Typical Tuesday

It's a typical Tuesday at the Parry House. This morning the kids and I slept in a little after their late bedtime last night and attempt to night wean Ethan (thus lost sleep!). We sluggishly got ready for the day and managed to get to Walmart for the van's oil change by a little after 10am. After wandering the Walmart aisles for 30 minutes or so we paid for the oil change and swung by the library to drop off a big load of books and pick up the 8th book to the series I'm devouring. I forgot the library is closed on Tuesdays and it was pretty dissapointing to realize I will have to wait until tomorrow to get my hands on that book!

We ended our morning errands at Safeway where we did our weekly grocery shopping. I had already planned out the week's menus and had my budgeted list in hand. I attempted to put Ethan in the grocery cart "car" with Grace and some Cheezits which didn't work out so well. Grace pushed Ethan and he pulled her hair. Bringing children to the grocery store is always such a joy. I came in $.86 under my planned for budget even with a few extra additions I forgot I needed. I loaded up on baking goods since Safeway has good prices on baking basics and offered a $5 coupon if you spend $20. So for $20 I got two bags of flour, two bags of sugar, two bags of brown sugar, two bags of powdered sugar, vegetable oil, and four cake mixes. Not too shabby AND I got a coupon.

After unloading and putting the groceries away, making lunch, and putting Ethan down for a nap I started on the laundry for the day. Today I'm doing all the towels in the house and folded a ginormous pile of laundry. I find that it's much easier to fold laundry while Ethan naps since it's an excercise in patience to attempt to fold clothes and keep them folded if he's around to "help". While I folded clothes Grace busily decorated her princess notebook with her princess crayons and stickers and then proceeded to work on filling her Snap n Style doll's bag with all manner of pink and purple toys. She loves to collect pink and purple toys in bags for some reason.

David is working from home today which means he's wearing pajama pants and taking 300 meetings on the phone. The kids' folded laundry is still spread on the floor since I don't want to wake Ethan from his nap to put it away. Both the dog and the cat are snoozing on the couch, and Grace is wearing her Cinderella costume and shoes which is something she does every day. It really wouldn't do to not spend part of the day dressed up as a princess.

So there you have it. A typical Tuesday for the Parry Family.

The Big Toy Clean Out

Today was a productive day for the Parry household. Today we dumped every toy in the house (save the big obvious toys like the toy kitchen, doll house, dress up box, blocks...) on the living room floor and weeded out some toys to get rid of. The toy pile was massive. It was the first time we've attempted such a big toy clean up and we managed to weed out lots of things with Grace's approval. We told her we would give the toys away to other kids to play with and she was fine with the idea. Most of the toys that we were able to put in the give away pile were toys that Grace hasn't played with in a long time or that Ethan had outgrown. We wanted to do this before Christmas and the inevitable glut of new toys overflowed our toy storage limit. We have two huge plastic tubs for toy rotation that are now completely empty since all the toys fit in the bookcase in the kids' room, in the toy basket in the living room, or in the living room bookshelf. I'll be saving the tubs to use for toy rotation after Christmas I'm sure.

I'm glad we had the kids help us sort through the toys since we had two goals in mind. One was to thin the stash and the other was to teach Grace that it's nice to share her bounty with others. With Christmas approaching and the talk about Santa Claus and presents already beginning it was nice to take a moment to talk about sharing the blessings we've been given with others.

A Perfect Picture

David had me take 3000 photos of him wearing his suit and tie this afternoon. He wanted to have some professional looking photos of him to use online for various business related sites. Of course David is super hard to please when it comes to liking photographs of himself and is never happy with the results. He's convinced he's not photogenic but I have to disagree. I think he looks pretty darn good! Here's the top 5 photos from this afternoon's photo session, which one is your favorite? Please vote!

Photo #1

Photo #2

Photo #3

Photo #4

Photo #5

I see spots!

Poor Ethan just can't catch a break. Not only is he underweight, growing teeth, and getting over a head cold/cough/ear infection but he now has spots. That's right, spots. I first noticed his spotted nature this morning and let him run around in just a diaper for awhile to make sure it wasn't heat rash or something similar. The spots stayed so I called the pediatrician's office and talked to a nice nurse who told me that Ethan most likely has a viral rash. Whatever nasty head cold/cough is going around right now occasionally comes along with the lovely red rash that Ethan is now sporting. We're supposed to call if he spikes a fever over 101.5, shows signs of developing another ear infection, or the rash doesn't appear to be going away within 4 days. So for now Ethan has spots.

Ethan doesn't seem to phased by the whole deal. I wanted to take some pictures of his new exotic skin covering to share and so I handed him the Nintendo 64 controller that is "his" to play with and snapped away. As you can tell, he's still a pretty happy guy!

Sisterly Love

Lately Ethan has started to sleep through the night on occasion, though he still wakes up to nurse once some nights. Last night was one of those nights and I stood by the door listening to the tired cry and was hoping he'd put himself back to sleep so I wouldn't have to intervene. Listening by the door I expected to hear some tired crying and wasn't prepared to hear a tiny voice in the dark. I heard Grace say very softly and tenderly "It's ok Ethan, I love you" over and over. After listening to her try to comfort him a few times I went ahead and nursed Ethan so he wouldn't disturb Grace anymore.

But isn't that sweet?

Pink Obsessed

This morning Grace industriously moved all of the pink toys in the kids' room into her bed and all of the non-pink toys into Ethan's crib. Yes she is obsessed with pink and yes this is what happens when the time change happens and Mommy and Daddy are too tired to wake up at the new 6am. If you're a parent of small children I bet you prefer the spring forward time change over the dreaded fall back. Gaining an extra hour only gains us big messes to clean up!

Trick Or Treat

We had our third annual Halloween with the Cresswells and this year Grace and Jordan were both Cinderella. Apparently Cinderella was a *very* popular costume choice for the 3-4 year old girl set. Grandma did some work on Grace's hair when she got here and managed to use a ring from the stacking toy to make a princess bun. Grace was very happy with her Princess Hair. This year their little brothers wore the same costumes they wore two years ago! Ethan donned Grace's pumpkin costume and made it his own. I don't think I've seen a cuter pumpkin then Ethan. Bennet was a super cute lion.

After a much interrupted homemade pizza dinner we piled the boys in the red wagon and the girls were off and running in their plastic glass slippers and clip clopped their way down the sidewalk. Jordan's shoes flashed blue which was ultra-cool but only lasted about 6 houses before she traded them for the much easier to walk in tennis shoes. Grace refused to take her glass slippers off ALL DAY LONG and thus developed a blister on each of her big toes. She's a total slave to fashion.

The girls were totally cute remembering to say trick-or-treat and then "Thank you!" and "Happy Halloween!" but their creative additions were the best. After a particularly good candy haul Grace made sure to call out "We'll see you next year!" which had us in stitches!

Once we got back to the house the girls dumped their candy out on the floor and inspected their loot. I raided Grace's candy and confiscated all the bubble gum and jawbreakers which I deemed inappropriate and noticed she lucked out and got a package of HoHos. Yum! We talked the girls into eating a chocolate cupcake before jumping into the candy and while they ate chocolate frosting the boys took their opportunity to inspect the candy as well. Grace's favorite candy is Smarties, she still hasn't eaten any of her chocolate candies which may not be smart. David and I are both eyeballing her stash!