As long as you don't post it on the internet

Alyssa and I were in the garage when she spotted this frame and started hamming it up. When she asked me to take her picture, of course, I said yes. But when she asked if she could take my picture, I said, "No way, look at me!"

She responded, "Mommy, I just wanna take your picture, I'm not gonna put it on the internet."

That totally cracked me up and I would love to do that thing where I play stupid and say oh I don't know where they come up with these things...except I have to admit that's a phrase that gets tossed around occasionally at our house.

Like just last Friday.

I took Amanda to the dentist for a check-up and the dentist reported that the good news was no cavities! And the bad news is that he wanted to extract three teeth. Three top front teeth. That very day. Remember my last post about how Amanda's first top tooth took so long to come out? Well that's because it's crowded in there. She should have already lost those front teeth but the crowding was making it too hard for them to come out... meanwhile her permanent teeth are ready to come in. (Yes, he also mentioned she's going to need braces! Wheeee!) Amanda is not a big fan of losing teeth. Unlike me, who would have yanked every single one of mine out when I was six if it were possible. So when we got home, her smile sporting three new gaps... she said, "I know you're gonna wanna take a picture Mom, but do NOT post it on your blog!!!"

Who me? I would never do that?!?

Alyssa's comment was funny but it also got me thinking... it's all fun and games when I'm the one doing the blogging but the thought of them posting humiliating photos and stories about me isn't nearly as delightful. Is it too early to talk to a lawyer about that?

Random Photo Tuesday (February catch up)

One of the first things that happened in February was that Amanda finally lost her first top tooth. I say finally because it was kind of a long drawn out process. Not only did it take a long time but it was obvious that the permanent tooth was trying to push out the baby tooth, and it just got lower and lower and lower... but it wasn't very loose. Not loose enough to pull... Wasn't Amanda's best look though. I'm not going to show you the before picture but if it had gone on much longer I was afraid she might start to look like this:
But how cute is she in the after photos? These photos were taken the day after she lost her tooth and her new one was already about a quarter of the way in!

In February, Alyssa got a new bike!We saw Gnomeo & Juliet.We saw Disney on Ice. I also decided I should attempt some creative Valentines this year. The photoshoots went something like this:
And the Valentines turned out like this:Do you know what this cat really needs?
A pillow!
Also more comfortable with a pillow: Justin Bieber.

Alyssa did a lot of playing in February. Alyssa pretended to be an artist. She pretended to be a chef.
She pretended to be a princess. (For the record, that is MY faux fur coat... I'm guessing circa 1974-ish.) She had a pretend wedding where she got to be the beautiful bride, complete with pretend flowers and pretend tattoos.She had spectacular pretend wedding rings.And a pretend groom who was not all that excited about pretending to get married. It's never a good sign when your pretend groom has to be dragged down the aisle by your pretend maid of honor.After a brief discussion, the pretend wedding was called off.But from the looks of this photo, the pretend reception must have gone on all night.

And then we could all end up in jail

I was looking for my phone before the girls and I ran to the store. Alyssa asked why I needed it and I explained that I always like to have my phone with me when I'm driving just in case something happens.

Amanda pipes in: I always think something's gonna happen. That's why I always take my jacket everywhere I go... and shoes... and quarters (for quarter machines not phone calls) because you just never know.

Me: You are SO your Grandma N*'s granddaughter!

Amanda: Well you just never know. There could be an accident or we could end up in jail.

Me: Why would we end up in jail?

Amanda: Well I don't know what you're gonna do!

All of my life I've felt like sort of a goody-two-shoes. I've never been in trouble for anything. Never got a speeding ticket. Never even got called to the principal's office. But in the eyes of my 8-year-old, apparently I'm just a wild card. Capable of anything. You better take a jacket and some quarters because at any moment I might choose to steal a car, beat up a police man or rob a bank.

Random Photo Tuesday

Okay, I know it's not Tuesday but you'll get over it, right? In an effort to catch you up a bit on what's been going on with us while I was on the longest blogging break in history, I'm going to share some random photos. These are all from January. Next week I'll get to February. I know I've been gone a lot longer but neither one of us wants to go back that far, right? I'm hoping that flipping through these photos will remind me of what we were doing so I can fill you in on the details a bit too. (Above is Amanda with the camera that Santa brought for the girls. (water proof, freeze proof and shock proof. Yes, I'm trying to train the next generation to take pictures of every single thing.)

