Shopping Used To Be Fun

Dave has been working insane hours recently, which means the girls and I have been given the gift of A LOT of time together. Hanging with the girls is a good time and all, but at some point I actually have to run some errands. I'm fine grocery shopping with them, they are actually pretty well behaved there (and, I'm pretty efficient now, thanks to my list app on my phone). But, there are just some errands that I would like to do without ever having to sing the ABC's, spell "hungry," or tell anyone to take their hands out of their pants (which, coincidentally, is why I also don't like to shop with Dave). Anyhow, this is the 4th weekend where Dave has worked during all business hours, so I realized that I was just going to have to suck it up and take them out.

Saturday - goal: buy new blue jeans and a bathing suit
I set out for the Dulles Town Center and I thought I had a secret weapon in hand, I told Paige that we'd go on the train that rides around the mall, but ONLY IF they were well behaved while I shopped for the perfect pair of blue jeans. Knowing I had little time, and that I would eventually end up there, I started at Old Navy. I grabbed a bunch of jeans, hit the dressing room, and things were going well. As I was admiring myself in the mirror though, I looked down and saw Paige spitting a big loogie on the bench in the dressing room. She saw my look of horror and, I think, thought it would make the situation better if she "cleaned up" her mess...by LICKING it off the bench. I never even looked for a bathing suit...

Sunday - goal: go to Costco, Kohls, Dollar Store, and Best Buy
Stop 1: Costco - This one was the easy one. The girls both love Costco and we go there as often as we do the grocery store, so they were both well behaved. Only hiccup is that Rylie really doesn't want to sit in the infant seat anymore (this is the case for all shopping carts, she wants to sit in the big basket part), where-as Paige wants nothing more than to be considered a baby and insists on sitting there. So we look somewhat absurd with the baby in the big part and the big girl in the baby seat, but whatever. We walked around, I covered snack time with samples, and we grabbed what we needed and left. No issues.

Stop 2: Kohls - This was our shortest stop, because we didn't get to actually shop. Paige went into hysterics because Kohls has those dumb carts that only have one baby seat that faces out and she couldn't ride. So I left. Failed attempt #2 at getting a bathing suit.

Stop 3: Dollar Tree - I needed to get prizes for my prize bin at school. I knew this would be difficult to do with the girls because they usually want me to get them every single item in the dollar store. Today was no different. I think I had to say, "no, put that away," 472 times in the 10 minutes we were in the store.

Stop 4: Best Buy - I needed a specific charging cord, and I had no idea where to find it, so I bee-lined it to the first employee to see if he could point me in the right direction. He looked at me, at Paige, then at Rylie and was like, "Why don't you just hang out here and I'll run around and look for the cord, that'll be easier." I was all, "yes, yes that will be much easier." So we were just standing in this one area and there was music playing, and the girls love to dance, so they started to bust a move. I believe the song was, "we didn't start the fire." Paige was so into the music that she danced right out of her pants; as in, they fell down to her ankles. Of course this happened right as the employee returned, and to say he was mortified would be an understatement (3 year olds in their underwear must be a new thing for Best Buy).

While I already do 90% of my shopping on Amazon as it is, I think I'm going to have to increase that percentage. No more shopping with the girls.

Home Renovations

A few months ago, we had a light fixture installed in the toy room. The installer managed to put 6 holes in the ceiling and one in the wall. After a few months of walking past these very obnoxious holes, we finally decided to do something about it. We patched, we sanded, we patched and sanded, then we patched and sanded some more....and then we were finally ready to paint!

Here's the old toy room (this was the only picture I could find where the drapes were still up):


Then we painted the walls (3 cream, one pink). My addiction to Pinterest gave me the idea for an artwork display for the girls:


Then we put up decals on the pink wall:


I would have felt satisfied with our progress, except for this one pesky little problem--that there is no break in our walls where we can just stop painting. The entire main floor of our house must be the same color. So this meant that I had to also paint the cream walls in the tv room and kitchen.

Here's the "old" tv room:


I started painting, one wall per weekend. Oh, and we moved the tv:


On the list of things to do is to order new shades for the tv room, get a new tv stand, mount the tv on it's new wall, put some of the wall decorations back up, and, of course, paint the kitchen. We'll get to it...

Our girls are hysterical.

We think (know) our girls are pretty funny. This will get them far in life. Here are some of our favorites:

Paige
-We were playing a game where we trapped the girls and they had to say, "open sesame" to get out. When we trapped Rylie, Paige decided to offer some advice to her as to how to escape. She said, "Just say open up sesame....wait, it would be open up sesa-Ry for you."

