Chicken N Dumplings

Last night I made chicken and dumpling stew. It was wonderful. I love dumplings. love. love. love. Charlotte I thought would love them too since they're mostly just flour, which she has taken to eating all by itself lately (gross). She didn't.

Dan: "Charlotte you need to finish your dumpling."
Charlotte: "No I don't."
Dan: "You need to eat three bites of carrot and two bites of chicken then. And be done with that sass."
Charlotte: "I'm not done with the sass yet."

I'm pretty sure she wasn't really clear on what sass was, but it sounded much better than chicken or carrot.

To Be Human Again

Boy it's sad when the titles of your posts come from Disney. Oh well. I do feel human again. And you know why? I slept. I slept and slept and slept. And the family rejoiced. Or at least the husband portion of it anyway. I'm fairly certain the child portion doesn't register much in the way of the mommy portion. Except one funny conversation that my daughter had with a friend of mine who was watching her.

Charlotte: "What's wrong with your finger?"

Friend: "I burned it."

Charlotte: "When Mommy burns sheself she gets mad."

And it's so very true. So at least she notices some things.

Our Halloween went well. (I was going to try to segue that, but I couldn't think of anything. So I decided you could just follow me along.) Charlotte was perhaps the quietest lion you have ever seen and Greg was a ghost.

She wouldn't let me comb out her hair to be the mane which was the crowning part of the cotume, but she's two and a half so, whatever.Apparently the best part of his costume was his ability to eat it.

I'm the only one in the family not in a costume. Daniel went as a logger. When an hour went by and nobody asked him what he was I told him that proved you can't just wear your normal clothing and call it a costume (even if your clothing is a costume for other people).

And because I got such a great response (thanks Grandma Jane and Grandpa Mel) to the other two videos I posted, here's another little one. I like to call it Guarding the Pumpkin.

Conspiracy Theory

My family is trying to kill me. Do I have hard evidence of that? No. But I give you my reasoning:

Why would my sweet child, who had previously been sleeping at least 5 hours at a time if not 7, suddenly decide to revert back to 3?

Why would my husband have to work evening shift last week and then night shift this week at the hospital catching babies? Or is he just saying he has to work, but really he's in cahoots with the non sleeping child? Maybe he's going over to someone else's house. Someone who has a sleeping child. Then he comes back home at 8 AM and goes back to bed to sleep for six more hours just to throw me off the scent.

Why would my sweet older child decide to get sick right at the same time? Requiring me to wake up multiple times a night and get her water so she doesn't cough until she throws up. This means I have gotten no more than two hours of sleep at a time.

Why also would my sweet child decide that he no longer can self soothe when waking up too early from his afternoon nap? Then my dear husband doesn't know how to soothe him so I must then wake up from the only nap I've had in DAYS in order to get said child back to sleep.

Then to top it all off, I'm awake from soothing said child so I pick up the house. Dear husband doesn't want me to get too suspicious so he helps pick up the house. Then what does dear husband do? Goes to sleep!

You may say that I'm crazy. You may say that all of these just happen to coincide at the same time. But I know the truth. They're slowly but surely trying to kill me.

It's A Pack Pack

We went shopping on Saturday and Charlotte found another thing she's in love with. I took a video.

She wore it around Eddie Bauer for a good five minutes before we made her take it off.

Strange things my daugher loves:

• Unsharpened pencils
• Buckets
• Water bottles
• Rulers
• Pack Packs

The TV-Or Why My Kid Doesn't Sleep

After having my child for two almost three years now I've finally noticed a correlation between her sleeping habits and the TV. Contrary to what I would believe there does not seem to be any correlation between the total amount of TV she watches and her ability to fall asleep. The correlation happens between when she watches and when I want to put her down. I already had a sort of amount of TV limitation (nothing concrete), but recently I have enacted a time of day limit on TV and it has done wonders in our household.

1. No TV until after you are up and ready for the day (clothing on, hair done, teeth brushed, bed made)
2. No TV between lunch and nap time (Usually about an hour of time there)
3. No TV after dinner (About an hour and a half before bed)

It is amazing the difference in her ability to go down. With this and some other slight changes in her bedtime routine I have discovered peace in our home at bed time. So why did it take me so long to figure this out? Why the difference in bed time? Does the TV way over stimulate her for when she needs to sleep? I have no idea. All I know is that I'm so very happy with the result.

How To Cross The Street

There are a few perks to Charlotte being in Joy School. One of my favorites is hearing what she's learning come up at home. ("You mean milk comes from cows?") One day she went on a field trip to the park. While there, the mom that was teaching talked about crosswalks and what they're used for and how to be safe around the road. A few nights later Daniel took her to his school with him to pick up a book from a friend. When they came back he told me that they encountered a crosswalk on their way from the car to the library and this is what Charlotte told her father:

Charlotte: "Are we crossing a road in a crosswalk?"
Daniel: "Yes."
Charlotte: "And do I need to hold mommy and or daddy's hand?"

I stinking love my little sponge!

Definitions

A few nights ago Charlotte was getting out of the bath. Mixed in with her constant verbal commentary on everything in her life she said,

"Greggie is Mommy's little guy and Daddy's son."

I thought that was really cute.