamas and climbed under the covers in her bed, eventually falling asleep. When Julianne woke up, all she knew was that Lilian was gone. It didn't ever cross our minds to check the house because why would Lilian put herself to bed at 6:30-7:00 in the evening? Especially when we knew that she had been out and about with friends just slightly earlier. Chalk it up to a life lesson learned. Check the house first, when a child goes missing. You could save yourself a lot of emotional grief...

Dinner menus...last week vs. this week

 Last week:
*Spaghetti with homemade sauce and homemade breadsticks
*Zuppa Toscano Soup with sesame seed bread
*Pork Roast with Zucchini Herb casserole and shredded potatoes
*Ginger-Lime Chicken with coconut rice and roasted carrots
*Flank Steak Salad with french bread


This week:
*Leftovers
*Dominoes Pizza  (Did you know you can order on-line???  How did I not know this before?)
*Nalley Chili on corn chips
*Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (If I'm feeling really ambitious I may throw some sausage in with it...)

Gourmet goes out the window when Bryan is out of town...

I win "Mother of the Year"

Seriously, people.  Is that not the cutest sleeping face EVER??

And yes, she is indeed sleeping her in clothes.  But that's nothing.  Yesterday??  Yeah, yesterday I sent Lilian to preschool in a mismatching skirt and shirt, black ballet slippers and uncombed hair.  In my defense, I did try!  I offered a different pair of pants to match the shirt.  I tried to get her to stand still long enough to brush her hair.  But we were running late....and I was driving carpool.  She liked how she looked.  The shirt and skirt?  Mismatched patterns to be sure, but the colors coordinated.  Ballet slippers?  Well, ballet flats are in style right now.  And her hair wasn't THAT tangled!  Besides...she's FOUR years old.  And I've never claimed to be that kind of mom that dresses her kid in the perfect outfit from Gymboree complete with matching tights, shoes and hair bows.  Darling as it may be, it's just not me OR Lilian.  So off to preschool she went in her eclectic outfit.

Fast forward two hours....

Lilian climbs into the truck with her two carpool buddies in tow.  I buckle them in and start driving away to Lilian's pronouncement of, "Mom, I don't have any underpants on."
Umm...what???
My mind quickly rewinds to earlier in the day when I had asked Lilian to find a pair of underpants out of her dresser drawer and put them on.  It's only too obvious that she didn't do it.  
So not only am I the mother that sends my daughter to preschool in mismatching clothes and messy hair...I'm also the mother that sends her daughter to school going "commando."  In a skirt, no less!!  She claims she was careful and didn't inform anyone...by telling OR accidentally flashing.
Sigh.
The crown for "Mother of the Year" is sitting firmly atop my head.    

It's a good thing she's cute....

I should've realized earlier that nothing good tends to come from a toddler that is too quiet for too long. Lilian emerged from a good thirty minutes hanging out under the kitchen table looking like this:
She knows better than this. She also knows that she will be in some serious trouble if and when her dad finds out. (I guess I'm more or less outing her by posting this on the blog, aren't I?) She's in the tub right now with instructions to start scrubbing.

While we're on the subject of Lilian...she had a preschool field trip to Wheeler Farm
yesterday. It was hot, it was dusty, and there was a lot of walking. But we got to see a new baby lamb born that morning, feed the ducks and take a wagon ride so it all equalled out I suppose. Lilian had a great time and that's what really matters.

The Dinner Hour

This is a recent article written by my dad for their neighborhood newsletter...one that, though was not written necessarily with me in mind, seemed to hit me especially hard all the same:



(Look! It could be us! Well, minus the horse and about a century or so....)

The Dinner Hour
George Orwell said, "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." It's true, and that probably explains why people my age feel so qualified to be generous with their advice. That said, let me now exercise the prerogative of my sixty-plus years and offer a suggestion to those of the next generation.

Have dinner together.

The question our kids call out when they come in from play....slamming the back door and sloughing off their coats onto the floor...is ancient and predictable: "Mom, what's for dinner?" But the response these days is something new. It's the voice of a busy mother in another room whose thoughts are occupied with other things: "There are some frozen burritos in the fridge. Go warm one up in the microwave if you're hungry." This is, ever more commonly, what passes for the dinner hour in the new millennium.

