thoughts on a sunday

Last month for my thoughts I posted a picture pretty similar to this one. .  .except this one doesn't have a beef stick, and this one shows a lot more happiness and relief than the other one did.  We are happy.  We are relieved.  Florida is over.

• Yes, Brian is home!  He might not be living in the same house as us all the time, but we are so happy to be in the same state, at the very least.  He goes to Newport on Tuesday,  and I pretty much insisted that we go with him.  McKay has three days off of school, so it just felt like it was meant to happen.  I don't care how much it costs us, we need to be together right now.  So now we have a whole week!  

• Brian survived Florida and I am so proud of him.  It was rough on me, yes, but I think it may have been worse for him.  He did a really, really hard thing for two whole months.  He never plans to return to Florida.  

• It's fun to see how happy the kids are to have him home.  Layla was pretty cold towards him when he said hello in the car the first time, but even just a few minutes into the drive home, she was smiling and acting all amazed that there was a man in our car.  I can't tell if she remembered him or not, but she's totally accepted this man. . .although this morning she was a little shocked again that there was somebody else in my bed.

• We all know that I love my little Layes to pieces, but there is something that I do not love about her.  She refuses to sit in the grocery cart seat, and prefers to hang out in the basket.  That makes it sounds too  nice.  She doesn't "prefer", she climbs, crawls and twists her way out of the seat, so that I have no choice but to put her in the basket.  And as soon as I do she is as happy as can be and kind of wants all the other customers to pay attention to how cool she is.  

• I'm always afraid she's going to fall out of the basket because she acts like it's her own private little room and roams around like a crazy person.  How did we get here?

• For preschool I moved the kids' easel that was in the garage, into the family room.  I think it may have a new home.  I just can't move it out because for the first time since we got it two years ago, they are playing with it, almost daily.  Something about having it out in plain sight, I guess.  McKay will go and practice writing words and letters, and Ellery does some really great abstract art.  Layla even loves to draw. . .but  not as much as she loves to chew pieces off of the eraser.  Anyway, it's red and blue and ugly and it's in my front room!

• That brings me to McKay's writing.  We've been working on birthday thank you notes and at the rate we're going, family, you will probably get them by Christmas.  Anyway, I thought writing thank you's would be a great way for him to practice writing, with a purpose!  I love seeing his mismatched upper and lowercase letters, as well as the varying sizes of each letter and word.  He's totally into putting periods behind every word and no matter how many times I tell him they go at the end, they just keep showing up.

• So a few months back Layla started doing something occasionally and I always forget to mention it.  Sometimes, when I get her up from a nap, I will go in and she will be completely topless.  Somehow she maneuvers her body out of her shirt and just hangs out half nude in her bed.  I have no idea how she does it.
   
• I guess it's time to talk about how I want a mini van.  I am SO sick of our car seat situation.  Since Layla was born, we've had all three kids in the middle row of our car.  It was squishy, and I spent the first year throwing her infant carseat over Ellery to the middle, but it worked.  Now, Layla is in "the throne" and Ellery has graduated to a booster with McKay, and they cannot buckle their seatbelts becacuse it's just too squishy.  Ellery, I love her, but she is pretty helpless when it comes to doing her seat belt.  This really frustrates me.  She tries, I think, but she just hasn't gotten it yet.  So with lack of space and all the buckling, I am ready for more room.  So this week I told Brian that I either needed a mini van or an umbrella stroller, so McKay could fit in the back row with just a little stroller instead of the huge one.  Guess what I'm getting?

• The stroller. 

• The throne is the car seat that we bought McKay, our first born, when he turned one and we were young and stupid.  It is huge, heavy, and luxurious.  

• Ellery loves to tell the general public Layla's name when we are out and about.  

• This weekend we got to go to a baptism of our pretend Oregon cousin, Kari.  Ellery was all enamored with Kari because of her b beautiful white dress and fancy french braid.  She could not wait to get baptized herself someday, as she told me several times during the program.  You know how they always invite the kids to go up to the font to get a better look?  Well, my kids went up and watched the baptism.  As soon as they came back to sit by me, Ellery had a panicked look on her face and practically yelled to me, "I DO NOT want to get baptized!  I DO NOT want to get in that water!"  At least she has a few years...

• McKay was also quite taken with Kari, except his fascination came with the picture on her baptism invitation.  She was in her dress all beautiful and fancy, and McKay carried it around for a whole day.  I think I even saw Kari get a peck or two.  Oh dear.

Happy Sunday!