Big Girl

Riley Jane aka "Doodles" is seriously starting to scale the walls. A daring climber by nature, she is reaching to the tippy-top constantly and bringing me all things off limits. Yesterday during one of our rare "sit down lunches" together, she grabbed the salt shaker off the table. It's one we got with our everyday china from our wedding so it's quite special and hard to find now that it's discontinued. Need I finish the story? I asked her to put it down and she kindly replied, "No. I hold it." She dropped it on the tile. Let's just say...I was disappointed. Doodles was sent to time out and I spent the next half hour sweeping and vacuuming up shards of shaker. These are the times that every mom has encountered. It was such a small worldly thing, but due to pure exhaustion and brain overload, I was more than frustrated. Frustration inevitably led to guilt. Thus, the emotional-energy sucking continued. The funny part to all of this is that last night, Riley Jane put her 3X life-size Elmo in TO in the hallway. She said, "No! 2 minutes. Timeout." Then she pressed on to the laundry room to get the broom and sweep the kitchen. After sweeping, she put the broom back and told Elmo to "Come here." Then she sat in his lap. I was surprised to see how accurate (except for the lap sitting of course) her recall of the situation actually was. These babies are so impressionable. That reminds me how important my response is in situations like these. I don't think I overreacted after watching the reenactment.

Here's our favorite "BIG GUY!" as Riley likes to call him, trying to get some sleep. I swear this kid already has six-pack. He's so long and lean. Getting stronger everyday. His little personality is 1/2 charming/squealing with delight and 1/2 seriously ticked off in a "too cool for this, Mom" sort of way. Love him so much it hurts.

We met Adeline and Luke (!!!!) at Chick-fil-a today. Here are some pics of Ade and RJ trying out a cookie parfait sample. We could have done without the parfait part.

I've been thinking... (I know- again?!?!) ha ha... not funny. Riley will probably have to transition to a big girl room when we move again. So what's a girl to do? Redecorate! Here are some ideas I have... I've always loved the aqua + red combo. Any thoughts?