Rhyming Time

My girls are fun to take shopping because they love, love, love to shop. Most of our shopping is actually window shopping, but it's still a good time. In fact shopping is often the highlight of our day. Today, however, after our shopping trip, I felt like I'd been run over by a mac truck. It took us forever to get out the door, but that was alright. It gave me a chance to make sure both of the girls were fed, dressed and coiffed. Quick side note--I'm experimenting with different hair styles for Carolyn because her birthday pictures are coming up and I want to make sure she looks as cute as she can possibly look. Right now I'm leaning toward doing her hair in pigtail loops. JT laughs at me because I'll be planning outfits and hair styles months in advance. Can I help it if I'm a planner? No, I can't. Anyway....back shopping.......once we finally got out the door and buckled in the car, we went to Walmart to do the bulk of our grocery shopping. When we go to the grocery store, Carolyn always wants to walk instead of riding in the shopping cart. This could be because Lilia gets the front, and dare I say more comfortable, seat and if Carolyn rides in the cart, she has to sit in the basket. In Albertson's it's not a problem for her to walk by me because it's a lot smaller and a whole heck of a lot slower than it is at Walmart. Walmart's a zoo of mish-mash harried, impatient people. I barely avoid getting side-swiped and bumped by other carts. Carolyn is much harder to see and there are a lot of near misses. She also gets tired or distracted or both and tends to lag behind. Today she found a Little Mermaid umbrella that she had to have. She begged and begged for me to buy it for her (something she very rarely does) and while I denied her plea to purchase it, I did let her look at it as we strolled through the store. Yes, I'm weak. Anything to make the squeaky wheel less squeaky as we shop. And yes, I knew even at the time that I was just putting off a melt down, and possibly intensifying the melt down that was coming. Anyway, back to the umbrella. It was such a distraction to Carolyn that I was actually giving myself a headache, trying to have eyes in the back of my head to make sure Carolyn was safe and still watch where I was going. I finally took the umbrella away and put in on top of some cinnamon rolls (sorry Walmart Worker who had to put it back wherever it really goes). This made Carolyn very, very sad (so sad that she was telling JT about it when he got home and begging him to go out and get it for her). So sad in fact, that she didn't want to walk anymore and rode in the back of the shopping cart, a sad, pouty little waif. Alas. In every life some rain must fall. By this time, my head was absolutely pounding and in fact, it's been 5 hours since we've come home and my head is still pounding. To top it all off, Lilia gagged herself with her fingers as we were in the checkout lane and spit up prunes from her lunch all down her face, arm and cute outfit. It was so gross. At least it was just spit up and not vomit. See, I can look at the silver lining......Speaking of Lilia, as I was changing her diaper and getting her ready for bed, she rolled away from me (she's wicked good at rolling now) and peed the carpet and then rolled back to me. My right eye started twitching like mad and I thought my head was going to burst. It's funny because as soon as the girls went down for the night, my headache mysteriously lightened up to a dull, tired ache instead of the sharp misery that it's been ever since our shopping trip. Coincidence? One last thing, I have to brag about Carolyn. We've been working on rhyming and she's a rhyming foo' . She'll say a couple of words like "nose, pose" and in a way too perky, spastic voice I'll say, "they sound alike THEY RHYME!!!" This game never gets old for Carolyn. I will admit that it does get tiring for me. I can only be so enthusiastic about rhyming for finite amounts of time. That said, I am very proud of her and the funniest was this morning when she was rhyming and she said "eyebrows!........" and then started laughing because she couldn't think of anything that rhymed with that word.

Water Show

This is how the trip home from Rachelle's house started, but it's not how it ended.....Apparently my girls love road trips as long as they're under 1 hour (sort of like their mom, if we're being honest). By the time we were 2 hours into 6 hour the trip, they were both howling. You know how when one wolf starts howling, the rest of the pack joins in? You don't know how close I was.....

Both Carolyn and Lilia are doing new things lately. While Lilia's new bag of tricks tend to be cute things (it's her age, I think) Carolyn's new bag of tricks seems to be getting old very fast (it's her age, I think). When I feed Lilia, I'll sing to her and when I finish, she'll sing back to me, looking very earnest and trying so hard. When her song is done, she'll beam at me, so proud. It's very cute. Carolyn is exploring the limits of what she can get away with and what she can't get away with. I've had to play the NC card (naughty chair) way too many times lately. It will be sad when it doesn't work anymore. With how quickly she's growing, I should probably be thinking of a new threat to use later on. I'm pretty sure that I'll need it! Actually, she's a very good girl. I think a lot of the bad and obnoxious behavior is due to boredom and an excess of energy (oh that I had some!--even if it wasn't excessive--I speak of the energy of course and not the boredom). Maybe the walks I intend on taking the girls on will help? Especially the ones to the park. A lot of times she'll run up and down the hall, laughing with a joie de vivre and I can't even get after her, even though running in the house probably shouldn't be encouraged, but it's probably the only exercise she's getting! I'm also thinking of getting a cheapie kiddie pool for the back yard for her to frolic about in. We actually paid for our water irrigation this year, so we've been able to use the sprinkler system and we should have soft, green grass instead of the brown, burned, sharp grass that we've become accustomed to each summer. Of course, we have to wait for the weather to warm up a bit before we do any of this stuff. The weather is so wacky this year! We went from 40 degrees to just under 100 degrees in one week! And now we're back down to 50 degrees and it's not warming up any time soon. Um, hello? I live in Idaho, not Alaska. What's up with the cold, windy weather this late into the summer??? By the way, you know how I mentioned that our sprinklers are now working? Well, over the last 2 years, we've accidentally mowed over many a sprinkler head and now that the water is turned on, we're treated to several water shows daily. It's like the Bellagio at my house. By the way, here are a few pictures of the water show for your enjoyment. Keep in mind that there are at least 10 more. There is one that shoots up at least 15 feet in the air (we call it the Geyser) and would probably go higher, except that tree branches break it's accent. It's actually a little bit embarrassing. Luckily we have the sprinklers set to come on at 4:30am-8:00am and hopefully my neighbors have better things to do than be up and around and watching the show (although it is entertaining). Of course, most of my neighbors are elderly, so that is not the case. Oh well, at least it keeps the weeds green.

My Own Fine, Young Canabal

Earlier this week I was holding Lilia, and Carolyn came over and brushed her mouth against Lilia's head. "Oh", I said, "you're giving Lilia kisses! What a good sister you are! You love her so much."

"No, I'm chewing her." Surely not.

"What did you say? You're kissing her?" I asked. She couldn't possibly have said that she was chewing on her sweet, innocent, baby sister.

"No Mommy, I'm chewing Lilia," Carolyn carefully enounciated.

"Carolyn, we don't chew on people. It's not nice. We're not canabals," I explained. In response Carolyn gave a casual shrug and said, "I'm a canabal." We argued for a few minutes about whether or not she was a canabal, but she maintained that she was indeed a canabal. Just so you know, I didn't actually explain to Carolyn what a canabal actually is. I didn't want to give her ideas.

Okay, I've been struggling with this post for almost 2 weeks now. Between internet troubles, being out of town and my children being as uncooperative as possible, I don't think it's going to get done. If I don't post it now, it will never happen. So, I'm just going to post this one as it and do a better one next time since I have a lot to write. I think this post is jinxed or something. Really.