Time flies

I can't believe how fast the last 10 days have gone! I'm honestly not even sure what all we've been busy doing, but we've been keeping busy. When we got back home after our trip to my mom's last week, Erik had cleaned the house for me! It was wonderful - so I spent the week trying to stay away from the house so it would stay clean for my book club get together on Friday. We played outside a lot, but we had to fight rain. Monday was a weird day here - it started off sunny and we ended up having three thunderstorms that day. Once, a bolt of lightning hit and the thunder was so loud - we thought for sure something outside had been hit. Nothing was that we could find, but it was so close I felt the hair on my arms raise. None of the kids were scared by it at all. Erik laughs at me, but I have this irrational fear occasionally during thunderstorms that a tree near our house will be hit and fall over on one of the children's rooms - he always says to me, "Those trees are so big that they would hit our room too so we would all be killed." That' s not quite the reassurance I'm looking for, but he seems to think it will comfort me. Thankfully the storms were only during the day and we all slept restfully.

Will has been crawling all around the house and is pulling himself up on the furniture and is even starting to climb the stairs. I had to dig out the old baby gate for across the stairs. Will's favorite thing to do now is to blow raspberries on our skin. Walker & Maggie laugh and giggle when he does this to them. I worry about it a bit b/c I'm afraid he will give them a big bite - with eight teeth, a bite really hurts! Will just loves chasing Maggie & Walker around the house now that he is crawling.

Maggie & Walker have taken to playing hide and seek. Walker has a bit of an unfair advantage as he can convince Maggie to be the "seeker" every time. Maggie is so cute counting, "One, two, sixteen, eighteen!" Then she hollers, "Me find you Walkie." She runs around the house twice then comes tome, "Where Walkie, Momma. He hidin." If we cannot find something in the house, Maggie always tells me, "It hidin' Momma." Maggie is talking so much more and is so funny when she talks. I can't believe her logic already. We still allow her to have her binky (pacifier) when she naps and goes to sleep. It is usually for bed only, but on days like today where I knew we would be gone all day and she would need some comforting, I smuggle one with us. We had gone to the fair, then to the Deli for the Cruise A Palooza downtown, and on our way home from the cruise, she cried and cried for her binky. I kept telling her, "No." and this is the conversation that transpired
"Binky, Momma?"
"No, Maggie. Binky is for bedtime and nap time only. You already took a nap and it isn't bed time yet."
"Binky, Momma. Me ti-red. Go seep now."
"No, Maggie, it is not time to go to sleep now."
"Binky Momma, me head hurt."
"No, Maggie, I don't think your head hurts."

Now what 27 month old do you know that has the ability to come up with all these reasons why I should give her a binky? Erik and I joke that we are in so much trouble when she gets older - I don't think I'll make it to her 5th year! Oh, and I've never had so much trouble convincing a child to wear clothing! When we got home tonight, after we ate supper, Maggie followed me upstairs and wanted to get ready for bed. She tried to put her own diaper on (she is completely potty trained except for night - and that is only because I am not ready to get up in the middle of the night to help her go potty). She somehow then decided she wasn't ready for bed, so put her panties back on and came downstairs. I was pleased that she at least had on panties and wasn't totally naked. She then saw Shelly come down the driveway and as Shelly turned around at the garage, Maggie managed to put on a pair of plaid espadrille sandals and Erik's ball cap and was planning on going outside to "see Mimi, Momma!" She was so funny. I'm telling you - her sense of fashion is a force to be reckoned with and I'm afraid as the years go by, I will lose that battle. I will have to enforce a strict uniform for her daily life. She is nothing like what I am used to, that's for sure. But she's also so sweet and cute. We were at a picnic yesterday and someone there told me she looked like a real-life baby doll.

Walker has been so tired lately that the evenings have been somewhat difficult. Tonight was especially bad - he was jumping on the furniture and flipping around. When he gets like this he gets a little dangerous around the little kids. Erik & his mom took them up to bed tonight b/c Shelly was visiting after dropping off some auction finds for us. He had such a hard time falling asleep so I went up to tuck him back in and he got all teary eyed and said, "I sure wish I could stay up and watch TV with you, Momma." So sweet - I know that part of it is a ploy to get me to give in (which I didn't) but I left the room wondering how many more times he will want to be with me and will say such sweet things to me. He's growing up so fast and as he approaches 4 1/2 years old, it just doesn't seem real that he could be that old already! I keep thinking next year at this time we will be preparing him to go to Kindergarten. I promised Walker that we would pick a day this week and he and I would stay up "really, really late" and watch a movie. He giggled so excitedly over that promise.

Well, I better head up to bed. We are going to go to the fair tomorrow to watch the goat judging. We're studying it now so in 3 (gulp) years when Walker is old enough to participate in 4-H, we know what we are doing!

Oh, and as always, don't forget to look at pictures on my flickr page. See the link to the left!