This weekend has been a bit trying for me. It all started Friday morning really. It was my last morning coffee with the girls from church. Warren still wasn’t feeling 100% so he stayed close by. I was home by 10 since we had a repair man coming for the dryer. It was making a bad rubbing sound when running. He got here, we turned it on, and I heard a clinging sound coming from inside. I opened the door to find a screw tumbling around. Once I took it out the dryer sounded fine. Go figure. The best guess we have then is that the screw go lodged in the crevice between the drum and the wall. The repair man only charged us a percentage of the service call. I still felt dumb that we had him come all the way out here just for that. Friday night we baked some fish and had rice and peas to go with it. Laura ate all that I gave to her. Warren wasn’t so big on it. As a reward for eating such a great dinner I gave Laura one scoop of ice cream plus one cookie. May be a bit much, but I wanted her to know how proud I was that she ate everything that she was given. She didn’t even complain about it one time!
Saturday was a day full of laundry. Since we thought the dryer was broke, we hadn’t done laundry for two weeks. With four of us in the family, there was a ton to be washed. We had also just bought two garbage bags full of clothes for Warren. I only washed up one of them since that is the size he is in now. Suffice it to say that my day was spent doing laundry. I also made it a point that the clothes didn’t sit in the baskets for a week unfolded. Everything (with the exception of the jeans since I slacked off there) is folded and put away. For those of you who don’t really know me, this is a huge accomplishment around here. Laura was really whiny on Saturday. I had enough of it. I let Robert deal with her most of the time since I just couldn’t take it anymore. Then in the evening we did our weekly grocery shopping. We also went to Target for some paper goods. I found a lot of scrapbooking letter stickers for cheap on Craigslist. We met the girl at Target in Hudson to buy them. I looked at them tonight and they seem great. I’m excited to find ways to use them. Laura did not do so well with dinner Saturday night. She was crying and whining all through dinner. We didn’t have dinner all together since we got home so late. We just gave the kids some fishsticks and yogurt for Laura. She didn’t even eat all the fishsticks or even half of her yogurt. She was whining so much that we just put her to bed.
This morning Warren actually let us sleep until 6:30! We were on the ball and to church a little bit early! The last two weeks I sat in with Laura during Sunday school. I made the decision today that I’d just drop her and go. That did NOT sit well with her. I heard her crying as I walked back up stairs. 
I went down 5 minutes later to check on her and she was cuddling up to the director of Sunday school. I asked if she was ok (using just hand signals so Laura wouldn’t see me), and the answer was a sorta/I don’t know. I gave her another 5 minutes and went to check again. This time she was sitting on the floor with her class listening to the Bible story. I knew she’d be fine now. While Laura was at Sunday school, I was enjoying a visit and coffee with Tracey and Tashia. We decided to compensate for me not making it to coffee anymore that once in a while we’d go to the local Mexican restaurant for dinner. They both loved that idea. Now to pick a day/time. During church Laura was whiny still. Warren fell asleep on me and slept until communion. I was losing patience with her then. She LOVED the children’s sermon today. All the kids got a piece of a Hershey’s chocolate bar and 2 Starbursts. She thought she was hot stuff with that. Back at home, it was past lunch time. I had lunch going as fast as I could. This only made Laura whinier. Eventually we all got lunch. Laura went down at 1:30 for nap, which is way later than she normally goes down, even at Helen’s. Thankfully it was a quiet afternoon here. She slept until 5! I still think she is fighting off a bug of some kind. Dinner tonight was taco salad. Laura did really well with it. I mentioned it in my previous post. Immediately after, she wanted to go in and take a bath. Who am I to argue with that? She is starting to learn how to take off her shirts by herself. It’s amazing how independent she is becoming already. In some ways it is nice, but in others I want her to stay my little girl that needs me. After her bath, I let her watch a little bit of her princess movie and then to bed. I am trying to remember to say prayers with Laura before bed. As a part of Sunday school, the goal for this year and up to 1st grade is to say the Lord’s prayer together as a class. So now we are starting to work on that. After his bath, Warren got his blanket and toddled off to his bed. We had both kids in bed at 7:55 tonight. This is unheard of in this house! Usually Warren is up until 8:20 or 8:30. I am certainly not complaining though!
Looking ahead at this week, I will be busy enough. I promised Laura that tomorrow we would paint her nails again. She told me tonight that they aren’t pretty anymore. I am also hoping to do another craft project with her. On Friday we made a wreath. We cut out a circle. I traced her hand several times on red, yellow, and orange paper. I cut her hands out and then we glued them onto the circle to create a fall themed wreath. She calls it her flower or her sun, but that’s ok. She had fun doing it, it was time for must Laura and me, and I have evidence of what size her hand was at this age. I also mentioned finger painting to her. We may try that tomorrow or save it for Tuesday. Wednesday evening I am going to a card class at Archivers with Mandy. Friday I start as the assistant manager at Textbook Services.
I’m a bit nervous about taking this on. I know most of what there is to know about it. I’m nervous about having authority over the students that I’ve worked with, working along side Virgil more, and taking on more responsibilities. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I get into the groove of things.
I’ve talked a lot about Laura, but not about Warren. He is past toddling for the most part and full out walking. Sometimes he borders on running. He loves the independence that comes with it. He is much happier. We don’t have the gate up at the end of the hallway much anymore. He leaves the DVDs alone. He will go into our room for the most part. Sometimes he goes into Laura’s room, but there isn’t anything for him in there. I think he does it just to get a reaction, and boy does she give one! He is still very much a carnivore. It is a huge battle getting him to eat any fruits or veggies. I honestly don’t know what to do. I worry about how little he gets. His 15 month appointment is in November. I don’t think I want to wait that long to ask about it. I never had this problem with Laura, so I don’t know how to approach it. He is sleeping better. Sometimes he will wake up a bit before 5, but he is starting to move closer to 6:15 and sometimes 6:30. I’m looking forward to the day that we can all sleep until 7 again. Verbally, he is starting to make progress. To me, the biggest thing right now is that he is starting to say momma. He could say it before, but just refused to when I was around. This weekend I’ve been hearing it a lot from him. 
He does a lot of babbling too. I can’t recall if Laura did a lot of babbling or if she went into simple words. I’m just happy he is talking more. Oh yeah, and Warren is understanding some commands. If I ask him to go find Daddy he will go look for Robert. I can also have him show me his bed and he toddles down the hall to our room. Such a smart little boy. He is starting to communicate with me that he is tired and wants to go to bed. A few times last week he either went to our room on his own, or he happily went when I asked him where his bed is. Tonight he took his blankie from the living room and went down the hall.
Well, I think that about covers things for now. I’m hoping to update more even if it just a short tidbit. I may even take a page from a blogger I follow and post several times a day. They’d be short posts, but just something to put out there. I don’t know how many people actually follow me, nor do I really care. This is mainly for me to have a way to record what is happening in life and with the kids. It also allows me to vent my anger/frustrations.