All of the pictures I took two weeks ago were of Jules or things she does. That whole week was kind of blah. The highlight was going to my parents' house one day after school.
Jules is at that stage where she just wants to get everything out of it's place. Just to see it there. And then she moves onto the next thing. This was every clean bowl in our cupboard, plus 5 cups, her breakfast plate (which she likely didn't eat more than 2 bites of--because she's also in that stage where she only eats two bites of anything before getting bored). She will often get all the bowls out, take each one, cover her face with it and yell something. So she dirties every bowl. But if I tell her to stop or to put them back, or say anything she doesn't like (saying she can't watch Octonauts right now is the most likely to evoke this response), she yells, "No Momma! Stop talking!" It's so funny. But I have to try to keep a straight face and tell her that it's not nice to speak that way.
Another example of food she decided she HAD TO eat and then took one bite and was done. This is an uncooked lasagna noodle. I would have stopped her with this one, but she found it while I was in the shower and I found it on the floor outside my bedroom when I got out.
She's so incredibly adorable, though, it's super hard to resist her when she's not screaming at me. She's also super polite. All of my kids have gone through a polite stage at this age. Hers has just lasted longer than I remember the others' lasting. She is the best at saying thank you. When she's throwing a fit over something (like giving her milk in a sippy instead of a cup, even though she said she wanted it in a cup five seconds ago) and you end up giving her what she wants (I try to do this whenever it doesn't matter--like with a cup vs a sippy, not when she's throwing fits over wanting to eat chocolate instead of dinner), she still has huge alligator tears streaming down her face, but she calms down enough to give me a sniffly "thank you." She says excuse me when she thinks she's gotten in your way or when she pretends to burp or toots. She says you're welcome and please. And she says sorry all the time about the funniest things.
Some of my favorite things she does currently:
Instead of "tiger" she says, "tigey."
Instead of orange she says "ongey" (said ohn-gie)
She calls her belly button her "beebo" (it's from a book we own)
She calls Baby Yoda either "Cute" as in, "Come back, Cute!" or "Where Cute?" or "Googoo" (his real name is "Grogu").
She LOVES sunglasses and wears them inside the house daily, switching between the four pairs she owns every couple of minutes.
She can name pretty much any ocean creature you can throw at her, but her favorite bath toys are still My Little Ponies and cups.
She always shares her food with whatever stuffed animal is nearby.
She loves going "round and round and round in circles"
When she wants to get up on the bed or sit on the counter while I brush my teeth, she says, "Uppadown?"
When she sees the cat right away in the morning, she often greets her by saying, "Morning, kitty! Nice to meet you!"
Her favorite pants are the red leggings she's wearing in the picture above. She asks to wear them every day.
She thinks the word "oops!" is hilarious. Especially when Cecily says it.
During Christmas, she would spontaneously start singing, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," and she often asks me to sing songs about either frogs or Jesus.
She tries to count things all the time. She knows most of her numbers--just not which order they go in. So often it comes out, "One, two, seven, eleven, eight!" or something similar.
She loves drawing, coloring, painting, using markers, etc. Anything artistic, she's excited.
I don't know if this is a favorite thing, but she loves chocolate more than anything else. Chocolate will calm her down from her biggest fits. She will eat it for every meal and snack and not get tired of it. For example, chocolate milk and a chocolate muffin for breakfast, a chocolate protein bar for lunch, a kitkat to calm her before her nap, etc. She ate probably half of the chocolate we got from Santa this year because her sisters were not wise enough to put it out of her reach and she ate EVERYBODY's.
We were driving on the highway one day last week and we saw the steam coming from the smokestacks of the steel refinery nearby. I tried to take a picture (which is below) but it didn't turn out super good. I was stopped at the off ramp stoplight and had to be quick. But as soon as she saw it, Jules pointed it out and said, "Steam vents!" And I was like, "Wha....? How do you know what those are?" She excitedly chattered about the steam vents for a bit before I realized she must have learned about the ones on the ocean floor from Octonauts. Haha. She's so super smart to have related the two. It amazes me what she understands.
This past week was mostly me doing book covers and painting stuff. Steve had to work a lot this last week (like 60 hours, maybe?) because his company gets a lot of business from the Stimulus Packages that go through and one went through last Friday (I think). So he had to work a lot of the day Saturday.
I was not looking forward to another Saturday of managing the kids by myself and sitting around the house, so I bribed the kids with cookies and mixed sodas to help me paint beds in Mira's room. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday at 11pm (the kids were not up that late--I was doing one last coat on the bunk beds) we painted three twin-size and one full-size bed frame.
Monday, I painted the trundle frame and the safety bar for the bunkbeds.
Tuesday, I went shopping at DI and found a dresser for Mira and a scratched-up Ikea Callax bookshelf. Mira's closet is a walk-in closet with lots of shelves, so she'd previously just been putting her pjs and underwear and socks in bins on the shelves. But it was NOT working for her. It was always a disaster area in her closet. So in doing a room makeover for her, I wanted to get a dresser that would help keep her stuff more organized. So Tuesday afternoon and evening, I sanded both the dresser, which had been poorly stained like a dark cherrywood color previously, and the bookshelf, and put a coat of white paint on them.
Wednesday, I painted them. The stupid dresser took three coats of paint, even though I sanded it almost down to the bare wood.
Thursday, my parents came out to help me. I was going to paint the walls white, but after all the painting I'd done, and after looking at the new bedding and how much brighter the white on the beds made everything, we decided the gray would suit and to save ourselves the effort. Instead, we organized her closet (this took a majority of our time!), washed and put all the bedding on the beds, moved the dresser and bookshelf in and filled them, and made 5 throw pillows and a pillowcase.
We all really really love how it turned out.
I stayed up way too late making book covers the rest of the weekend. There is an auction coming up in one of the groups I'm a member of and I can make a lot of money off auctions, so I tried really hard to up my game and make them amazing. Plus, I won't be doing any custom work during March (I'm taking maternity leave), so it would be good to have a little extra income to make up for it. It's a vetted auction, so you only get in if the moderators think your stuff is good enough. I'll find out tomorrow or Tuesday if any of them was accepted, but even if they're not, I'm so proud of them. Definitely some of my best work.
Tonight we were delighted to have the Kerbys--Gina and Josh and Allie--over for dinner. We've all had Covid, so we figure we're pretty safe getting together. The food was delicious and Gina and Josh were kind enough to indulge Steve in his latest favorite game, Everdell. It took us 3 hours to finish. That's what I call good sports! Not many people are willing to put up with a 3-hour board game.
I was going to read a book tonight, but I wrote this blog post instead. Because I love you. And I really do like having a record of my life. Now I must go to sleep. A 42-year-old 7-months pregnant lady should really be getting her beauty sleep, right?
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