Riley and Avery

Yes, Riley is now training wheel free! I so really can't believe it because, truth be told, she totally taught herself. I took her training wheels of this morning and then her chain fell off. I didn't get around to immediately putting the chain back on. I was trying to get Avery to sleep when I hear Riley ask Rudi to put her chain back on. I came out to see what was going on with it and Riley was gone. I asked where she was. Rudi said "She just took off." I said "On her bike?" and he said "Yeah." I said, "Did you put her training wheels back on?" and he said "No, she can ride without them." Just like that? I'm just floored...And proud!

So, we went to the Colorado State Fair yesterday. It was Dollar Day, so admission and all the rides were a dollar. Thank goodness, because even the kiddie rides normally take 3 tokens, and with Riley, Avery, and me riding them, we'd be paying $9 to go an a kiddie ride. Craziness. Well, Avery is too short to go on any of the kiddie rides by herself. And I'm too big to go on most of the kiddie rides with her. Bummer. We did find a few that we could go on together. I never thought that a child who is almost
three wouldn't be able to go on kiddie rides. I mean, I know she's tiny, but come on. How can a family come to the fair and tell a nearly three year old that she is too small for the rides that are clearly for children, when the child knows darn well she's not too young? They both liked the ferris wheel the best. I was nervous that Avery would scream as soon as we got going, since she has shown signs of being scared of heights before. She did clutch to me, and wouldn't let me use one of my hands to point things out. Anyway, as we finally get going up she does "wooooooooooooow...booooooootiful!" Riley liked looking at how small the people on the ground seemed, and how small everything else seemed.


Riley also went into the haunted house with Rudi. Although I heard a lot of screaming (she got the screaming down on the kiddie roller coaster when I told her she can scream on rides) she really wanted to go on again, but we had used our last tokens on the ride and as we were about to leave, I didn't want to buy more.


Thankfully we stopped at Subway before going to the fair. Man, food was expensive! We even passed on funnel cake (Rudi and I both looooooove funnel cake, so you know that was hard) because they were $6. Now that I think about it, Rudi did spend $6 on an ice cream sundae, so now I'm starting to think I was gypped out of my part of a funnel cake. Hey, no fair! Someone owes me half of a funnel cake!


We left for the fair around 2pm and got home after 11pm. So it was a long day. Right before going to the fair, I took a shower, and Avery asked if she could nurse in bed. Then she said "Wait a minute, we going to the fair. Can I nurse after the fair?" It was cute. She nursed at the fair, by the way. The girls were literally asleep in the car withing three minutes (Avery was asleep before we even left the parking lot).


Fun times all around.

I shut two of Riley's fingers in the door yesterday. I felt so bad. She was going into the garage to get something, so I opened the door to turn on the light. She started going down the steps and I go to close the door and she had put her fingers in the side by the hinges. They looked pretty smooshed but she'll live.


Oh yeah. So Riley and Avery were busy drawing and creating when I realized that Riley had gotten the envelope of hair I was saving from Avery's first haircut. She had "glued" it, using glue and liquid lip gloss, to her picture of a cat. I was beyond mad. I was irate, to put it mildly. Then as we were going to the fair I was putting Avery's hair into barrettes and I notice many short spots. I noticed that she had bangs. I noticed a two-inch section on the crown of her head. I realized that Riley not only used the hair from Avery's first haircut, but harvested hair directly off of her head. Grrr. Avery's hair was looking so nice, with the bangs as long as the rest of her hair. Now we are back to square one, growing out her bangs. I may have to neaten her bangs up, but well, now she has bangs. Sigh...

Well, this is the picture that Riley used Avery's hair for:


I guess the whole picture will have to go in the scrapbook. Well, at least it has an interesting story now. That is, if the liquid lip gloss ever dries...

And about getting Riley into the Kindergarten curriculum...well, I'm wimping out. I don't know why. I just am. I also don't want to ask while I'm painting because if I weren't a charity case I wouldn't be there to ask anyway. I don't want to take advantage. Should I wait until Open House on Monday (Labor Day)? Grr, I don't know...

I just had to get rid of that old post. Not that I have anything interesting to say that hasn't already been said. I think I've told everyone by phone about the cops coming to our house for Riley, and no more excitement has really happened.

I am starting to feel a little bad about the school painting. I mean, Riley's tuition is $5000+ and I certainly don't feel like I've done that sort of work. School starts in about two weeks, so I have more time. Even if I were being paid $20/hour, that's still 5 weeks of 50 hour weeks to earn $5000. I guess I could continue to do work while school is in session, just on the weekends. The furniture is just about all painted, just a few shelves remain. I painted the cabinets in the kitchen, so I think walls will come pretty soon.

