Looking up

today was a good day.

first, i slept in til 10.  second, my kids slept in til 10:30.  THAT is how you start the day out right!

anyways, we all got ourselves ready for a trip to walmart and i was delighted to see the ads online have so many good deals.  i think my average savings on price match stuff is between 30% and 50%.  so worth it.

i gave baby girl the choice of either eating a muffin at the table in the kitchen while i got ready or eating a banana in the car on the way to the store.  she chose the latter and "ate it all gone" by the time we arrived five minutes later.  i'm beginning to wonder if this past week of horrendous behavior was in any way connected to her refusing to eat anything.  can any sort of growing pains or anything do that to you?  make you feel so crappy that you just lash out constantly and refuse food?  i digress.  i was happy she ate her banana and even happier that brady fell asleep in the car.  and maybe happiest that he slept through the entire shopping trip and didn't wake up until we pulled into the garage (except for two seconds by the meat department when he woke up and smiled huge and i gave him a binky, pulled the blanket back over his carseat and he went back to sleep... that n e v e r happens.  ever.)  we got all of the things on our list, and baby girl was really well behaved.  she was pretty good yesterday so i trusted her enough to have her sit in the basket part of the cart and put brady's carseat up top.  most everything was sat on at least twice and helped herself to at least five slices of that provolone pictured next to her in the cart but she was really great about it all.  today she's been really acting almost completely normal.  when i told her the cookie sample things in the bakery section weren't out i didn't get a huge "NO! THEY ARE!!!" tantrum but a "oh.  do you think they're hiding?!"  precious.  i know she's an exceptionally well behaved child.  i've been around enough kids to know that.  but still, i guess it's a good thing she has some really really horrible days (like monday) that make me grateful that she's typically so forgiving and easy going about life.

when we left walmart we had an interesting situation where the lady at the door asked to see my receipt (i can't even remember the last time that happened) and said it was because of all the milks under my cart (there were seven... and i always put my milk down there now that i shop with two kids and i need the space) and what do you know but... the milks weren't on the receipt.  well, five of them were missing.  when the cashier scanned them she scanned one whole milk and one skim and typed in for it to ring up for five additional skim and i guess it didn't.  i honestly wouldn't have noticed had the receipt lady not checked and had to go back to pay for those five gallons of milk.  the funniest part was that this same thing juuuuust happened to me last night as ross with a purse that the cashier didn't ring up and i didn't noticed until i checked my receipt in the parking lot and had to go back in and have the girl ring up the purse.  the least funny thing is that i see that receipt checker lady all the time (because she doubles as a door greeter) and now i'm going to feel annoyed because it's like she thinks i TRIED to smuggle seven gallons of milk out of walmart on the bottom of my cart.  my integrity means a lot to me.  i should have told the lady about the purse incident from last night so she could be impressed with my honesty.

we don't typically dress up so much for walmart but i sent baby girl to her room to pick out something she wanted to wear and this was what she chose.  with no good reason to say "no," i said "yes."  i really feel like doing stuff like that with her makes her more agreeable and compliant throughout the day.

i always preferred dresses as a kid too.

she stopped to sit on this bench for a bit to watch a remodel guy working on the floors.  he looked like a singer from n sync and was pretty amused by his audience.

baby girl frequently takes off her shoes in the car and throws them over the seat to the back area where i put groceries.  i found this pair of brown sandals back there when i was loading groceries so i tossed them up to baby girl.  when we got home i saw that she had taken off her clear sandals and put on these brown ones instead.  also, why does she prefer to have them on the wrong feet?  i don't get it.  and yes, she turns three in a few weeks and i still have her rear facing.  she loves it.

she also loves this bouncer that i finally got out for brady.  she loved it then and she loves it now.  i tell her she's only allowed to stand, not sit, but i'm comforted that she won't break it because she's just barely still within the weight limit for it.  and she asks for her turn and can climb in and out completely by herself.

both kids napped at the same time and for a long time and i actually had to go wake brady up after 3.5 hours (normally i don't let him sleep that long but he's still feeling so under the weather (as evidenced by that awesome carseat nap since carseat naps these days are typically 10 to 30 minutes) and i knew he needed it. later tonight my christopher actually left him on our bed  for a few minutes to run to the kitchen for something.  he came back a minute later with a panicked and excited "brady just fell asleep on our bed!  but i woke him up the second i saw it!"  ha, no binky, no swaddle, lights on and he put himself to sleep in less than two minutes.  that is a tired kid that has seen better days.  at least the crying fits and extreme fussiness are passed and now it's just the lethargic melancholy sort of sick baby.  he's still not eating well but it's improving a tiny bit each day.  hopefully he does well with christopher on friday when i head up for the last bit of girls camp.  but i will say that it was pretty awesome when i put him in his crib tonight and he was so sleepy he didn't even need a binky.  just drifted right off to dreamland.

because of the hot weather, i kept him naked under his swaddle.  and since i double swaddle so he doesn't bust out, i had to get creative to keep him from overheating.  i now use a pair of abigail's leggings to pin down his arms and then put the velco swaddleme on top.  it's working great.

speaking of binkies though... baby girl gets a binky for nap time (ever since she was 18 months old and we came back in town after three weeks of traveling for christmas and she was teething and was sick and i let her have the binky for nap for a few days and it just stuck.  but as long as she naps, i'm okay with her having a binky.  and i pray daily that she will nap until she's 14.  or at least until she goes to school someday) and she has a few to choose from.  it gives her some control over nap time being able to choose a pink binky or purple binky (for the record, purple almost always wins).  the last few days though, she's told me she wants "no binky" for nap time.  at first i thought it was just a ploy to give her something to cry about so i'd have to return to her room mid nap but nope, on the days she's asked for no binky, she naps like she always does.  i really wasn't paying attention to it much because i was sure it had to be a fluke but today was probably the fourth time this has happened and i don't want to jinx it but it seems like she's headed in that direction.  if so, what a dream come true.  although i shouldn't be surprised because most things have been easy with her (eating, sleeping, nursery at church, potty training, etc) but yet i continue to underestimate her.  maybe someday i'll learn?

we hung out on the bed in the playroom while abigail played trains.  and ball pit.  and baby dolls.  before asking if she could watch thomas.  and i happily said that yes she could!  because good listeners get those kind of privileges!

i'm a firm believer that kids need both a mom and a dad.  moms and dads just parent differently.  i think i'm an awesome mom but let me tell you that it would not occur to me to strap and velcro a diaper to my head to make teeth brushing and bedtime more fun and interesting.  ps- sorry that you can't see my honey's face.  it is priceless but i elected to crop the picture before posting it because i thought maybe he wouldn't want it on the internet.  i'm such a considerate wife.

so back to the day... both kids went to bed beautifully and all is right in the world.

except those horrendous wildfires going on right now.  the smell is so bad you can't go outside at all and you can still smell it inside even with all the doors and windows shut.  and the smoke outside makes it look like you're a mile away from the fire even though it's gotta be at least 50 miles away.  so while i'm a little uncomfortable with the temperature in our house (yes lynell, it gets pretty hot inside although it's normally not terrible if there's a good breeze coming in the windows) because we've had record breaking temperatures and can't open our windows because of the crazy smoke and fire smells outside, i'm just really grateful that we have a home and that we're safe.  my prayers go out to everyone struggling right now.

this was taken at 2:00 this afternoon when my phone was reporting that our weather was "partly cloudy."

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