Nonsense, Laden With Gratuitous Pictures Of My Children, Which Is Probably Why You Come Here Anyway

 "Finally! I've been searching this library FOREVER for this rare and enlightening tome. Now I can get back to my thesis!"

Last night we were putting the girls to bed late - SO VERY LATE- after an evening out. I was rocking Nessie in her room and Joey was getting Ariel changed in HER room. And the following conversation ensued:

Joey: WOW you have a full diaper! What's up with that??

Ariel: I got a lotta pee!

Joey: Did you just say you had a lot of pee?

Ariel: Yep! Lotta pee.

Joey: *overcome with delight by the sheer awesomeness of his firstborn* I love you!

Ariel: I love MAMA! *runs away from him to give me a hug*

Oh my goodness, you guys, having CONVERSATIONS with my child is a.ma.zing. She's hilarious! I'm pretty sad about the whole "my babies are toddlers and tomorrow they will probably be graduating from college or something" thing, but this talking thing is pretty fantastic. EVEN when she says the same thing over and over. And over. AND OVER. Very fantastic, I tell you.

In light of this conversation, we have decided to start...shhh...potty training today. Hold me. She's very excited about the potty we got at IKEA this week, but I had to inform her last night that if she wants to pee in the potty (and subsequently receive CANDY) she is first going to have to actually SIT on the potty. So far she has mostly wanted to wear it on her head. Or Nessie's head.

Recommend any good potty training tips? Movies or books? Just come to my house and do it for me because this seems terribly abstract for a two year old and there are a lot of things that I can't seem to explain to her. Like how when the dog walks past you without touching you, it does not in fact BURN OH THE AGONY MUST SHRIEK AND WAIL AND NEED MECINE, MOMMY, HURTS! MECINE!! ?


And not to leave Nessie out of the Tiny Newborn Smooshy Babies Who Think They Are Grown-Ups club, she took her first step last night! And I saw her do it! Twice! You know what this MEANS?

Ariel's snacks may never be safe again. She is not pleased about the increasing mobility of her sister. Not one bit.

Nessie has been practicing her walking skillz in the pool, actually. She can touch the bottom when she's plopped safely in her awesome pool floaty thing, and she's very supported, so she zooms around like a crazy child. LOOK AT ME I CAN MOVE! AND MY HANDS ARE FREE TO GRAB STUFF AT THE SAME TIME! OMG YOU GUYS THIS IS AWESOME!

Question: 1500 gallon little above-ground vinyl pool in the backyard - classy or trashy? It always seems slightly redneck to me, but that isn't stopping us from LOVING our pool time. I repeat, LOVING. We get sunshine and fresh (stifling, humidity-laden, 100 plus degrees) air and the day doesn't stretch into an endless monotony of living room, toys, mess, Sesame Street, AND the post-swimming naps are AMAZING. So I make a concession to possibly redneck living, just this once.

And finally, I have somehow managed to LOSE an entire week. I thought I had two weeks before Nessie's birthday party and last night it was brought to my attention that no, I have only ONE. Curse you, summer, with your deceptive lazy days! So I have a LOT of birthday stuff to do! A WHOLE BIG LOT!

Okay you guys, run away before I give you an all-caps migrane or something. I often resolve to write an entire post without any all-caps, much as I often resolve to leave comments with no exclamation points.
BUT I JUST CAN'T SEEM TO HELP MYSELF!!!


UPDATED: After publishing this, I was looking it over and adsense decided that an ad with a beautiful non-redneck pool would be applicable here. Seriously, adsense, ARE YOU TAUNTING ME? I'm a teacher! That pool costs like half of my yearly salary! Not cool.