And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Making Progress

I told you it would be slow without the slavedriv -- er, my dad here. We are not the type to get up early in the morning and jump to work, unless we're shamed into it. Still, we made a bit of progress on our playhouse. The roof is about 1/2 shingled, the doors and windows are trimmed, and the octagon window in the loft is cut out and trimmed (after a couple of false starts) -- and we're only up to Home Depot trip #9. Two more to go before I lose the bet -- and at least one of those will be returns.

Dave stole my blog entry about teaching Ian to tell time and learning to sleep later. All I can say is, that's the best parenting idea we have ever had (and I think it was mine). Ian picked it up so quickly -- knock on wood -- and I hope it will continue. The only downside is that somehow I made the mistake of sacrificing my own bedside clock to the little guy, and now I never know what time it is when I wake up in the night. Difficult for the control freak in me.

Tomorrow night I am running an informational meeting for parents about Daisy Girl Scouts. I'm starting a troop at Katie's school. Already two moms have called to express interest (one of whom has twins), and there are seven kindergarten classes at St. Paul's. There could conceivable be 70 people at this meeting tomorrow. I was thinking about making cookies, and we planning on doing it tonight, until Dave suggested that I could just buy cookies to put out. Now I'm torn -- on one hand, I like making cookies, and I like impressing people with homemade things (yes, I know I'm vain), and I have this very cute trefoil-shaped cookie cutter. On the other hand, I do have other things I could be doing, and why should I work so hard to impress strangers, and, okay, Dave got me with the little dig about being like the Desperate Housewives character, Brie. So I'm not sure what I'll do.

Notice that I am, of course, procrastinating planning the actual content of the meeting -- I intend to do that tomorrow in a cafe while our sitter watches Ian. I also plan to write our annual Christmas letter. What, me, overscheduled? Hey, if I get the letter done before Thursday, when the kids' pictures come in at Sears, I'll be doing great. I already have the cards addressed and stamped -- all 60 of 'em.

Oh, quick Ian vocabulary note. Remember Ian, the one who supposedly can't talk, and who answers almost all encouragement of repetition with a prolonged, "Nooooo"? Dora the Explorer told him to say "abajo," and now he does. Abajo, for crying out loud. He's speaking a second language, and he still won't say "cat"!

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 6:35 PM