Toddler Tricks and Money Mayhem

Susie (my 2-year-old) has been on the phone a lot lately. She walks around cradling a plastic banana between her shoulder and her face and saying, "Is your mommy home?" and "Uh-huh. Hmmm. Uh-huh." I've asked her who she's talking to, but she doesn't seem to hear me. Probably because she has a banana in her ear.

Ba-da-bum.

Maybe she was talking to a toilet-training hotline, because yesterday - miracle of miracles - she walked up to me and said those 3 words every mother wants to hear: "Wanna go potty." So I sat her on the toilet, not expecting her to actually use the darn thing, when what to my wondering ear did appear but a tinkling like bells on the harness of 8 tiny reindeer.

Sorry, 'tis the season...I'll try not to let that happen again.

Yes, she actually peed in the potty. I happened to be on the banana, I mean phone, with Larry at the time, so I was shrieking into the receiver, "She did it! Did you hear her tinkling? She did it!" Have I mentioned that he works in a very centrally located cubicle? So now his colleagues think (if they didn't already) that 6 kids may be a little too much for any one woman to take.

Larry and I are trying to pick out a paint color for the living room. I'm thinking we may need to hire a mediator. What with our divergent tastes in home decor and the fact that there are approximately 14 billion different shades of gray available at our local paint store, we'll probably get this place painted, oh, maybe 9 years from now. Or perhaps we won't bother. I mean, we've got lots of different shades of gray smeared all over the living room walls at this point anyway. We could leave it and go for the variegated look. Like multi-colored yarn. I bet I'd be the first knitter to paint her walls to look like her favorite skein. Take that, all you knitting bloggers!

We gave up today and agreed to pay a friendly service technician lots of money to explain to us how our gas fireplaces work. It's galling. Add to that that we brought the second car in for an oil change today and ended up paying the garage almost 500 dollars (that's on top of the 1000 dollars from yesterday), and Christmas is looking less and less merry. I mean, for us. There's a bunch of mechanics who are gonna have a pretty good time, though.

Anna is speaking to me again. I have no idea why.

Larry came home for dinner and then went back to work. Good. I didn't want to see him anyway. Now I can waste the entire evening on the computer and he won't even know. I do still have about 1500 photos to edit. And a photo calendar to put together. I don't know what the heck I did with my time before we went digital. Sleep, maybe?

Sleeping is a good idea. Maybe I'll just go to bed early. (And you know you're middle-aged when that seems like the best way to spend a free evening.) G'night, all!