Oh, I started school Monday. I have two classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, American Environmental History and Humanities: Early Civ. The history teacher seems to be a really popular one in the history department and she thought my interest in the environmental impact of formula feeding and disposable diapering was interesting. The Humanities class seems really fun, although I am the oldest in the class. At least my hitherto useless knowledge gleaned from hours of History Channel programs will come in handy. She had a reproduction of a portion of a bas relief work and asked us if we knew what it was. I said "It's a frieze from the Parthenon!" She held up another that was almost the same and I said "It's Persian." And she had a bust of Michelangelo's statue of David, which was, in my opinion, super-easy to identify. She said that the Renaissance was outside the scope of that class, but what is similar in antiquity? I'm like "Uh, the Colossus?" Yup. I don't think I'll have problems in these classes.

I have two paralegal classes on Thursdays. Civil Litigation (dry as bones) and Business Organization (drier that bones). The director of the paralegal program is the teacher of one of them, so I guess it's about time I met him. The other is by the same teacher I had for Contracts last semester. These classes are half online and half in-class.

So. Avery is into primping herself. One night I was getting ready to go to class and I told Avery that Daddy was going to take them to the Mall. Dumb thing to say to a girly-girl right before dinner. I couldn't get her to eat. She was too busy getting ready. The best was when she was putting on chap-stick. I said "Avery, putting on chap-stick?" And as if I were the dumbest human on the planet, Avery said "Well, I can't go to the Mall without Chap-Stick!" Duh. This was after I had to do her hair in a particular way at her request. And then she checks herself in the mirror to make sure she looks "beautiful."



I made Montessori sound bottles for Avery. I made them too easy. It's really remarkable how acute a toddler's hearing is. I spray painted eight glass salt shakers to that four were red and four were blue and filled them with four different things so that a blue and red one matched. I put lentils, beads, dried beans, and dried corn in them. Avery had no problem matching them up right away. I think I'll have to make it harder.

I also have started having Riley teach Avery some of the work, in true Montessori style. They both really like it and it gives Riley the chance to be the "teacher" and she is really gentle and patient (so far) with teaching Avery, which are not natural traits of hers.

Little Sweetheart is starting to get all sorts of random white hairs all over her. It's like she's salt-and-pepper. And yet underneath it are the tabby-stripes. She's just a mutt. And a turd. She's getting spayed next month on the 18th. And getting the indoor-cat shots. I don't know why I always get stuck with the stubborn life-forms in my family. Rudi, Riley, and Avery are all incredibly stubborn and Little Sweetheart is no different. I take her off the counter, and as soon as her feet touch the ground she is back on the counter. We can do this about a dozen times.

So, Rudi wants to go on a solo camping trip for a couple of nights at the beginning of next month. I'm totally cool with that. I have plans to turn the third bedroom into his "man cave" so that's the perfect time to do it. He knows that I am giving him the room, but I want to decorate it and arrange it to surprise him. Right now it's a storage/sewing room. I sew downstairs anyway. The boxes can go in the garage. The only other problem is that I had bags and bags of old toys to get rid of in that room and the sneaky little kids found it and now they are scattered around the room. So bad, in fact, that I can barely get into the room. So I have my work cut out for me. We did agree to bring the loveseat from the garage into the room, so I'll have to clean it up a bit and get him to help me with the loveseat before he goes, but I still don't think that he'll have a clue. I'm planning on building some really simple shelves and such and putting up pictures and setting up his easel and organizing his art supplies. Ooh, I'm gonna have fun!

Oh, I am sooooo beyond exhausted! For the past three days I've been watching Isaiah and Ariana for 9-10 hours a day. Then going to the school to paint after dinner and coming home between 11pm and midnight. Then get up again between 6am and 7am depending on when Isaiah and Ariana will be dropped off. Ugh. And I even managed to scrub the house down yesterday. Our usual water and vinegar cleaner wasn't good enough for the stove. I usually sprinkle baking soda on and then clean with water and vinegar, but I used all the baking soda in the litter box. Glory be to Brillo pads. Ah, stove is nice and clean.

I am thinking of getting a can of magnetic paint and making a magnetic wall. The name is really a misnomer because the paint is not actually magnetic, its a metal paint that magnets stick to. That way we can have a wall that Riley and Avery can arrange their art on without using glue, tape, or tacks to stick them up. And you can paint over the "magnetic" primer with your regular wall paint color so it will be invisible. And hopefully when we move, another family will move in and go "Sweet! A magnetic wall! The previous mother must have been a genius!" At least, that's how it will happen in my head. Yeah.

So, now that we have single-stream recycling and no longer have to sort anything ever, our recycling can looks a lot like our trash can, giving Avery a coronary every time she walks into the kitchen. "Gasp! Mom, we can bee-cycle this! And this and this and this. And we can bee-cycle this!" And then she makes that snotty exhale that I thought was only reserved for teenage girls and gives me the look. So I had to explain that the can with the blue bag is the recycling and the can with the white bag is trash. Maybe she'll get off my back now.

