Oh, Hi!

Yes, I'm still here. Just can't seem to find the time to sit and write anymore. I'm lucky if I get to read my e-mail and peer quickly at two other people's blogs per day.

Things are going well. Sweet Pea settled right into school after our little hiccup (the forgotten hug & kiss) on the first day. She has not cried since, and thoroughly enjoys her time at school every day. She went so far as to describe her third day as "brilliant," which had me giggling. Every day she gives me a drawing, a painting or a piece of macaroni jewelry that she has made. I don't know what to do with it all, but am heartwarmed every time she comes running out of the classroom yelling, "MOMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!", throws her arms around me in a big hug, and says loudly, "I made this for YOU!" Happy mommy sigh.

This past week we reached a funny point with our goodbyes. Since that first day Sweet Pea has been very concerned about remembering our hug and kiss every day, and even goes so far as to give me at least ten kisses and a long hug. However, she seems very keen to get into the classroom as quickly as possible after the teacher unlocks the door and welcomes the children in, so we station ourselves near the door once the teacher arrives, give lots of hugs and kisses, and then she's all business and says, "Okay Mom, I'm going to go in there now." She stays to hear me say, "okay, have a wonderful afternoon, I'll pick you up in 2 1/2 hours," and then she's off like a flash to the door. It's so cute! Tee hee

At her school there are two teachers per class and one of them is always stationed by the door to welcome the children with a handshake, eye contact, and a warm verbal welcome. I really like that - it must make the children feel very noticed and cared about. Although watching Sweet Pea go in, it looks like she views the welcome as a necessary toll she has to pay to get into that fun, fun classroom. ha ha!

Many people have told me that The Bug will miss her big sister while she is at school, but she really does not show any sign of such a feeling. While she adores Sweet Pea and wants to be with her and doing what she's doing when Sweet Pea is home, Sweet Pea is pushing her away more often than not these days and not being very nice, so I venture to theorize that The Bug may actually be relieved to have some time without her sister. She (The Bug) and I have fun running errands just the two of us, or just playing at home. On days when The Bug does not take her nap right after breakfast, she naps the entire time Sweet Pea is at school, beginning as soon as possible after we get home from dropping off Sweet Pea, and ending either when The Bug wakes up, or when I wake her up to go pick up Sweet Pea. Those afternoons are super nice for me, since before this I almost never got a quiet portion of any day for myself. You'd think I could post on my blog during that time, but I usually "waste" most of that time instead, doing things like washing dishes, folding laundry, prepping for dinner, talking on the phone, reading other people's blogs, occasionally writing an e-mail, and finally sitting in front of the TV by myself, catching up on "my" shows, Monk and Psych. It's very difficult for me to get through those shows each week, since I figure it's not a good policy to watch murder mysteries while the girls are in the room, and Slipshod and I have different shows that we both enjoy that we watch together at night. This week if The Bug has a morning nap on any of the three middle days of the week, I'm planning to take her to some friends' house while Sweet Pea is at school, to visit said friend mommy and her twins. Yay!

In other news - you'll probably be reading this on Slipshod's & my 12th anniversary, which is Monday. We had his mom & her hubs come up on Saturday and spend the night. They watched the kids while we walked to a nearby sit-down restaurant and had a nice dinner. The plan had been for us to go back home after dinner, get the girls to bed, and then go out to a movie. However... during dinner I had second thoughts about going back. The two of us and the kids had gone to a birthday party in the pre-and after-noon part of the day and as a result The Bug had totally missed out her nap, with the result that she napped instead in the car on the way home and then again from 3:39pm-5:30pm. I was pretty sure that I would not be able to get her to sleep a mere 2 hours later, and couldn't bear the thought of leaving her again. When we left for dinner she was absolutely heartbroken and screamed and reached for us, etc. Since she had settled down while we were gone, I didn't want to shake everything up again, and due to her late nap and the fact that Sweet Pea had also slept in the car & would therefore not be tired at the usual time either, we decided to just head on out to the movie.

Well, Stardust was sold out at the first and closest-to-home theater where it was showing, so we had to drive back toward home and farther in the opposite direction (from the first theater) and go to a later show. Neither Slipshod nor I realized how crazy long that movie was going to be. It was sort of difficult to enjoy the movie with Slipshod, who recently read the book, almost constantly saying, "oh my god, why did they - what the f-," looking down, putting his hands over his eyes, and shaking his head. However, I did like most of it, though there were some REALLY obvious problems, like how did Tristan suddenly and without us seeing any introduction know Septimus near the end? I'm guessing that the scene where they met must be on the cutting room floor and the continuity people missed that inconsistency... I did enjoy getting out and having a date with Slipshod but not even halfway into the movie I felt incredibly tired and I felt a nearly uncontrollable need to be snuggling my baby and nursing and rocking her to sleep. I never worried about Sweet Pea - she's completely fine being left alone with her grandparents now, even at bedtime. But the baby? Not so much. And *I* missed *her* probably just as much as she missed me. But only after I'd been out of the house for the first 3 hours. hee hee. When we got out of the movie it was 10:30 and I pretty much ran to the car. And when we got home I ran to the front door, but it was locked and I didn't have my keys! Slipshod took his deliberate, sweet time getting his keys out of his pocket and opening the door - he's such a meanie sometimes.

When we got home we found all the lights on, but everyone but Grandma sleeping. Sweet Pea and her grandpa apparently took forever to get her ready for and into bed, and left all the lights on in the process, but The Bug fell asleep on Grandma, without any crying, before Sweet Pea even got her teeth brushed! Grandma was afraid of waking The Bug by setting her in the crib because she figured if The Bug woke up during the transition, she would start screaming for me and it would just be allllllll over. So Grandma stayed in the rocking chair and let the baby sleep on her until we got home. I got into my jammies as quickly as I could, took The Bug from Grandma, got into bed with the baby still sleeping on my chest, and just laid there, cuddling her. Half an hour later Slipshod came up for bed and didn't see The Bug when he peered in the dark into the crib. "Where's the Baby" he asked, and I said, "I'm still hugging her..." I did eventually roll her off my chest, onto the bed next to me and go to sleep. :o)

Changing the subject again - Sweet Pea's interest in spelling and writing words has been piqued, so every day she asks me how to spell whatever words she can think of, and I tell her, and she writes them. Often instead of just giving her the letters I ask her, "what makes the (whatever) sound?" and she answers, always correctly so far, and then goes and writes it. She gets so excited when she guesses the letters correctly, and she can spot her name and her sister's name on things because they each have a puzzle with their names, so she has seen them spelled out on a regular basis. She can also write her own name now without any help. Her words sometimes come out as a mirror image of how you and I would write them, but she's only 4 and just learning. My teacher sister tells me that that is normal until about the age of 9 and I should not give her a hard time about it - which I was never doing anyway - because correcting her too much might spoil her interest and make her stop wanting to learn. Someone else also suggested to me that the mirror image thing might happen with her because she is left handed. At any rate, she's writing and enjoying it very much.

There must be more I haven't written about, but I can only think of one more thing to tell right now: Today The Bug started calling me "Mommy" instead of "Mama." I remember being kind of sad when Sweet Pea made the switch, but it doesn't bother me this time. It's just so adorably cute how she says it that it makes me all melty - especially since she often says it while she's giving me big hugs and wanting me to hold her. Awwwww. :o)