It's been a few days, so I can laugh now.

In the last post I said Claire's messes could always be worse? Well, if you are not a mother or have a sensitive gag reflex, quit reading now. If you have a sensitive gag reflex and are a mother, congratulations, you must be pregnant! HA!

OK, so Claire yells from across the living room to me and says, "Mom, I'm poopy." We're still working on the potty training thing and I know she has a pull-up on, so no biggie. I tell her to go to the bathroom and I will change her. I make it to the bathroom first and she waddles up behind me...with poop running down her leg. Oh crap (literally). I clean her up enough to get her upstairs to the bathtub. Ellie follows us up the stairs. I love that she's walking so well. I put Claire in the tub and turn to check on Ellie...who has a trail of poop behind her. Not from her diaper...from her feet! And her hands are covered in it too! She has some around her mouth, but her breath is minty-fresh (more on that later). AH! I'm freaking out and yelling at both of them (mainly Claire). After bathing and dressing both girls, and cleaning out the bathtub, I go downstairs to a lovely smell coming from the living room. Yes...poop EVERYWHERE! OK, so I may be exaggerating slightly, but there were several large piles on the floor. I throw all the toys into a laundry basket and start wiping up as much as I can. Yes, I made sure the toys were poop-free also.

My carpets are nice now that I've cleaned it. For awhile I didn't think they would ever look the same. More good news: the living room doesn't look like we were vandalized anymore.

Sorry - no pictures. Or should I say, "You're welcome!"

The "privilege" of working from home

I wasn't clear-headed enough to get a picture of this before I cleaned it up...

If my 3-year-old had been in daycare, I would not have just cleaned up the following mess...

1. A 3-lb bag of animal crackers emptied onto the recliner in the family room.
2. My kitchen utensils being used in some quasi-science experiment.
3. A pitcher of stale tea mixed with weeds from the back yard and Cheerios in a bowl that previously had potatoes in it.
4. Potatoes covered with a mixture of stale tea, animal crackers, and Cheerios in a bowl from ? I'm not even sure where the bowl came from or if it was even ours. The neighbor brats...eh...kids throw stuff over the fence into our yard all the time. Claire has acquired some really neat balls this way.
5. The tea, cookie, and Cheerios concoction on the carpet. Not even the dog would lick it up. The smell was indescribable.

The joys of working from home....=) At least there was no poop involved. It can always be worse, right?

Claire's Preschool Program

This is the :12 version. If you want the 5:00 version, email me and I will send it to you. =) You are either very bored, need a good laugh, or love Claire very much!

Ellis is pretty smart, too!

Ellie is reclining on a bag of trash (I think), reading a book. So what that it's upside down and only the jacket of the book. She stayed like that for the longest time. Ellie is very content, most of the time, to just hang out.

Proof of Claire's Intelligence...or Ingenuity

When I am working in my office, I put up two gates so that the girls are confined to one room of the house (right outside my office). Claire figured out that if she drops a toy bucket on the other side of gate, she can use a chair to simply step over the gate. Pretty smart, huh?

My Little Butterfly

This is one of my favorite pictures of Ellie. The butterfly wings bring out her big, blue eyes. No story, just a great picture.

Every 3-year-old does it at some point....

The date: 3 weeks before Claire is the Flower Girl in Bree and Dan's wedding.

The scene: I am sitting at my desk, working.

I hear John yell from upstairs, "Where did all this hair come from?"

Yep. Claire was Mommy's big helper and cut her bangs...with the trimming scissors. Just like Mommy does...kind of.

Oh yeah, and she cut her sister's bangs too. I am amazed that she didn't cut anything else off. Those are sharp scissors! I am also amazed that Ellie stood still long enough for Claire to do it.

And her preschool teacher said she needed to work on her cutting skills...right.