Just When You Thought the Pink Dress Was Gone

I know it to be factually true that some people have to actually buy toys for their children, but I don't know that I have bought many for my kids.  You see, my kids have two sets of grandparents that have access to a community thrift store.  Being young kids new toy smell and packaging hold next to now importance, so pretty much everything has been checked over by another kid and passed on.

One of the things there seem to be in abundance are pink, princess costumes.  Now, when I was first told I was going to have a daughter, I made a solemn promise that I would bring her up right.  I would have a punk rock kid with black dresses and purple hair.  What I wound up with is HRH whose favorite color is purple and thinks that pink unicorns are the best animal in the world.  I even offered to dye her hair purple for her, but she wouldn't hear of it.

So today there were tears shed on my part when her pink princess dress ripped beyond repair  So it should come as no surprise to anyone that when the postman delivered a box from grandmother, it contained a replacement pink princess dress that was at least 40% more pink than the one I had just tossed.  And it has a dunce cap apparently.



Ed wasn't completely left out of the package.  He got some jammies that would be much more fetching if he had chest hair.

Rewards and Compost

Pretty much the moment that Her Royal Highness (HRH) woke up this morning, she wanted to put on her princess costume which she picked off the clearance rack at the toy store yesterday. It isn't technically a princess costume, it is a princess superhero costume which is apparently even better because I think that means you can fly as well. We are trying to use this idea to further a point the dentist made yesterday about the correlation between thumb sucking and orthodontist bills.

Seriously, have you ever heard of a super hero that sucks their thumb?



While HRH was sleeping Ed came outside to help me rake up leaves to top off the compost pile. I am going to complain about something I never thought was a problem before this house; I don't have enough leaves that fall on the ground in the summer. You see, I need some dry, dead type vegetable matter for the compost bin and this time of year leaves are falling all over the place. Except in my yard. I'm wondering if the neighbors would mind if I rake their yard. Probably not.

First Trip to the Dentist

Today was a big day for Dana, here first trip to the dentist.  She has actually been asking to go "visit" the dentist for a number of months now thanks to a Dora book.  Dora has a wonderful time at the dentist and even gets a cavity fixed while she is there!  I realize that kids books aren't bound by reality, but no one is ever stoked after getting a filling, that is just wrong.  Dana is kind of, sort of good about doing something with a toothbrush every night, so we were hoping for no cavities.

We went out for lunch together at a real restaurant, which, you can see, featured high class cuisine AND chocolate milk.  I've found that you can bring toddlers and pre-schoolers into most restaurants, but you should be prepared to tip well.



After lunch we headed off to the dentists office, arriving early enough for Dana to fill out the paperwork.  Unfortunately this kid has no idea what her social security number is, so I wound up stuck with documentation.  When the oral hygienist came in I fessed up to not flossing her teeth, but I did point out that we let our kids pick out their own toothpaste.  You can see the preferred brand of my first born and she must really like the flavor as I caught her drinking it straight from the tube last night.



The good news was that there weren't any cavities and hopefully having the dentist tell her to brush and floss will be more acceptable then listening to mom and dad.  The best part is that she seemed to have been alright with the experience overall, especially since the dentist gives stickers and swag.

Rainy Day Adventure

We have been really fortunate with the weather this summer. Pretty much everyday has been dry and relatively comfortable, which insures plenty of time to take the kids outside and run them to the point where they are tolerable for the rest of the day. Unfortunately into every life a little rain must fall and while we live in a house large enough to let the kids burn off some energy eventually they need to go outside or I'm going to crack. After nap time we went off in search of adventures in the woods.




I had been promising the kids we would find a salamander/newt in the woods for a couple of weeks, but they are pretty tough to find when it hasn't rained for awhile.  However, after a few hours of a light rain, Eastern Newts are pretty easy to find in the woods if you look through the leaf litter around the edges of the woods.  We found this little guy pretty early on in our adventure.  All kids like lizards and they especially like orange lizards that pee on dad's hand.

The other thing that kids like are spider webs.  Right along the side of the trail is this great funnel web the kids always like to check out and with the light rain today the web was really beautiful.





We wandered through the woods for awhile longer and I've gotten really good at identifying the point to turn around so no one wants to get carried until we are right at the end of the walk and I can happily tell them to drag it along on their own.  After all, the point is to wear them out, not wear out dad.  They had the entire rest of the day to work on that task.

Running Around

When no one has a traditional job in the house, the weekends aren't really that much different than the rest of the week, yet they still kind of serve as a firebreak from the norma routine.  Sundays are almost always kind of a lazy day, just making it up as we go along.

The kids almost never nap at the same time and Ed normally has a couple of hours of time by himself.  Today he and I went wandering through the woods picking up acorns and sticks when we heard someone sneaking up behind us.  Dana had woken up and she and Mere were following our wagon tracks.  We decided to head home so the kids and I could go the playground to give mere a break.

The playground on Sunday afternoon is always a hit or miss affair, especially during football season.  Sometimes there are bunch of kids there with moms that are trying to hide from the football game, but the weather was chilly and overcast today so there were only a couple of kids.  While Dana was off playing with some random children, Ed found a truck at the sandbox and proceded to move some serious sand.

Continuing with the Halloween Decorations

Dana has been going on and on about the approach of Halloween.  We hung the decorations up inside the house last weekend and every day she asks new fewer than three times whether or not we can go trick-or-treating.  I always tell her to get her boots on, but mere insists that we wait until the 31st.

One of the things that Dana insists on having is a scarecrow.  There was a near mutiny the other day when she saw that people had them out in front of their houses.  She couldn't understand that WE didn't have one in our front yard.  I tried to explain that we lack the necessary straw to make a scarecrow, but that problem could be easily fixed.  So, we bought straw.

Which the kids proceded to try and pull apart in the front yard.

So the straw has been hidden for the moment until the construction of the scarecrow begins.