Dlora and I raised five daughters. To the extent that we had any success with them, we credit it in large measure to our dinner hour.

Dinnertime was one of the non-negotiables in our family. We found that a sit-down dinner at the kitchen table...mom and dad at each end, the kids down the sides...not only assured that we were having at least one good, balanced meal in a day, but also assured some daily family time together...a rare commodity in our fast-paced culture. Our dinner meal provided for more than a quick and perfunctory blessing on the food; we often knelt and had family prayer there at the table. We sometimes read from the scriptures. I think it was from our dinnertime reading that Melissa became enamored with the story of Ammon cutting off the arms of the bad men who were scattering King Lamoni's flocks. It was at the table that Katie honed her math and fairness skills, dividing 7 people into 24 fish sticks and making certain that nobody got more or less than their 3-3/7 fish stick allocation. Dinner time was sharing time. Sarah regularly recounting what the awesome foursome of Sarah, Kami, Chellie and Lori had been up to during the day. Mary demonstrated her muscle power, deftly unscrewing the lid from the mayonnaise jar when none of her girly sisters could manage it. Rachel sang us the new song she had learned at Joy School. It wasn't always spiritual resonance...sometimes it was a kind of controlled bedlam as our five daughters all talked at once, but it was family time in real life: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And shining through the ridiculous was the ever-present glimmer of the sublime...the rock solid center of family solidarity and love.

On a practical level, our family dinner hour brought order to our evening. And it was easy on our family budget: homemade spaghetti (our kids' favorite) was far and away cheaper than Happy Meals, buckets of chicken, and frozen, prepared entrees warmed in the microwave and consumed at the kitchen counter. So, here's my advice: Put down the frozen burritos. Dust off the family recipes. Stop text messaging. Get a little infield chatter going.

Have dinner together.

I know that having dinner together as a family is important. Obviously I grew up with a stellar example of how to do it. Time and time again I've heard advice and read studies from church and secular leaders alike. Have dinner together, they all say. At the time it kind of baffled me because as parents, Bryan and I had no problem whatsoever with having dinner, together, all of us around the table. It's just been in the past few years that I've realized what all the warnings and hoopla was about. Because all of the sudden, it is ridiculously hard to have dinner as a family. Two teenagers with busy schedules, Brandon at gymnastics four times a week, Bryan with odds and end deadlines or business trips, me with rehearsals....

All the sudden it takes a lot more effort and sacrifice to make sure we have dinner together as a family. So I'm trying. Trying to make it more of a priority. More of an essential part of our day. Cooking is not my favorite chore. Oh, I can cook and I've got some pretty awesome recipes in my repertoire...but it's a chore, like doing laundry or vacuuming. So in order to get a great meal on the table or at least in progress by the time Bryan comes home from work...it's taken some serious mental planning as well as physical scheduling.

Can I just say...making a menu at the beginning of the week and, from that, a grocery list, has been a life saver. I'm not one of those who can rummage through the pantry and fridge and come up with a fabulous meal on the fly. I'm a recipe follower. Our menu for this week...it's a simple one. Because other than tonight, every night this week Julianne, Rebekah and I will be at rehearsals or performances for "Receive These Things"...the play all the youth in our stake are involved in and I am helping to direct. (More about that later this week.)

Monday: chef salad (Kids love this cause they can put in whatever they want... "like all the good stuff instead of all the gross tomatoes and avocados"...according to Julianne.)
Tuesday: spaghetti and garlic bread (You know, that spaghetti with the homemade sauce that my dad mentioned in his newsletter? Yeah, it's still my very favorite.)
Wednesday: homemade chili in the crockpot and cornbread
Thursday: ham/carrot/potato casserole with french bread (Another favorite from my childhood...one of those comfort food type of casseroles.)
Friday: dinner out before the show.
Saturday: chicken tacos with all the toppings
Sunday: buffalo roast with carrots, onions and potatoes

A Conversation

Me: Brandon, you need to clean your room because Grandma and Grandpa are coming over tomorrow.

Brandon: But, why??

Me: So that Grandma and Grandpa don't think you are a slob.

Brandon: But I am a slob, Mom. And if I clean my room, don't you think that's a little bit like lying?


(Honestly. The things this kid will say to get out of putting his things away....)

To make or to not make the bed...that is the question.

