A Time for Dancing...

Today was a time for...

1. Helping Paul renew his passport since his expires this month and he's traveling to Italy in September. I wish we were going with him, but I just can't picture putting my munchkins through all those time zone changes at this stage of life. He got his picture taken at CVS today and put his application in the mail.

2. Going to a few yard sales. I spent about $35, and almost all of the items were $1 or less. The most I spent on any one item was $2, such as for a beautiful hardbook collection of 7 of Eric Carle's books (original price was $34.95). I spent most of that at our neighbor's yard sale. Her daughter, Madeline, is 1 year older than Nadia, and her son, Cooper, is several months older than Ian. She has really great taste in clothing. Most of her daughter's clothing is from Gymboree, Old Navy, etc., and she sells most things for $1. I have been buying shoes from her for a few years and some of the ones I have bought in the past that don't fit Nadia yet she uses as dress up shoes; so we're getting a lot of use out of these shoes already! The sparkly sandals (from Gymboree) that are Nadia's favorite shoes right now were ones I bought from her yard sale last summer. If I had more time, I could have visited several more yard sales within 1 mile of our house as one development not far from our house was having a community yard sale today, but I can only spend so much time going to yard sales when I have a 1 and 3 year old in tow.

3. Going to the library for story hour. I asked one of the librarians if the woman doing the program for birth to three is a school teacher, and they said she is. That's what I thought. She did an outstanding job again today although I had a hard time keeping Ian under control today. Paul had a hard time with Ian at another library last night. He took the kids to a puppet show. Ian just wants to GO, GO, GO! It was a blessing that he was a bit on the late side as far as when he started walking.

4. Napping. On Sunday Nadia didn't take a nap. It's the first time I ever recall her not taking any nap when I did put her down for one. Yesterday she was in bed for 90 minutes but didn't nap (she had napped Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). Then she fell asleep yesterday on the way to the swimming pool, which proved she did need a nap. She woke up in a very grumpy mood since that nap was only about 15 minutes long, and she usually naps for at least 90 minutes, if not longer. Today she had no trouble falling asleep for her three hour nap. I'm relieved as I'm not ready for her to give up her nap yet. I still have a goal in mind of a day when BOTH of my children will be down in their beds for a nap at the same time. I'm praying that becomes a normal thing before 2011 comes to a close.

5. Reading. I have still been reading to Nadia every day, but we haven't been spending as much time reading with our trips to the swimming pool. It's raining right now so we're not going to head to the pool as I originally planned. Nadia had a blast yesterday as Joseph (lifeguard) played with her in the water for 30 minutes. I'd love to give him a "tip." Do lifeguards get tips? He definitely enjoys kids and goes way beyond the call of duty. On Monday he got quite a workout as he was playing with a bunch of young children (2 hours after his shift ended). He kept lifting them up and throwing them in the water (2 other lifeguards were on duty). The water temperature at the pool yesterday was 85 degrees - heavenly! Yesterday a book I had ordered came in the mail. it contains all 6 Madeline books. We didn't read all of it yesterday, but we'll have time for that today since we're not going swimming.

6. Dancing! Tonight Paul and I are going ballroom dancing. We haven't danced in years, and it's how we met in 1997. Of course it was a lot cheaper back then as we didn't need to pay a babysitter. Hopefully we still remember how to do the tango, waltz, rhumba, cha cha, foxtrot, etc. I'm really looking forward to it!