This is her mad, "I don't WANT you to take a picture right now!" look.
World's Sweetest Child
Nights have been a bit rough around here lately, as I have been delivering my sister's paper route while she is on maternity leave, and it's sort of thrown everybody's schedule off. Last night nobody wanted to go to sleep for anything, and I was getting really frustrated - especially with the baby, who wanted to nurse, then stop, then nurse, then crawl around, then nurse, then... you get the picture. So I had to take a break from her. I left the room and went to the big kids' room. Logan and Carrie were in bed, but nowhere near asleep. Lately they do not like being in their own room at ALL, and there is usually a lot of begging to sleep with us or have me snuggle with them.
So I lay down on Logan's bed and snuggled up to him. It was lovely - for a full 10 seconds. See, Kayla was completely hysterical in the other room - even though David was holding and snuggling and comforting her. She. Wanted. MAMA.
After only a moment, Logan said, "Mom, you can go back to your room, that's fine with me." I was really shocked, considering how badly I knew he wanted to sleep with me. I said, "REALLY? Why???" And he responded, "Because I care about my baby sister. I don't want her to be so upset."
If anyone has one of those carpet steam cleaners, I could use it today, to clean up the big sticky puddle that was once my heart, which melted completely at that moment.
Ta-da!
Check it out! I did a bit of online research (i.e., I decided to ask "Googloise" - which, if you're scratching your head, would be my lame combination of "Google" and "Heloise") and I discovered that rubbing alcohol was suggested to remove permanent marker from the wall. Of course, I should have known! Rubbing alcohol takes care of everything. Ink on your leather couch? Rubbing alcohol will remove it. Germs on your thermometer? Rubbing alcohol will kill them. Dirty laundry on your floor? Rubbing alcohol will tidy up AND train your kids to pick up after themselves -- whoops, I'm daydreaming.
So anyway, approximately 89 alcohol-, ink-, and paint-soaked cotton balls and a half bottle of rubbing alcohol later, I'm left with this:
Not bad, huh? You can still see the markings, ever so faintly orange. And it really did take off a layer of paint. But what a vast improvement! Someday I'll have to prime and paint that spot, but now it can be done when we're ready to sell the house, as opposed to, oh... tomorrow afternoon.
Take THAT, Sharpie!
A lesson in household baby-proofing
Hey, has anyone seen my red Sharpie? Don't worry, the baby couldn't possibly have it; it's WAY out of her reach.
Or... maybe it isn't. I think the girl has Inspector Gadget arms. How am I going to clean this off??? The Magic Eraser didn't do a thing. Anybody have a good tip for removing permanent marker from the wall? (You know, other than primer and paint?)
I'm filing this under "Cute Kids", but to be honest, I have to say this is one of the less cute things she's done.
Another not so cute thing she did was break the wireless network adapter.
So, no internet on the desktop computer until we can move it into the spare bedroom (where the modem and router are) and physically plug it in. Maybe that will turn out to be a good thing - we'll all spend less time on the computer. Sounds rather appropriate for Lent, no?
Still, she's lucky she's so darn cute.
Catholic literature and M&Ms
Originally I took this picture to include with a post about the M&M prayer project. But when I looked at the picture, I thought it was interesting to see the books on the shelf behind the jars. That's one of my Catholic shelves. There is a really nice assortment of Catholic books there, from fiction, to apologetics, to theology, to motherhood. (And notice Sarah Palin's book on the shelf below - did you know her family was Catholic when she was young? I read that in her book. Fascinating.)
But since you asked, the M&M project is going very well. See how many M&Ms they each have after just a few days? They're quite fascinated with finding new ways to earn M&Ms for themselves AND for each other. ("Mom, Kayla just gave me the last bite of her waffle! She sacrificed!!") And it might be curbing a problem we've been dealing with of late, namely Carrie's refusal to accept apologies when she has been wronged. Usually she screams "NO!" and refuses to listen to the penitent, but now that she knows that accepting an apology will earn her a pink M&M, she has become much more receptive. I am naturally hoping she'll get so used to this over the next 6 weeks that it will continue after Lent. Perhaps forgiveness will become a habit? We shall see.
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