Lucy's 5th Birthday - 9.19.2010

Lucy celebrated her birthday with an out of town friend on Friday evening at American Girl doll store.  In the past, Lucy didn't know you could BUY things from the store, she thought it was just a place to LOOK.  Sorta like a museum.  Go ahead moms, take that nibblet of genius for your children who have not yet been corrupted by The Consumerism.  We blew the top off that old theory and bought a brother (Freddy) for his twin sister Sally, (who has been featured here in the past completely covered from head to toe with scotch tape) and a husky with a dogsled.  And that decision was completely unprompted.  No words like, 'look Lucy a DOGSLED'.  I really don't even know if she remembers I used to instruct dogsledding courses for Outward Bound - could care less, I'm sure.  She had been eyeing it in the catalog, drooling over the thought.  So dogsled it was.  Lucy loves dolls and dogs, so this was a perfect marriage.  I never really played with dolls as a child, much to my mothers frustration.  This love of all things doll related jumped from my mom, over me, right into Lucy.   

Happy 5th Birthday Lucy Marlow!

First Day of Preschool, 2010

The kids started preschool on Tuesday.  Eli will go two mornings a week, and Lucy will be in pre-K 5 mornings a week.  People have been asking what I am going to do with ALL that time...all 6 hours a week without a child.  The list, it is really endless.  But mostly, I will try and get on the workout wagon again.
Lucy has really grown up so much this summer.  She rocked her first day of school and took it in stride.  Eli is growing into a big, loud, opinionated and fast 2 year old.  I sat with him for an hour on his first day (this is the way they do it), and I leave him for an hour on Thursday.  The following week, we will be on a full regular schedule. 

First of Many

Lucy turns five in two weeks.  This was her first cake, of many, over the next several weeks.  Her best friend will be out of town on her big day, so they invited us over for an early celebration.

A Series of (non fatal) Events

Oh, hi there!  Sorry I've been neglecting all of you faithful readers. I don't know what I've been doing, but surely it was important.

Recently, I made a few questionable parental decisions, that culminated in this:

Eli perched on the top of Lucy's armoire eating gumballs

I started giving Lucy stars for good behavior and when she collects 5 stars she earns a quarter.  I've been using this obvious bribe to not only get her to do what I want her to do, but to also teach her about money.  She collected $1 and was excited to go and spend her dollar in the dollar section of Target.  She looked for a long time.  This girl needs TIME to make decisions, and finally settled on a box of gumballs.  Normally, I would not let her buy this type of thing, but it took so long for her to make this decision in the first place, I just wanted to get out of that store.  Next, she decided she was going to store these well earned gumballs in her room.  Again, normally, I would fight her to the death on this, but for some reason, I let it go.  It took all of about a half of a day for Eli to discover this new pile of sugar, which led Lucy to put them on top of her armoire, out of Eli's reach.  Lastly, Eli was quiet for more than 2 seconds, upon which time I discovered him shoving colorful balls of gum into his mouth.  Now, how did he get up there?