Avery has also entered another level of pretend play. She was playing with her Playmobil animals and there was a specific baby cat that she was looking for. I couldn't find it. Bracing for a meltdown, I told her that it must be missing. But Avery grabbed a chicken and said "It's okay. I'll bee-tend this is a baby cat. Just bee-tend." How nice.

Just now she wanted to pretend that she was a baby and put on her diaper (a week ago, I wouldn't have done it, but she is not 100% potty trained and just peed in the potty not two minutes ago). So I put her in the Swaddlebees that she suggested. Matthew asked what she was putting on and if it was a really diaper. I said yes, it's a cloth diaper that you can wash and use again. And Avery says to Matthew "Yeah, like a washcloth!" And then she makes the snotty exhale sound again. Like, duh!

I am just so sick of the rain. And the cold. It was in the fifties yesterday and rained all stinking day. The night before it thunderstormed so bad that I woke up. It was just the loudest thunderstorm that I had ever experienced. I know, waking up during a nighttime thunderstorm may not seem like a big deal to most people, but I have seriously never woken up during a thunderstorm. Growing up, my family would all complain the next morning because they couldn't sleep because of the thunderstorm, and I'm like "what thunderstorm?"

So yesterday, because of the rain, I had Riley, Avery, Isaiah, Ariana, Matthew, his sister Julia, Josephine, and Ryan in our house. I mean, eight kids? Who wouldn't go crazy? Thankfully, Ariana took a three hour nap (her norm, lucky mom) and Avery was napping and Isaiah took a short nap and Riley went over to play in Matthew's house. Ah. I could breathe for a minute. All of Riley's friends are older than she is, and they all start school on Monday. Riley will be one lonely child. Maybe we'll get some of the Montessori stuff done.

Speaking of Montessori stuff, Riley was really feeling it yesterday. All the kids over our house, me running to the school to paint, and she was so emotionally fragile yesterday. I told her that we would make ourselves some tea in the tea pot and have a tea party while doing some Montessori work right before bed. She worked on addition and did it pretty well. It was her first exposure.

Lying in bed last night trying to get the girls to sleep, I was watching the Olympics and Riley asked me to put something on for her (she really never gets to watch TV in bed unless she's sick, but she still asks all the time). I was like, seriously, fat chance kid, Michael Phelps will be in the pool any minute now. Oh my goodness, what an awesome race that was! Yes, I am a nerd.

Avery has this new thing about washing her face "So it can look beautiful. It's not beautiful right now. I look like an orphan. I will wash my face so it is so beautiful beautiful!" I can see who our bathroom-hog will be in the years to come!

Oh my goodness, it actually stopped raining! Riley ran right out.

Ah, where to start?

I have been painting at Riley's school these past two days. I start at about 9:30 and go to about 3. I have been painting furniture so far. I try to do a good job, but some of the furniture is so over-painted already that I'm really just filling in chips and covering scrapes. I haven't started on the walls yet. After the furniture, with all their nooks and crannies, I think walls will be fast and fun.

So, yesterday Rudi took the girls to the mall while I was painting. When I come home Avery says "Mommy, why does my tummy hurt?" I ask her if it's because she's hungry, which is usually the culprit. Rudi says "Oh no, she ate a bunch of chicken nuggets at Chick-Fil-A!" I say "They fry in peanut oil!!!" He felt so bad. He really felt horrible. He was upset that they didn't have a sign up or anything. Well, Avery had a stomach ache all night long and a couple bouts of diarrhea. Which does not mix well with a kids who's been recently potty trained. She actually made it to the potty twice, and kind of went a little in her undies once (about which she remarked "It looks like oatmeal! That be gross if someone ate it!") So I don't know what to think about the situation. On one hand, I'm glad to know that she won't die if she accidentally eats something fried in peanut oil (although we don't eat fried food anyway, just when Rudi's in charge apparently). But on the other hand, I've heard that some peanut-allergic people don't react to peanut oil because it's been refined so much. Well, Avery had a reaction, just not an anaphylactic one. Hmmmmm...maybe I'll post in the allergies forum at MotheringDotCommune.

Well, the house is a wreck since Rudi has been watching the girls. And I have Isaiah and Ariana tomorrow, so I need it clean pronto. I'm starting in the kitchen. Fun. While Rudi sleeps on the couch.

Oh, speaking of oatmeal. I was telling Avery how Little Sweetheart is going to the vet next month to make sure she's healthy and to get her shots. And I kind of said to Rudi, "And to get her ovaries out, ha ha!" And Avery said, with a look of total bewilderment "To get her oatmeal taken out?" Funny stuff.

