Mike spent the day working his butt off in the yard.  To stay out of his hair, I took the girls to see my parents.  Arden starting the morning off impersonating a very large crab.  Everything sent her into a tailspin, especially the word “no”.  She’s so freakin’ dramatic.  If you tell her no, or remove her from something she is playing with (like when I moved her away from the cactus she was about to eat), she throws herself on the floor and begins screaming, crying, and kicking.  Most of the time it makes me laugh because it’s so over the top.  When she does it repeatedly, however, it becomes less funny very quickly. 

The morning started off with Lily wandering into our bedroom far too early this morning.  I blindly groped for the remote so we could entertain and keep her quiet with television (hooray good parenting skills!).  After 15 minutes of being mauled, including Lily putting her icy feet on my face and draping herself across my legs, I staggered into her room, hoping she wouldn’t notice.  I passed out in her bed.  My last thought was, “oh thank you lord for this moment of quiet.”  Not so much.  She padded into her room, asked me why I was in her bed, and proceeded to sit in her red chair and stare out the window, while talking non-stop to me about everything and anything.  At one point I heard a loud snapping noise.  I sat straight up and focused my bleary eyes on her - she was sitting on the floor with her foot crammed in her mouth - BITING HER TOENAILS!  In usual devil form, when I yelled at her to stop, she grinned maniacally at me and said, “Why, mommy?  I have a hangnail!”  The whole hangnail thing comes from my mother - and now Lily thinks that any time her nails are longer than bitten to the quick, they are hangnails and need to be mauled, picked and bitten.  The habit is now down to her toes, apparently.  Great.  Now I’m going to have to put NO BITE nail polish on her toes, too - not that it does any good on her fingernails.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day walking around while Lily rode her Barbie trike and Arden lounged in the stroller (and screamed everytime I took her out - she really likes her stroller), hanging out at Sunday Park and basically destroying my parent’s house.  We also watched “A Bug’s Life” in which Lily was only mildly interested - why watch a movie when you can be swinging from Grammy’s chandelier and generally creating havoc everywhere you go?

They are both blissfully asleep right now - and it’s quiet - at least until tomorrow morning at 6.30. 

Lately Lily has been in such a hurry to get off the potty she is neglecting to wipe.  A number of times now she has discovered later that she is, uhhhh, not as fresh as she’d like to be, and informs me of such in very loud tones, usually while in front of a group of people.  On Tuesday before we sat down for Dora the Explorer LIVE Pirate Adventure, Lily stopped by the bathroom with her daddy.  This time, he was the lucky one to find that she had huge skidmarks from her earlier bathroom poop break.  He did the best he could with thin toilet paper and some sink water.  We keep reminding Lily not to forget to wipe, as well as telling her that if she needs help, we are always there for her.  I’d rather spend the next few months helping her wipe than experiencing moments like the one we had in Arby’s, where she told me her butt hurt, checked it out, and then held up her hand which was unfortunately covered in poo.  This, in the middle of a very crowded restaurant. I’ve never moved so fast in my life. 

Lily is just in a hurry for life.  She can’t be bothered with the little things when she has bigger fish to fry, like a night out at Dora or a jamocha shake to taste (Grampa’s).  She doesn’t let anything get in her way. In a strange way I admire her enthusiasm for life and the speed at which she flies during the day.  And honestly, it’s also very nice when she crashed at night - she goes from wide awake and chattering to passed out and snoring with only a few minutes in between.  We’d like her to slow down just a tad.  It would certainly help with the amount of laundry I do. 

We had a great time at Dora and Arden stayed home with Aunt Loie.  I think Aunt Loie got the good end of the deal, however.  When we arrived home, she was crashed on the chair and a half, fireplace blazing, with a big cozy blanket over her.  I was a bit jealous, having come from 20 minutes stuck in a VCU parking deck, a large crowd of 3-5 year olds and a lot of stinky popcorn being thrown everywhere.  Lily really enjoyed herself and did a lot of feet-stamping, flag-waving and clapping.  Dora’s cousin Diego looked like he was about 45 (I think he’s supposed to be around 10 in the show), Swiper was distinctly and flagrantly gay (I’m suprised his handkerchief over his eyes wasn’t rainbow-patterned instead of black - we kept expecting him to sashay over to the corner and scream “Out and Proud!”), and the Map, who on the show sounds like a crabby New Yorker, was in the live version very female, with a very squeaky, high-pitched, chipmunk sounding voice.  Mike made some very crass comments during the show into my ear which made me guffaw outloud and generally act poorly.  I guess if he’s still making me laugh after all this time, it’s a good thing. 

I have a photo gallery now that is fairly organized . . . check it out. The link is to the left and is called “Gallery”.  It’s a work in process but as photos are uploaded, they will be put there instead of embedded into the blog.  Or both. 

Hi everyone,

Nothing is ever perfect, including my blog, but this is the new one and it’s close.  I’ll be making some changes over the next few days including putting links on the site and finding a way to post the photo gallery I have been working so hard on.  In the meantime, please do me a favor and register as a member.  It’s in the upper left region of this blog.  Have at it!  Big thanks to Phil and Aaron at Top Dead Center Design for helping me with this.  I also thank Meredith who was the inspiration behind me not using blogger anymore and renewing my commitment to the blog.  It was much appreciated.

I haven’t been posting much lately because I am in the process of moving this blog to its new home. It requires me to cut and paste, as well as upload, every single entry and photo I’ve put here in the past. I’m up to June of 2005. It’s actually been fun looking through old entries and seeing how much things have changed, as well as stayed the same.

Mike and I took some pictures this weekend of the girls, so here’s a few, including a couple of them playing with the Frigigears - the toy the Savages sent for Christmas. It’s like the new Alamo - there’s always a showdown as to who gets to play with what gear. Lovely! They love the toy . . .

I’ve also included some pictures of Sean and Cristin’s visit to Richmond. Sean is Mike’s roommate from college. He’s dating a woman who lives in Charlotte, so they meet in Richmond because it’s kind of half-way. Lily loves them both! Arden just likes to look at Sean.