Daddy's not gonna be happy....

The girls were in charge of "watching" their little brother while I dried my hair today.....poor little guy. It's hard to be macho when you live with a bunch of girls!

Brooklyn's Haircut

Disclaimer: The red, sparkly, vinyl barstool that you see in this post does not stay in my kitchen. Its home is in the basement and goes with the red tiled bar that I had nothing to do with. They came with the house!!

So, I've finally done it. It was a must. It has taken, oh I don't know, at least a year of prepping. What am I talking about? Brooklyn's haircut. Brooklyn loves her long hair. And she wants it to stay very loooong. The last time I cut/trimmed Brooklyn's hair was a year ago and she was so excited to get her haircut until the first golden locks fell. And then the tears fell right along with the rest of her hair. And after we were done, she cried over the garbage can where her limp, lifeless hair lay.

Well, now her hair is much longer. It's been growing for an entire year after all. But, she wouldn't let me come near her with scissors. Every time I thought we could get a little trim in Brooklyn would say something like," You can cut my hair as long as you don't use the hair cutters." Or "I do want a haircut. Maybe tomorrow mom. But not today."

So last week I just did it. I got her out of the tub and put her on the barstool and told her how fun it would be and that hair cutters do not hurt. We started off pretty well. And this is what she looked like a couple of minutes into it.......

My poor, dramatic little Brooklyn!



I don't know why she hates haircuts, I just know that she does. She hasn't had a tramautic experience with haircuts or scissors or anything. I guess it's just one of those things and I should be grateful she isn't a boy!

This was all the happiness she could muster so soon after her ordeal.

And after all was said and done she saw this. And the tears started again.......

Abby's Skirts

Lately Abby has been very particular about what she wears. I may have mentioned this in a previous post. She is no longer able to wear just in anything. In fact, most days she has to wear a skirt. Not for the fashion statement although she looks darn cute. No, it's for the comfort factor. All of her brand new, hardly been worn jeans "don't feel comfortable".

I don't really care what Abby wears as long as she wears something and her outfit looks fairly cohesive. She's actually gotten pretty good at choosing her outfits. Like I said, most days there are no problems with this system. But on other days we have big problems. Days that I forget to, say, do the laundry. And Abby is left with too-stiff-what-a-waste-of-my-money-never-been-worn-jeans. Well, on one of these particular days I told Abby that I was sure she had one skirt left in her drawer (albeit a little snug) but no leggings. She was just going to have to be a bit chilly until her clothes got out of the dryer. Her response?

"NO Mommy! I can't pull that skirt up. It makes my hands go (sob) sour!"

Sour? Really. That sounds bad.

We ended up just unbuttoning and unzipping the skirt so Abby's sour hands could work better. Problem deflected for the time being!

We were also at Abby's preschool a couple of nights ago for Make It Take It Night. We made windsocks. And while we were at it we were able to quiz Abby's teachers about how Abby really acts at school. They were telling us all about Abby setting the fashion trends with her little friends. Apparently all the little girls have started wearing skirts and coming to Abby for advice about how they look. Does it really start this young? Actually I can answer that myself. No. It starts younger. Just ask Brooklyn!

Trip

Two weekends ago (yes, I'm behind!) we decided to head for Denver. We wanted to get a temple trip in and since we live 4 hours away from the Denver Temple we really have to plan in advance to make it all work out.

Darren took Friday off and we headed up first thing in the morning. Jace did not want to eat when he woke up that morning because it was much more fun to play and giggle instead. I tried nursing him, I tried feeding him rice cereal, I gave him more time to play, tried nursing him again and he would have none of it. So when I said we left first thing in the morning it was really more like 9:00. But do you think my kids really care about time? No they don't. So I said fine. He must not be hungry. Let's just go. Everything ran smoothly until we got to Main Street and stopped for gas. (I'm talking Main Street in Lamar, as in 1/2 mile from my house.)

Well, at that point Abby unbuckled her seatbelt to get earphones for the movie and was having problems buckling back up (she was on the opposite side of what she was used to because of our luggage). So I jumped back there to help. The only problem was that Jace saw me and then remembered he had not eaten yet. I made no eye contact and pretended everything was normal. I'm sure you all know how this story ends up. Well, we got back on the road with a screaming baby and hoped for the best for about 20 minutes before I finally broke down made Darren pull over so I could feed him. For those of you familiar with the Lamar area, we barely made it past Wiley.

Anyway, that was the beginning of it and even after he was fed Jace was mad. Because I am neurotic about my children being in carseats and being buckled up I refused to get Jace out of his carseat and instead headed to the back and squeezed myself in between seats and on the floor of my minivan where my sweet little Jace could gaze into my eyes for the rest of the trip. If you are confused about where exactly I was squished into I will clarify. I was in a very small space in between two seats and I had no seatbelt. No, how could I have a seatbelt when I had no seat to sit on. I wasn't too concerned because I'm fairly certain that if we had had an accident I would have gone no where. Did I mention I had squeezed myself into a tight spot?

The bad news is that I have freakishly poor circulation, a bad back, and a bony rear end that was made worse by the bars I was sitting on (we have an option to have a seat in that very spot.....we just didn't put it in.) The good news is that the rest of the trip was fairly quiet.

That night we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's and the girls had a great time. Denver has a few different Chuck E. Cheese's and unfortunately Darren and I think we chose one of the more ghetto ones. But the girls thought it was fantastic.

Here's Abby. She liked trying out the different games.

Brooklyn's favorite thing was to go on all the different little rides they had.

Jace just couldn't handle any more excitement.

After all our fun and games we headed to the hotel. Darren decided to sleep with Brooklyn because she's a wild sleeper and he was worried she would fall out of bed. At home she has a wall on one side and Abby on the other. He was going to use his 7th sense. You know the one that alerts him in the middle of the night of a child about to fall out of bed. Well, fall out of bed she did and woke everyone else up along with it. Usually this would not be a big deal. But I have a baby who doesn't want to go back to sleep in a strange place. So Jace and I were up for a solid hour just looking around. He finally fell back to sleep but was up several more times. Let's just say there are nights when I am extremely grateful to finally see daylight approaching!

The next morning we hit the outlet malls where I got some new, cool, square dishes that are extremely big and barely fit into my cupboards. I feel so hip. And a new pair of running shoes that make running 3 miles feel like nothing. Ok, not really. They'd have to be motorized to accomplish that.

Anyway, for those of you who actually finished reading this long post congratulations, you're at the end! We had a great time and wish we could go more often.