This Week So Far! =)

Katie has fallen into the habit of YELLING herself to sleep during her nap. She doesn't want to sleep and tries so so hard to stay awake....this is how she fell asleep yesterday after twenty straight minutes of kicking her fat little fit against her crib while Bree and Claire had lunch. This is what's left of Bree's seconds while Claire was working on her first batch of pbj and oranges. =)

 

We did Brownies last night, too. I posted this to IG, but it was a water relay game meant to get the girls thinking about what other girls their age have to do to get water...it got me kind of emotional and choked up and feeling super lucky and blessed that by some sheer roll of the dice luck I ended up here, and I get to watch my kids grow up in a safe place. 

 

This was before Paul read that new article out that says kids under 2 shouldn't watch very small screens because it damages their eyes. Katie was up in the middle of the night with a stuffy nose and we think probably a sore throat. She watched a little Elmo and was ready to go back to sleep.

 

And, SNOW! Yay!

In other news, I cleaned out the playroom this morning. We had entirely too many things for the girls to keep track of, and now we have a lot fewer things. We will give this a try for a month or so and see how it goes. If we need to maintain a lower level of things than we have now, we will do that. It's not respectful to our family or our home to have broken or seldom-used toys strewn across the floor, or in disorganized piles, or tossed behind a shelf or in a tent....so those things are gone now, hopefully to find homes where they are needed. I mean this honestly, not in that smarmy self-righteous martyr-mother voice. Seriously. We had this very conversation with our older girls earlier this week and unfortunately they chose to make choices consistent with a belief that nothing would change regardless of the state of their playroom. Hopefully in the future we can continue to model and encourage conscientious and thoughtful care of our many, many lovely possessions for a number of reasons, not least of which is my desire to avoid that knowing, condescending look from the Goodwill collection guy as I unloaded a large number of bags filled with brightly colored plastic objects from the back of my stereotypical SUV. =)