summer vacation marches on

The floor has been picked up and clean at bedtime for a whole week! It is a new record! I am so proud of the girls. Now to make it so I can say the same thing for my room! We are working on it though. My goal is to get tidy by then start of the school year so when we get back to school I have good routines back in place.

In other happy news, I may have found a way to get through to Sydney. When she does not listen 3 times, I take away a Barbie doll. And I start with the good ones too. Yesterday she asked me how she could earn back the last one I had. I had her help me clean Josh's room. I have almost never seen her help clean so willingly. I was thrilled and I think she was proud of herself. She got her last Barbie back in her box. Despite all the grief those bed caused, I am SO Glad we did it. They really love having their own space. I have heard Sydney tell Emily her space is closed, and I think it was hard for Emily to deal with that, but it was good for Sydney to be able to have that as an option when she needs it.

Three more weeks of summer! It is so hard to believe we are nearly done with summer. We have not done all the things I planned to do yet! I am going to cram them all in if I can in these last 3 weeks. Next week I head to Ithaca with the kids for 4 days, tomorrow is rock climbing, when we get back maybe a quick Williamsburg trip, we shall see if it is still free for military and if reserve IDs will work! Emily is still complaining that this is not the summer she wanted. Hopefully next year we can take a "proper" vacation. Better get out of debt first!

Anyone know if night terrors can happen during the naptime? josh woke up today and seemed unreasonably upset and took 15 minutes to calm down. The whole time he seemed almost to be in rigor he was so stiff and over extended. It was very upsetting. Luckily the one thing that worked was starting a Thomas the Tank engine movie. Then he sat in my lap with Binky and Lovie and was a happy camper. It was not something I want to experience too often.

I am taking bets on the amount of time remaining in a crib! Josh has tried flinging his leg up and over the edge when he wants down and out at naptime and bedtime. Once he is able to swing over, the crib is toast. I hope I get another 3-4 weeks out of it, but I am not too hopeful that I will get much more than that. Such a wonderful invention the crib. How will naptime ever happen without it?

Cleaning the room

Apparently if I pretend to be a parrot and squawk out the names of things that need to be picked up, it keeps the girls amused enough to scurry around and pick them up. For my own amusement I pointed at things on opposite sides of the room for them to pick up. Third night in a row the floor is tidy. This is only the first night of the parrot though. I need a drink of water now. My throat is a little rough!

Success

At least for now the girls room is quite tidy! Sydneys area was the last big holdup and we worked with her last night to get it picked up. Hopefully they can keep up with it!!

But the really good news is that the plan worked. Both girls like having their own space, and they love getting todo what they want in the space. The floor in between in prime place space and they play together there. Keeping Josh out of their beds and nooks will be tricky! He loves ladders and seems to have gift for bugging them by grabbing their stuff and shooting "Mine". It drives them both nuts! If they would ignore him, he'd get bored and leave it alone. Sibling rivalry at its finest!

Cheer camp

The girls went to camp this week. 9-11:30am. Friday they cheered for the basketball campers final game. Both girls had fun and said they wanted to do it again. I enjoyed seeing the cheer! Emily might lack a little rhythm, but she had energy in her jumps! Sydney did a great job and seemed to really like it all! Josh liked the clapping and cheering in the game, but wanted to steal the ball which made it difficult to handle him in the gym.