Happy Cousins

April & Caleb came to visit this week from Wednesday to Friday. We had a wonderful time. We tested the baby proof nature of the house-needs more work, but plenty of fun new toys of Caleb, the air mattress-leaky, the community pool-out of order bathrooms-eeew! The Children's Museum-wonderful and huge hit with kids! (Mine are already clamoring for their next visit!), the playground-very fun, Local hot dog restaurant-so yummy!

Oh baby!

The girls did a great job on Saturday cleaning their room and playroom,(Emily even managed to get her dresser back down to wood and treasures uncovering at least 5-8 inches of stuff-yes we should have acted sooner) and an even better job today getting it messy again! I did not get on them about cleaning it before bedtime, since I was just a bit more scattered than usual, but I mentioned we would need to get on that tomorrow.

After I had hugged them and kissed them and sent them off to bed, I heard them still talking but didn't hush them up too much. I probably should have known they were up to no good! So ten minutes after I said goodnight, they came trotting out, one at a time, and gave me a pile of stuffed animals that they no longer wanted and now wanted to "sail" I think they mean sell! So I thanked them, and then with each kiddo there was one item I really wanted to rescue. I suggested to both girls-did I mention they came out separately-that maybe that item would be a great thing to save and give the baby. Oddly enough they changed their minds instantly and no longer wanted to get rid of the item in question. So if selling to a stranger is ok what does it mean when giving it to your prospective baby brother is not?

Too much in one day

So today was Sydney's birthday party. That ordinarily would be plenty for any one day, but she was also attending a birthday party on the same day as her own. Normally the girls go to parties together, but occasionally they are not both invited. This was such a party. It was small, and only for 4 year olds. Emily was crushed when we actually got to the door. All morning she had been fairly supportive and helpful, but I think she thought I'd change my mind at the last minute. Luckily Karl was able to stop his yard work and distract her so she cheered up fairly quickly after I left. I dropped Sydney off at the other party, and came back 30 minutes or so later to finish the prep for her party in the afternoon. It took a lot of work, but I got the food ready, and the house fairly tidy. I also had 2 extra helpers, friends of mine came over to help get it all done before the guests arrived.

We were having a princess theme-ed party, at Sydney's request, but since some of her guests were boys, we did not lay on the girly stuff too much! we invited everyone to bring their suit and set up the backyard slide as a water slide. All day long it had been hot and sunny. Sadly, 30 minutes before the party, the wind changed, the clouds drifted in a bit and the smoke of a local fire filled the air! It was not quite as pleasant an afternoon to be sure, but at least it did not rain! The kids had a wonderful time shooting down the slide, and running down the slip & slide. We did have to do some creative work with the mulch & the hose so we could keep the inflatable pool in place when the kids landed! And the yard got very well watered in several spots!

After the water games, we feed the little munchkins dinner, had cake, unfortunately I scorched Cinderella's arm when I carried in the lit cake, and opened presents! Then we pulled the string on the pinata, a safer but less exciting version. I was amazed that the string that opened the hatch was literally the second to last string pulled! The kids swooped in as they rushed to pick up the candy from the floor, but they didn't actually wait for it all to fall out of the pinata, so several of them kept yelping as they got hit on the back & head by falling candy!

All in all, it was a success. Everyone ate, had fun, and went home fairly happy. Although there were a few tears after a balloon drifted away on the way out the door. (Did anyone know that helium is a natural resource and currently somewhat restricted? Apparently the local grocery store, with attached floral & balloon shop is restricted in their helium intact, 2 tanks a month instead of per week, and really hate having to face unhappy moms who want their balloons! I just heard this today and no I was not a ranting mom at the store!)

Emily had really struggled today to understand why she could not...go to the other party, have the balloon she wanted (one of the fancy mylar ones), share the presents with Sydney, fill in the blank! You would not know she was the older child today!!! I don't think she fell asleep last night until about 9pm, which is terribly late for her, but still it was a long day for her.

She ended the night in hysterical tears in her bed in time out. Dinner was served at the birthday party, but she decided she was still hungry at 6:45pm even though she ate 1pb&pb sandwich, 1 chicken drumstick, 1 hot dog, watermelon, grapes, carrots, and cake . I offered her several choices for additional dinner which she refused. She then continued to sob to her sister about how sharing was a nice thing to do, as Sydney continued to color with one of her new presents, and refused requests to share. When the warnings did not have much impact, and the sobbing didn't lessen, I was extremely grateful to notice it was time to go get ready for bed. Then she began crying even harder because she was still hungry. 3 strikes later, she was in her bed in tears. I actually thought she fell asleep, so Sydney and I quietly finished bedtime routine without her, but that backfired too, since then she was sad that we didn't do bedtime with her. So now, I have finished, but both girls are out of bed-potty run this time, and I really hope they fall asleep soon. I am beat!

