Riley and Avery

So, Avery just had to get a haircut.  I was tired of the constant rat's nest on the back of her head, and really, plain old long hair is just not flattering on her.  I found a kids hair cut place and we headed out.  It was a really neat place, decorated to the nines and the ladies who worked there were so child friendly.  I'd been to kids salons where it's decorated for children, but the employees obviously would rather not be cutting kids hair, but not this place.

Avery got a wedge haircut which is absolutely adorable!  They did a really good job.  Avery doesn't really like it, saying that the back is itchy.  I think because the hair is so short back there, the cut ends might make her itch.  I think she'll get over it.

We went to Trader Joe's yesterday and an elderly man, perhaps in his 70s, stopped us and said that Avery's haircut was the most adorable haircut he's ever seen, and that his "lady" is a beautician and spotted Avery's haircut as soon as they walked in.  It was nice of him, and made Avery a little more confident about her new do!'

There's something about a wedge haircut that just turns all the heads.  If you don't want attention, don't get your girl a wedge haircut!

I did take pictures, but on my cellphone so I'll have to upload them later.  The battery is dead now and it's charging so the GPS can guide us to Ikea!

Oh, yeah, almost forgot...Riley has another adult tooth coming in where her lateral incisor just fell out.  Thing is, she already has her two lateral incisors.  So, what is this mystery tooth?  Her cuspid isn't supposed to fall out until she's 9-12, and this tooth that is growing in has a flat edge like an incisor, not pointed like a cuspid.  I mean, I guess it can be a cuspid, but where is it going to go for the next few years until the baby cuspid falls out?  I am really wondering if she has an extra tooth.  I have a call out to a pediatric dentist to see if we can have it looked at (as well as all her other dental problems).  And why, oh why, does this kid's adult teeth always have to jump the gun and come through before the baby teeth have even gotten loose?  It's causing crowding and crooked teeth.  Argh...I see orthodontics in her future.

Night Two of our new bedtime strategy and the girls have slept in their rooms for two nights in a row.  No night-waking, so fussing, no nothing.

I have always read a lot to the girls at nighttime.  In fact, I read them to sleep.  I came to the realization that this was not helpful.  It prolonged bedtime and having them fall asleep that way wasn't helping them to learn to sleep on their own.  I moved story time to the living room, so it is a pre-bedtime ritual, not a bedtime ritual.  So far so good.  The television, obviously, is off during this time (Rudi can just deal with it for 30 minutes LOL).  They get into their pajamas, have sleepytime tea, and we read some Harry Potter, and some James and the Giant Peach.

I finally managed to produce a usable art space for the kids.  Yippee!!  I have had SO many failed attempts at this, but I think I learned from my mistakes.  First, the art area has to be the art space.  The only art space.  The place where all the art and craft supplies are gathered.  Otherwise, random acts of art will crop up all over the house.  We are trying to avoid this.  Second lesson, the old adage" out of sight, out of mind" is so very true when it comes to children.  Around this house, we have tons of empty cigar boxes.  Just tons.  I used them for art supplies.  Perfect, huh?  Well...no!  If the kids can't see the pastels in the cigar boxes, they will never ever use them.  This time I used small open baskets to hold chalk pastels and oil pastels.  The baskets were on sale at Joann's for about $2 each.  Sweet deal.  I am working on getting together old magazines for them to cut up, but unfortunately we recycled all of our old magazines before we moved.

So, clay class is a thing of the past.  I lied to Riley and told her that I could get my money back LOL.  Poor thing was so willing to trudge on through a sub-standard program rather than having me waste money.  So cute.  I need to pick up their clay creations at some point.

We ran out of propane on Monday.  No heat.  No hot water.  No cooking gas.  It sucked.  The propane people only deliver to South Portland on Tuesdays, and I noticed that we were low over the weekend.  In addition, with the storm coming, people who probably didn't really need propane panicked and ordered a delivery for Tuesday, so the company had to double-up on deliveries.  Yay.  This means that our propane guy who normally visits in the morning couldn't get to us until the afternoon.  Once I get a better idea on our usage, I can make sure that we don't run out again.  Like, how am I supposed to know how long 20 gallons will last us?  Or 10 gallons.  I mean, we were at 50 percent last time I checked, so I was surprised to find us hovering around zero over the weekend.  Yikes!

Riley loves reading.  Rudi loves reading, and buying books.  I love reading, and the library.  Rudi loves buying books for Riley.  I love checking books out of the library for Riley.  Who makes more sense?  Riley has a stack of books from the library, in addition to chapter books that she got for Christmas, and yet every time Rudi goes to Borders he buys her a book.  Ugh.