Time for bed...

Felicity is still awake but lying in her bed quietly. Mary is asleep in my lap, where I'm keeping her because the air conditioner in my room is turned in my direction (no other direction for it to go to cool the room) and so I'm a bit cold. :-P She's keeping me warm. ;-)

This week has been interesting for me. I'm not really sure why, but I've been paying closer attention to my kids and I realized that they're suddenly much more mature. Felicity is actually talking, communicating ideas, making logical connections, understanding things, and initiating a lot of interaction as well as activity. The girls love playing outside as much and as long as possible. Also, since we finally got the toys in the play room organized again, there's a bit of floor space in there and they have been enjoying playing in there a lot...and I've been participating as well as observing.

I haven't kept up very well with developmental milestones this time around. When Felicity was a baby, I'd check constantly to make sure she was within a couple weeks of normal. ;-) Now I just occasionally look back at pictures of what she was doing at that age to compare to Mary now. And I just realized that Felicity was helping with laundry when she was Mary's age. So I enlisted Mary's help the other day with getting wet laundry into the dryer...and she eagerly assisted.

I feel silly. Ha. All this time I've been trying to figure out what to do with my kids while I try to keep up with housework and keep them out of mischief. Too obvious an answer, I guess...Felicity runs into the kitchen whenever I'm unloading the dishwasher, hopeful that I haven't yet put away the silverware because she likes to (sorting stuff is such a happy past time for preschool aged kids). And if she sees me pulling a load of clean laundry out of the dryer, she'll race to wear I set it down and beg to fold specific items. LOL! Yeah, I pretty much have no excuse for not getting the work done.

The other day, I asked Felicity to clean up the living room floor while I was working on making bread in the kitchen, I think it was. Or maybe I was preoccupied otherwise. I don't remember what I was doing, but I wasn't able to monitor her, so I have no idea how she went about things, but I do know she had to deal with Mary the whole time and I know from my own experience how challenging that can be. And, lo and behold, when I did finally get back into the living room, she had cleaned up all the toys and trash and clothes. Some of them were stacked on the couch, some in a laundry basket, some stacked elsewhere, but the floor was quite clear. And she had taken the carpet sweeper and cleaned up the carpet that way as well. It wasn't a perfect job, but for her first time and unsupervised, I was quite impressed.

And then a couple days ago she decided that she needed to make a chocolate cake. Josh and I were both working on stuff in the kitchen, Josh preparing some corned beef to grill (it turned out deliciously, though I still really don't like how salty it is) and me working on cleaning up and also making mashed potatoes, etc. But Felicity wouldn't let the chocolate cake thing go, so I finally got out a bowl and a wooden spoon and she got to work. Even without using a hand mixer, the cake turned out fairly well. It wasn't as light and fluffy as a mixer would have made it, but she did beautifully with the wooden spoon and she seemed to do everything quite intuitively. She wasn't even very intimidated by cracking eggs. So I guess I'll be working on teaching her how to make bread soon. Every almost three year old needs that skill, right? ;-) (She really, really loves homemade rolls, so she may as well learn to make them herself.)

And, for anyone concerned about safety, no, she doesn't put stuff in the oven or pull it out. :-P LOL! But she does have a grand time and always wants to observe whatever I'm doing. I'm not sure when I'll be comfortable with letting her use the stove or oven, even supervised, but I anticipate that being years away. Dishes, however, may be sooner...we'll see (with supervision, for sure).

So anyway...it's bed time and I'm tired. :-)