Is today the day?- UPDATED

EDITS AT THE BOTTOM

Is today the day? To go cold turkey? Will I give in? Will I be strong enough?

Only time will tell....

EDITED TO ADD: PRAY for me!!!!

EDITED AT 12:47 P.M.: Just hit the hardest part of the day: naptime. She is laying in bed, eyes closed, rubbing them, sobbing. Pitiful. The sobs are slowing, but still pitiful. The good news is that I am still feeling strong in holding to the plan of cold turkey. If I can get her to nap it will certainly make the day a little easier later.

EDITED THURSDAY- 24 HOURS IN: Lily is a rockstar! She did great! No more pacis!

Bubbles!

First words are a big deal. Many kids have a specific word that was their first. Abby's was "Hi!" Clear as day. I don't count babbling. Maybe I should, but I don't. Lily's first word has been a little bit trickier. Not as clear or consistent. Go figure. Not to mention, I swear there are lots of things she'll say and then I can't get her to repeat them.

But, this weekend, we got some pretty consistent first words. It was fun. We've had "Mama" and "Dada." No biggie. I didn't really count those. I'm waiting for "Mommy" and "Daddy." But we now have "bath," "Papa" (as in Grandpa), and... drumroll please... "bubble"!!!! I am 100% sure that Gymboree class has something to do with it. We do bubbles at it and I bought their special bubble thing and we've used it a ton in the week that we've had it. Which, by the way , I recommend buying. Worth every penny. Doesn't seem like it would be, but trust me.

We also had some friends over for a laid back cookout on Labor Day. The girls had some fun with sunglasses....

The girls with their friend, Emma.

(I should add our laid back cookout wasn't without a little bit of Carrie/Lily drama. First, Lily pulled a glass full of my lovely Bahama Mama drink mix all over the top of her in the kitchen. She, of course, started screaming and slipping everywhere. We finally got all the sticky mess cleaned up and Lily in dry clothes, everyone happy, and what does she do? Yup, literally stumbles and SITS in the cats' water bowl. Water streaming everywhere, Lily screaming, and me losing my little bit of sanity. Mike, Jaimie's brother, said we ought to just put her in her bathing suit. Fair point. That lovely pink T and jean shorts number? Outfit #3. Oh, and the Bahama Mama incident? Ought to win me Mother of the Year, I'm thinking.)

Mo Willems

Allow me to introduce to you to some of our (Abby, Lily and I) favorite characters from author Mo Willems' books:

This is Piggie and Gerald.

And this is Pigeon. He's a little more well known.

If you have little ones and you haven't ventured into reading some of these books, I would like to encourage you to. We found the Piggie and Gerald books at the library in the Early Reader section (not the Picture book section). They. Are. Awesome. Truly. The text is simple and the pictures are simple, but they are hilarious. Lily gets a real kick out of them. It is very easy to use lots of voices and expression with them because they are so simple.

I also found Mo Willems' blog recently just by googling him. He had a post just this week with artwork by his fans. It was so cute. Here is a link and some samples. So don't just take my word for it:

The Hunger Games

I have a new book obsession. The Hunger Games. You must read it. It is actually a trilogy. The second one is titled Catching Fire and the third is Mockingjay. I had heard of them and a friend recommended them a while back and I just got around to reading the first one. About halfway in, I realized that I was going to have to read all three, so I went out and bought them all. One of the things I really like about them is that you can go back and look for things you missed the first time you read them, so they are the kind of books that you can read more than once.

Let me give you a little synopsis. The setting is in the future. North America as we know it no longer exists and there is a new society that was created after some type of revolution. As a result of this, the Capitol rules over 12 "districts". Every year the districts have to select 1 girl and 1 boy (between the age of 12-18) through a type of lottery to travel to the Capitol and participate in the Hunger Games. Only one will win, and by win, I mean live. The story is told through the eyes of a girl named Katniss, who I believe is 17, and lives in District 12.

I have read the first two books so far. I asked Matt to read it too, which I rarely do, and he really likes it too (so far). It has been really fun to read it together and be able to talk about it. We so rarely read the same types of things. I am trying to not get any farther ahead of him than I am already, so I am waiting to start the third book. Which is killing me, by the way. I'm not sure I'll make it through the weekend...

Family Rules

New Idea!

I want to try this:

Isn't it cool? It is from one of my favorite blogs to read, The Pleated Poppy. She featured this a while back, and I thought it was cool, but wasn't ready to tackle it. Just yesterday she featured it again and reposted all the links on how to do it. HERE is the link to that direct post. It really doesn't look all that hard, but it will take a little bit of money to buy the canvas and papers and such. I'm pretty cheap when it comes to projects like this, so cost can sometimes stop me. That said, I think I'd like to try it now. I'm not completely sure where I'd hang it, but somewhere downstairs for sure.

My first step, other than looking for sales on canvas, is to put together "rules". I will probably cherry-pick mine from many of the examples, but I think it will be fun to get help from Matt and Abby. What rules would you put on your Family Rules Canvas?