Little Girl Dolls Make the Difference

Lily and I went to the store together. We were walking by the little girl clothes and Lily feel in love with a dress. It was purple (of course) with a bow on the front and a matching dress for a doll. It was 40% off and I had a gift card so I bought it for her. She was tickled pink. Then I realized all her dolls are babies. Little bald babies. She put the dress on one of her baby dolls happily enough and played with it for a while. Then I remembered something.

I spent the evening digging through boxes and eventually found my old dolls. There are two that I had that were close to the 18" size that is so popular right now, My Friend Jenny and My Friend Becky. So we gave them baths and washed their clothes and Lily has barely put them down since. She takes them everywhere. Jenny stays the closest, but mostly it's both of them. It's so sweet. She's played with dolls before, but this is something else. She absolutely loves them. They are a little skinny for the dress matches her new dress, but she doesn't seem to mind at all (she's a little skinny for most of her clothes, too!) She mostly has them in the outfits they had on from when I was a kid. 

The other day I noticed her dolls didn't have shoes on. I thought it was just like her other baby dolls- sometimes they just don't have anything on and it's no big deal. Then we went to leave the house and of course the dolls had to come with us. She grabbed her dolls and ran to her cubby to put her shoes on and I saw this...

Isn't that just the sweetest thing you've ever seen? I didn't make a big deal (I took the picture later when she wasn't around). I just waited to see what happened. When we came back she took off her shoes and took off the doll shoes and lined them all up again. She's melting my heart, that girl! I think she may be ready for her own big girl doll soon! It's a big moment. I'd better start saving now! I wonder if I should let her decide which big girl doll to pick or just pick one I love. My favorite was Samantha and she's not available anymore. Maybe Lily and I can pick out a new favorite together. This calls for a trip to the library.

Pants Weather

The battleground has been set. It's fall and the weather is cooling off, but my son doesn't seem to think so. Early this week it was pretty cold. I am admittedly a cold wimp, so I had my coat on and I was feeling comfortable. Ryan, however, insists he will be warm in shorts. Every day I walk to the bus stop with a sweatshirt in hand and try to convince him he wants to wear it. One day he even put it on before we left the house! He had goosebumps on his legs that day because he wore shorts and it was freezing. I told him the next day he needed to wear pants. He agreed as he stood there covered in goosebumps at the bus stop. Just for the record I told him he could go home and change and I would drive him to school. He wanted to ride the bus. So I told him I would bring pants to his school. He said no, it would be embarrassing. I brought them anyway. He didn't change.

So the next morning when he got up I reminded him that he should wear pants that day. I left to go make his lunch. When I walked by his room this is what I saw...

I thought it was pretty hilarious, so I took these pictures. Then I made him really put the pants on. I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that his broken dresser drawer was sitting in the background overflowing. I really need to send in the paperwork to get that fixed. Sometimes it's the moments that matter, not the surroundings.

A Season for Everything

It seems summer will be ending soon whether I like it or not. I like summer. Sure it's hot, but with a god mix of a/c, sprinklers and pools it can be really fun. What I love most is the freedom of summer. I'm not on anyone else's schedule. Ryan is great at getting himself up and ready for whatever the day has in store and Lily has been sleeping until 9:30 some days. So I have been able to sleep in which is heavenly for me. Summer has been great.

Fall will bring a new season in my life in more ways than one. Of course it will cool off and the leaves will turn many beautiful colors. This fall will also mark a new season in motherhood for me. Lily will start preschool which means I will have regular and scheduled time alone. This is both exciting and hard for me. It will be hard to send my babies off to 3rd grade and preschool, but I'm excited to have time to do things like get groceries and run errands alone. It's the little things really;-)

I'm hoping to use my time so well that I'm able to do projects that have been waiting years for me. Maybe I'll get those scrapbooks I've been wanting to do done or reorganize the spare room so it's useful again. Maybe I'll even be able to keep my house clean enough to have visitors more often! Okay, so that's a pipe dream;-) If I can at least keep it clean enough so I don't feel guilty doing other projects that would be a major win for me. I have a list a mile long of things I want to do. I need to figure out a way to break it down so I don't feel overwhelmed and end up doing nothing.

And now I will leave you with these famous words adapted from Ecclesiastes 3...

"To everything
turn, turn,turn
there is a season
turn, turn, turn
and a time for every purpose under heaven." -The Byrds

Now it can be stuck in your head like it is in mine:-)

Time Out

My child cracks me up sometimes. I was at the table eating and I heard him stomping up the steps. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm giving myself a time out."
"What happened?"
"I'll tell you later. I can't talk right now. I'm in time out."

Laptopless

It's not as sexy as it sounds---get it? lap top*less;-) Yeah, you're right, it's not that funny. Jay has my laptop again. He had it all last week because he was on a trip with the middle school ministry at church. He was supposed to be off work, but he had to log in and work a couple hours each day because his co-worker was sick. It's a good reason and I'm glad he was able to work it out and still go on his trip because it was a great trip for him.

Still, I really don't like not having my laptop. I don't know how people sit at desks all day. It's bad enough that I have to do all my photo editing at the desk, but now I have to do all my web surfing and e-mailing here, too. Blah. Plus I have a project where I have to transfer a bunch of information to a spread sheet. I actually may end up doing that on the desktop since it has 2 screens and that makes it easier to see the information I'm transferring, but I started it and got about 1/10th of the way through and had to stop for a while. I took a break from the desk and now here I am blogging from the desk...I guess that's not very responsible of me, huh? Well, I do have until September to do the project, so I think it will be okay;-)

So yeah, like I said, Jay has my laptop again because he is on his way to Michigan for a funeral and his co-worker is due to have a baby any day (like several people I know). Jay wants to be prepared to work just in case. Another really good reason. I'm really glad he is being so responsible and prepared, but I miss my laptop.

You may play the violins for me now. LOL