Sick days

I gave her a cup of peppermint tea.

"Mom! You just gave me dyed water!" Meg

Shopping

"Mommy, my birthday is in three days! Maybe you should go out tonight and buy me presents. ...Mommy, why are you giggling?" Meg

Laundry

"It's okay," I told Jonathan. "I line up all your socks in rows for you."

I'm sure he really appreciates that.

Watch out for those supper Pharisees

"What are you making for dinner?" Meg asked me.
"I'm making rellenos and fajitas, but you're something of a Pharisee about rellenos, so you may not get any," I informed her.
"A Pharisee?" Jonathan asked.
I considered. "I think I meant Philistine."
"How much legalism can you fit into a relleno?" he demanded.

Little sisters

Meg: "Kate, you're in the way!"
"Have you finished your soup?" I asked Meg.
"No. And Kate's peering at it!" Meg said.
I turned to Kate. "Are you peering at Meg's soup?"
She grinned. "Yeah!"

Kate talks!

Kate's vocabulary is just taking off. I think today is the first time she's been able to say the names of our whole family, and she also keeps coming out with new words. We were looking at pictures on my computer and she named "froggie" and "river." She also saw a lot of "baby."

Her favorite words right now are "yeah," "no" (I love that she can actually answer a yes or no question!), "syoo" for shoe, "me" for her lambie pacifier, "dog," and "juice."

Poisonous plants

"Leaves of three, let it be," said Meg. I was so proud of her for knowing that.
"And do you remember what plant that is?" I asked.
"Poison ivy," she said matter-of-factly. "And dragons-bane."

Patricia Wrede is a great storyteller, but she's not doing much for my botany lessons.

Moving week

We're moving this week. I thought I'd liveblog.


10:11: It's barely ten in the morning, and I want to quit. Can I go back to bed?

11:00: Taking down our bedroom curtains. The only thing left on the walls are the miniblinds, which stay with the house, and a starburst clock. My walls are lonely and I do not approve.

11:15: Start the girls making birthday cards for Grandma. We are all about colored pencils and stickers today. I regret that I packed her present instead of mailing it back in June, but it's gone now. Quickly, while the girls are preoccupied, I toss or pack the baby silverware that they totally don't need to use.

11:30: Encouraging email from friend, and more emails, also potentially encouraging but which require decisions on my part. I put off answering them because I don't know the answers.

12:09: "Why are there Cleopatra and dinosaurs?" I ask. Meg answers, "The dinosaurs are the audience." True enough, and Cleopatra is part of the band. This is apparently completely normal for Peg+Cat world. I go back to fixing grilled cheese.

12:45: I explain to Meg that she can't use "stupid" because it's a word that carries a cloud of other meanings around with it, and she can't use it properly until she's old enough to understand all the other meanings too. I add there are other words like that too. Like "dang it," she asks? Yes. Exactly like "dang it."

1:31: Have a deep urge to gold-leaf the top ring on all my terra cotta flower pots. I resist, not least because I don't have any gold leaf. I put Kate down for her nap instead.

1:43 While sorting laundry and rummaging for lip gloss, I found my long-lost good tweezers. That's exciting.

2:18 I went downstairs to put in a load of laundry and found myself dusting and sweeping the back half of the basement.

3:44 Fell down a Pinterest rabbit hole, devised a scheme for reupholstering four ottomans in pink tweed with gold nail-head trim, changed out the laundry, and finished sweeping the basement. It's ready for mopping. Meanwhile, I'm going to start the packing and cleaning list for Thursday.

4:28: Finished the cleaning list, got Kate up from her nap, and got Meg out from her bath. Put on oldies and started doing dishes.

6:15: Discovered tomorrow is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, so made two sets of cow ears out of construction paper.

6:58: Dinner.

7:30, sharp: Kate to bed.

8:30: Kate up, requiring fresh linens and stories.

8:45: I finally begin my after dinner work. 

Vegetables are hard

We're about to move, so I sat down one day, made a list of all the main-dish-ish food in the house, and made a meal plan to eat through it. We had two weeks' worth of meals -- two weeks! -- and sadly, that was a week and a half ago. So while I've dropped by the store for milk and eggs and bread and fruit, we're kind of reaching the point where I'm all, "spaghetti sauce counts as a vegetable, right?" (In my defense, my sauce starts with "open a three-pound can of crushed tomatoes." So maybe it really does.)

We were going to have calabacitas last night with our enchiladas, but my last zucchini was a squashy mess. It wasn't quite a puddle, but it was getting there. Alas. A cucumber just isn't the same.

Also, Target has the weirdest pricing on groceries. Today, they had Rainier cherries for $4/lb, which is the cheapest I've ever seen them anywhere, and zucchini for 3.19/lb. Over $3, in JULY. I swear. I didn't buy any.

Picking Up

Oh, the explanations you have to make sometimes...
"All right, Kate, I need you to put all the Octonauts back in their bin, but not dinosaurs, Darth Vader, bats, or dragons."