Tough Princess

 Paige has recently decided that she's a princess. In spite of dressing up in her tutu daily though, she still insists on wearing her favorite dump truck or steam shovel jammies. Which she wears while watching Tinkerbell and putting on pretty chapstick.

Yup. Tough like Daddy. I promise she's really smiling in this picture.

 Or she'll carefully mother her little baby while watching pirates and octonauts.

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We like to think that she's well-rounded. Mostly though, she's just silly.

New Stuffs!

It's been a quiet week on this side of the country. For the most part, we're doing expensive and stressful, but boring things like registering our car and filling out leasing agreements.

Grandma Tucker took me shopping for my birthday and I got some new jeans and a pair of Chacos!

I suddenly feel like a cool kid.
Speaking of cool kids, this one got some new shoes too! She was cooking up a storm tonight. We're eating pretty well lately, though we might want to check if the steak and eggs are BPA free.

 She's stylish too! I'm rarely allowed to pick out her clothes for her anymore. 

 And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and the children are all above average. Have a good week everybody!

Gone Fishin'

For Labor Day, Grandpa took us fishing at Piney Run!

When Paige wasn't playing on the slides near the shore, she had fun looking at Grandpa's lures. Especially the worms.

 
For a while we thought that we weren't going to catch anything, but after leaving his pole in the water for a minute to go play with Paige, Jeff proudly stated that he'd caught the first fish. Gutsy little guy too, going after a lure almost as big as himself.

I was lucky enough to claim the second fish of the night. The first fish I've baited, cast and reeled in all by myself! I'll teach him to run off with all my bait.

Paige said it was a talking fish, so we put it back in hopes of getting a wish. We're still waiting to hear back...
We didn't end up with anything to take home for dinner, but it sure made for a fun day! Thanks, Grandpa!

Give a Mouse a Cookie

If you let Rebecca make mushroom lasagna for dinner, she'll want chocolate ice cream for dessert.

Since there's no chocolate ice cream in the house, she'll want to make her own, and eventually settle on a recipe for chocolate ice cream with brownie bits.

After making the brownies, she'll realize that ice cream only uses egg yolks, so she'll want to make some macaroons to use up the whites. 

Of course, cooking is no fun if you don't get to sample everything along the way, and by the time she's done with all three desserts that she's impulsively made at 10'o'clock at night, she'll probably have a stomach ache. And a whole mess of dishes (for second time that day). 

Doing all those dishes will make Rebecca super tired, so she'll sleep in the next morning.

Sleeping in will make her soo hungry that she won't want to take the time to figure out a proper breakfast, so she'll probably eat cookies and brownies.

Which will give her stomach ache. And make her fat.

And that, children, is why Rebecca should never be allowed to cook after seven.

Digs

After looking at over a dozen different apartments, we've finally settled on this one:

Yup! We're staying at Grandma and Grandpa's! Well, at least for month or two until an affordable place at one of the places we like opens up. For now, this is home sweet home. You can tell Paige is really bummed.

Mom asked me if Jeff and I had a song, so I had her listen to the song Jeff learned to play and sang to me when we were engaged. Paige gussied up and made us all dance to it. Perfect little anniversary moment.

Damage Control

It's raining in Maryland. Grandpa and Grandma's house has a lot of Very Nice Things. We spend a lot of time telling Paige 'No.' She's not thrilled.

Up until now, Paige has been sleeping in a crib, but since we've been here, she's been sleeping in Tuck Tuck's bed (with Phillip, La La, Clifford, and Elmo). Because it's only been a couple days that she's been sleeping without bars, I didn't necessarily expect to walk in on her Friday, having smeared an entire tube of Desitin all over the bed and herself. Ironically, none of it got into her diaper, because she couldn't get her pants off, and that's what she was crying about when I came in.

By some miracle, the carpet was also spared, but it still took us well over an hour to get everything cleaned up. We've run the sheets through the washer three times though, and they still smell like bum cream.

Now, the next part is my own fault. For some reason I decided that we needed to top things off by giving Paige a haircut right before bed. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, having had a long day of being scrubbed and rebuked and punished, she was in a right mood. She sat very patiently in the chair while I got her all ready, but as soon as I started cutting, I may as well have been giving a haircut to bobblehead on a dirt road. What was going to be a quick trim became shorter and shorter as I tried to fix botched clips without spearing my thrashing baby. Jeff finally called a halt to the madness and sent us both to our rooms.

After a good night's sleep, we looked over the situation yesterday and each took a turn trying to patch things up. Four packs of fruit snacks and an episode of Spongebob later, here's what we got: it's short, and definitely not ideal, but it'll do till it grows back out. Sheesh.

Off the Road

Well folks, we're safely at Grandma and Grandpa Tuckers'! Here's some of what we learned along the way:

1. Always drive with Benadryl, towels, Fabreeze and a bucket. And, gas station sponge baths are not the end of the world, or a trip. Life goes on.

2. Always bring stickers. When she wasn't queasy, Paige was pretty happy, but a sticker book that can entertain her for 3 hours is always a plus. (I think there's a baby back there!)

3. While the super cheap motels are livable, paying an extra $20 to forgo the funny smells and sticky floors is probably worth it.

4. Des Moines is really pretty. West Virginia is gorgeous.Wow.

5. These two are my favorite travel companions ever.

6. I'm okay with not eating beef jerky or powerade for a while. Yes, I am.