Big Girl

She blows my mind sometimes. I always thought if you were three then you were really, really young. But she's so old.

Tonight, Eily was down at her usual 6:oo pm (yes, you can be jealous. I have never had a child who's sleeping pattern should be envied until now. It's WONDERFUL!!! Not the envy creating part. The sleeping part. She goes down at 6 and wakes up anywhere from 7-8 the next morning. And... she has done this since she was about 6 weeks old. Score!) and Claire was beside herself with exhaustion. Claire was throwing a fit over something, I can't remember which particular fit of the day that it was, and I told her to go to her bed and when I was finished feeding Eily I was going to come in there and have a talk with her. This was a sneaky maneuver on my part because I knew that she would fall asleep before I was able to get in there. And I was right.

Every Wednesday I babysit two little girls ages 3 and 2. Usually, by the end of the day I am too pooped from keeping peace between the 5 girls and changing diapers and feeding everybody that I have no energy left to re-clean the house. (I pick it up every morning.) Today I was determined to conquer this so I made a rule that they could only play in the Living room, Dining room, Kitchen area. This was brilliant!! The girls have a little kitchen in this area and so they played tea parties and restaurant ALL MORNING!! And those rooms were trashed but it was with things like dish towels and play food and play dishes. Super easy to pick up. And I was able to get all of the 8 loads of laundry washed, folded and put away, detail clean both bathrooms, pick up the rest of the house and make my cinnamon roll batter for in the morning.

After Renee and Natalie went home, we had the above fiasco with Claire and then it was just down to me and Elaina. I mentioned that we ought to pick up the "area" so that the WHOLE HOUSE would be clean for Daddy!! And do you know, she just went right to work cleaning up that whole disaster. Of course, I helped her, but still...what a great little girl. Sometimes, she will just come and find me and say, "I cleaned our room, Mom, 'cause it was a little messy." And she isn't lying. I'll go in there and everything is put away neatly.

She's just so old! Sigh. How did this happen? When did this happen?

Claire decided that she really wanted some candy this morning so she peed in the potty without me telling her to. ( I felt I need to say something good about her, too.)

Eily can say, Mama, Dada, bye bye-and wave, give high fives and last night she started clapping her hands.

SOMEONE MAKE THEM SLOW DOWN!!!!