A few weeks ago I discovered carpenter
ants hanging around on the front porch and working their way
under the siding. These are very big ants! Someone told me last
year that ants don’t like the smell of cinnamon so you can dust
cinnamon along your doors and windows to keep ants out. It
seemed to work well last summer. So I grabbed my BJs contain of
cinnamon and applied a generous heaping to the ants and the
wall. They scattered! Then I made a thick line of it along the
door jamb and closed the door. The next day when Alan was home
I showed him the whole situation and the few ants who were
brave enough to still be hanging around. He tried to put some
more cinnamon along the wall and under the siding. While he was
doing this Lex came over to see what was going on. Alan
explained what he was doing and Lex got concerned because “we
eat cinnamon, it’s not for putting on the ground!” Then he sat
down to watch. A few minutes later he noticed the cinnamon
container and read it, exclaiming, “Oh! Dad! This is GROUND
cinnamon. It’s not food, it IS to put on the ground!” :) Get
it? Ground cinnamon? :) That boy cracks me up!!

This is from my
phone. Notice how nicely they are sitting and smiling. Too bad
they never do that when I have my real camera! We got to BJs
today and discovered they have brand new carts, with TWO seats
up front!! This is awesome :) The kids always argue about who
gets to sit up front (though Eve generally wants to walk
anyway), but now there is room for both. They spent the whole
shopping trip in and out of the cart, trying both sides, etc.
Another nice feature is that if just one kid is in the seat
there is still room to put stuff down, like hats, cups,
coupons, etc. Very good thinking by someone at BJs!!

Happy 4th of July! We had an awesome day.
I was thinking about writing a long post here, but just looking
through the photos is making me tired. That, and the fact that
it’s almost 11:30pm! So for now here are two photos and a quick
summary :) This morning we went to see a parade, followed by a
little event with a petting zoo, games, and (most importantly)
a fire truck and an ambulance. Lex spent a long time running
through the ambulance. Then home for lunch and naps. This
evening we went to another event with french fries, balloons,
horse-drawn wagon rides, and a whole fire station full of
trucks and ambulances! A fireman told us the best place to go
to view the fireworks, so we headed that way. The kids ran
around with other kids, had a picnic dinner, and LOVED the
fireworks. Actually, around 9:00pm Eve started asking if we
could go home now. Then she said she needed a nap :) Alan got
out the stroller and she watched the fireworks in a state of
indecision: watch the fireworks or nap under the big sunshade.
But they were both super well-behaved all day. It was awesome!!
And naked day #2 was a success (through two clothed outings)
all the way until about 9:25pm when she peed on my lap. Yuck! I
actually think she was starting to doze off. Probably I should
have put a diaper on her by then :) But I’m going to call the
day an overall success!! I’ll post lots of pictures soon.
Tomorrow Alan’s parents are coming to visit and the boys are
going to do a deck project. They are very excited. I’m ready
for a 24hr nap! :)

Naked day went pretty well, overall. She
napped, naked, and woke up dry. We went outside for awhile and
I was hesitant to put pants on her (but more hesitant not to!),
but she did great! All went well until the evening when they
both were struck with diarrhea, which created a messy evening.
I just got done mopping the floors! :) We’ll try again
tomorrow. Or maybe we’ll go out for some 4th of July fun, since
we accidentally missed the local fireworks tonight. Silly me
assumed they were actually ON the 4th of July! Lex is very
excited about fireworks and he’ll be sad to find out we missed
the local ones. Anyway, a good day otherwise.

We were playing in the arts & crafts
drawer today and Eve decided to make a necklace. Lex, of
course, wanted to play too. I was surprised at how good both of
them were at stringing the beads on. Last time we tried it
neither of them were quite coordinated enough. They really had
fun today.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIetURzG3xs]

I read an article awhile back about potty
training in 3 days. One thing that caught my eye was their
suggestion to have the child go completely naked for the first
few days. They said that if the kid is wearing pants or
underwear they are more likely to be confused and have
accidents. I’ve seen this a lot in Eve lately. She wants
underwear but has lots of accidents, but then she will tell me
she peed in her diaper (while wearing underwear) or get upset
about peeing in underwear, even though she is really in a
diaper. Anyway, she definitely seems to be confused by that.
The other day I stripped her down after dinner and let her run
around for awhile, and after a few minutes she ran right to the
bathroom and peed on the potty! So I decided to try some naked
time for a few days to see if we can kick this diaper habit
once and for all! So far, so good! She was naked all morning,
very happily, and used the potty with no accidents. I was going
to hold off on blogging until tonight, but the below picture is
so funny I can’t resist posting it now. She used the potty
right before I took a shower, so I thought (hoped!) it would be
safe to leave her unattended for a few minutes. They were
watching a show, I took a quick shower, and came down to find
this:

 

The
silly girl got up, got her potty, put it on the couch, climbed
on, and peed! She was happily sitting on a potty full of pee,
watching TV. I’m so thankful that she didn’t pee on the couch
and also thankful that she didn’t try to get off the full
potty! Whewh!!! I told her to sit still for one second longer
while I grabbed the camera :)

This
picture is just to remind myself that it is summer and we do,
occasionally, see the sun. It’s been many, many days, but it
came out for a few minutes this morning. Yay!

 

Something seems to have clicked in Eve’s
brain recently and she is now a counting wiz! Well, she’s been
able to count for awhile now, but she figured out the “touch
each thing once” part of counting and can now count individual
objects and stop when she runs out of objects to count. Before
she just waved her finger around wildly and counted to 12 or 15
or some other random number. In the past few days she has been
counting EVERYTHING and telling me “you touch each one once!”
Such a smart girl!

We are finally all getting healthy after
our bout of colds and eye infections. Yay! Sadly, today we
discovered a second downside to daycare: biting! Poor Eve got
bit on the arm by another kid today. Apparently this is not
uncommon, but sad for Eve nonetheless. At dinner she told me
“we do not bite Eve, people are not chew toys.” :)

While
I was taking pictures of Eve’s arm, Lex asked me to take
pictures of his “beautiful striped shirt.” He was so excited
how could I resist!

They drove me crazy yesterday. Lex was up
early this morning but I had to wake Eve up at 8am for daycare.
We got out the door, everyone cooperating but no one very
excited about the day. Not sure why. They entered the daycare
very timidly and Lex seemed upset, or worried, though not
crying, when I left. Eve was also not her usual bouncing,
cheerful self. Now I’m sitting in a quiet, cold office and
missing my noisy warm babies. Somedays it seems like you just
can’t win!