Dr Seuss Would Be Proud...?

As you may know, I babysit part-time for two of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet, R & G. I mean, I am really lucky to have these two! When they come, I try to always have a craft to do with all the kids. This week to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, we made Cat in the Hat hats. I was pretty excited about this one, so I took pictures.I started out by cutting out the center of a paper plate for the hat brim. I then cut small slits in the top of a paper lunch sack, put it through the paper plate, and taped it to the plate for the top of the hat. I stuffed it with newspaper to hold it's shape, and then let the kids go to town with the red paint (I gave the littlest guy red crayons instead).

As always, the kids were wearing big old paint shirts to protect their clothes, but sweet R reached down under the shirt and wiped her paint covered fingers all over her darling, brand new BabyGap khakis and white socks.

Okay, this is the part where I made a really stupid mistake. I picked up Hannah in one arm and sweet R in the other arm, made sure the other two were safely and contentedly playing, and then dashed down to the laundry room to try and save the pants! The bottle of red paint was up on the counter, out of reach of little G, but apparently not out of reach of Logan. When I returned from cleaning up the first disaster, I found the second one.

The story from Logan went something like this: After I rushed out of the room, Logan decided his hat needed more paint, so he reached up for the bottle of paint, squirted some on his palette, and then set it down on the table. Little G then grabbed the bottle and squirted it all over the kitchen floor. When I found him, he was sitting in the paint (also dressed head to toe in BabyGap, mind you), driving a Hotwheels car through it. Pretty ironic that gave him crayons instead of paint to color his hat to avoid the mess, huh?!

Now that I think of it, it's really quite appropriate: "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" making a crazy mess in the house while the mother is away. Hmmm...sound familiar?

I ordered the kids into the living room, and Hannah screamed in her high chair, while I wiped down little G and the kitchen. This time, I dragged all four kids with me to the basement to wash G's clothes. All I can say is, thank Heavens for washable paint! With a lot of Spray-n-Wash, scrubbing, and a trip through the washer, everything came out (I think. I still need to scrub my floor with bleach. Pink grout just doesn't look that great in my kitchen).

When the hats were dry, we glued strips of white paper around the hats to complete the Cat in the Hat look.

Logan insisted on making this face in every picture!

The hats turned out pretty cute and the kids seemed to get a kick out of them, but I'm not sure they were worth the aggravation. I think we are going to take a break from the paints for a while.

T-minus Four

Well, it's official - Summer is scheduled to have her labor induced on Thursday (four days from now), which happens to fall right on Valentine's day! For some crazy reason, they want her to come in at midnight on Wednesday. I guess her OB is hoping to have her deliver soon after his 3AM refrigerator raid.

We are excited for our new little girl to arrive, but it's amazing the amount of preparation that Summer can come up with to be ready for the new baby. We've been continually buying diapers during the past 9 months to the point that we have enough to supply a small army of babies, and we've also stocked up on the formula (Summer has had some seriously horrendous complications from breastfeeding in the past... even requiring surgical drainage of about a cup full of purulent material from an abcess). Anyway, I had figured we were all set. Next thing I know, Summer wanted to turn the guest bedroom into a nursery, so we ended up pulling the bed out, switching it with Andrew's bed, stripping the wallpaper, painting the walls, and filling the room with baby funiture. As soon as we got everything together, she says "the colors don't match very well," and the next thing I know, we've got shelves, dressers, and the crib all packed into the garage for painting. Still, I have to give her credit; she was right along side me with paintbrush in hand helping me every step of the way, even in spite of being 9 months pregnant and ready to burst at any moment. She's one heck of a trooper. The nursery is looking pretty good so far, and hopefully, we'll have everything done by Wednesday, and we'll be posting pictures of the new baby next week.

Also, we wanted to say thanks to all of you who have helped out and given us so many clothes, baby items, gifts, etc. It will make the transition from two children to three much smoother.