Happenings in my house

My daughter, at two and a half years old, had a 'first' yesterday.

I have always gotten a kick out of babies and toddlers that fall asleep in bizarre or unusual positions or locations. For example, a child that falls asleep in their high chair while eating dinner, or on a cement sidewalk using a cement stair as a pillow (*wink, wink, Jill*), etc..

My daughter has never done this. She is the type of gal that loves to sleep in her own bed. Whenever we've been out running errands, and she gets tired and tries to fall asleep in the car, I always keep her awake because she has never been able to transfer from the car to her bed and stay asleep. She'll think a 5 minute, or 10 minute, nap was her 2-3 hour nap. She just didn't know the difference. Even though I suffered immensely.

Now, she rarely naps. I would say it happens once, maybe twice, a week, but never more.

Yesterday, while I was preparing dinner, she was playing 'catch' with my tomatoes. Meaning, she would grab a couple of tomatoes, go outside on the back deck, and throw them over the deck onto the ground below. I didn't notice her game until I found five or six tomatoes on the ground already. I asked her to stop playing 'catch', and to go and pick them up off the ground.

Defiantly, she picked up two more tomatoes, went outside, looked back at me to check if I was watching ( I was!), and threw another tomato to the ground. I told her she had to play in her room alone for two minutes because she didn't listen to me.

She was upset that I sent her to her room and started to whimper/cry while I went back to work in the kitchen. After her time out, she came out to the kitchen, apologized to me, and when I told her I couldn't hold her because I was cooking soup, she got mad and laid on the floor under my feet.

I had the oven fan running because I was cooking bacon, and I think the noise of the fan, and her overall exhaustion, caused her to promptly fall asleep on the hard wood floor. She slept like that for around 40 minutes. It was definitely a 'first' for her and I, and unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of it because I didn't want my dinner to burn.

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Speaking of dinner, I have recently started swapping dinners with my friend Erin. We each take two nights a week, and cook enough food to feed both of our families. It makes it so I will only have to cook three, maybe four, times each week instead of seven. This is only our first week, but I can already tell that I am going to absolutely love it.

The first night she brought me dinner, I had a clean kitchen free of dirty dishes, and didn't have to worry about stopping my sewing project to start on dinner. We had a hot meal delivered promptly at five, and after dinner, I didn't have any dishes to wash. We had enough leftovers for lunch the next day and the food was delicious.

We have the next three months planned and I am super excited. I would recommend this to anyone willing to give it a try. Find a friend that has a family with a similar size to yours, and who cooks and eats like your family. Plan your menu out in advance and set some ground rules, and begin. It is definitely worth it!

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Something else that is definitely worth it, is waiting patiently for almost a month and a half while your daughter masters potty learning. I can happily and gleefully announce that my daughter has been 'accident free' for nine days now! I am very, very proud of her.

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I've been working on some sewing projects that I'll share with you in the next couple of days.