First day of school laughs

 First day of school, 2009

First day of school, 2010

First day of school, 2011

On Sage's first day of school she was insistent about wearing the exact same shirt she wore to the first day of school last year and the year before.  Same size even.  Either Sage is not growing, or the shirt is growing, or I'm the biggest tightwad ever.  I know I'm a tightwad (but not that tight).  And shirts don't usually grow (or maybe that's just my third trimester perspective).  As to Sage growing, I know there's no way she'd let me put darling little pigtails in like I did two years ago.  (She plans to wear the same shirt to the first day of school next year, but with braids in her hair this time.)  I just have to be glad she isn't wearing a back to school outfit like mine from the blessed year 1989 (think matching brown shorts and vest and big brown bangs over big glasses).

As for Eliza, she is thrilled to be in kindergarten.

 

And if you didn't know better, you might think she landed herself a spot in Miss Spider's kindergarten class.

And so Lily won't feel left out, I've enrolled her in a little alternative to preschool that I like to call Grocery Shopping 101, where she and I get to do all the grocery shopping (and other errands) together after we drop off the school girls, and we will NEVER take her older sisters with us again until next summer.

Happy Back to School 2011.

The vomit scale

How is it that when your own kid pukes 10 times in one night (the number of dirty bowls in my sink let me know it truly was 10), it's like a 8 out of 10 on the lameness scale....

But when a neighbor kid barfs once in your car, it's 12 out of 10 on the same scale?

That is one of the 600 reasons why I will never run a day care out of my home.

To My Garden

Dearest Garden,
It is really nice of you to carry on, growing tasty things deep down there amongst all those 6 million weeds that I'm supposed to be attending to.

The yellow Siamese twin squash you gave us was unlike any I've ever seen before.  I'm a little scared to eat it, actually.

The peas were a huge hit with Lily.  One day when I hauled her out of the garden into the bathtub, unbeknownst to me, she brought the peas with her and decorated the tub.  She's sad that pea season is over. 

I think the tomato jungle is doing well, even in the absence of cages until last week (that was not good planning, by the way).  We have quite a hoard of green tomatoes, even though Lily picks them whenever she thinks I'm not looking.  I'm counting on some amazing homegrown ones to teach Lily this year that tomatoes are not the worst food on the planet.  (So far she thinks they're just green apples.)

When I brought in another huge load of summer squash today, Sage accused me of falsely informing her that gardens are harvested in the fall.  Let's just let her think that is true, and I'll keep eating the handful of raspberries that ripen each day that never make it inside. 

I think heaven will have lots of sun-warmed raspberries.  Just maybe with less bees hovering.  And maybe heaven will have zucchini plants that only produce the exact number of zucchinis you need.  I'm not complaining, but my compost pit is getting pretty full of zucchinis, which causes me a tiny bit of guilt.  As does the number of zucchini muffins I personally consumed today. 

Kitty love

I am so pleased with how brave my girls have been with our little kitty.

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 Eliza offered to take a picture of the kitty and me.  Behold.  The kitty and [part of] me. 

Haven't we talked about Eliza's photography skills before?  Because it seems like they're just getting worse.

The service chart

After Eliza's misdeeds earlier this month, my older (and sometimes wiser : ) sister, Krista, suggested I make Eliza her own special chart with places to mark off when she did something good or nice, thus rewarding the good behavior.

Sage was delighted with Eliza's chart, and with trying to help her fill all the squares (aka--"Eliza just smiled at me!  Can she mark off a square?").  Sage begged for her own chart, which, unfortunately, has superseded the second round of Eliza's chart.

Sage's favorite thing to do for a mark on the chart is to make an "invention" for someone.  Yesterday she made a wallet protector by wrapping Eliza's wallet in a ziploc bag, then rigging a yo-yo string so it stretched around the ziplocked wallet; then she secured the yo-yo string by lacing it through several holes of Lily's croc on the other side.

Today she made me...actually I still don't know what it was.  It was something that did some sort of locking up, but it took Sage about 3 minutes to do up the "lock" so I'm not sure it would win the Invention Convention or anything, but it did get a mark on the chart.  And that's what matters, right?

P.S. Tonight Eliza asked for her big dog.  You know, the trash can one.  And then, conveniently, I thought I heard the phone ringing in the other room....

Everything but the kitchen sink

We are down to two kids at home for the weekend, and I'm sorry to say that I've been enjoying it quite a bit.  We jumped at the chance to send Sage to Las Vegas for a quick 3-day trip (down with Aunt Lorene and back with Aunt Danielle), as her cabin fever has become a little much (not so much her cabin fever as the manifestations of her cabin fever, which almost all consist of using "Mom" and "mean/meanie/meanest" in the same sentence, at high decibel levels).

On the morning of departure, I asked Sage to pack her suitcase for her 3 day trip.  This is what I found crammed into her backpack, along with the 3 outfits, PJs, shoes, socks, undies and toothbrush that I requested:

Ruler

1 inch piece of chalk

Washcloth ("for spills" she explained)

Blue belt (that was only used once in the last year)

Pen

3 toothbrushes

3 flossers

1 broken princess comb

Beanbag

Empty toilet paper roll

2 tubes of toothpaste

Stuffed turtle

Jumprope

3 pairs socks

2 rubber bracelets

Hello Kitty watch (not functional)

Purse with mirror and hand sanitizer

Heart pillow 

Basically everything but the kitchen sink.   I hope she survives without that piece of chalk that I snuck out.

Two down

Yey for our second successful birthday party in a week. (First one.)

Today's theme was Under the Sea. 

The kids ignored the water obstacle course I set up and just slip'n'slided.

Homemade octopus pinata=big fat pain.  But it was cute, until it dropped off its string before actually being broken by that noodle.  (We wised up and used a noodle instead of a frying pan.)

You've got to have an M+M machine, regardless of the theme.

Thanks to Becca--photographer and party manager. : )

Some news

After dealing with Eliza's antics yesterday (including, but not limited to scattering birdseed in the carpet, glue on her bed, face paint on Lily and the sheepskin rug, half our Sam's Club carton of gold fish in a bowl of water, and a quick pit stop on her bedroom floor), I guess I should be feeling pretty happy that the results of our ultrasound were....

XY!

It's a boy!

Just think how many years it will be before he can climb up bathroom shelves to reach my Halloween face paint stash!!!