How I'll Be Spending Mother's Day

Diet of Potatoes and Ice Cream: $9.95 a week

Constant nausea and a husband who smells like onions to me: $0.00

Ten pounds already put on from diet of potatoes and ice cream: One gym membership

Letting a little one make its home inside me for the next 7 months: Without price.

8 weeks

Morgan Talks... and Talks

After an entire afternoon of training Morgan how to, er, "communicate" more effectively, my patience grew thin. This was her observation:

"Why is it so hard for you to talk to me lately? Why are you acting so, so, so 'screamish'?"

________________________

An observation from a time-out:

Morgan: "Mom, you are very classy and very mean."

I think I speak for everyone when I say, "Huh?"

That being said, I wouldn't trade her in for the world. Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

Play Talk

Overheard Morgan playing in her room with her dolls:

Morgan is donning a quasi-radio voice: "Put your hands together everyone for our new president. Our new president is... Cinderella."

I was in the next room trying not to burst out laughing.

Later, I asked her about the presidency. 

Emily: "What's a president?"

Morgan: "Oh, a president is the most kindliest person of all. A president gives back rubs (she starts rubbing my back) and does this (she rubs my shoulders). They're very important."

Resting, Resting 1-2-3

I've mentioned our new neighborhood. Have I mentioned that there are a lot of kids here? Lots of kids. It's great.

I didn't have this conundrum at our last house b/c Morgan has precisely one friend who lived 3 houses down. And we didn't even see her outside every day.

But now Morgan has the wonderful blessing of having several friends.

Unfortunately our schedule doesn't always sync up with everyone else's. Morgan's nap usually starts at 3pm (I know, aren't I bad?) and some of her friends are just beginning to wake up from their nap then.

To avoid utterly rejecting children who keep ringing the doorbell (and get no answer), I came up with this handy graphic that I slip in between my curtain and the window of my sidelight.

It's doing the trick! The doorbell remains silent for naptime and we're still friends with our neighbors. :)

Morganisms

Emily: "Morgan, do you know how messy your room is?"

Morgan: "And you know that you love me, doncha?"

___________________________

Emily: (at Morgan's door knocking)

Morgan: "Don't come in, Mom. I'm doing something a little bit gross and a little bit destroying."

Naturally I had to come in. It was neither gross nor "destroying". Whew.

Letting Them Grow Up

It's not so bad if they grow up.

 Shopping. 

Talking. 

Bonding. 

Looks good to me. 

"Those" People

Call me a people pleaser: I'm horrified at a recent realization in my neighborhood: We are those people.

You know: the people whose lawn has dandelions.

The only people on the block whose yard has dandelions.

And, I imagine, the house who neighbors will grimace at when their non-dandelion yards occasionally sprout one of our dandelion offspring... the stray dog kind of yard.

Everyone else's lawn is sprayed. I even have a few more enviro-conscious neighbors who hand pick each dandelion from their yard.

In our last neighborhood, each lawn had their share of dandelions. In fact, I'm loathe to admit that our lawn turned more a shade of yellow than that desirable grass green in each summer.

In our last neighborhood we occasionally made a valiant effort to keep the dandelions from getting too bad.

But here, in my new Homeowners Association neighborhood, lawns are not "cut". They're primped. They're even coddled.

Lest I sound judgmental, I want my lawn to be primped and coddled. Just not by me. And I'm a little fearful of the chemicals some spray on the lawns.

So while Dan and I remain indecisive about this dandelion issue, maybe we'll stay inside until fall.

Or maybe-- and this is a stretch-- maybe we'll convince people that dandelions are okay.