Life

This morning was another typical morning at our house. Early to wake up. Quick to eat breakfast. Gabs hurrying to get dressed in her "up sleeves" and skirt before I can actually pick out appropriately warm clothes for the cool spring morning. It was all too classic. It was a morning like each and every other morning. Then, when Gabriella was doing something funny a thought came to me that hardly ever does. I thought, "Write that down so you can remember to tell Joe when he gets home."

Then it hit me. I realized this is what I want to remember. This is what I want to have recorded. This is what I should be journaling about. This is real life. This is what is important. So, I did record it. And now I'm journaling about it. This is a day in the life of our Gabriella at 3 years old.

8:30 am- Gabs tells me that I am "the honey" and she is the mommy. She pushes her stroller to "play school" where she proceeds to stand at the podium (the wet wipes) and spotlights herself "...I love to play dress up and the color yellow..." She then grabs the hymn book and leads the class (aka Gwen) in song...scripture power obviously. Don't ask, I have no idea what's with the minnie ears.

10:00 am- We put Gwen down and the fun begins. Painting! We checked out an Eloise book at the library, so Gabriella informs me that she is painting herself and that she is "being a master painter." I tell her it's called a "self portrait." She misunderstands and says "yes, it's super important." Well, that too!

10:30 Watches today's show of choice, Dora, while I shower. Yes, it was 10:30, I should be embarrassed huh?

11:00 am- Tired of painting, she "helps" me make her Easter dress. Which translates into putting all her little animals on my rotary board and covers them in scrap fabric blankets. Very entertaining.11:30 am- As I continue to sew, she asks for me to print her coloring pages. We do this all the time. We love to print free coloring pages off the Internet, because she's so wishy-washy about what she's interested in. This way, she tells me what she wants, and I print it. Then, she colors. She loves to color on the piano bench pulled over to the couch or chair. It reminds me of when I was little and we would set up the ironing board and sit at it in bar stools and play "school". Coloring on the piano bench provides much longer entertainment then coloring at the silly old bar. 12:00 pm- Gabs loves to be the one to open the door when she hears Gwen. She told me while she was coloring, "I'm tired of waiting for Gwen to wake up." She really does get pretty bored without her playmate. Gwen loves seeing Gabriella when she wakes up.12:15 pm- Lunch. But when your three year old is on a food strike, lunch lasts about as long as it takes to push the food around the plate, eat one bite, then merrily skip away with the cup of milk, because that's the diet around here. The milk diet. 12:30 pm- I catch Gabriella making up a new song in the piano room for the random halloween, trick-or-treating witch bag she found in the closet with her crayons. It had been buried since October and now it had new life and was the "friend" of choice for the rest of the day.1:00 pm- While I was changing Gwen's diaper, Gabriella decided all her babies needed changing. Babies also include her witch, giraffe and elephant, or anything that looked like it could be "stinky". This was the best part of my day. For 30 minutes I listened to her say in her most "mom" like voice, "Oh no. My baby is stinky all the time. I always have to get my baby giraffe a new diaper." I later had to go around the house and collect a dozen "stinky" diapers to put back in the drawer to be used for real.
2:00 pm- Rice time! I read a suggestion one time that said if your kids get bored with the toys they have, simply move the toys to a new area in the house and they'll all of a sudden be magical. For example, a train track is suddenly transformed when moved from a child's room to the kitchen floor. So with this time of day always being our toughest, we took the rice into the girls room. Gabs emptied a storage bin and we filled it with the rice. They filled dishes and put them in the oven. We had many "picnics."

3:00 pm- Afterwards, Gabs crawled into her "secret cave" (in the corner under Gwen's crib) while I vacuumed the rice mess. Thanks for that!3:30 pm- Joe's home and is immediately put to work reading stories. Gotta love the Research months! The rest of the day revolves around which girl can climb on daddy the most. It's so nice when daddy's are home.Just to be fair, and so you don't think that every day runs this smoothly, I fully expected to have pictures of Gwen screaming because Gabriella took her toy, and Gabriella crying because Gwen messed something up. Surprisingly, today wasn't that kind of day. We were just busy.

I have this theory that if I am busy, the girls will be busy. Busy children are happy children. Happy children equals-I get a lot done. So, today I was busy. The girls were busy. I finished one Easter dress and the girls had fun. Life is good!