About the cake, just a little side note, I decided to make it this time, since Sydney liked a really simple cake, and I figured it would be fun to buy the princess toy set, so she could have cake decorations and actual toys to play with later. Normally I would have picked the set myself since they are not always painted the same, but I had to order this set. I was extremely disappointed to discover that whoever painted this set decided to make the princess look like drag queens. I was even more annoyed since I did not have time to send them back & get a new set! But she does not seem to care, so I will just be quiet about it from here on out! I wish the picture wasn't blurry too! Oh well. Enough griping! It was my own fault for not bracketing the shoot.

School's out

Today was the last day of school for both girls. I am definitely sad that the year is over as are they. Emily spent most of the mornings this week crying at breakfast for various different reasons, but usually related to school. First it was finding out that her sister will be in a different preschool next year and not at the same school as Emily. Then it was finding out that she would have a new teacher next year. Then finding out Sydney would be in a different school next year, and on and on. She will miss her wonderful teacher, Mrs. Porter, but she was reassured today she was always welcome to come back & visit.

Faraway Cookies

So we have 3 wonderful song & story books by Sandra Boynton. They are so funny and I just love them! Emily & Sydney have several favorite songs and don;t often like to hear the other songs on the cd because they just want to listen to their favorites again & again! Well this morning at breakfast, the cd was going in the background, and they listened to a new song today from Philadelphia Chickens called Faraway Cookies. I had heard the song & seen the picture in the book, but didn;t know too much about it other than that I thought it was a cute story about a puppy who wanted cookies that were on top of the fridge.

Emily heard the song and wanted to know why she was sad. Then she started to tear up. Luckily I distracted her so we did not get the full waterworks before breakfast this morning. After school, I was not so lucky! She wanted to listen to it again and started bawling! I got out the book and made up a rather clever back story about the Puppy's mom saying it could not have more cookies since it would hurt the puppy's tummy to eat to many, but that the puppy still wanted them and that was why she was she was singing to the cookies. She kept crying. She also asked to hear it again. I made her calm down before I would play it again. She finally calmed down and we listened to it again. I thought we were done with the song, but apparently while I was out at church tonight she really confused Karl with a piece of paper with a picture of someone crying and cookies and wanted to hear the song again, and was in tears again.

I officially don;t have a clue about what to do with this situation, but here is a link to a video on YouTube playing the song. It is just adorable (the song not the video) so I hope you all enjoy it. I don't think I should post the picture from the book for copyright reasons, but the picture is of a puppy looking wistfully up at chocolate cookies up on the top of the cabinet in the kitchen.

Babysitting Emily & Sydney

Tonight Emily & Sydney had a babysitter. She is a friend of our from church, and Emily's Primary teacher from last year. She is absolutely wonderful and a real lady, with a wonderful accent. A month or so ago she sweetly offered to babysit the girls and told us to pick a time, so I asked her if she could babysit so we could go out for a pre birthday date night. We not only did she babysit for them, but she also took them out to eat at the tasty Mickey D's. We don't go often, but the girls love the occasional trips-normally we go there on road trips only, so this was an extra treat! Well, we had a great evening and when we got home, we heard about how everything went on their outing. They both ate all their dinner (albeit slowly on Sydney's part) and played in the play area. Emily finished first, and ran off to play. After a little while, she came back, Sydney was still eating, and told our friend, "You call me when dessert is ready." And she scooted off to play.

Emily is a creature of habit, and I don't know when this habit started, probably over the summer when Karl was in DG and I bought popsicles for after dinner snacks, if they were good, but it has become part of Emily's little quirks. Dessert is only dessert if it is frozen. Occasionally though watermelon is an acceptable dessert. Other things are nice, but not usually considered actual dessert. She will inform you that those are "snacks". She will turn down cake or brownies for her ice cream sandwich or popsicle. She also has learned to like the frozen fruit sorbets we bought for Sydney's post operative recovery which she obviously never ate.

So we forgot to warn the babysitter about her dessert habit. Emily never eats a lot of sweets and will be the first one to stop eating something-which is why the Halloween Candy ran out right around Easter time this year. Being the wonderful person she was, the comment struck her as really funny and not rude or pushy, so when they were ready to go, she asked if they could eat in the car. " Oh no, we have to eat here." was the response. So the girls got cones and enjoyed them right there! Apparently they were really wonderful angels all evening which as a parent is always great to hear and while they may not do it for us every night, at least they will shine their halos up for the occasional babysitter!

So many thank you's to our wonderfully kind friend for our fun relaxing evening out!