before and after

I'm a terrible decorator. I don't know how to put things together and make them look good. I can't really picture how things are going to look, and don't want to spend money if I don't know if I'm going to like something, so many, many parts of our house have gone undecorated in the over eight years that we have lived in this house. I hate how plain it looks, but don't really know what I want most of the time. My husband gets so frustrated, because he wishes it were decorated, but I don't want to waste money on things I'm not going to like for long.

One of the areas that has become increasingly more frustrating in our house is the entryway. It's very small, first of all. In the winter there are shoes and boots galore. There's nowhere to store anything. Our hats and gloves are in a cardboard box stashed on the top shelf of the closet. So hard to get to. We don't have a mud room, or even room for anything like it, so the front entry is the only place to have these sorts of thing. The closet is small, too, so there's not room to store much in the way of shoes either. Also, there's no way for the girls to hang up their coats. They can't reach the hangers in the closet. So they either throw their coats on the chair in the adjacent living room, which looks awful, or I have to stand at the closet and wait for them to bring me their coats every time we come in.

One of my Christmas presents from my parents was a bench with storage, which is something I've been wanting for at least a year, but I've had trouble finding what I want. There are so many qualifications. Size is the biggest obstacle: it has to be small. Another issue is that it can't be flush to the ground because there is a heat register there, which needs to be left open, so it has to be up off the ground. Price was another obstacle. Finding something I liked, which also fit these parameters was tough. But my mom and I finally did it. We found one and she ordered it for me a few weeks ago. She also bought me an early birthday present, and got me a matching shelf with hooks to put above it, which will allow the girls to hang up their own coats.

The bench arrived last week and the shelf came yesterday. Tonight my husband and I put it up. Imagine new, nicer baskets on the shelves, which I'll hopefully find soon.

The first three pictures are before (including the mess of shoes...) and the last picture is after.

lost and found

All is right with the world. I just found the wonderful, soft, expensive leather glove that I lost last Friday. I've been going crazy since then, trying to find it. I just went to the grocery store, which was the last place I knew I had it, to see if anyone had turned it in. (No luck there.). On Friday I actually shoveled the whole driveway, looking for it, rather than waiting for my husband ti come home and snow blow us out, because it had snowed for hours before I realized I had lost it and I was afraid the snow blower might ruin it. I didn't find it there either. As the snow has melted since then, I kept looking in the grass, thinking maybe while I was shoveling I tossed it into the grass with the snow. Nope. Looked through the car several times. Nope. But just now I was walking through the garage on my way in the house and thought to look in a box that was out there, which had been in the house on Friday. And sure enough, there it was!! Hooray!

It's a good thing, because do you know that you can't buy a decent pair of gloves in the middle of January? I've looked. You can buy swimsuits. You can buy short sleeved shirts. But you can't buy gloves. Isn't that crazy, the way the stores do that? Clearance all of the winter stuff right after Christmas and bring in summer. Who wants summer stuff in January?? We need gloves, people!

So thankfully, mine have been found.

tonight's facebook status...

"At bedtime tonight I started telling Rebecca (age 2.5) about how I used to rock her in the rocking chair we were sitting in, and give her a bottle. "Where are the bottles?" she asked. I told her we don't have them anymore. "You hold me like this?" she asked, as she scooted herself laying sideways in my arms like a baby. "Yes, and I sang to you," I told her. "You sing to me now?" she asked. So we rocked and I sang song after song to my "baby" in my arms (after each one she asked for another one). Best stall tactic ever, Rebecca.... So, so sweet...."

pigtailed cuties

Rachel hasn't wanted me to do anything to her hair (other than brush it) for years. But for some reason, for the last couple of days she's asked me to put it up. Yesterday it was one ponytail, which didn't work out too well because it fell out at school (her hair wasn't quite long enough for it), so today we did two pigtails, which are much more secure. And whatever her big sister has, Rebecca wants, too, so here is the result.



My ipad doesn't take the greatest pictures, especially when the blinds are open right behind them, but it makes it a lot easier to share pictures because there is no transferring between camera, card reader, and computer.

this and that

There's not a lot of news around here. Real life has started up again after the holiday craziness. Rachel's back at school, and thankfully doing pretty well at the moment (she was having a rough time, behavior-wise, before Christmas, so I was worried about how she'd do going back), and Rebecca and I are back in our little routine.

