Angela says "uh-huh", "uh-uh" and "uh-oh". She only has a vague sense of what they all mean. It's very easy to catch her being naughty because she loudly repeats "uh-uh. uh-uh. uh-uh" as she does something bad.
Angela waves at everyone who says "hi" or "bye", and sometimes when I get her attention to take a picture.
Micah is pretty worn out these days. He passed out on the couch last Saturday afternoon and Natalie kept bringing him toys to get him to play with her, but he wouldn't budge.
He gets to spend plenty of time when he's home just being one of the kids. Pictured here, drinking juice from a sippy cup:
And here, joining the girls for their bedtime bath:
Everyone loved the fireworks on Independence Day. I had chalk and glow sticks from the dollar store to keep us entertained before they began.
We also marched in a parade, but have no pictures. It rained the whole time, which made it slightly miserable. Natalie got pulled in a wagon which we borrowed from a friend but Angela wouldn't stay sitting down. I ended up carrying Angela (who fell asleep for the middle 75% of the parade) while carrying an umbrella. Natalie made up a little nest with a quilt and the removable umbrella from our stroller and stayed tucked up, semi-dry, eating candy that we were were supposed to throw to the parade-viewers. It was a good time. Here she is a few days earlier passed out randomly on the dog bed in the borrowed wagon.
Angela is a bit of a picky eater and it makes me nuts. Somehow, though, she never refused a cup of warm milk or a bowl of ice cream. Especially chocolate.
After three weeks without diapers, Natalie has made no headway with potty training. Not only did she continue to have accidents, but she started deliberately peeing herself. On Friday, she wet her pants 5 times before 10am and on Saturday she registered her disdain by peeing into the toy box. I don't know what to do with her. We've tried rewards, positive conditioning, punishment, daniel tiger, appealing to her desire to be treated like a big girl, tried panties, pull-ups, diaper covers, stark naked; it seems that she just refuses to be potty trained. I am extremely not okay with this. Nevertheless, I don't know what else to do.
On another gloomy note, we have a plumbing issue. When the shower/tub is used, it leaks water downstairs in our kitchen. I had noticed the water a few times but thought that it was from water being spilled onto the floor of the bathroom and that I just needed to seal up the base boards in the bathroom better. On Saturday, I caulked up the whole bathroom floor and then we still got a big puddle downstairs when the girls took a bath. I investigated and discovered that one of our cabinets has considerable mold and water damage. Lovely. They're cheap particle board, so there will likely be no way to repair the cabinet, and I don't know how we're going to replace just one cabinet and have it match the others without replacing all of the cabinets. And that's just the tip of the iceberg: who knows what damage is behind the walls and how complicated/expensive it will be to fix the source of the leak. Our community holds a master insurance policy for our complex. A few weeks ago our neighbor on the other side of the wall had a major issue that was caused by a blockage in the main pipeline to our building and she had to replace tons of walls and flooring and pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket even though the source of the problem was clearly the community's responsibility. So I'm extremely concerned about the expense. I am also insanely upset because we were planning to put this place on the market to sell in 3 weeks, but now I have no idea if everything will be fixed and cleaned up by then. Why, oh, why, couldn't this have happened two and a half months later and been some other poor wretch's problem?!?! Add in the stress of living for who knows how long without a usable shower or tub and taking care of the girls while getting it taken care of all while Micah is gone all the time trying to finish his thesis and we are planning our move to Florida. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I'm stressed. This seems like the last thing we need right now.
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