I was surprised this morning to hear Brandon say
"Mom, you've got to stop making my bed!" in a kind of half irritated voice.

Honestly, I thought he'd be happy I was doing this nice thing for him. At the very least, pleased that he was getting away with something.

"Why not, Brandon?" I replied.

"Because really, Mom, what's the point? I'm just going to get back in again tonight. And then it's a pain to have to untuck all my covers and pull the pillows back out..."

Sigh. Personally, I make my bed every day. It's a rare day that I find myself climbing into an unmade bed in the evening. (I hate that, by the way...)

A few days ago I didn't get around to making my bed until 6:30 in the evening. But I still did it.

I am of the opinion that even if the rest of the room is spotless, an unmade bed makes things look messy. As also the opposite is true...a made bed will make a messy room look so much cleaner, even if there's still a bunch of stuff all over the floor. Obviously this bit of motherly wisdom has not sunk in with Brandon. Or my girls for that matter. And maybe I'm doing them a disservice when I make their beds for them. I guess I'm hoping that if I do it enough they'll eventually realize that they really like the way that it makes their room look, how it feels when they climb in at night...and decide to keep it up on their own.

Or maybe I'm just making them lazy.

Regardless, it makes me feel better to see made beds in each bedroom!

Incentive or punishment?

This is the view that greets me when I walk down the hall to girls' bedrooms. Do you think that the girls will be embarassed enough that I have posted these pictures to keep their rooms clean on a more regular basis in the future? If nothing else, I suppose I could say it's punishment for not cleaning a few days ago when I asked them to.
Do you see that suitcase on the floor in the middle of all the mess? Yeah, Rebekah still has not completely unpacked from her Washington D.C. trip. She got back two weeks ago.


Julianne's room isn't quite so bad. She did a spur of the moment whirlwind clean about a week and a half ago when she had some friends coming over. But still....

Early harvesting

I was not happy to see this.

It didn't take long to find the culprit.

Here is the culprit looking appropriately chagrined after a stern talking to about the hows and whens she is allowed to pick vegetables out of the garden.

Favorite Photo Friday: Mom and babies

Can you guess which baby is who?

Favorite Photo Friday

In honor of Lilian's birthday...
June 3, 2007

Potty Training: Take 2

This little girl has filled up her potty chart. Which means that not only is she wearing cute little Dora or Princess panties pretty much every day but she also got to go to Super Target and pick out a special toy. She picked out a tea set...despite the fact that she has already has so many toy dishes and food that it seems like I'm tripping over them every time I turn around. I guess this means that the play kitchen we've got for her birthday will be a big hit next week.

And okay, okay. I admit it. It was way back in January that I briefly mentioned that I was starting the whole potty training adventure. I blogged about it specifically so I couldn't back out when things got hard. But after 3 days or so things did get hard. And I decided I wasn't ready...no matter if she was or not. We put away the stickers and the chart and the potty and pulled back out the diapers. And I breathed a big sigh of relief....while simultaneously holding my nose every time I changed a stinky diaper. But a couple of weeks ago I decided BOTH of us were now ready. We made a new chart. We bought more of those panties with her favorite TV characters on them and off we went. Success! Pretty much. I'm sure we're still in for some of those "but I was busy, Mom!" or "I couldn't hold it!" moments. But for the most part I think we're golden. Now if only I could convince her that those automatic flushing toilets at the store aren't going to suck her in and down....

Don't you hate it...

....when you're trying to send the kids to bed and you realize that there are no sheets on the bed? Because you stripped the beds when you were trying to be all sorts of productive earlier in the day, but then got sidetracked and forgot. And now the sheets are still wet in the washer? Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Favorite Photo Friday: Happy Birthday Brandon!

(Warning: Long post ahead... but seeing as this blog has turned into my journal/scrapbook/family history, I wanted to officially document this story.)

