Quick 5

This Quick 5 is dedicated to my sis-in-law, Mindy, and her crappy week.  I mean, because she had a crappy week.  I hope it's everything you hoped it would be.

1.  A sign that perhaps Alaina watches a little too much PBS Kids: she has an intense desire to speak Spanish.  She's always asking me what words are in Spanish, and all I can give her is the very basics.  No joke, she will ask me for "Leche, por favor" at breakfast.  If I give her instructions, it's common for her to say, "Si, madre."  She tries to get Joya to speak Spanish too, but I usually intervene, since Joya does not even have a very good grasp on English yet.

2.  This weekend we'll celebrate Joya's 2nd birthday.  Her birthday is on Sunday, but that's a really busy church day for us, so we'll have our traditional 2-Year-Old Pizza Party with the fam on Saturday.  No theme.  No fancy cake, just cupcakes.  And we're doing pizza, because serving pizza is really the only thing this tired, pregnant momma can handle serving a crowd.  Luckily, pizza is one of the three meals that Joya will actually eat for dinner (the other two being mac and cheese and spaghetti.)  The good news is Apple Ben will be home from college on his fall break.  It'll be like old times.

3.  This past Wednesday night was Backward Night at AWANA.  I told Alaina about it, and then right before she and Lee left, I got down and started turning her clothes around backward.  She freaked out, and started crying really sad tears.  I told her all the kids were going to be wearing their clothes backward, but you would have thought that I was trying to subject her to some awful humiliation.  So I turned her clothes around, figuring she should wear her vest backwards once she saw the other kids.  She did come home with her vest on backward, but said she didn't like it because the tag kept "poking her in the chin."  I wonder how she's going to react to Crazy Hair Night in a few weeks.

4.  October is the month of the 31 Days blog posts.  I participated last year with 31 books that I recommended, and it was really fun to have hundreds of hits on my blog each day.  But this year I couldn't think of anything to write about.  Plus, apparently over 1200 people are participating, and it loses much of its appeal to know that so many others are doing things.  One of the blogs hosts it, and you can link up your blog there.  But, really, who is going to read through 1200 topics to find one they want to follow?  I think last year I was successful, because my blog was around #125 on the list.  I suppose, though there really aren't 1200 different topics.  And I didn't really want to write about something that someone else was writing about.  But I do have an idea now.  Maybe I'll move my 31 days series to January, when things get boring after the holidays.  I'm thinking of doing 31 Days of Normal, and posting pictures of Joya's plain chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting or pictures of the shoe pile in my girls' closet, just to show our fancy Pinterest blogging world that there are normal people out there who don't strive to make every single aspect of their lives magazine worthy.  It's a 31 Days that I would want to read about.

5.  Heard in the van on Monday on the way to MOPS:
Alaina: Hey Joya!  Knock-knock!
Joya: Knock-knock!
Alaina: No, it's a joke.  Knock-knock!
Joya: Knock-knock!
Alaina:  No!!  KNOCK-KNOCK!!
Joya: Knock-knock!
Alaina:  No!!!
Joya: Knock-knock!
Alaina: NOOO!!
Joya: Knock-knock!
I didn't intervene.  I just laughed my head off. 

Happy Fall Day.  It sure is pretty outside.