Catching Up

You may have been wondering what is going on around our house that has caused the longest break in the history of this blog. All I can say is that "nothing" keeps me busy a lot. We are all settling into the Preschool routine. I have assumed the responsibilities of the room parent. Being a first time preschool parent I volunteered when no one else offered. I figured I have the time so why not. My volunteering came with a round of applause from the other mothers in the class. That should have been my first clue that maybe there was a reason no one else wanted the job. Just call me a social coordinator of the 4 year old kind.

Enough about me. I know this blog is mainly read for the Elaine and Charlotte stories. So here we go.


The girls have been sharing a room for almost 2 months now. Originally they were both sharing a queen sized bed but after some very long nights of both girls waking each other up because of the close proximity we traded our queen for a twin with my sister Emily. Elaine is still mad about it. Probably once a week she says to me "Mom, it is not nice to take other peoples beds." At first I totally agreed with her about that fact until my agreeing led to the question "then why did Aunt Emily take my bed?" I have now modified the response to "sometimes it is ok."

Bed time goes something like this:

• both girls in their beds (Elaine twin, Charlotte toddler bed) around 7PM with blankets and whatever else they need.
• 7:15Pm Charlotte opens the door and peeks out needing a drink refill. She only opens the door enough to slip out her bottle. When it is refilled you hand it back through the small opening.
  
• 7:20PM she comes out of the room because she needs to give Daddy a kiss. She has her bottle and blanket with her and declares "Up" meaning she will now be going upstairs to our bed to fall asleep.
  
• Elaine in the mean time is snoring because she takes about 3 minutes to pass out once she is on her bed.

The middle of the night is not much better but has improved. We went through a two week period that was reminiscent of having a newborn were one little girl or the other was up every hour or two all night long. This was a good reminder of why we are not having any more children. I couldn't take it. We ended up making a little bed on the floor at the end of our bed for whoever wanderes up. At this point Charlotte just goes right to the little bed in the middle of the night instead of waking me by climbing up into my bed. I only know she is in our room because she immediately starts calling for a drink the second she feels settled on the floor.

We still love cousin Asher. Charlotte sees pictures of him and demands to hold him. She calls him "E" for whatever reason. She asks for "Owey" (Emily) and "E" all the time. She has been known to let other people hold him but only grudgingly.





We are done with the pool. It is fall after all and the high right now is only the mid 80's. This is how Charlotte spent her summer swimming. She just floated around the pool in her Dora floaty and life was good.

When Charlotte is in baby withdrawal Elaine steps in to help.


At our house there is a new found love for riding toys. Interestingly enough, the girls get bored if you actually put the money in so we just pretend.





We have finally reached the "my sister is fun" stage and they play together very well. It is fun to listen and watch them interact. One of my favorite things is looking in the rear view mirror while I am driving and seeing them hold hands across the car seats. It makes up for all the fighting and yelling that always seems to happen while I am on the phone.

I am now full on in my 30's as I celebrated my 31st birthday. I occasionally find a gray hair that backs up the fact that I am getting older. My birthday weekend was not the best ever because the stomach flu took its toll on each member of our little family. The girls and I were healthy enough to have cake at Emily and Enoch's house. Rob on the other hand was not so lucky.