Lily has a new role - yoda wannabe. Everything is phrased in Yoda-Speak. “Gummy bears I would eat”, “Glass of water will I drink”, etc. It’s hilarious. A lot funnier than her “remove the diaper full of poop at naptime” routine.

There have been no posts as Steve and his friend Tim are here, tiling their brains out and making our bathroom into a work of art. Free time has been spent in the yard mulching - we had 12 yards delivered to split with our neighbor, and we’ve barely made a dent in it. We planted some new stuff, cleaned up the deck, and at least the outside of the house is presentable.

Mother’s Day was nice - we took Lily to the park and met Alex there who was hanging out with Matt. After that, it was a fabulous gourmet meal at McDonald’s (guess who picked the restaurant). McDonald’s, for those of you who don’t know, is affectionately referred to by Lily as “Mac-a-donal’s” and she is particularly excited about their “play-arrhea” (sounds like diarrhea - means Play Area). For dinner we all went to Pasta Luna and I ate like a pig. It was delicious!

It’s back to work tomorrow, so there won’t be any posts until the weekend. I hope all of you in cyber land are doing well.

Yes, it’s been far too long. I got a yucky sinus/respiratory infection, and was out of it for the better part of the week waiting for the first round of antibiotics to work. They didn’t, I got worse, and two visits to the doctor later + one Z-pak, I’m feelin’ fine. I still sound like a 1-900 operator, but that has its perks.

I turned 34 today. It was pretty anti-climactic, as all birthdays beyond 21 have been. I worked all day, felt annoyed for most of the day, and got into an argument with someone within Association for Accounting Marketing about starting a local chapter here. I love it when people from outside of the state tell me all about the accounting firms within the state. Hello, I live here - and work in the industry. I’m, uh, familiar with the way things work around here.

Speaking of which, we now have some clients in Northern Virginia, and Jennifer and I both agree that it is very, very refreshing. Richmond is incestuous within the business community. Everyone knows everyone. It gets old after a while. It also has major benefits. It’s nice, however, to work with clients who don’t know the same people we do, and have no preconceived notions of who we are, or who we aren’t. The billing rates are nice, too.

Lily is doing fine, but killing my mother while we wait for Barony to have an opening for her. She poops in her diaper during naptime, removes it, and usually ends up splattering her bed with tidbits of excrement, all the while screeching happily, “Grammy/Mommy, I made a BIG poochie!” It’s disgusting and really, really irritating. I wish she’d screech BEFORE she pooped so I could put her on the toilet, but so far no luck. She is totally potty-trainable in terms of her maturity, speech, and understanding of the concept - it’s her iron-clad will that is keeping her from doing it. I wonder where that came from.

In a couple of weeks, Mike and the girls and I will descend on Aunt Dana and Uncle Richard and meet up with the Savage family at the Asheboro Zoo. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. We don’t get out much, so therefore, it doesn’t take much to thrill us. I haven’t seen Susan and Eddie and Jenna in a hundred million years, and I’ve yet to meet Colin, so that’s pretty exciting too.

My big brother Steve is here from Michigan, laying tile in both of our upstairs bathrooms and generally helping us out a ton with our big bathroom remodel (thank you tax return). I am hoping my few good connections down here will help convince him to move here permanently. The more family, the better. Good lord, did I just say that?

Today I realized that we really need a vacation. With the exception of one night away before Arden was born, Mike and I have not taken a vacation since we went skiing in Colorado. That was when I found out I was pregnant with Lily. I need 7-10 days off. No email, no telephone, no work. I feel fried and crispy, but we’ve got a lot of work product to shove out the door before the end of the summer. Thankfully Sara has been helping us out. She’s a project manager above all project managers, and every day, Jennifer and I thank the lord above for her presence. She has saved our sanity and maybe one of these days she’ll make some money with her own company - I don’t doubt she’ll be extremely successful if she puts her mind to it. If anyone needs a professional organizer, she’s the one to straighten you up.

