And Then We Moved Into The Bathroom

When we last left our heroes, the noble Paige triumphantly mounted the porcelain throne of running waters and embarked on her lifelong quest of maintaining a dry derriere. Such an enterprise is not lightly undertaken, however, and we have therefore cultivated somewhat of a residence in the lavatory.


Whilst pursuing our course, we were joined by the honorable bear Winnie surnamed Pooh. Here, both verturers are happily arrayed in their questing raiment.


In keeping with their friendship, the companions have come to each other's aid in the direst of circumstances, and therefore honorable bear has successfully preserved his vestment! The fair Paige has been less successful. But we shall persevere!...once her panties are finished being washed.

Unexpected Leap (aka Paige's Crappy Day)

We are not currently potty training Paige. We weren't really planning on it until we were finished moving and settled this fall. But Paige has decided over the last month or two that she doesn't like pooping, and will hold it in until she absolutely can't anymore. It's been an uncomfortable experience for her and anyone else around.

She'd reached maximum capacity this morning and was having to stop every 5-10 minutes to clench and cry. With both of us already miserable, I plopped her on the toilet for a change of scene. And it worked! She pooped! In the toilet!

I'm way more excited than she is. I gave her a big hug and kiss, telling her what a good, big girl thing she did. She just cried and asked for a diaper. She wasn't super happy until she got a bunch of candy and we called a bunch of people to celebrate...Thank you, everyone I called, for pretending to be enthusiastic about my daughter's bowel movement.

This Just In!

Okay, so this would have been posted last week, except for the fact that we all got sick the day after Valentines and are just getting over it. Being sick is the pits, though it's sure better when your bunk-mates are these guys:

When you get lots of snuggles:

And when the little one is content to just color and watch 'shows' all day:


Backtracking a little though, Paige recently learned the word 'cookie', so for Valentines Day, we decided to make sugar cookies.

Tayva and Calvin then came over to help us decorate the few cookies that actually made it past the sly fingers of my little helper and into the oven. It made for a fun afternoon.


Finally, in case you missed our formal announcement:

Badly-Captured Moments

Perhaps it's just been too long since either of us have handled a camera, but Jeff and I are not in a picture-taking groove at all. Our new camera came the other day and we've only taken about six pictures with it, and most of them are off-par for one reason or another. All the same, here they are:


They say that children learn different things when they're with their father that they don't learn from their mom. This is what I woke up to yesterday morning...

This, on the other hand, she might have gotten from me, along with the sympathetic crying she did when Gabe fell off and conked his head.

Finally, winter actually arrived today. As pretty as it is, there are crocuses starting to come up in the front yard, so it better leave again soon. Humph.

Still No Camera

Sorry for the lack of pictures. We're working on it though, and hopefully it won't be too much longer. Till then, here's the week's highlights:

I'd been having a rough day with Paige not eating much, and I guess it was starting to rub off on her: when she spilled a handful of craisins on the floor, she dropped to her knees, sighed, and said, "Oh, Paige! No!"

Paige and I were in Walmart the other day. I pulled out a shirt and asked her if she thought it was cute. She locked eyes with me and very seriously responded, "No." She said that about pretty much everything else I showed her too. I thought she was just in a contrary mood, but as we passed the Valentines day stuff, she said, "Pretty! I like it!" Apparently, I just have bad taste.

I threw away one of my two pairs of England shoes yesterday. Both shoes were leaking water, there was a 1-inch hole in one of the toes, and I'd superglued the heels back on to keep them from flapping. It was time. Luckily, I found some red patent flats to replace them. I'm pretty excited.

Speaking of shoes, Paige got some baby flip-flops from Old Navy this week too (they were on sale). She wants to wear them everywhere. Morphing into my own parents, I tell her No, she has to wear real shoes in the snow or her feet will freeze. Sheesh, kids these days.

A friend of mine had her second baby boy a little over a week ago. I took Paige over for a playdate with Taylor, who is just younger than Paige, and I got to hold new little Zachary. It made me realize how much of a baby Paige isn't anymore. She walks, talks, dances, makes jokes, plays games, and has opinions. *sniff sniff* My baby is growing up.

Wow. Sorry for being so sappy. We now return you to your non-maternal programming...

We made mozzarella cheese yesterday! It's been our to-make list for a while, and I got Jeff all the materials for Christmas, so we set up the kitchen and made it happen. It turned out really well! We have not quite 2 pounds of cheese in our fridge, and tonight we're making margarita pizzas. Mmmmm.

Um... I think that's it from our little corner. Happy Sunday!

Blast from the Past

One of the effects of living in London, where there is so so much history, was that Jeff and I had a running conversation about all the people who had lived in where we lived, shopped where we shopped, and saw everything we saw on a daily basis. Sometimes we'd imagine us living in that time period--sidestepping horses in the street, lighting coal in our fireplace, worrying through world wars, getting electricity installed, watching Princess Di's story unfold--it was a fun game.

The conversation had lulled since we'd been Stateside, but it came up again tonight as I was browsing web images of London and happened to come up on some photos from the 1940s. This one struck a peculiar cord.


It was the shop sign that caught me originally: 266 Ashley Trunk Store. Our flat address was 262, and was right next to Ashley Mansions.



The clincher though, is the windows. I know the view of those windows from both sides. The only difference is that the 1940's photo windows are flat 14's (far left middle in the modern photo) and we lived in flat 10 (far right middle in the modern). But the windows are the same. And I suddenly feel like the house next door got bombed.

The after-bath

There was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead,
and when she was good,
she was very very good,
but when she was bad,
she was horrid.



Things are pretty quiet over here...if you couldn't already tell.