Brandon's due date was the 1st of April. April Fools Day. I thought that was appropriate seeing that expecting a boy was kind of a joke on me...someone who grew up with only sisters and had already had two daughters. March 23, however, the doctor informed me that I was dilated to a 3, that he was surprised I wasn't in labor already, and did I want him to get me started that very day? I hemmed and hawed and then said no. My last labor had been quite long...close to 20 hours...and if this labor was going to be more of the same, I did not want to be confined to a bed. I wanted to labor at home as much as possible before coming in. But I told him I would be more than happy to have him strip my membranes and see if that got things jump started a little bit. He did. And my contractions started immediately. A few hours later they were strong and coming every 6 minutes or so. I figured I'd wait a few hours more and head to the hospital, completely certain that we were having little Brandon that day after all. It's good that I waited. Because as time passed those strong, consistent contractions got weaker and further apart. And by the next day they were back to being just regular braxton hicks contractions. A few more days passed, by which time I was seriously kicking myself for not taking the doctor up on his offer to be induced. I had another appointment scheduled for Monday morning and was prepared to eat crow and BEG to be started.

I went to church on Sunday, everyone rather shocked to see me. I was as big as a house by this point. I figured church would be a good way to take my mind off how miserable I was. I was counting down hours to my appointment the next morning. At exactly midnight both Bryan and I were awakened to a loud popping sound. And then the feeling of liquid. My water had broken! Hallelujah! Bryan stripped the sheets and sopped up the liquid best he could while I got the sleeping girls and overnight bags into the car. About half way to my parents house the contractions started. WHAM! Every 3 minutes...a few even piggy backing on the one before. Hard enough that I was gripping the dashboard and doing some serious breathing to get through them. Bryan started worrying that we needed to just go straight to the hospital and have my parents meet us there to pick up the girls. No, I told him...I was sure I still had some time. My shortest labor at that point had been 15 hours. We continued on, dropped the sleepy girls off to my equally sleepy parents and, ignoring most stop lights on our way, made it to the hospital in record time. We told the on-call intern that my water had broken. She wanted to do a test to officially check. We felt this was ridiculous...this was not the first time we'd had this experience. "Do you want to go check our mattress?" was Bryan's frustrated question. But she insisted. And came to the conclusion that, yes, we were right. Then, so as to "not introduce infection" she decided not to check me to see how far dilated I was. And then, after hearing that my last 2 labors were longish....even with me assuring her that I was pretty certain this would be faster...more or less wrote me off as someone she didn't need to worry about overly much for awhile.

We hadn't been there long before I was already getting to the point where I couldn't handle the contractions anymore. Usually I can go for quite awhile, only getting the epidural for the last few hours. I felt like a bit of a wimp when I asked for the anaesthesiologist so soon after arriving. It took 3 tries to get an IV into my arm. Bryan and I were both getting whoozy, my pain getting worse and worse. And then, laying on my side waiting for the epidural, I started panicking. I felt like I'd lost all control of my body. The contractions just wouldn't stop. Bryan, who was sitting on the other side of the room, not being able to handle watching them poke needles into the woman he loved, saw the look on my face and heard the panicked whimpers I was making and could tell that I needed help. He rushed over to take my hand. It felt like I was sinking and his hand was my life-line. All the sudden I had the overwhelming urge to push. I'd never felt that before! I'd always had the epidural before that. I mentioned this bit of information to all the medical personnel hovering over me so the nurse checked me, FINALLY. "Oh my!" she said. "You are at a 10!" The anaesthesiologist asked if I still wanted the epidural at that point. Had I been in my right mind maybe I would've declined and just pushed that baby out. But I was still brain befuddled and panicked and said "Yes, oh YES!!!" He got it in and it started working miraculously fast. Two contractions later my doctor got there and I started pushing. About a contraction and a half after that, little Brandon was born. 3:45 AM on the dot. My shortest labor by quite a lot! Brandon cried. We cried. They weighed him...8 lbs exactly. My doctor seemed surprised that I could have a baby that big. "Where were you hiding all that?" he asked. I laughed. I'd told him and told him I'd felt bigger this time around.

So my little Brandon was born on the 26th of March. It was 6 months to the day after my grandfather had died...an event that had been particularly emotional for me. We decided Brandon's middle name should be James in his honor. Brandon is very aware that he holds my grandfathers name. He asks about him a lot, wants to learn more about the man he is named after. Seems to be very proud of his middle name. I don't know if Brandon realizes how much that means to me, that he honors his great grandfather like that...a man he never even met in this life.