Rebecca's room time is going better this week. That first day was the only one she cried. The next day she fell asleep curled up in a little ball in her rocking chair, and now she's playing and seems to enjoy it. Today she even ASKED me if she could go play in her room! I hadn't given her room time today because we went to the grocery store during that time, so after lunch, before naptime, she asked to play in her room. What? You want to give Mommy some time to herself? Are you kidding me? Sure!

We've been working a lot on helping her learn her letters. She's interested and enjoys it, so why not? She knows R (R says Rebecca, she proudly yells.), M (M says Mommy!), D, G, T, K, B, U, E, H, X...I think that's all for now. When we're out driving around she'll point out letters on signs. She's always right on, too!

She's enjoying her toys from Christmas, but she likes playing with them in unconventional ways. She got a "puzzle" which looks like a barn (she loves barns and farm things) and you open up little doors and there are little animal magnets inside. Rather than taking them out and putting them back in, she takes them out, sticks them together (they're magnets, so they stick together, back to back), and calls it her iPad or her iPhone (I don't know how she even knows what an iPhone is, because no one she knows even has one!). She carries it around, swiping her finger across it, like you do on an iPad or iPhone....silly girl. Or she puts them in a dish from her little kitchen and calls them cookies. She loves taking little pieces and parts of toys and using them for other things. This is all well and good until its time to put the pieces away and I can't find them all. It drives me crazy. I've kept Rachel's toys for years without losing parts, and now I'm losing all kinds of pieces. It makes me so mad when I can't find something. I try and tell myself it's just a toy, but I want them to remain complete with all their pieces. A lot of times they're up in Rachel's room, where the two of them often play. And since Rachel's room is usually a disaster, even though I make her clean her room at least once or twice a week, they're always hard to find. If they're not there, I find them under couches, in between cushions, and so on. Or they just stay lost...which I hate. This girl....I don't remember having this problem with Rachel.

Rebecca's developing an imagination, which is fun to see. She plays in the bathtub and makes up scenarios for the princess dolls (Rachel's bathtub princess dolls), or she has pretend tea parties with a stuffed animal, and so forth. She's enjoying playing with Rachel's old Little People castle, carriage, and the princes and princesses that go along with them. That's what she usually plays with during her room time.

Rachel is enjoying school. I hear the most about music class. She loves it. Art class, too, but especially music. She's selling Girl Scout cookies right now, and has already surpassed what she sold last year, so we've made some progress. (We are not the greatest Girl Scout cookie selling family. We have a small family, no one is local, and most of the people we know are already Girl Scouts, so it's hard to find people to sell to. There are three Girl Scouts just on our little cul de sac of 10 houses, so selling in the neighborhood is tough, too.)

I'm taking two correspondence courses right now in order to renew my teaching license by the time it expires this summer. One of them is about using the iPad in the classroom. I actually have learned quite a few things about my ipad that I didn't know, just from doing my assignments!

And that's the news from our world.

room time

When Rachel was little, she had playpen time each day, when she would play independently in the playpen for thirty minutes or so in another room while I cleaned or showered or whatever. When she was older she graduated to room time, where she did the same thing, but in her room with her toys instead of in the playpen. She did great, and sometimes would last even an hour in there playing by herself.

When Rebecca was younger, I did playpen time with her, too, but it never worked as well. She'd play for a little while, but it always ended in tears, wanting to be rescued and let out. I used to use her playpen time to shower and take Rachel out to the bus stop last year, when the bus stop was right across the street, so I wouldn't have to get her bundled up to go out in the cold.

Over the summer I finally gave up on playpen time, though, because she rarely played, and mostly cried. I started taking showers earlier, before my husband left for work. I hated doing it that way, but it was the only way I saw to do it.

This year the bus stop is quite a way from our house, so I can't leave her in the house anyway (Since it's been cold and icy we've been driving. Today was the first day we walked in quite awhile, though it was rough pushing the stroller through our neighbor's unshoveled, icy, snowy sidewalks...grr....that's a story for another day...).

