Just a whole lot of randoms

We have friends coming to stay with us starting tomorrow night and we've been running around getting the house ready and still have a few more things to do, so this post will just be a bunch of random thoughts.

• Whenever Stasa watches any Disney princess movies she has to dress up as that princess. It gets really entertaining when we're watching the Disney princess sing-a-long DVD because she goes through so many costume changes at warp speed. A friend on Facebook made a comment that she doesn't just let life go by, that she participates. That statement is so spot on. Stasa wants to be a part of everything and I think that's part of why she's a bedtime rebel. She doesn't want to miss out on the fun.

• Stasa and I both got stung by a hornet this past weekend. We were packing up our stuff to leave the pool and Stasa shrieked and grabbed her hand. Now, she's a pretty good fake crier, but this was a real cry. Initially I had no idea what hurt her, although she said a bee bit her. As we were comforting her, the little hornet flew up and stung my ankle and OH MY GOD it hurt. Poor Stasa. And she got stung twice - once on the top of her hand and once on her finger tip. It's been years since I've been stung and I kind of forgot how much it stings. Stas was lecturing the "bee" during the ride home and kept saying "That's not nice! I'm not the bee's friend!" Tom looked at me and said "Well, I guess we know she's not allergic now." We were both afraid of that because you never know. Thank god it was at the pool where they have emergency kits. And this is exactly why I hate things with stingers. Stupid bugs.
• I am still amazed at how much Stasa resembles me. Is that conceited? Maybe and I don't even care. She is my mini-me and it makes me so happy. The other day I went in to rouse her from her long afternoon nap and stopped short when I saw her. The way her face was resting she looked just like my mom. Every now and then I see it and I think it's the placement of her eyes and the way her mouth settles when she's thinking. And that's the biggest reason I'm so happy she resembles me because I really look like my mom and it's my mom's memory living through us. I love it. When I was about 12 or 13 years old I was visiting Garu, my mom's mom, and was surprised to see a new black and white photo of me in her room. I didn't remember taking that picture, but was pretty sure it was me. Garu laughed at me and told me it was my mom at my age. We looked nearly identical. Who knows. Maybe one day Stasa will make the same mistake I did when she sees pictures of me. 

• We're trying to sell a couple of our strollers. Right now we have five different strollers, which seems insane. Before you judge me, let me explain. We initially had the Graco travel system, but got rid of that stroller as fast as humanly possible. I hated that thing - it was bulky, heavy, and inconvenient. I traded it in for 20% off at Babies R Us and replaced it with the snap-n-go. Before that we also purchased a lightweight umbrella stroller since Stasa had outgrown the infant seat. We loooooooooove our umbrella stroller. It takes up almost no space, is light, and perfect for going just about anywhere except walks through the neighborhood. Since we enjoy taking long walks, we bought a single jogger. We both love it and have put many miles on that sucker. And then along came Lexi. I had visions of long neighborhood walks with both girls so I started the hunt for the perfect double stroller. Unfortunately I had champagne taste and a beer budget. I ended up getting a double version of our single jogger. It's heavy. And large. And heavy. And Lexi haaaaaaaaaaaaated it. She hated all strollers. So we used it only a handful of times and I ended up using baby carriers whenever we went out somewhere. Once Lexi started getting too heavy for the carriers, I started the hunt again. This time I hit the jackpot on Craigslist and found my dream stroller for nearly half the original cost. DONE. Both girls love it and we love it. It's lightweight, compact, and still has plenty of room for both girls and a diaper bag. And now we have five strollers. LOL Excessive, right? Agreed. We're selling the single and double joggers for about half the cost we paid for them. 
• I love having the kids so close in age. I love watching them play together and hope that they're always close. I hate that daycare costs so much. I hate that because of those costs we have to carefully plan when we will have our next baby. For now I'll just keep soaking in all of the fun we have with these two. They have the best giggles and are both so loving. If Lexi's upset Stasa will give her one of her own toys to cheer her up. And while little Lexi is in a hitting phase - hitting us and Stasa - she also feels bad after hitting Stasa and will give her a hug and kiss. And when Stasa's in timeout, we have to do everything we can to keep Lexi from sitting with her. She has to be wherever her big sister is, including timeout. 

When I don't sleep, my thoughts are a bit scattered

Some outfits of the day:



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We carved pumpkins this week.




Tom's:


Mine:


Stasa's:


Lexi's:



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I made the Halloween skirt Stas is wearing in that third OOTD:

I have a few other fabrics to make more skirts, but I might try a different pattern. I'm undecided if I'll make the others as long - I do like the idea that she might be able to wear it again next year. I used this pattern for the Halloween skirt and while it was pretty easy, it was late at night when I was sewing and I kept making stupid errors. 

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Little Lexi is teething and driving me batty with her gnawing and drooling and sleep-striking. Look at the bags under her eyes - she's GOT to be exhausted, right? I know I am.

It's a random kinda week

First of all, look how cute she is:


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Conversations with Stasa:
"Where the fwuar-wals go, mommy? Fwuar-wals go night night in the 'rees?"

