Thursday's Five

1. DH took the older girls fishing this evening, so it's just me and Cuatro at home for a few hours. Ahhh, quiet! How I've missed you!

2. We had a crazy morning that began with Uno dropping a large plastic cup of fruit punch which then bounced off the table and splattered everywhere. Stainy, sticky red drops rained down from the kitchen windows, her chair, the table, pooled all over the floor.... "On the bright side," Uno said, "none of it landed on my scrambled eggs! My breakfast is saved!" Yeah. Lucky. Grrrr.

A couple hours later, we had some poop adventures with Cuatro -- maybe 20% my fault for not putting her diaper on very straight, but 80% her fault for being SO FREAKING WIGGLY that it would be impossible for anyone to put it on correctly. *Sigh!* I spent a good deal of time scrubbing her down, putting her in the bath, cleaning stains out of the carpet, disinfecting the changing table and a handful of toys, and making a collection of poop laundry (she got it on Dos's clothes as well as her own).

The day improved from there, though. I guess it would have to, lol.

3. In related news, my sister helped me pinpoint the way in which Cuatro resembles DH! Everybody says that she's an exact copy of me, not a trace of DH in her. But she is a perpetual motion machine, just like her father. She's always trying to escape her bouncy seat or changing table or my embrace; when she sits, she bounces (high! She could go to the baby Olympics with that bounce!). She moves, moves, moves. DH isn't fidgety, but he's always got to be doing something, some project or bit of work. I told him the conclusion we'd come to, and I think he wasn't sure if I meant it as a compliment or a criticism. In Cuatro's case, it's adorable -- sooooo much energy in a teensy-tinsy little body! And in DH's case, I think it's admirable; he's such a hard worker, and it's all to benefit our family. So for both of my perpetual motion machines, it's a compliment. :-)

4. I want to take the girls school shopping this weekend, but I'm afraid that Uno and Dos will have growth spurts immediately after I've spent all the bucks on fall clothes. (They've done it before, the meanies!) If I wait for the growth spurts, though, I'll miss some really good sales. I suppose I could just buy stuff that's too big.... Hmmmm.

5. We have no private preschools in this town -- no cozy home places, no church-affiliated preschools, nothing. The town of 2k people we came from had at least three, and this town of 10k has nothing but the underfunded public pre-K (you have to be extra needy or developmentally delayed to get in because they don't have enough teachers for everybody's kids) and daycares. I don't want to put Tres in daycare and pretend it's preschool, so she and I are going to embark on a learning adventure together. Eeeek! At this point I don't think I'm going to go all out with a particular curriculum, but there are a few workbooks I'm eyeing to help her learn all the basics (letters, numbers, shapes, etc). We'll probably set aside a couple hours twice or three times a week and call it school. Anyone who's done this kind of thing before should feel free to leave me some advice in the comments! ;-)

And that's my five for today.


~RCH~