Oh, and I'm unnaturally excited about single-stream recycling! No more sorting! At all! All plastics 1-7, newspaper, cardboard, glass, paper, aluminum, everything all in one bag. Sweet.

I'm also all excited about the milk I got on sale at the grand re-opening of a near-by King Soopers. 99 cents for a gallon! Yes, I said 99 cents a gallon! Score. I need to go back for more. I only had a hand-basket and could only carry one gallon. I'll probably get another one or two. I mean, for 99 cents? That's unheard of! I wonder how long the sale will be going on...

So Riley and Avery both got haircuts (by me, poor things). Avery's is a lot easier to cut because the curls are forgiving. Riley's turned out okay, I think. Don't have pictures of Riley's hair yet. These are pictures of Avery walking to the mailbox (wearing a 3-6 month dress as a top) in order to mail me a letter. She doesn't really get how the postal service works.

So I think I found a winner in terms of future schools. Globe Charter School is opening their new building pretty close to where we live (less than half the distance of Golden Mountain). They offer language instruction in French, Spanish, German, Russian, or ASL from Kindergarten. They offer a global-oriented environmental education with supposedly a lot of hand-on learning. I really can't wait to check them out, but obviously want to wait until there are actual children in the classes. And they offer K-9th grade and all the children have the same school day, so no separate drop-off and pick-up when Riley and Avery are both in school in different grades. The fee for going there is only $125 a year per child and 5-10 hours of volunteering/fund-raising each month. I like the approach to parental involvement. It seems that schools with active parental involvement do better. I'm not really looking for Kindergarten, but probably for first grade. If we can, we'll keep Riley at Golden Mountain through Kindergarten. They really really genuinely enjoy her being there and I would like her to graduate from there. But I'm really excited about this Globe Charter School.

So we went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner the other day. I learned several things about my children from going there. One, my children are so unused to air conditioning that they freeze in ACed areas. Riley and Avery both requested jackets, and it wasn't even cold in there. Simply air conditioned. Two, Avery has no concept of how restaurants work. We must not eat out enough. She ordered her chicken fingers and kept telling me over and over and over again that she was hungry. I went out to the car and got the girls jackets and when I can back Avery said "Why you go outside, Mommy, I'm hungry!" And I asked her if she thought I was going to make her chicken fingers, and she was like "Duh!" No, the mommies don't go back into the kitchens at restaurants and make the family's food. Three, Riley has expensive taste. She was so excited when she looked at the children's menu and saw a snow crab option. I mean, she almost wet her pants. So Riley got snow crab, which was a lot of work for me, with very little pay-out. The restaurant was super-packed and super loud. They had four different birthday parties going on (the family kind, not the kid kind). The disco ball was spinning and the staff came out to sing and dance every several minutes or so. Riley did not like the noise. Which is strange for someone so adept at making a lot of her own noise. I had the crab cakes and they were okay. I mean, the proportion of crab meat to spices and breading was good, but they made the crab cakes with snow crab. I like snow crab as much as the next person, but dude, crab cakes are not supposed to be made with snow crab. It just tasted "off."

Avery said something cute yesterday. She went potty and then wanted to change her clothes. She picked out an outfit and said "I want to put this on so I can go outside and look pretty for Matthew. Because I like him." Rudi almost died.

So we bought a steam cleaner for the carpet. I've done the entry way and the dining room so far. The the kids art area is next, then the living room. Man, the high-traffic areas were awfull. I used way more cleaning solution than I had planned. Now I'm the carpet police. We also got a new vacuum cleaner. The one that we were given stopped working. It the Eureka EnviroVac, which uses 33% less energy and has washable filters so less is wasted. I really like it so far, but it's hard to tell. All vacuums work nicely the first week you have them. The true test will be if it can keep up with us over the next several months. It's picking stuff up from our carpet that our last vacuum didn't. The steam cleaner worked really well. I'm very pleased with it so far. We'll see if it gets the spilled paint off of the carpet. Oh, and the house smells soooooo good now. Geez, the carpets must have really stunk.

I ordered more RAM for my computer. I should be getting it within the next couple of days. 256MB of RAM just isn't enough. So I'll be getting 512MB in the mail soon. I can't even open iPhoto anymore. Insufficient RAM and more than 2,000 full-sized photos will do that, I think. Next I have to work on the combo drive. Fun.

About five years ago, we had Callie and Dicey. After getting Dicey as a kitten I vowed to never get another kitten. Just go for the older cats. I had a brain fart somewhere along the way and now we have a kitten. Now I remember how much trouble they are. She's cute and all that, but the kittenish antics are really wearing on everyone. Especially the jump-on-your-face-at-2am game that Little Sweetheart likes to play. Oh, and the run-like-hell-for-the-door-whenever-it's-open game is getting old too. As is the hide-under-the-car-and-try-to-catch-me game.