Quick 5

It's been a week of highs and lows, and I do mean the temperature.

1.  I know I'm a grown up and I should have this conquered by now, but I am about out of patience by 6:00 every night.  Trying to get the girls to clean up the massive mess that has accumulated over the day doesn't help either.  So I came up with this little idea to help us help them clean up:

I've seen things like this for actual chores, and I've always planned on making one when the girls get old enough to truly help clean around the house.  I thought I could bust it out each Saturday and have a clean house by the end of the day.  But the girls are too little for the big chores, so I thought this might help with end of the day clean up.  I know it's overwhelming to them to just say "clean up!" and it's just as overwhelming to me to micromanage the clean up.  But this has turned it out to be a game.  The girls love it.  Even Joya, although to my dismay she always picks the sticks with the biggest jobs, like cleaning up all the Little People animals (we have about a million.)  The game may get old someday, but so far it has eliminated 90% of the crying and yelling that goes on during clean up.

2.  In another Mommy Fail moment, Alaina always asks to hold Bria, and I rarely let her.  She seems to ask right when Bria is getting fussy and ready for her next nap, so it just never seems to be a good time.  I should be more proactive and offer when Bria isn't fussy, but I'm not that put together.  But finally she asked at a good time this week, so I snapped some pics. 

She wanted a picture making a "silly face"

3.  And this is how Joya rolls:

I only wish I had a picture of her dragging around our toy shopping cart filled with random things.  She looks like an actual bag lady then.

4.  Wednesday was AWANA Award Night, and Alaina got the award for finishing her second Cubbie book.  My little Cubbie will be in Sparks next year.  She's thrilled.  I'm a little nervous, because I think Sparks might be way more involved than Cubbies, but that's life, right?  Anyway, they called her name and she went on stage and they gave her a ribbon.  When she saw that ribbon she got the same look on her face that I would probably have if someone handed me $5,000.  Uber-cute.

5.  In other accomplishment news, I can't believe I keep forgetting to mention this.  I think it's because it's almost no big deal, but on the other hand, it's a HUGE deal.  Alaina now wears big-girl undies to bed, and has for the entire month of April.  She's been in pull-ups this whole time, for good reason.  She'd have a few dry days here and there, or a few dry days in a row, but then wet them again.  The pediatrician and I agreed that it's just because she's such a deep sleeper and that she would grow out of it.  I admit I had days and weeks wondering if she truly would grow out of it, but I chose the Just Relax method of night-time potty training.  I know there are parents who trained their kids by waking them around 10:00 at night or whatever, but that didn't seem like training the kid to me, unless you WANT the kid waking up every night at 10:00.  Anyway, at the end of March I realized she had been dry for a whole week, and we were at the point where we either needed to buy more pull-ups or bite the bullet.  And she's done great ever since.  We only had two accidents in the whole month, which I think is fantastic.  She really is growing up and ready for kindergarten. 

*Bonus note: I employed the double sheet method on her bed, which was a God-send for those middle of the night accidents.  Basically you put this on the mattress: a waterproof mattress cover, a fitted sheet, another waterproof mattress cover, and another fitted sheet.  That way I could just strip the top, wet stuff off the bed and she was ready to jump back in bed, without having to completely redo the bed in the middle of the night.  We'll probably need to go two or three months without accidents before I take that off. 

Have a great weekend, folks!