And now here we are, 9 years later. Brandon has given us such joy, as parents. He is such a good kid, such a sweet boy. And such fun to have a boy in the midst of all these girls. Bryan and Brandon have a special father/son bond. Brandon absolutely adores and idolizes his dad. He dresses like him. He matches his hobbies to Bryan's. When you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up he says, "A computer business owner...like Dad!" I'm grateful for my boy. I can't believe he is 9 years old already! I love, love, love him!! Happy Birthday Brandon!!

Favorite Photo Friday: Rebekah tree'd

May 2008. This is my Rebekah. My first born. The one that first turned me into a mother. She's almost 14 now. And I've realized something. You know how parents dread and/or complain about the teenage years? And yes, I know she's not that far into them yet...but, I like them! Or maybe it's just her. She's definitely your stereotypical teenager, certainly. She's a social butterfly...always wants to be with friends. She complains about curfew. She goes through numerous outfits daily and throws half the contents of her closet onto her floor or bed. But she's a good girl and I like to be with her. As a daughter, yes, but also just as a friend. I'm interested in all her experiences with her friends, boys she likes (or thinks are gross) and classes at school. And so far, she is happy to share it all with me. So far she isn't embarrassed by me. Amazingly enough, I'm fairly certain that she and her friends think I'm cool. Well, as cool as a 36 year old mother can be. I'm so glad that she feels comfortable enough to talk to me about anything and everything. That she trusts me. I hope that continues for a long time to come.

Happy Birthday Julianne

I don't cry when my kids go off to Kindergarten. Rejoicing and doing the "happy dance" is more the order of the day. But when they turn 12? Oh my. I end up an emotional mess.

Julianne turned 12 yesterday. At 6:55 AM about fifteen 12 and 13 year olds from the neighborhood came a-knocking at our door. (I had been pre-warned and was expecting them.) They woke Julianne from a dead sleep, blindfolded her and carried her up the stairs and out the door to a pancake breakfast down the street to celebrate her birthday and entrance to the Young Women program in the ward. Although she says the whole thing is a bit of an exhausted blur, she was very pleased.
Unfortunately for Julianne, she had a doctors appointment smack in the middle of the day. And seeing as going to the doctor on your birthday to start growth hormone shots is not usually on the list of fun ways to celebrate your birthday, I made sure to check her out a little extra early so we could go to lunch first at Five Guys. Big hamburgers and lots of fries. Dr. Lindsay was aware that it was Julianne's birthday. Felt kind of bad about it. Enough that they bought Julianne a little Happy Birthday cupcake to make the visit a little extra special. Have I mentioned how much I love our doctor?

And then, since Julianne and I had a rehearsal last night for "Power in His Touch," we had an early dinner with the rest of the family at Texas Roadhouse. She opened her presents there. Of all my children, she's the best at giving me detailed lists of gift ideas. Which means that she's always happy with what she receives, but not surprised. We did surprise her with a new bike earlier that morning though. Yay!So I spent the great majority of the day with my new 12 year old. Watching her, talking to her, thinking about what's in store for her now that she's turned 12. I found myself on the verge of tears all day. Happy tears. Complicated and overwhelming emotions. But good.

The time has come....

Just so I can't back out and wait another few months, I am announcing that the potty training has begun. Of Lilian. Just in case you were unsure. It's been 6 years since I last potty trained a child and my memories are a bit fuzzy. From the long lapse of time or from banishing the whole experience from my mind, I'm not sure. So just to let you know....because I'm sure you all are SO interested...things are going well and we are cautiously optimistic. Lilian is thrilled, of course, because this all means that she is allowed to run around the house nearly nude. And play with stickers.
And just in case you were getting nervous that I was going to update you on each and every success and accident in turn, don't worry. I don't plan to say anything more on the subject until the whole thing is done. I'm hoping that post will come sooner rather than later. Time will tell.

Consistency or Sanity?

(Click on the comic so you can better read it....)

I'm a little ashamed to admit it but this comic? This is, all too often, me.

Not Sleepy

"Lilian, are you tired? Do you want to take a nap?" This was wishful thinking on my part. Naps are few and far between these days. So when she said "NO!" I wasn't too surprised. Five minutes later, however, I found this:But hold onto that whoop of glee.... I've just realized she has a stinky diaper. Which means as much as I'd love to transfer her to her bed...or even just leave her all cozily (?) cuddled up on the kitchen floor, I'm going to have to wake her up to change the diaper before she gets a rash. Sigh.