Parent-Child Night

Tonight was Parent-Child night at Millie's school.  It was a WONDERFUL time!  Millie got to show us all of the work she does, we got to sing songs and she even served us a snack!  It was really amazing to see her in HER element.  She was so excited to show us around and her confidence really came out tonight (in a good way).  It definitely made me feel like we made the right school decision for her as she has really taken to the Montessori model.  Merrill loved it too.  Everyday when we drop Millie off, Merrill is eager to stay and explore.  Tonight she did just that!  She followed Millie's example and did a lot of the work herself too!  All in all, it was a perfect Thursday night.

The reading corner was the first place Millie wanted to show us

Counting hearts

Pouring (she does a lot of pouring work!)

food prep -- preparing (and eating) a mini bagel.  Merrill had no trouble at all learning the steps to this one by watching Millie!  

                                  Merrill getting a lesson on color matching from one of the teachers

She figured the sorting one out all by herself

                 Millie and her buddy Addy.  I need to get faster with the camera to catch TWO children looking at the same time!

Cheese!

 Merrill loves to "help" Scott in the work room  :)

 Little drummer girl

Now this could come in handy ...

And yes, she actually went through the whole process and changed the diaper by herself with just a little coaching from us.  (She enthusiastically requested to do this and initiated the process -- please do not report us to Child Services for child labor :D).  I guess she's seen the process enough times!  Hmmm, maybe another baby in the house wouldn't be so tough with a little helper around ... :D


**side note, they were dressed for the "beach" which is why Millie is wearing a sundress a couple sizes too small ;)...

Books

 There is nothing like a fresh new stack of books from the library :)

Winds are brewin'

  Wind's in the east, mist comin' in.  
   Like something is brewin' about to begin  
   Can't put me finger on what lies in store  
   But I feel what's to happen, all happened before. 
~Mary Poppins 

Yes, something is about to happen that has all happened before...  After lots of consideration and many different factors, I have 

decided to become a stay-at-home mom.  Again.  In fact, last Friday was my last day with clients.  This week was supposed to be

my week to finish up reports, evals, progress updates and get my files in order.  I've been thwarted a bit by mother nature, but the

end of the tunnel is very much in sight.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about making this transition again -- happy, excited, nervous,

sad to say goodbye to my clients, fearful ... .  I'm also feeling much more prepared this time around now that I've got over a year of 

being a mom of two under my belt.  It also helps that the girls are at the ages they are.  But I also know my weaknesses now and 

have been working to plan for them.  And I've been figuring out my limits so that my expectations for what happens on any given

day are appropriate.  I can't "put my finger on what lies in store" exactly, but that's okay -- I'm ready to see where these winds 

take us :). 

The Begining

A very good place to start. 

As the new year dawned, I was inspired by posts from my Aunt Barb and Cousins wife, Leslie as well as the book "The Happiness Project" which they had both referenced, Millie's school had recommended, and I was researching to purchase for myself.  What was I inspired to?  To clean out a closet!  The first Monday of the new year I attacked our bedroom closet which had been taunting me since the day we moved in.  It was a disorganized catch-all of clothes (maternity, nursing, post pregnancy, shoes Scott's clothes and shoes...) and just junk.  It's a walk-in closet, but it wasn't even close to functioning that way and it made me feel agitated every time I opened the door.

I'm always a bit daunted by the idea of starting a big house project like cleaning a closet (yes, this was a BIG project...) without back-up for the girls.  But, what I found is that I can accomplish one big project in a day, even with "help" from the girls.  Since then I've also discovered I can do a really good deep clean on one room in one half of a day even with the "help" of the girls.  Attempting to do more than that just stresses us all out and giving up before I start leaves me with a lot of mental clutter due to a to-do list that never gets smaller.  Needless to say, our closet is clean and organized and beautiful.  Yes, I just called our closet beautiful :).  It gives me such a feeling of peace and joy now every time I use it.  Not only that, but it has motivated both Scott and I to be better about keeping it clean and organized and using it to hold our clothes rather than leaving them in unsightly piles.  It's been great :).  It's amazing the happiness that a clean closet has generated.  It was wonderful to clear the physical and mental clutter that had accumulated there and it really felt like a fresh start for the new year.  Heck, I even moved in some of my "skinny" clothes -- how's that for confidence!

Now, I did tackle this project with the help of the girls, so of course it didn't go exactly as planned.  As quickly I was tossing out clothes and placing them in piles to be thrown away, donated or sold, Millie was pulling clothes out and exclaiming over how pretty they were and then taking them to HER closet :).  I think she ended up keeping 4 or 5 of my tops.  What can I say, the girl likes clothes...

This is one of the tops she commandeered.  What can I say, she makes it work!  She wanted to put it on right away so I just did a quick fix and tied knots in the shoulder straps to make them fit and voila!  I was shocked at how cute it was. Of course she then paired it with her striped leggings...  Still, I think it works :).  We'll have to see what we can do with the rest of the tops she saved!

Still Here ...

... despite local forecasters best efforts to entice the Blizzard of 2011 to bury us all in an epic amount of snow and ice.  Apparently "sleet" is the preferred winter precipitation  -- a lot of it will give you a couple of snow days but it doesn't accumulate like snow -- 3 inches vs. 15+ inches, I'll take it! -- and it doesn't "bond" to surfaces like ice, making power outages and slick roads much less likely.  So, we're counting a few extra blessings here tonight.

We also thought we should just let the world know that we're still here bad weather or not seeing as we haven't posted anything in over two weeks.  We're still here, still enjoying life, still keeping busy as a family of four, still plugging along :).  I have started two blog posts in the past two weeks and written countless others in my head (someday I'm sure that is going to count for something...) and just haven't taken the time to either finish them or make them real :).  It's on my list though (ironically the title of one of my started posts ...).  Suffice it to say, "life is good" right now and that's a good reason to be away from the computer. 

I have some reading I want to do tonight, but we'll see, maybe I'll get a few "easy" posts off instead -- I might have the bug now :). 

**I just remembered one of the "demotivators" I've been facing.  I like to snuggle up on the couch in the evenings making my laptop the preferred "blogging" computer.  Problem is, for whatever reason on this computer I can only upload one picture at a time.  Given so many of our stories are told in pictures, this is a bit of a pain and picking up a book seems to win out ...