We’ve been busy here at Casa McLaughlin. Must be the spring weather making us buzz about like bees with things to do and places to go. Has the urge to spring clean hit you yet? I’m beginning to look around and notice the dirt and clutter more and more every day. Poor Kevin. I forsee lots of furniture rearranging in his future. Hee hee.

Anyway, I finally finished up two more identical skirts for the girls. Remember the twirly skirts? Here are their cousins, the button skirts. I cut the fabric a good two months ago and it languished about on my craft table. It was moved and buried and pushed around most rudely until I finally decided to sit down and finish it off. Just like the twirly skirt, it was a snap to sew up and I’m so pleased with the results. Leina? Not so much. She has decided she will “most definately not ever” wear her skirt and threw a fit when I dared to hang the offensive article in her closet. Kulia, of course, decided to take the exact opposite reaction and loves hers. Don’t worry, I fill force Leina’s unwilling body into her skirt if it kills me. I’m seriously thinking I need to start sewing for myself because trying to guess the reaction of a very extremely tempermental 4 year old is wearing me out.

Anyhow, I am not the only one creating. My girls are both crafty chicas extreme. They love paint. I’m not so hot on them painting. We compromise with dot paints. Who ever came up with dot paints should be awarded some sort of mommy nobel peace prize. All the fun of paints without the horror. So here they are, my crafty chicks.

This snail caused them to go into fits of laughter. Why? Because they thought the snail’s tail was poop. Snail poop! Could anything be funnier? Um, yeah. I’m so not looking forward to the whole “poop humor” phase but it seems we are there. Sigh. I can only hope it passes very quickly. Of course, I understand after poop humor comes fart humor. Things to look forward to. Lucky me!

Yesterday everything that has been circling around us decided to collide. At one. It was crazy.

A few days ago, the frame on our sofa broke.

A few days ago, Kevin wrote a check on an account we had closed to Costco.

A few days ago, I noticed Artie had a tooth that looked wrong.

A few days ago, Kevin ordered a new video card for our computer.

And then, yesterday, all of the above were fixed and/or updated. It was a wild ride that went something like this.

Woke up and took Artie to the vet for an 8am exam. He tried to eat everyone he saw even though he was muzzled. Unsurprisingly, the vet didn’t really want to try and open his mouth to take a peek at his teeth. I do not blame her. Artie really does not like strangers prying around his mouth and he has very large and mean looking teeth. So they decided to sedate him and take a look. 20 minutes later I learned that he had two shattered teeth. Poor thing. Image the pain of two shattered teeth! The vet said there was no emanel and she could poke right into the nerve. Yikes.

So I left Artie there for some emergency dentestry and headed home. Kev took off for work after dropping Leina at school. This meant I had to pick up Artie myself. Well, myself and Kulia. Imagine, if you will, the joys of trying to get a very drugged out dog and a two year old across a parking lot and into a car. It was not fun. Threw Artie at home, picked up Leina from school, ran home for lunch where I got a call from Costco saying our check was returned and we needed to try again. Yeah, decided to leave that mess for Kevin. Also found out that our broken sofa was still under warranty. Yippee! New sofa section is on it’s way. Also arrived in the mail, the new video card which Kevin kindly installed so now I can play my computer games without a lot of awful lag. Another yippee. But by the time we crawled into bed, we were wiped. All the odds and ends we were trying to track all week landed at our feet yesterday.

The up side, of course, is that our to do list is strangely empty. Which is good because this weekend is my big coast vacation with Kat. So I can leave worry behind me. Thank goodness.

Oh yes, and Artie? He looks a bit like a hobo with two missing front teeth but he appears to have fully recovered. At I write, his is curled up gnawing a bone quite happily. I can ony imagine he’s relieved we finally notice that fact that his teeth were killing him. Poor old man.

Here she is, with her own very important message for you.

Be nice.

We are back and finally unpacked.

I have spent the last few days totally glued to the computer because some how I found myself with 264 blog posts to read. 264! How long was I gone people?!?! So I have been reading and clicking and reading and clicking but I am finally caught up.

Phew.

That’s the problem with the Internet. Everything is so connected. So one site leads to another, leads to another, and before you know it, it’s 6:30 and the kids are starving and your house has been ravished and your husband has just walked in the door and is looking at the chaos with wides eyes that clearly say “what on earth have you been DOING all day” and some very wise part of your brains warns you not to answer that question because hearing that you surfed the Internet for, like, 8 hours straight will not ease his mind in the least.

So, yeah, I’m back and caught up. Just in time for the weekend. Yippee!

All is good in Rascal land.

Kulia woak up at 7:30 this morning so I was barely up myself. A little less snuggling and a lot more feeding and we were on our way. One quick story to relate: I was hittin’ the shower after breakfast, Kulia was playing by herself and I asked her to come up stairs to the craft room while I cleaned up. She said,

I count yesterday as “day 1” with Kulia (aka The Rascal) ’cause I was technically alone with her from noon on – and that’s more than enough time.

Day 1 re-cap:

We went out to lunch with Papa-Mac and she gave him her Rascal look the whole time, when not smacking down the Mac-and-Cheese. Then she came home and take a 3 hour nap. We finished off the day with an Artie walk in which she rode in the stroller and yelled, “faster, faster!” whenever we went down a hill.

Day 2:

She slept in until 8am. My body couldn’t handle the extra sleeping time and I woke up at 7:15 (the Leina wake up time). I finally had to get up and eat at 7:30am. I’ll try and stay up extra tonight to enjoy the sleeping in more.

We snuggled all morning in bed watching cartoons 🙂 After 4 shows (her Daily allowance of TV) she finally asked if we could go play. For those of you interested there is a limit to her TV desires. I would have bet it was at least 8 shows. There’s some hope for her yet.

We played Batman and Baby Robin, hide and seek, then puzzles, puzzles, puzzles. She’s slowly figuring out how to turn the pieces to get them to “click” into place. She gets so excited when she does I just kept going and going and going with them.

Then we went shopping. My first single parent mistake. Instead of filling her with the required 10am snack I figured we’d just stop by the donut shop while we were out and about. Not a good decision. She was a terror by the time we got there and scarffed 3/4 of her donut and wanted another one. I didn’t want to put anymore sugar in her than necessary but if she was that hungry I figured we’d better get something more nutritious from the car. When I told her the donuts were all done and we’d go to the car for some more Tantrum child went into full meltdown. Ah, there’s nothing like a screaming child in a small store. The joy of parenting. Luckily she’s still small and I could pick her up without much fuss. By the time we walked around the block to the car my arm was getting very sore but she’d calmed down. I got some raisins and fishes into her and she was much better. Regardless we weren’t doing the Costco trip after that. It was home and some quiet time.

Lunch was easy – she didn’t eat much wonder why? But we did another Artie walk afterwards ’cause the pooch won’t get one tonight. She went down quietly but slowly and is in hour 2.5 of the nap and starting to rustle up.

Manny is sick so dinner was cancelled. It;ll be lasagna again for me – the 3rd meal in a row. Many thanks to my prescient wife for cooking me a delicious one before she left! We’re going to do a post-dinner Safeway run ’cause Costco was pushed off until tomorrow. You may ask why I really need to go to Costco and that’s because we’re down to our last 1/4 bag of nuggets. At this rate Kulia won’t have anything to eat on Monday. And I don’t want Tantrum Child II to appear. Wish me luck.