"Daddy, I got you a birthday party in the cah. No look, daddy!"

"Old MacDonald had a farm and Bingo was his name-o E-I-E-I-O yay!"

Me: Who likes bananas?
Stasa: ME!
Me: Who likes apples?
Stasa: ME!
Me: Who likes Lexi?
Stasa: ME!
Me: Who likes Yo Gabba Gabba?
Stasa: I cry. I cry at Gabba Gabba. It was dark out and I cry.

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Guess who has TWO tooth buds?


Yeah, she's chewing on everything now and drooling all over the place. It's so funny how different she is from Stasa. I get Lexi ready in the morning and feed her and then put her in the playroom and she'll happily play by herself while I rouse Stasa. It's fantastic. Of course if we take too long, she'll scootch her little butt into Stasa's room to see Big Sister.


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We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday and played outside for a bit before coming in for dinner. Stasa loves kicking the ball around with Tom. Can you tell?

Tom had also managed to cut the grass before we got home and Stasa had way too much fun rolling around in the freshly mowed lawn. Needless to say, it was definitely a bath night after that (plus, remember how itchy you'd get after rolling around in the grass?).

Throwing it all out there

I had a massive headache most of the day and decided to rest on the couch while Tom made dinner. Lexi was hanging out in the kitchen with Tom (or at least I think that's where she was because she wasn't in the living room with me and I was too tired to get up to check). So as I'm laying on the couch, dying, there's Stasa chugging along on her Little People car thing - through the living room, into the kitchen, past the dining table, and back into the living room. And she's singing. At first I wasn't sure what she was saying, but as she made her next pass through the room I picked up a few lines and realized she's singing this. The kid picks up all sorts of songs now.

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The other day I was picking the girls up from daycare and there was another mom walking out with her baby as I was walking into Stasa's room. Stasa ran up to her, crying hysterically, and yelling "my Lexi! my baby!"- convinced that this woman was stealing her baby sister. I couldn't apologize enough to this poor woman, who very nicely stopped to let Stasa see that she wasn't taking Lexi and that her baby, little Elizabeth, was her own. I finally convinced Stasa to go to Lexi's room so I could prove that this lady didn't steal her sister. And of course, they were changing Lexi so Stas didn't see her right away and she freaked out all over again.

Who knew she was so attached to her baby sister? And Baby Sister loves Big Sister. Like seriously. Love. She lights up when Stasa walks in the room. Quiets down when Stasa talks to her or plays with her or does tummy time with her. She's always smiling that big gummy grin at her.



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Stasa still loves dressing up as a pretty pretty princess. She's always coming down from her playroom with some sort of princess outfit on. This pretty pretty princess likes to read.

And eat.

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*Someone* has discovered her feet. 'Nuf said.

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I had a *brilliant* idea the other night. Earlier in the week I had gone through this month's copy of Parents magazine and ripped out pages with things I wanted to try and one of the pages had a recipe for homemade ectoplasm (aka slime). I knew we had made this when I was working at University View, but couldn't for the life of me remember how. I wanted to slap myself when I saw the recipe because, my God, it couldn't be more simple. Corn starch and water. Plus a tad of food coloring. 

Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime

I'm too brain dead to make a coherent post or too lazy or whatever

Time-outs have become a joke around here and we're at a loss at what to do about it. Here's what happened yesterday: Stasa hit Tom out of frustration and he put her on the step for a 2 minute time-out. She gets up the minute he turns his back and she's SMILING and LAUGHING. He sits her back down and tells her she's in time-out. She keeps laughing. He tells her "daddy's upset" and she says "daddy sad?" Then she gets up and tries kissing him and says "daddy happy now?"As if a kiss will get her out of time-out. It's like a big joke to her and it's insanely frustrating to us.
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Stasa's vocabulary amazes me these days. She'll bust out with something and I think "when the hell did she start saying THAT?!" And I love love love how she pronounces certain words and I don't care that it's wrong. Everyone should say chocolate "shoclate". It makes it sound special. And she's so observant. Now when we get in the car she instructs everyone to buckle up and won't stop harping on me until I actually buckle my seat belt.
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I think Lexi is starting to give us some real smiles and I love each and every one of them.

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I've been writing a lot about our lack of sleep. I was fully prepared to wake up in the middle of the night with Lexi, but I didn't expect my great sleeper to start waking up, too. And as I've said before it's so easy to get an infant to fall back asleep (or at least our infant) - I feed her and she goes into a milk coma. Stasa's a bit more difficult and we've been giving in and either letting her sleep in our bed or we lay in her bed with her until she falls asleep and I think that's why she's still waking up every night. Tom and I keep saying that we need to just suck it up and put her back in her own bed alone, so that's exactly what I did last night when she woke up at 2:30. I sat outside of her room and kept putting her back in her bed and after about 10 minutes of crying she fell back asleep in her own bed. Alone. BIG GIRL. I'm going to do the same thing every night until she starts sleeping through the night again.
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And to round out the randomness, pictures from yesterday.
(When did she get so old?!)




Shifty-eyed Lexi doesn't trust anyone...