This Week

Ten things we've been up to this week....

1. Getting up earlier than usual. Like 7:24am, at the latest. What is up with that?
2. Eating 2+ bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios every morning for breakfast. It is the girls' favorite cereal right now, and there is no comparable substitute.
   
3. We've learned that if you run out of HNC's and try to place something else on the table, Little Sis will reject the offer, throw the bowl of cereal onto the floor in a screaming fit, and then you'll need to mop the floor before you run to the market for more cereal with a 2 yr. old who hasn't eaten breakfast yet.
   
4. Dirty dogs. The dogs are loving friendly wrestling out back, but our grass is so very dried out it's hardly even grass, and it all gets stuck in Sampson's coat, which he shakes out the second you let him in the door. It was endearing last week. This week, not so much.
   
5. I finally found the elusive Pumpkin Spice Coffeemate in my grocery's freezer, so we've been enjoying homemade P.S. Lattes each morning this week. Extra necessary now that the girls are no longer sleeping until 8 am.
6. When we're not enjoying autumnal lattes, it's Vanilla Honey Chamomile tea or Apple Cider. Mmm... mugs of steaming goodness...
   
7. Working on the girls' Halloween costumes. I'm making Big Sister's, and I totally burnt my pointer finger with the hot glue gun. I ended the night with a glass of Pinot Grigio, a Motrin, and my hand engulfed in an ice pack. Other than that, it's coming along smoothly.
8. Looking at Freecycle, Salvation Army and Craigslist religiously for secondhand outdoor toys, like a sand table or playhouse. Not a one. Nada. Nothing. I even put out a request ad on Freecycle and Craigslist for used toys. It is so frustrating that no one wants to give me their used children's toys for free.
9. Little Sister went pee on the potty twice this week!! We offer her a M&M when she sits, and if she actually goes she gets another. It's all about lucky timing; bribing her to sit when she's still dry. Otherwise, you wait a little too long and suddenly she's standing there telling you she already went in her diaper. She's physically a ways off from potty training, but we're tickled she's shown a geniune interest and is aware of her body.
10. Speaking of aware of her body... so, while generous in size, our backyard gets a little boring once the girls are done running back and forth while holding on to separate ends of the jump rope. Inevitably, they find themselves standing at the fence, leaning their faces through the bars and yelling things at the top of their lungs. For instance, they like to yell, "We have the same buuuuu-uutt!!" or other phrases with parts in them. And since we do not use slang terms for our parts around here, you also might catch them yelling the word penis or vagina. As in, "We have the same va-giiiii-naaa!!" Ahem. Believe me, I'm trying to instill modesty and a sense of propiety in them.... but at the same time, not discourage them from using nonoffensive anatomically correct words when drawing simple comparisions between themselves.
    

And... that's about it....