Here’s a vision for you. It was the first thing I saw this morning. I heard a commotion in the hallway and opened my eyes to see . . .

Lily wearing the top of her pajamas, no pants, no diaper, with one ladybug rainboot on and one bare foot, and brandishing a toilet brush (a dirty one, I might add) like a sword while making strange clucking/screeching sounds. Apparently she’s feeling much better.

Now Arden has her cold/cough. 3600 Riverchase Court has been nicknamed “Repository of Germs”.

Mom and I went to visit dad last night. He was on some seriously good drugs. At one point he was trying to talk while falling asleep, so his lips were barely open. He was trying to tell mom how to get home (even though she wasn’t in the room) and he told her to take 75 south. That would be fine, if we were still in Michigan. You gotta love Demerol. He wasn’t doing very well last night when we saw him - throwing up, out of it, and in some pain, so I’m hoping he’s doing better today. Lily has already informed me that she plans to “kith Grampy’s boo boo”. Lucky Grampy . . .

“Stop smacking your sausage!” Yes, it’s true - those words came out of Mike’s mouth, directed at Lily. She has decided that when she’s done eating, she either throws the food on the ground (Delilah loves that one) or she hits it with her hand until every piece of food is flat and mushy and ground into her high chair.

“Don’t jam that up Arden’s nose!” That one was me, today, at the pediatrician’s office, trying to control Lily, who had gotten ahold of Dr. Derco’s tongue depressor and was trying to widen Arden’s nostril with it.

“Hands, HANDS! Hands OUT of the MOUTH!” Again, me. Trying to get Lily to stop putting her fingers in her mouth. She’s obsessed with eating her hands.

“Don’t eat that marble!” Lily recently found a marble, and has been trying to give me a heartattack by putting it in her mouth all the time. Even more than her hands.

“Stop touching your sister!” Suddenly, she “loves” Arden. This means she’s constantly trying to sit on, suffocate, smash, step on, or hug Arden to death.

“Don’t TOUCH the dog food!” This one is self-explanatory. At least she hasn’t eaten any of it lately.

“Stop touching the toilet!” Again, self-explanatory. She loves to splash (or as Lily says, “flash”) in the water. Even if it’s dirty toilet water. Erghhhhhhhhhh.

“Stop touching yourself!” I’ll just leave this one alone. For any of you with young children, you know exactly what I mean.

“Don’t eat the diaper!” The final straw today for me - after an hour of hell in the pediatrician’s office, Lily took all of Arden’s diapers out of the closet and began walking around with them in her mouth like some kind of rabid animal.

This is just a random sampling of some of the insane phrases Mike and I both utter on a random basis. I’m sure there are plenty more, but I’ll leave it at that. Suffice to say, we made it through another round of shots for Arden (4 of them), another weight check for Lily (22 pounds), and hopefully we’ll make it through one last week at Tuckaway without Lily getting some funky gross stomach yuck. There’s always hope . . . for the end, I’ll leave you with some recent pictures of Lily, learning to eat apples.

Arden rolled over last night, but I couldn’t post on the blog because our Comcast service was down. So it’s official - big “turkey jumbo” as Mike and I affectionately call her has finally rolled over. Neither of my children have been particularly precocious in terms of how fast they do things. According to my mother, I was walking at 2 week old and potty trained by 4 weeks and speaking French, Italian, and Russian by the time I was 6 months old. It’s hard being as smart and gifted as I am, I tell you.

Arden projectile vomited all over Grammy today - not sure if she just got herself all fired up and upset while waiting for her bottle to cool, and that caused her to puke, or if she now has what Lily had last week and is actually sick. I may try to feed her again shortly since she threw up everything (and then some) of what she’d had to eat.

Lily’s still sick, and running a low-grade fever right now. I was thinking she was over it but every afternoon she tends to get tired and crabby. Right now she’s trying to hit Arden over the head with Arden’s rattle. 5 minutes ago she was trying to kick her in the head . . . it’s so much fun having a toddler with a death-wish for her little sister!