Adventures in parenthood

Charlie... might be the death of me.

Seriously, if he doesn't kill me, I'm not entirely sure what will. The upside of that is that if he doesn't kill me, I will believe myself to be invincible, which could come in handy from time to time.

Not a single one of you who has boys every accurately communicated the amount of energy and patience that's required to manage a two year old boy and I hold you all personally responsible for my current state of emotional instability.

To anyone who might, at some point in their life, find themselves responsible for managing a two year old boy, I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that he might be the death of you. There, I warned you. Don't blame me.

Case in point... The other day, Charlie was quietly upstairs playing with his sister while I visited with a friend downstairs. I should have know. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! Never, I repeat, never let your two year old boy play quietly upstairs. Two year old boys don't play quietly. They play very loudly and get into mischief quietly. This is a fact of life.

He finally came downstairs covered in his sister's special order, not cheap eczema cream.

It was deluxe.

First, I gasped, then I may have cried a teeny bit, then I just started laughing and grabbed my camera. I figured it was the healthiest way to deal with the whole situation.

And considering the amount of shame he displayed, I imagine he probably didn't need me to get mad at him. Look at him, he knows what he's done.

Let us pray that he's learned his lesson because he generally uses up all the patience I've got for him and the girls before we get to the end of Monday. This week, I've cleaned up wet dog food out of the heating vent, taken him to the ER when he fell out of shopping cart at Costco, prevented him from running out of Wal-mart into traffic (again) as well as all the little things like cleaning up mud off my wool rug, waking up at 5:30 every morning and dealing with endless temper tantrums.

Lucky for him, he's got his looks to fall back on.

Think Pink!

Lizzy was invited to a Pinkalicious birthday party today, so we got her all dressed up in as much pink as we could find...

It suits her well, if I do say so myself.

It's dancy dance time!

So, I believe that during the summer, you all were tortured with my rants over dance - my dance rants, if you will - and how my unnecessarily strong opinions would ultimately effect my daughters and their happiness.

Well, I finally got over myself and signed my girls up for dance. Funny how that worked out.

Actually, it's worked out really well for us. I mean, we had to get over Jane being determined that she wasn't ever going again and that she hated ballet and Lizzy screaming and crying and spitting and hitting and crying and not getting out of the car and not letting go of my leg for several weeks, but ever since we pushed through that, it's been great.

Last week, we finally made it to their winter recital and I had to post our pictures.

I haven't been the biggest fan of our costumes in the past, but this year, we totally scored.

Jane got in the car and said "mom, my costume is the most beautiful costume I've ever seen!"

There were a lot of princess costumes at the recital, so we're thinking that the spring recital theme is something princess related.

Buster had to get in on the action.

Lizzy has a Cinderella costume this time and although I had to fork out a small fortune for the Cinderella costume, at least it will make an awesome dress up or Halloween costume later on.

I think that she liked it too.

Aw. Sisterly love. We don't see much of that around here, so let's take another picture to remind us that it exists.

There we are. I'll pull this up and look at it next time they are upstairs pulling each other's hair and screaming for my intervention.

This is Jane with her buddy, Abby. They did so great in their dance together. They are getting old enough that they can actually dance and do it well instead of just adorably stumbling around on the stage.

Lizzy also did great on the stage. I was fairly certain that she wouldn't even put that costume on. And if she DID, I was very certain that she wouldn't let me do her hair. If she'd let me do that, I was positive that there was no way she'd keep those ribbons around her neck and head and if she would, I knew I'd never get her to go backstage peacefully. If somehow I managed to get her backstage, I was prepared to be called back to get her because I knew she'd throw a Lizzy fit. If by some miracle she got on the stage, I was expecting to watch her curl up in the fetal position or stand there staring blankly and sucking on her fingers.

Shockingly, none of the above happened. She trotted up and did her dance like a pro. I knew that she knew the whole thing because she would tell me all the choreography. She wouldn't show me, she'd just tell me.

"you put this arm up in the air and then you turn around and then you put your hands by your tummy and shake"

I never saw her do a single step until the recital.

Leslie and Ben came. Ben is a big fan of dance recitals and likes to come if he possibly can. I forgot to get a picture of him, but he was also very proud of the girls. I let him pick out a rose for each of them and Leslie brought them candy. The dance studio gave them a little gift bag too, so I guess no one noticed that I didn't really actually do anything for them, you know, other than all the stuff I did.

That's kind of a weird photo, girls. Let's try again. Look at mom! Say cheese!

No, Lizzy. Look over here! One, two, three....

Oh never mind. I give up.