Keeping Me on My Toes

I feel like blog land has left me in the dust.  I'm so far behind.  And while there are many reasons, this girl is definitely one of them.

These stools were a yard sale find ($10 for the pair) that my Grandma thought were a mistake for several reasons, one being that they were dangerous.  They are maybe 2 1/2 feel off the ground, so I laughed it off.  Maybe she was right, after all...

Ah, yes.  She's on the move...Once I got her down off the stools, she had to find a new place to climb.

Wait for it...

Yep, she's all the way on top.  What am I going to to do with this girl?  Someone asked me at the first of the school year, how it was having only two kids at home during the day.  I told them it was a piece of cake.  That was before Paigie started walking.  Now I'm thinking I'd like to go back and change my answer. :)

Life with a Boy

Last Friday night, my brother Adam came in from work with this large bottle of "smart water."

Ian is easily fascinated by things like a cool water bottle and insisted that he needed one.  I wasn't convinced, but he decided he would buy it with his own money.  It was that cool to him.  So Adam was going to run out to the store and Ian was sending him off with his money for this bottled water.  I heard him tell Adam, "Ok, so get me three of these with this money."  I intervened.  "No, Ian.  You most certainly do NOT need three.  One is a gracious plenty."  "But Mommy," he said.  "Elise and Merry Grace need one too!"  Then, when his cousins came in, he gave Adam instructions to purchase six bottles of smart water--because Emmy, Charles Allen, and Ally also needed a bottle of water.  So $9.00 of his hard-earned money later, he'd gotten all the kids (minus Paige, who I assured him had no use for a liter of bottled water and wouldn't feel left out for not having one) their very own bottle of water.  What a sweet kid.  However much a waste of money it might have been, what he gained in kindness was more than worth it.  He is so sweet, self-less and loving.  I just love that kid!

That very same kid took a bath tonight.  Filled the tub up good and had himself a good soak.  Okay, so it held a much closer resemblance to this:

(If you've ever read Calvin and Hobbes, you'll appreciate this reference.  And if you haven't, shame on you!)
Anyway, after much splashing and swimming, Ian was declared clean and got out and ready for bed.  Somewhere in the process of locating his boxers and pj's, he discovered water leaking in the basement.  Like the handy helper that he is, Cory went off to see what the trouble was.  It turns out that Ian's rowdy bath-time behavior resulted in a LARGE amount of water being sloshed down the bathroom air vent, which then puddled in an elbow joint and was slowly leaking onto the basement floor.  Once Cory released the puddled water from the vent, there was a small flood in the basement.  So about 50 towels later, the floor is dry, the air vent is full only of air, and all is well.  I shudder to think what our house would look like if we had two boys.

Oh my word.  But isn't he cute?!

Halloweens Past and Present...

What happened to the Halloweens of  yesteryear, filled with

princesses,

 or dragons...

Mermaids

Spiderman,

or angels?

What happened to cute little witches and red power rangers?

This year, we traded all those things in for something just a little creepier...

"Dead Brides" (yes, that's a direct quote),

Vampires (complete with fake blood dripping from his eyes and mouth)
 and

a hand-me-down witch. :)

Happy Halloween!!!

Fold Your Arms

Yesterday morning, as we were getting ready for family prayer, I asked Paige if she could fold her arms. 

And.....she could!!!!

If there is anything cuter or something that will melt your heart any faster, I can't imagine what it could be.  Oh, how I love that precious baby!

Really?

Sunday morning, (a.k.a. Halloween Hangover) found Paige in the kitchen in nothing but a diaper sucking on three lollipops.  Yes, three at once--two in one hand, one in the other.

Ok, so its possible there is a little snot mixed in there too.  But look, she's a kid, its autumn time and that is just what happens. Anyway, I know she is a fiend when it comes to dum dums, and yet somehow I thought it was a good idea to buy the giant $7.00 bag to pass out to any trick or treaters who came to our house.  So after handing out about 12 lollipops, I'm left with 288 dum dums.  Now I'm pondering who on earth I could give them to.  Anyway, you can probably imagine how she looked after eating three sticky suckers.  She was coated about an inch thick in stickiness.  She drools sticky stuff all down her face, down her tummy, she touches her sticky candy all over her legs, she misses her mouth and gets her cheeks covered, she stumbles while she walks and gets the floor sticky (not to mention what she gets on the lollipop), she wipes her eyes, her hair is matted down.  To say every square inch of her body is sticky seems like such an understatement.  Finally, after those three were gone, I gave her a good soaking in the tub and had her cleaned and ready to go.  Not ten minutes later I see her toddle by me in the bedroom with two blue dum dums.  What?!  Fortunately I caught her before she got too sticky and told the kids to throw them away.  I finished putting on  my clothes and lo and behold, there was that cute little baby sucking on those same two dum dums.  Are you kidding me?!  So I took them away and asked the kids, "Why didn't you throw those lollipops away?"  Elise looked at me and said, "Uh...We did."  Uh oh.  Apparently she'd gotten them out of the bathroom trashcan.  That is just too gross!  So I handed them to Elise and asked her to make sure they got really, really thrown away this time...like buried.  Thankfully we made it to church without another sucker incident.  But when I went back in the bathroom I found the trash scattered all over the floor.  Apparently someone had been scavenging.  Seriously.  Someone has got to come get these suckers from me.