The three sweetest words in the English language.

"You were right."

I'll have to tell Bob. I finally asked Caroline about this picture:

And you know how I thought it was a head, over a torso (with breasts!) with arms & legs? Well, I was wrong.

Turns out, (and now I vaguely remember Caroline saying something about it when I found this drawing) this is a picture of Caroline. With a crown. But not because it's her birthday. Because she's a queen. So the smaller circle, up over the big one? That's her crown. And we may need to work some anatomy classes into our busy schedule, because apparently, her arms and legs are coming out of her head.

At our house, on birthdays, the birthday girl gets to wear a crown at dessert time. The "crown" is my mom's tiara from when she was on Homecoming Court in high school. I used to love trying that thing on when we would visit my grandparents' house in Iowa, so when we were splitting up my grandparents' things, as my grandmother prepared to move in with my parents, I asked for the tiara. I knew that my girls would have as much fun with it as I did. And they do.

Crunch Time

So we've asked our priest to come bless our house tomorrow. And then, we decided to make it a house blessing/open house. We've invited people from church, people we work with (or in my case, used to work with), former neighbors, other friends, etc.

I really thought that hosting such an event might give us added motivation to finish some projects. And it did -- just not the ones I was hoping for.

I tried and tried to find a rug for the foyer. Without a rug, it really feels unfinished. And it is. Actually, it's unstarted. While my parents were here, we went to TJ Maxx (thanks for the tip, Allison!) and found two rugs I liked. I bought them and brought them home, knowing I could return them if Bob didn't like them. And he didn't. But he was willing to live with them if a) we agreed they were temporary, and b) I liked them. So we agreed to live with them. But then, all through the night, the rugs kept coming into my dreams, and I was stewing over them, and finally I realized that I wasn't as wild about them as I'd thought. You know how sometimes something you didn't like grows on you? (Awkward sentence, I know.) Well, I experienced the opposite effect with these rugs. They shrank on me, if you will.

Sorry to talk so much about rugs. There are so many things more important than rugs, and yet, in my Project Coziness, I'd like to get this "right." And no, I don't mean to imply that there's one rug that's right for my foyer. One of many, I'm sure, I just need to find them.

I fell for this PB Kids rug. I really like it, and Bob likes it, too. And if we decided it was too bold for the foyer, it would be a great kids' room rug.

Cute, right? Except then I discovered that the rug is not one even height. It's textured.

So that rug's out. It's just not the one for us.

Anyway, so we won't have a soft rug in the foyer tomorrow night, but we will (drumroll, please) have a bath/shower that's no longer missing a tile! Thank you, Bob. I don't know how long that tile has been missing, but it was missing when we moved in (13 months ago), and hallelujah, Bob fixed it last night. The tile doesn't totally match (it's a slightly different shade of white), but I told Bob that what might be an eyesore to other people is beautiful to me.

Other projects to finish before tomorrow night at 8 (and if you're local, you're invited!) include installing some kind of lock on the downstairs bathroom door. It freaks me out when there's no lock on the bathroom door ... except in my own house, of course. But for everyone else, I'd like for them to not be worried that someone might walk in on them. Because that's never fun.

Kitchen progress: there hasn't been any. I did fill two holes with a product called Great Stuff. (Should I be in marketing? Because even I could replicate that thought process. What should we call this stuff? It's really great stuff. Oh, I know, let's call it Great Stuff!) And I did do some sanding. But there's a lot more to this kitchen project, so even though Bob's in Chicago today, I'm not going to surprise him with any more house projects when he comes home.

I did set up a table and chairs in the foyer, and I can't make up my mind about it. Does it look good? Bad? Weird? I think Bob's leaning toward weird. But I don't like having an empty room for people to walk into, especially when we have some furniture to work with in the basement and attic. So, there's a table & chairs in there.

Is this too weird? Is it okay? I don't know.

My prediction?

The Colts.

And I hope I'm right -- but if not, I'll be happy for the Saints. How's that for diplomacy?

Apparently my notes to self don't work.

Do you remember the Sharpie that I may or may not have put through the wash with a HUGE load of clothes? And how I reminded myself to check pockets? (Because, yes, I may have ruined a sweet little sleeper of Will's.)

Well, I forgot.

Load #2: I was unloading the dryer, and this fell out:

Thank goodness it survived its ride through the washer. Caroline, who picked it out, all by herself, while her mother bit her tongue (as in, I bit my tongue, not Caroline's), would be really sad if it died.

Load #3: I pretreated a batch of cloth napkins, burp cloths, and some hand towels, put in the detergent, and some bleach, and then went down right before supper to iron the clean napkins. And discovered that I'd never turned the washer on.

And then I stopped doing laundry for the day, because obviously, I wasn't doing such a hot job. My laundry mountain is shorter now, but not by much.


This is pretty much the only activity around our house today. The girls have been reading books with Pokey, and Pokey's been holding Will, and the girls have been playing with Poppy, and Poppy's been holding Will. That's about it. Can you tell Pokey melts around her grandchildren?


And this is the beauty that is outside. I love it.

Check your pockets.

My parents are coming in tonight for an impromptu visit. That means that, by supper time, I really should:

attack the mountain of laundry upstairs


run to the grocery store
make a pie crust or two
bake bread
clean the house
cook supper

And during that time, I'll have to face all kinds of distractions. Like:
and:

(If you've ever seen a cuter baby boy than this one, I don't want to hear it, because you're lying.)

And the three kids together: No wonder I never get anything done.

And, while I'm dealing with all my distractions, I need to remember to check pockets before washing clothes. Because it would be pretty bad if I did a huge load of laundry and then found this as I was loading the dryer:

I would never do anything this stupid. Right?

Right?

While we're talking about language...

Caroline talks a lot about the past and the future, and she has specific (and consistent) ways in which she does this.

To describe something that has already happened, she says, "Last night a year ago..." As in, "Did you make me a cake for my birthday last night a year ago?"

To describe something that's going to happen, she says, "Sometime on Thursday..."

Just so you have a heads-up, that's what those phrases mean. Every once in a while, Bob gets confused and says something like, "Did you tell Caroline we're going to Chicago on Thursday?" And I say, "No, did she tell you that? ... Oh wait. I'm sure I told her we'd go to Chicago some time soon. To her, that's on Thursday." The little goober.

She does like to read, so perhaps she picked this up in the sports section.

Stupor

In most ways, Caroline is like Bob. For example, she smells everything. Everything. It really grosses me out, but Bob is her champion in this. We have senses for a reason! We should use them!, he says.

But when she wakes up, she's a bit like me. If Bob talks to me about something when he's leaving for work in the morning (and I'm still in bed, mostly asleep), I will often respond like I know what I'm talking about. But I have no memory of it afterward.

Caroline, however, is just in her own zone when she wakes up. It's best to give her space so she can enter the world of the living in her own sweet time.

Anyway, Friday afternoon, I had to wake her up from her nap because we were going to meet Bob's mom for supper at the Olive Garden. I woke her up, knowing I would incur her wrath just by rousing her. So I quickly followed up "It's time to get up" with "We're going out to eat with Nena! At the Olive Garden!" She thought that through, and then remembered that the Olive Garden is next to a car wash that she loves.

But since she'd just awakened, she did not possess the ability to sort through her collection of nouns and come up with the appropriate ones. So she said, "Are we going to go see that thing with that thing in that thing?" And I, knowing exactly what she was talking about, because I AM HER MOTHER, said, "Yes, honey. We are."

Oh my goodness, I love my kids.