Is there anything sweeter...

... than a sleeping toddler?
We've really been wearing her out these last couple of weekends, with a visit to the Children's Museum, a trip tp the zoo, two birthday parties, several play dates, a parade, and a couple BBQs thrown in there.  I love it when she's so sleepy she just can't even keep her eyes open one second longer.  Makes for quite a peaceful ride home!

Tueday Tag Along

Here are the instructions:

Create a new Tuesday Tag-Along blog post. Include the Tuesday Tag-Along button by copying and pasting the code above. (You are also welcome to copy and paste these instructions in their entirety, or any portion of this Tuesday Tag-Along blog post!)


Add your blog name and the URL of your TTA post to the MckLinky below.


Follow Twee Poppets, the hostess blog listed in the first slot. Twee Poppets will follow you back! (Note: If you want Twee Poppets to follow you back, you MUST leave her a comment saying that you are a new follower and leave a link to your blog!)


If you can, please follow the blogs in the three slots before you (e.g., if you're number 20, follow numbers 19, 18, and 17). This is not mandatory, but it will help ensure that everyone who signs up gets a few new followers!


Follow as many other blogs as you want. The more you follow, the more that will follow you back! Be sure to tell them that you're following from Tuesday Tag-Along! You may also want to leave a link to your blog so they can return your follow more easily.


When you get a new follower through Tuesday Tag-Along, be sure to follow them back! It's just common courtesy. :)
 
 
To anyone who decides, to follow me today, welcome! I'll be sure to follow you back as soon as I can!

Why I love PBS

     I don't know about you, but I love it when my apartment is clean.  This pretty much rarely ever happens around here. As anyone with an 18 month old will tell you, it is nearly impossible to clean when they are awake!  There are only a few ways that I ever manage this feat.

 Method 1:  PBS.  Seriously, thank the Lord for a channel that shows educational cartoons at pretty much anytime during the day.  This is how I cleaned my kitchen this morning.  Hooray for Sid the Science Kid!  Hooray for Peep!  And most of all hooray for mommy knowing what these shows even are....

Of course, I can't just plop peanut in front of the TV all day long and still feel like a good mother. But I honestly do not feel bad about a show or two while mommy does the dishes, or runs downstairs to do laundry.  I know there are people who are totally against this, but I am not one of those mommies.  Although I have recently decided that Adam and I should not watch any of our shows in the evening before Peanut goes to bed because she is starting to understand a whole lot more and repeat things!!!  CSI or Family Guy may not be the best choice for her anymore....

Method Two:  Get her involved in the cleaning.  If mommy is sweeping, then Emma is swiffering.  If mommy is wiping the kitchen table, then Emma has a baby wipe in hand and is taking care of the cofee table.  Of course if mommy is vacuuming then all bets are off, and  Emma is standing on the couch screaming like I'm hurting her.  (We're working on this one...sigh)   Of course, this has it's drawbacks.  My neat little piles of dirt are often swiffered away all over the floor, and I have to summon a lot of patience in order to not scream and throw a fit.  After all, they're never too young to encourage cleaning right??? I'm really hoping to have a neat teenager some day. (Go ahead and laugh at me, I deserve it)

Method Three:  Food, food and more food.  And this one only works if she is buckled into her booster seat.  And if this happens to be mealtime then it does mean that I have chosen to clean over making myself any sort of good lunch, and will probably have to settle for either waiting for her afternoon nap or snacking on whatever I can grab while she's not looking.  Am I the only one who can't eat in front of her children without having to either share or endure full out tantrums in front of the refrigerator?

(this picture is from July of last year, so cute!)

And that's pretty much all I've got. Those are all the tricks.  And now you can see why my apartment isn't always as clean as it should be.  So how and when do you manage to get your cleaning done?  Let me know if I'm missing out on some good tricks!

Fire!

