Quick 5

Ah, a brief respite from packing. 

1.  Every morning Alaina says she wants to get dressed "All by myself."  She is actually doing a pretty good job of it too.  I hand her the clothes right side up, and she struggles her way into them.  She's great at socks, okay at pants, and pretty terrible at shirts, but she'll get it.  And her biggest problem with the pants is getting them up over the cloth diapers.  She's really going to like it once she gets to wear underwear.  Those pants will practically put themselves on.

2.  I've been slowly packing away Alaina's toys.  And I've thrown away a few broken ones.  I do it while she's napping, and she's really been none the wiser.  Except for yesterday, when she asked for one.  I caught myself in a lie, just as I was telling her "I don't know what happened to it!"  I corrected myself and told her what I did.  She was sad, but luckily she's still at an age where she's pretty easily distracted.  I focused her attention on what she did have.

3.  Speaking of packing Alaina's toys, I haven't packed them all, obviously.  She still needs things to play with for a week.  But she keeps bringing one or two to me and asking if she can take it to the new house.  I think it's cute.

4.  Joya is slowly moving out of lumphood.  She still only stays awake for about an hour at a time...an hour and half if we're lucky.  But she spends that hour talking or trying to bring toys to her mouth.  Of course it only makes it in her mouth about 10% of the time, but I love that she's finally trying.  And she's not so content just to lay down anymore.  She wants to be sitting more upright.  We may have reached the end of the Moses basket phase.

5.  I made an amazing crock-pot pot roast this week.  I don't think I've ever made the same pot roast twice, since I'm always trying new recipes and there are a million out there, but I think I've found my go-to recipe.  I do not feel the need to look any further.  It's super easy too.  Take a ranch dressing mix packet, an Italian dressing mix packet and a brown gravy mix packet, mix them together and sprinkle them over the roast in a crock-pot.  Add two cups of water, and voila!  Of course add potatoes and carrots to the crock-pot to your liking.  Lee said the potatoes and carrots were "bangorang."  That says it all.

Only one more week in this place.  It's been good to us, but it's time to move on.