Riley and Avery

Ugh, so Rudi is now working in the evenings in the produce section. He's working from 12-9 starting today. So much for family dinner time together. And the kids will most likely (hopefully) already be in bed when he gets home. And he won't get his permanent schedule until tomorrow, so we don't know when his days off will be. He was pretty good today, and got up early enough so that the girls got to see him before going to work, but I'm sure he'll revert to his old ways of getting up an hour before work and the girls will never see him. That was a disaster last time he worked this kind of shift. The girls don't usually see him go to work in the morning, so it was a little heartbreaking watching them both stand in the yard, waving and whimpering, as he drove off. Riley says "Bye bye, I'll see you tomorrow!" with a pathetic little frown. This really really sucks. Now I'm thinking about all of the doctor's appointments and such that I made for the future during times when he used to be off of work, and that I'll now have to reschedule.

Well, I've taken so long to create this post that Rudi is now home from work. I made pork and sauerkraut with mashed potatoes for dinner, and since I got a late start on dinner and it has to cook for two hours, dinner wasn't ready until 8pm. I let it cool until 8:30, and since Rudi took a half-hour lunch, he was home shortly before 9. That's my round about way of saying that Rudi came home early and the kids were still awake. Riley, as we speak, is standing in front of him and talking talking talking. It's funny how she's making up for his absence by monopolizing his attention. A few minutes ago, Rudi cried "help!" because Riley will literally not stop talking. It's like a one-woman show. She's telling him stories and singing him songs. It's adorable. But now I'm pretty sure that she will not be going to bed so soon.

Here's a case illustrating Avery's jealousy. I was sitting on the floor reading the newspaper. Avery comes over, takes the paper out of my lap, and climbs into my lap. So I position the paper next to me so that I can still read it. Avery gets out of my lap, stomps all over the paper, tearing and wrinkling it, and then climbs back into my lap. Goodness, what a diva!

So Riley is standing on the scale, and I ask her why and she says because she wants to see how big her feet are. I just wonder if she thinks that we all have a weird obsession with our feet size, every time we get on the scale. Hmmm...