This was taken from my front window at 10:45 last night when my neighbor's garage became engulfed in flames! Scary right?  Adam and I had just gone to sleep when I was awakened by shouts of "GET THEM OUT OF THERE! GET EVERYBODY OUT!"  My first thought was one of anger since we are often awakened by angry drunken shouting (we live right down the street from a bar)  But when I went to my front window to see what the shouting was about, that is what I saw! And since we live really close to the fire and ambulance dispatch stations there were like four firetrucks and two ambulances as well as a volunteer fire-fighting group.  The fire appeared to be done within ten minutes, but then when we thought it was out, it blazed up again! Luckily, they had the fire completely out within 15-20 minutes.  Nobody was hurt, although the garage and a car were completely destroyed. And according to the news they still haven't figured out what caused the fire to start in the first place. 

  But I know that I will sleep a little sounder tonight knowing how quickly everyone responded to my neighbor's distress!  It's  nice to know we're in competant hands here.  And thank you Lord that everyone made it out unscathed.  It's a densely populated area with lots of multi-family houses and young families.  This could have been so much worse!  That's enough excitement for the week thank you!

Oh and also, Emma slept through the whole thing! And her bedroom window (which faces the steeet) was wide open! How is that even possible that she could sleep through that but wake up if I creep open her door to check on her?

Creepy Parade Souvenir

Is it just me, or is this thing Bates Motel creepy? I fell asleep on the couch the other night and found this floating close to my face when I woke up.  I almost peed my pants, I kid you not.

Also, just so you know we are not the kind of parents who would pay $12 to own this grossly oversized thing.  We are the kind of parents who cheer when the vendor goes by and this gets stuck in a tree.  And then I am the kind of mother who sits by and watches while her super kind neighbors repeatedly try to get it out of the tree, and thank them profusely when they present it to their little peanut.  (who of course doesn't get excited at all, even though she screams ELMO every other time she sees him on anything)

And now we're both a little scared of it... so it lurks in our living room and not her bedroom because I think it would be child abuse to send her to bed with this thing.

ps. I had six followers as of yesterday afternoon and now I have 15!  Does that make me seem more legit? I do feel a little bit of pressure to write better now that I am subjecting more people to my rumblings (a mix of ranting and mumbling?)  But then of course the first post I come up with is this dribble about a creepy balloon.... do you guys still even want to be my friend?  I hope so :)

Tuesday Tag Along

So I'm relatively new to all this, but I'm hoping that it works properly and I get to meet some new friends!

Here's how it's supposed to work:

Create a new Tuesday Tag-Along blog post. Include the Tuesday Tag-Along button by copying and pasting the code above.

Add your blog name and the URL of your TTA post to the MckLinky below.
Follow Twee Poppets, the hostess blog listed in the first slot. Twee Poppets will follow you back! (Note: If you want Twee Poppets to follow you back, you MUST leave her a comment saying that you are a new follower and leave a link to your blog!)

If you can, please follow the blogs in the three slots before you (e.g., if you're number 20, follow numbers 19, 18, and 17). This is not mandatory, but it will help ensure that everyone who signs up gets a few new followers!

Follow as many other blogs as you want. The more you follow, the more that will follow you back! Be sure to tell them that you're following from Tuesday Tag-Along! You may also want to leave a link to your blog so they can return your follow more easily.

When you get a new follower through Tuesday Tag-Along, be sure to follow them back! It's just common courtesy. :)

Young Love

This is Emma's boyfriend. His name is "nonah" (known to the rest of the world as Jonah) Emma is obsessed smitten with him. She talks about him all day long and is constantly running to the door to see if he's there. He has in the past been known to grope her innapropriately (a LOT) , but since he's only two, we'll forgive that temporarily. If this is still a problem in a few years, he will have two sets of very angry dads to contend with. But in his defense, Emma has been stealing his pacifiers and toys since she could crawl. Also sometimes she plays coy and totally ignores his smooth "moves". But not yesterday. Yesterday she was totally into it!

Isn't he dreamy?