Sometimes J and I bicker about clothes. She wants to be girly, but I still think she looks cute in jeans. (Because she does!) So she wears jeans when it’s cold or convenient or I ask her to, but if it were up to her, she’d wear a princess tutu every day.
But even though she wants to be girly, she still wears her baseball cap with her tutu. And sometimes sneakers. I don’t have the heart to tell her that it doesn’t quite match…
I don’t really have anything to say tonight. We had a nice day. I’m super tired. My kids are cute. Tom says a picture is worth a thousand words, and a cute picture of C is worth at least two thousand. So without further ado…
There’s something about kids and Tupperware. We put childproof locks on all of the cabinets in the kitchen except the Tupperware cabinet…they just love to play with it. (I’ve heard that other kids are the same way.) I have some adorable pictures of J playing with our Tupperware here…I don’t remember JJ doing it, but I’m sure she did.
C decided to climb INTO the cabinet today. Not the best quality picture, but how cute is he? 
I’ve never seen him climb in before, but he cautiously climbed back out without falling. Don’t get me wrong; he falls plenty of times and always has a bruise or two on his head. But he likes to climb and explore. Guess he’s all boy!
JJ wasn’t feeling well today (some 24 hour stomach thing that she and I both picked up over the weekend – from someone’s garage sale, maybe?), so we had a sick/quarantine day. Even though she was sick, she was SO cute and sweet. I don’t know how she does it; I really don’t. But she has the ability to melt Tom’s and my heart instantly. Whether she was coloring in her Sesame Street coloring book, watching Cars with Grey Dog and White Dog, or taking a four-hour nap, all I could think about was how sweet she was.
I’m not sure yet if we were successful in our attempt to keep the other kids away from her, but I guess we’ll have to see.
I’m crossing my fingers…but not holding my breath.
Happy Mother’s Day.
The girls made cards for me (JJ’s said “I love you” but some of the letters were switched around, hehe). We skipped church because JJ has a cold and C is getting it. He’s also getting his two top front teeth, so he was awake pretty much all last night. After a nice, relaxed day at home, we headed to Brusters for some ice cream.
I love my family, and I love being a mom.
I like a good deal. So when spring comes around and neighborhood garage sales start popping up, I pencil them into my calendar. Today there was a big neighborhood sale nearby, and the weather was perfect. We strolled around looking for good deals. Didn’t find a ton of stuff, but we got a few good deals. We have some other sales coming up, so I’ll keep looking for some of the things on my list. (Like a PowerWheels for the kids! I want one, but I don’t want to spend a ton of money on it.)
The fire station usually has a chicken barbecue on the same day as today’s neighborhood sales, so we planned it into our afternoon. There’s just something about firefighter chicken BBQ!
We finally got some patio furniture for our deck (a few weeks ago), so we enjoyed our chicken on the deck in the sunshine. I love beautiful Saturdays!
It’s nearing the end of the school year, so J’s preschool class took a field trip today to visit the local primary school. They do this every year; the kids get to ride the bus, see the kindergarten classrooms, play on the playground, and eat their snack there. J has been looking forward to it all week. (I think she was mostly excited to ride the bus!)
I stuck around for a while after I dropped her off until the bus came, just so I could watch her getting on with all her friends. (Other parents did this, too, so I wasn’t the only one. Haha.)
Today was the day I finally dropped off her application for kindergarten, too. We scheduled an appointment with the principal, and eventually we will also do a kindergarten screening test (or something like that). I guess she really IS going to go to kindergarten next year, huh? I know she’ll love it, although when she realizes that JJ, C, and I are going to do things and have playdates without her, she isn’t going to be thrilled. I guess that’s the price you pay for growing up…
C received some insect pajamas in his Easter basket. They are 2T, so I wasn’t sure if he would actually fit in them, but since they are supposed to be snug, they work just fine.
During bathtime, J decided we should call him BugMan. We had fun with it after that. “I’ll get BugMan’s pacifier!” she exclaimed. “Goodnight, BugMan!” and so on and so forth.
My friend S posted on Facebook this afternoon, “Do all two year olds occasionally make their parents feel like complete failures? Or is it just mine?” I smiled when I read it, remembering JJ at the mall yesterday. Among other things, she knocked over a mannequin at Old Navy and refused to listen to me when I was paying for my car inspection at Sears, resulting in a rude comment from the guy helping us. Part of it is just that she’s three, for goodness sake, but it certainly made me feel like one of “those” parents who has no control over their kid.
Then we went to Target tonight, where JJ decided she didn’t want to hold my hand as we crossed the parking lot. She wanted to hold Daddy’s hand. And if Daddy couldn’t hold her hand (since he was holding J’s hand and C), she was certainly NOT going to hold my hand. When we tried to take her hand, she darted away from us right into the parking lot. Parking lot safety is a big deal to Tom and me, so we told her that if she wasn’t willing to hold our hands, she was going to have to wait in the van (with me) while Daddy, J, and C shopped at Target. I put her in the van and closed the doors, and the others went on into Target. But sneaky JJ, screaming at the top of her lungs, ran to the other side of the van, opened the automatic door, and climbed out anyway. Did I mention that she was screaming bloody murder? Oh yes. The woman in the car next to me was on the phone, watching me and laughing and shaking her head, and I could tell she was saying something about the situation to whomever she was talking to.
Hiding my smile, I put her back in the car and locked the doors this time so she wouldn’t escape. I informed her that until she was able to choose calmly to hold my hand in the parking lot, we were going to stay in the car. “I’m r-r-ready to g-g-go” she choked out tearfully. We then had a good talk about why she needed to be careful and how cars couldn’t see her because she was so small, and how she needed to trust that I was making choices to protect her. She was completely willing to hold my hand then and when we were leaving the store, so I felt good about her understanding of what had transpired.
I think one of the hardest things about age three is that they have all these thoughts and opinions, and they THINK they are big enough to make decisions for themselves. And they are, to some extent. But they are extremely limited in their understanding of the world, and their ability to make GOOD decisions for their own safety and respect and well-being of others isn’t very developed. It’s my job as her mom to teach her to choose well. But it doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes I have to tell her what to do and expect her to obey instantly, even if she doesn’t understand.
I definitely felt like one of “those” parents today and yesterday, with the embarrassing child who makes a scene, but I love my JJ and I know that she is still learning to make good decisions. It’s worth investing time into teaching her how to choose wisely, because someday I won’t be there, telling her what to do. Hopefully by then she’ll know better than to run out into a parking lot without looking. 
Our closest mall has a fun play area for kids, so we met some friends there today. We played for a while, enjoyed lunch at Subway, threw pennies into the water fountain, and headed to the pet store to check out the puppies. The back of the pet store (which usually has lots of cute puppies to “ooh” and “aah” over) was closed, but there were a few puppies and kittens in the front. One of the kittens was particularly friendly.
I asked J later to tell me about the kitten, and she said that “its tongue was rough.” 
A few weeks ago she informed me that she thought we should get a kitten…yeah, not going to happen. They are cute, admittedly, and less work than a dog…but still. I’m perfectly happy being a one-pet family.
We wrapped up our mall trip by getting a free shirt for C at Old Navy (thanks to their Snap Appy app) and getting our minivan inspected. (No thanks to a smart aleck employee for commenting sarcastically about how JJ wasn’t listening very well. Grr.) Then we decided to stop for ice cream cones on the way back home. Lots of fun for a rainy Tuesday!
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