-The other night Paige came in our room around 2 am saying she was scared. When she got up in the morning she said, "I had a bad dream last night, so I came in your room." I asked what the dream was about, and she said, "Izzy's poop."

-At bedtime, Paige has this routine of crying 5 minutes after we put her to bed. We go up, ask what is wrong, she asks for a hug, and we're good. A few days ago her reason was that she wanted some pickles. Except, she was serious. We offered hugs, but she wanted pickles.

-One of Paige's friends was coming over for a playdate, and I made the ultimate mistake of talking about it at dinner THE NIGHT BEFORE the playdate (these things are usually discussed only minutes before they happen). I told her that it wasn't going to happen until the next day (to try to stave off some of the incessant, "is he here yet?" questions), so she asked, "Is Noah coming over after my dark nap, or my day nap?"

Rylie
Rylie's funny moments are better captured by video, so enjoy:

Santa

So we saw Santa today. It went as expected...Rylie screamed, Paige got bashful. At the end (after we removed the screaming banshee from Santa's lap), Paige got to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She told him she wanted a "dog pit." I asked her afterwards what a "dog pit" was and she said, "my present from Santa." Duh.

This is the best picture we could get. The lady wanted to re-take it because, "the older one is leaning away from Santa." I was like, "uh, I think that if we're concerned about anything it's that the younger one is screaming, and while I think she'll forgive me for putting her there once, I think we'll need a baby therapist if we do it again."

Enjoy:

Shelf, the Elf on the Shelf

Last year, after a lot of discussion about the matter, we jumped on the "Elf on the Shelf" bandwagon. We heard our local Target had some in stock, and headed out to try to get us one. We may have had to elbow some desperate mothers out of the way to get ours, but we now have our very own little bundle of elf joy. We eagerly read the accompanying book with Paige (Rylie was only a few months old and we didn't think she could possibly begin to understand the idea of constant surveillance and reporting to Santa), and about half way through, they have this part where you have to name your elf. So when Paige was asked what we should name our elf and she barely thought about it before deciding on, "Shelf." We were like, "Ha ha, no, you don't understand, what should his NAME be," and she declared that his name is, in fact, Shelf. So last year we played along and didn't make a big deal out of Shelf, but he was definitely there when we needed him. This year, though, Shelf is like a celebrity in our house.

We got out the book at the beginning of December, and immediately Paige recognized her friend Shelf (I was secretly hoping she wouldn't remember his name, so we could make it a normal elf name this year...I never actually wrote it in the book, but I think we're stuck now). Our elf, Shelf, is not as creative as some other elves, he just hangs out up high, constantly watching. The very first thing Paige asks every morning is, "Can we go find Shelf," so we do have to be pretty diligent about moving him. She asks how his night was just about every morning, and sometimes will be like, "so did you tell Santa I was a good girl," to which he replies.....well, nothing, because he's a doll. But she still asks, every day.

Rylie still doesn't acknowledge Shelf, but I have high hopes for next year. When she is throwing a tantrum and I say, "Uh oh, I hope Shelf doesn't see you..." she doesn't even pause for a second to think about what I've said, so, like I said, next year.

Video Update

Here are a few videos from the last two months:

Paige has embraced her inner dare-devil and this is what she does every time we go out in the cul-de-sac. Don't worry, we've started making her wear a helmet. It was unsafe, I know...



A few months back I bought a deal for 4 cheerleading classes for kids. This was their final activity on the last class. As you can see, Paige has a real future here.



Andrew and Colleen went down to W&M for homecoming weekend. We got to watch Drew, and he's hysterical. Not sure why we didn't put clothes on him...watching 3 kids was hard.

Election Eve 2012

Tonight at dinner we were talking about voting tomorrow. Paige excitedly exclaimed, "We're going on a boat tomorrow?!" I decided to give her a brief overview of voting, and what it means to vote. Then I asked, "Who should I vote for tomorrow to be our next president?" Paige responded, without hesitation, "SANTA!"

Since we're on the topic of Santa, Paige decided that since we've checked Halloween off the list for this year, Christmas is really soon (not sure why she has that idea, Costco has only had Christmas decorations out since the second week of October). She told me that she's excited that Christmas is soon because it's almost time for Santa to bring her a dog bed. That's right, a dog bed. Apparently she would like a dog bed for when she's crawling around pretending she's a dog (which happens more frequently than I'd like to admit).

So, get out and vote for Santa tomorrow. Turn those states white.