A day in the life (and it's not over yet!)

The little man, coming at'cha!.

A photographer/nurse that I work with was over and got this shot (thanks Danielle!) - he's such a star! He's quite mobile now - not quite crawling, but commando crawling well. He loves to eat anything and everything. He has 5 teeth now and wants to use them. Oh, the howls when he's out of food!

Natty is doing well in school and the "I hate school" drama has decreased (thank goodness).

It's interesting the connections she makes. For instance, today we had a wild and angry morning (for the dumbest reason....we couldn't find her library book and today was Library. For all we knew she didn't come home with one last week but she wouldn't hear any of that and kept up a loud, petulant tirade about how awful I was that I wouldn't help her find it - and this is after I've looked in and organized all her bookcases. I nearly lost my mind. At one point in the morning Sam, who has a cold and therefore snot streaming down his face, is screaming because I can't get food into him fast enough and Natty is railing in high pitched whine mode about her lost (but more likely non-existent) library book and what a terrible mother I am. It was one of those out-of-body experiences where you take your soul/mind up to the ceiling and float around watching the chaos while your body is mechanically trying to fix what can be fixed (feeding Sam) and ignore or shout down what can't be (Natty). Ahhh, motherhood.)

Anyway, the point is, there were some angry words between the Buttner women this morning. So she brings home "Llama, Llama, Mad at Mama" from the library today. We read it through two times immediately after her arrival. Then she read it to herself while I made her lunch. Very cathartic I guess but she refused to comment on it. (The Llama, Llama books are great - cute, funny and apropos to life with children).

After such a stressful start to the day, I brought Sam into a steamy shower with me this morning to try to clear out his sinuses and that was the cutest thing. He loves water in any form (even just hearing it run) and we could have stood in the warm shower for hours. Normally he's not a snuggler like Natty was (He loves to be held, but he doesn't cuddle down in my arms like she did - too much energy) but he cuddled into my shoulder so sweetly under the water. And then he took a nap and I finished staining the stairs (matching the old stain fairly well, finally), took two beds apart, did some major touch ups to the dining room paint job and checked email. It's nice to check stuff off the list.