Bedtime crankiness and birthday cuteness

Well, all is quiet-ish here. The kids are in bed but are not yet asleep. Bedtime can be a little hellacious around here. Things can get a bit touchy by the time bedtime rolls around. Let me give you an example.
The man is putzing around the house, just puttering, putting stuff away, flitting like a mustachio'd butterfly from task to task. Blissful. Unaware of the tornado blowing in behind him. The girl suddenly appears with an apple in her hand and begins demanding, "Wash my apple, daddy." Over and over, louder louder, until the words are are blended together into one big, loud word. The man takes the apple, carefully, lovingly washes it for his starving offspring who shrieks "NO apple!" when he hands it back to her. Dumbfounded is the only word I can think of to describe the look on his face.

We have an ABSOLUTELY NO NAPPING rule in this house. It sounds mean, I know, but these 2 only need a few minutes of sleep in the afternoon to charge their batteries enough to keep them up until midnight. Trust me, this rule is strictly enforced! If someone falls asleep . . . I wake them up. The protesting, faking still being asleep and "I'm tiiiiiiiiiired, mommy." falls on deaf ears. (And the mean mommy award goes to . . . )

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking, "Why is it a big deal to you, of all people, if the kids are up late? Aren't you up anyway, oh Queen of the Night Owls?" Yes. I am up. I am up really late every night BUT I am up doing stuff that I don't get to do during the regular hours of the day like the vacuuming and folding laundry and descaling the grout in the shower tile. Important stuff. I am not up surfing the net or playing computer games or mindlessly cruising E-bay. *wink*

Anyway, I have a few more pictures to throw your way. These are the recent birthday pics.

Here's the girl on her 2nd birthday. She and I and the boy had cake on her B'day, as the man was out of town on business. We had a party on the following weekend.

Is there something on my face?


Less cake on the face means more in the tummy.

These pictures were taken at the girl's party. It was the end of August and it was cold enough that we didn't know if we would be able to have her party outside. We had to bundle up and make a big fire. Crazy, eh? In August! Global warming my left cheek.

What?

The boy looking like a man.

He was chatting up his cousin, sitting by the fire, chillaxin. Look at him. They really do grow up too fast, don't they?


Well, the man and I are off to the BIG city for the weekend to do our Christmas shopping. Grandma will be here with the kids.

Bless her heart and wish her luck!

I'll let you know how it went when we get back.

Have a great weekend!!

Inaugural post

Ok.

Here it is.

My blog.

Yup.

I'm blogging.

I have been pissing around with this thing most of the evening, I even had a first post up and deleted the whole thing, pictures included, because I panicked a little about everything being out there, y'know, on the interwebs.

I am cautious by nature and suspicious by choice. I'm not going to put our full names on here, especially the kids', or our address, etc. If you know us, you know our names and where we are. You know me. I'm a little "bushed".

A bush baby.

A chick from the sticks.

That's me.

Seriously though, I started this blog so that I could more easily share things, especially photos, with friends and family. The kids are growing and changing so fast that I can hardly keep up, let alone keep everyone updated.

I'll put a few recent pics in this post so you can see how the chil'rens is. No opportunity to brag on them will be missed.

Here's the girl . . .

2 going on 13.

She's only gotten to wear this cute outfit once, not because it makes her look too old but because the collar and the cuffs require ironing and there's no one around here who's gonna do it. ;) Good thing I bought it on sale! (naturally)


And now the boy . . .

Ever hear the saying, "A boy is a noise with dirt on it."? I offer you exhibit A.

This was late in the summer. Our driveway is not completely finished and there's this one low spot that accumulates any moisture at all and makes a great muddy puddle. It's a little boy magnet. Thank God they're washable.

So. That concludes my first blog post. My brain is tired and it's time for me to retire. I only have a few hours until the kids climb in to our bed and I have to move to the couch!

There will be more bloggy-goodness, so if you're interested, keep checking back.