We were at Universal Studios the last week of Christmas vacation, so that's where we celebrated New Year's. They brought "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" to life and it was so much fun hanging out in Whoville! There was real snow to play in and there were "Whos" everywhere we turned. It really felt like we were walking around in the middle of the movie and I LOVED it. After Universal, I have to say that January is pretty light on cute kid pictures. That's because I was hugely focused on decluttering my house. It was sometime last year that I started watching all those hoarding shows. You know the ones that start by taking you on a tour of a house that is packed to the ceiling with a lifetime full of stuff? Those shows fascinate me... and scare me... a lot! I noticed that the people with hoarding problems all seemed to have similiar stories: "I was always kind of messy and I liked to save things but nothing too unusual. But then _____________ (fill in the blank with divorce/death of a loved one/children leaving home/random disaster) and things completely spiraled out of control..."

Most of the people I've talked to about those hoarding shows respond the same way, saying something along the lines of, "GROSS! I can't imagine how anyone could ever let that happen." But me, I totally empathized with them. I thought, "Uh oh! I am kind of messy and I like to save things! I could be just one major life tragedy away from becoming that crazy lady with stuff piled to the ceiling and 23 cats!"

So last year I started changing a lot of bad habits and I got rid of a ton of stuff. Okay I didn't actually weigh it or anything but I swear there had to be a ton. To be honest, I expected that getting rid of all that stuff meant my house would suddenly be clean. That it would practically clean itself and that it would stay clean all the time. Totally didn't happen. Not even close! I mean things improved quite a bit but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Imagine my disappointment.

By this January I was feeling pretty defeated, especially after the major influx of STUFF from the holidays so I decided to get hardcore about it. I decided 2011 was going to be the year I turned it all around. By then, getting rid of my own stuff had become easy but I still struggled with letting go of the kids' stuff... and looking around it was pretty clear that their stuff was a major part of the problem. Their stuff took up A LOT of space. Their rooms were always a mess. And they dragged their stuff all over the house on a very regular basis because their rooms were too messy to play in! But they were attached to their stuff. Alyssa was far more attached than Amanda because Amanda liked to watch the hoarding shows with me. The phrase "crazy cat lady" was all I really needed to inspire Amanda to part with her overabundance of things. But ask Alyssa if she wants to turn into the crazy cat lady, and hulloooooooo does anything sound more fun than that? (Speaking of cats, below is our ONLY cat taking advantage of the fact I'm cleaning out a drawer. I bet the crazy cat lady's cats don't get to do this!)

I've realized that my attachment to things has very little to do with the actual things but everything to do with the memories those things evoke. So after the girls and I spent at least an hour playing I-spy with this photo (below) that I took several years ago of some of my Christmas ornaments, I realized that they already knew the stories behind many of the ornaments... Amanda would say, "This one full of sand and seashells represents my first trip to the beach." And Alyssa would say, "This is from the time that the Not-Real-Santa called me Booger Baby!" Even without the STUFF in front of them, the memories were still there.Okay, I'm a photo nut so of course I'd already thought about taking photos of all the stuff... but I'm also lazy and couldn't actually imagine taking photos of each and every THING, whatever it was, separately. We had a LOT of stuff after all. And what was I going to do with all those photos anyway? Become the crazy lady with a house crammed full of photos? You know who I'll be showing all those photos to? My 23 cats.

But the girls love I-spy books. If you've never heard of I-spy books, they're books that have these cool photos that are crammed full of all kinds of stuff and there are riddles that go with each photo and you have to find the answers in the photos. So what if I gathered up all the stuff I can't bear to get rid of into groups, snapped some pictures and turned those photos into an "I-spy" book. Then once we have the photos, BYE-BYE stuff!

So here are a couple of those photos. They include stuff from my childhood as well, recovering-could-have-been hoarder that I am. Can anyone spot Justin Bieber, who Alyssa plans to marry, in the top photo? Can anyone find Giraffe, who Amanda used to referred to as her husband, in the second one?

Alyssa also learned how to tie her shoes in January. When Amanda learned to tie her shoes she was actually a couple of years older than Alyssa. Mostly because she rarely wore shoes that needed to be tied. When I did finally teach her it took a while. A bit of practice and a bit of "I'll never be able to do this!" before she caught on. It was a much faster process with Alyssa.

Amanda taught Alyssa how to tie her shoes. She demonstrated for her ONCE and then watched as Alyssa tied them. And that was it. Alyssa's been tying her own shoes ever since. Leading Amanda to conclude that I am really, really LAME at the teaching thing. We also did a lot of painting in January. One of my most vivid memories of Kindergarten is from the day we put on smocks and got to finger paint. Just thinking about that day can still make me a teeny bit giddy. I only remember doing it once but I remember thinking it was the best thing on the planet earth. So I'm going back to my kindergarten roots and just PLAYING. My paintings are probably only slightly better than they were back then but I'm just as giddy... Yeah those are mine, not the girls... Scott took one look at the one of the house and said, "That is the worst designed roof I've ever seen. The rain is all gonna puddle up at the ends and it's gonna rot." I wonder if he was this practical in Kindergarten.