for sale

this has been a long week without daddy. and with no playroom. and with my ever increasing, pregnancy induced laziness. But we survived. However, I did seriously consider listing my children on ebay. Or perhaps craigslist (to save on shipping). I have since reconsidered and am now working on a timeshare idea. That way I can enjoy them but then rent them out a week at a time. That way I might actually get something done, get a decent night's sleep and even start to miss them occasionally. It's brilliant.

random stories of the week:

the girls were playing in my room while I finished cleaning up the kitchen. Suddenly, Ladybug appears, completely naked--not even a diaper but trailing the ever present blanket. She stopped as soon as I spotted her and lifted up her hands and asked, "what happened?"

the new favorite pretend game of the week is "Primary" (mimicking her church nursery class). Butterfly pretends to set the table with a snack and then her and Ladybug sit to eat. Then Butterfly leads singing time, then says something about Jesus and then pretends to pass our stickers.

Last night, Ladybug climbed into my bed (as usual) sometime between 2 and 5 am. But then Butterfly must have had a nightmare and she came to my bed too, crying and asking to cuddle. But I already had a sleeping Ladybug on my right shoulder. So instead of going around to my other side, Butterfly climbed in and cuddled up against her sister. The best part was that she took Ladybug's arm and held it, cuddling Ladybug's hand against her cheek as she slept.

we cleaned out the closet in the nursery. It's a chore I've been putting off but the chaos is making me crazy. So we sorted and re-organized. Well, mostly I sorted and reorganized while the girls tried to put on every dress they could find. It was a parade of Sunday dresses, starting with the 6 month sizes that they couldn't even get over their heads.

another cute moment was when Butterfly was laying on the floor and Ladybug laid down, using Butterfly's belly as her pillow. Ladybug opened a book and jabbered (I assume reading her a story) and ended each book with "Amen, go sleep!"

the girls discovered my bathtub. obviously they knew it was there but for some reason it has suddenly become a favorite place to play. It's a large and deep jacuzzi tub. So they pretend bathe (fully dressed) and play with their dolls and have tea parties and cook, etc, all in the bathtub.

We had some of the scouts at our house one evening this week and I made dessert for them (make waffles using chocolate cake batter and then build ice cream sundaes on top). There were two extra waffle cakes left sitting on the table when I walked the boys to the door to send them home. When I returned to the kitchen, Ladybug was sitting on the table, scarfing down chunks of cake. She saw me and knew she had been busted. She squealed and scampered off the table to hide.

we realized that moving the tv to our bedroom has been very bad for our productivity levels. I don't think we got dressed before 11:00 even once this week. (shh, don't tell daddy.) the girls come to my room in the morning and we cuddle in bed to watch cartoons. It's wonderful. Our favorites are "Mesame" Street, WordWorld and Strawberry Shortcake. (Ladybug says "rawberrycake!")

I changed the background on my phone to a new picture of daddy with his girls. Ladybug knows how to turn my phone on so she steals it away from me, unlock it and squeals "daddy!" And then kisses his picture. Butterfly used to steal pictures of daddy off of my scrapbooking desk and carry them around, hugging them and kissing them and insisting on showing them to everyone saying "my daddy". They'd finally wrinkle and tear and she'd have to steal a new one.

We had a playdate with Grammy and Papa at the park. Ladybug climbed the tall slide and went down, over and over. Butterfly really liked running and jumping on the bridge. But their favorite part was begging Papa to help them across the monkey bars. He held them up and they moved their hands from rung to rung, not actually trying to swing though and just let Papa carry their full weight. Then they dragged Grammy to the top of the tall twisty slide and made caravan trains with her to slide down.

I asked the girls what we should name the baby again. Butterfly told me "baby". Ladybug told me "munga", which is her word for monkey.

...all these stories make them sound really cute and charming, so why my resolve to put them on ebay tonight? Parenting is hard! Especially when daddy isn't home to help relieve me in the evenings. These wonderfully cute, full of energy, mischievous little monsters have been bouncing off the walls lately and I feel especially lazy. When I've accomplished nothing else, I defend myself by saying "hey, I made a kidney today". It's not really fair to blame my lack of productivity on the baby (sorry baby) and hopefully I can will myself to step it up.