It's Spring Break!

Spring Break '09 -- Monday


How do we turn off Brenna's internal alarm clock for the week? I've failed to impress upon her young mind the value of taking every opportunity to sleep in! She was up at 6:45 on the dot this morning. Tomorrow we re-institute the stay-in-your-room-till-someone-comes-to-get-you policy.

Charting New Territory: Last night the kids had a slumber party. Daniel slept on an air mattress in Brenna's room. It only took one hour, two 'get-back-in-beds', and three parental visits to get them to sleep. Brenna's complaint was that Daniel wouldn't stop talking. Overall, though, it was a success...encouraging as we contemplate moving them in together to make room for a nursery.

Semi-Crazy: I don't do messy kid projects - unless you count flour in the kitchen. Even then I only tackle that about twice a year. Messy stuff is unnecessary stress. Clean up is a pain and I just avoid it altogether.
I came downstairs this morning to find the table covered in paper bags, Brenna in an over sized t-shirt, and Daniel with a paint brush in hand. I almost turned around went back to bed. Almost, but Daniel spotted me and it was too late. They were painting with water colors, and loving every minute of it. We have about 15 new watercolor masterpieces to do something with now. (big sigh) Michael is semi-crazy to get out the paints. But he did and he cleaned them up and the kids had a great time. And that's why our kids have two parents. : )

The Big Challenge: Every break needs a goal. One big project that needs attention. It makes the week feel productive. Today we cleared out TEA, otherwise known as The Extra Area. It's a storage crawl space off our master closet. Christmas decorations, baby clothes, air mattresses, costumes, porcelain doll boxes....and the list goes on. Brenna and I were able to reduce the baby girl clothes by about 25%. Everything else was sorted for keeps, trash, and Goodwill. A job like that has tendency to spiral and this one was no exception. In order to condense boxes we had to pull more 'like-items' out of the attic. And since I was doing the girl clothes, it seemed a good idea to do the boy clothes too. But I didn't. Tomorrow we'll pull the rest of the non-clothing boxes from the attic and finish sorting. Reduce, reduce, reduce, and condense is the motto. We figure if we finish the project tomorrow, we can play the rest of the week.

The rest of the day included:
Much whining and many tantrums from a certain 2 year old. (perhaps related to not sleeping in his own bed???)
A piano tuning
A trip to Ukrops for groceries
Naps for Michael and Daniel
And this amusing picture on my baby center email for 19 weeks


That is one contorted little baby!