But I decided that it was time to introduce Rebecca to room time. She needs to learn to play independently like her sister always has. So today was the first day. I told her that she was going to play in her room awhile and I was going to do some work and then come back and get her. Well, she didn't like that idea. She kept asking me to stay and play with her. I told her no, that I had things to do, but I would come back to see her in a little bit. As soon as I left, she started crying. I let her cry for a little bit, then went in and told her that it would be a lot more fun to play than to cry. I said, "You can play or you can cry, but you need to stay in here until Mommy comes back, and it would be lots more fun to spend that time playing!" She told me, "I wanna cry!" So I left again, and let her cry. She started yelling, "I wanna get out! I don't wanna pway wif my toys! I wanna go downstairs NOW!" I just let her continue her rant, and she soon stopped, and I heard her toys moving around, so I assumed she started playing.

After a few minutes of quiet playing she started saying (not yelling or crying, this time), "Hurry up, mom! Come in here!" But she continued to play. I left her for 15 minutes and then went in to get her. We cleaned up and I told her we'd practice again tomorrow, but now it was time to go downstairs. Hopefully the crying will get less each day and she'll start to enjoy it.

In other news, Rachel has another bad cold. Ugh. But some good news is that she's FINALLY learned how to tie her shoes!! She got her first pair of shoes that tie for Christmas, so she finally had motivation to learn. She caught on a lot faster than I expected her to. She's so proud of herself every time she ties them. Her knots are pretty loose, so we're working on getting them tighter, but at least she finally gets it.

The artist

Rachel has always loved to draw. I'm biased, but I think she's pretty good. For being six.

Today I found this picture on the back of one of her school papers and was impressed with the details. It's Merida, from Brave, holding her bow and arrows, and the black thing is a bear.

If I can't brag on my own blog, then where?

back to reality

Today Rachel goes back to school, which means Christmas Vacation is officially over, and real life starts up again.  A few days ago I was really down about it all.  Today I'm very ready for things to get back to normal. 

I'm going to miss Rachel, though.  I've gotten used to having her around.  What I won't miss, though, is policing the arguing between the two girls.  Oh my.  It reached an all time high over the last two weeks, I think.  A little too much togetherness, I guess.  So I won't miss that, but I will miss Rebecca having a playmate. 

I'm also going to miss leisurely mornings in our PJs and not making Rachel's lunch each morning. 

But, that's life. 

Rebecca's been cuddly this morning.  She threw her arms around me and said, "This is my ____!"  (insert my name here--I don't know why she used my regular name--usually she says, "This is my mommy!").  Then she told me, "You are so cute."  I told her, "Well, you are so cute, too."  Next she said, "You love me!"  I assured her that yes, I love her, and she told me, "I love you, too."  She's been telling me that more and more in the last few days.  So sweet to hear!

On New Years Eve we were looking for something a little "special" to do with the girls without venturing out.  We ended up watching home movies.  We never watch the videos we take, so it was something special.  Rachel LOVED it.  She loved seeing herself as a younger girl.  And Rebecca kept saying that little Rachel was Rebecca.  They do look very similar, so a little Rachel does look like a current Rebecca, so it's easy to see why she thought that.  I couldn't believe how different Rachel was--so little girly, and it made her seem so grown up now.  Until recently she couldn't say certain sounds correctly (the R sound, the TH sound....), so to hear her talking that way in the videos made her current speech sound so mature.  I miss my little three and four year old Rachel.  I told her she needs to go back to being three or four.  She said she can't.  So I told her she needs to stay six and not get any older.  She didn't seem to like that idea either.  Sometimes I just want to stop time. 

We watched the day Rebecca was born.  So tiny.  So sweet.   No arguing with her sister, no telling me, "NO!" and no constantly getting into things she shouldn't.  There are certain things about babyhood that I miss.  Guess I'll just have to be happy that now there's no waking up in the middle of the night to eat like there was then.  She also couldn't tell me, "I love you!"  I'll take that.

Well, I have work to do.  Back to reality!

Happy New Year!

Here's how we brought in the new year this morning....

This is what Rebecca wanted to do the whole time. 

She did enjoy the sledding, though we don't have any pictures where you can see her!  (She was sandwiched between Rachel and either Mommy or Daddy.)  She is on the video we took, though.