September Wrap-Up

Get A Room: Our construction project finally wrapped up in the beginning of the month. As part of the inside painting we decided to "masculinize" one of the bedrooms for Liam. And so Liam finally has a room of his own! It is the smallest, but arguably the nicest, of the bedrooms in the house with its windows on two sides. And from Liam's perspective these are pretty capacious digs after residing in a 54 sq. ft. closet for 18 months. The irony is that the four huge windows let in ample light, even with the shades drawn and Liam seems to be pretty sleep-sensitive to light. To get around this dilemma we put his crib... IN THE CLOSET! (please don't interpret this as some deep seated parental fear of having Liam come out of the closet!).

Failed Bribery: Mid-month Megan and I had a "Special Princess Tea Party" (Does that make us Special Princesses?). I promised her we could have this party when she stopped wearing diapers to bed (she hasn't peed at night in over six months). So finally, she announced she was ready. We had the tea party and Megan went to bed in UNDERWEAR! The night passed without incident, but by the next night Megan was throwing tantrums to have her diaper back. Oh well, it was a good try. We did agree that four year olds don't wear diapers, so hopefully the end is only a few months away. We may have to celebrate with another tea party.

Howdy Partner: I became a partner at work. During the process I learned exactly why there are so many lawyer jokes. Anyway, it looks like our roots in Salem just got VERY deep so we shouldn't be moving anytime soon.

Out with the Old: As I reassembled the house, I went crazy getting rid of stuff - three carloads out of the house. Wow it felt good! I could definitely be one of those people who's gets rid of all their stuff and lives without possessions. I felt especially good about culling the stuffed animal herd. Man I hate those worthless dust collectors!

Play nice: Megan and Liam are playing together with increasing frequency, leaving me to fantasize about days when I can just say,"Kids go play!" and they actually do so.

School Days: After initial trepidation, Megan LOVES school. Like everything else, she just needed to warm up to the idea. These days she's taking on reading. Most three letter words are no problem (consonant-vowel-consonant words). She gave up Sesame Street songs on Youtube as a treat in favor of Clifford the Big Red Dog spelling and reading games (BTW - she can spell "big red dog" too!). And we no longer get to spell for secret parental communication. She's not always right but she's on the right track. Talking to Mac about her P-O-T-T-Y Megan was sure we were talking about the pond and when I asked Mac if he wanted the C-A-N-D-L-E at dinner, Megan's reply was,"I want some candy!"

Double speak: Liam has this weird habit of making every word a double. It reminds me of my Grandmother who always greeted everyone with a "Hi, Hi!" In our house we have "may-may" (Megan) and "Don-don" (Dante). At night we take a "show-show" (shower) and when he's naked he likes to play with his "peen-peen" (boy does he ever!). Favorite activities include "climb - climb" (climbing on anything!) and watching "Barn-Barn" (Barney, the purple dinosaur). In other Liam news he's still having a lot of trouble using the "poon-poon" (spoon). He's starting to learn his colors, but he always answers pink (then yellow). We only demonstrate this skill on pink objects when we want him to look smart.

Too much of a good thing: We just couldn't get enough of the construction chaos, so we decided to replace our roof, too! The 30 year old cedar shingle roof only had a couple of years left at best, so we decided to replace it this year before it leaked on our brand new siding. It also seemed liked a good idea to only have our plants pulverized to dust one year! So more nails, dumpsters, strange guys and a port-a-potty at our house again!

Now on to October!