Two birthdays, stitches, and a new school. And some randomness, too. Not in that order.

Sheesh, two birthdays in this house since I last blogged.... life must be busy! :-)

Aubrey turned 9! (Holy bleep, I do not feel old enough to have a 9 year old.) Poor thing wanted a slumber party birthday party, and so she invited only a handful of friends - only one rsvp'd (that she couldn't come). The other 3 didn't rsvp at all, and didn't show up. Aubrey was crushed. I had a feeling before it happened, so I tried to brace her as best I could. And we (Andy and I) had already decided that it was time to have a kitten in the house, and that a 9 year old is old enough for some responsibility in caring for it, so we let her pick HER kitten. She helped pay for it, she named it, she helps clean up the litterbox... Anyway, I took her looking at kittens the night she was supposed to be partying like a rockstar. And why? Whywhywhy do people not rsvp? Just a quick call. Or text. Or e-mail. Freakin' annoying people.

And also, we decided to switch elementary schools. The old school was okay*, but Aubrey was struggling in some areas, and they were not as helpful as she needed them to be. So when a flyer came about a charter school, we checked it out and decided a switch was necessary. She's having a tough time with homework, but is apparently doing well in class. So we are brainstorming ways to get her to concentrate and focus at home. Lauren is, well, Lauren. Didn't even want me to walk her into the building on her first day. I DID walk her in, but that's not what she wanted. Crazy girl.

*and what I really mean is, I thought the old school was okay. Until I saw her struggling so much with some of the homework she was doing in the 2nd week at the new school - I'm pretty sure they should've held her back or something. Learned that old school doesn't teach phonetics. Isn't phonetics key in learning to read and comprehend? Also, watching Aubrey try to answer some of her homework questions, it appears that they worked really hard at teaching their 3rd graders how to pass the standardized tests last year, and neglected other things as a by-product.

Sasha turned 2 in the middle of all of this. She is an awesome 2 year old, I have to admit. Loves to sing and be sung to - 'You are my Sunshine' is a favorite, along with 'The Itsy-bitsy Spider' and, thanks to our summer camp program at the preschool, an annoying song about a princess sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star'. I can no longer sing to her about a twinkling star - she gets mad at me and insists I sing about the princess. Stupid summer camp. She loves to eat. Especially fruit. Pretty sure she'd attempt to eat her weight in bananas (all 19.4 pounds of her) everyday if I'd let her.

She loves playing with baby dolls, and likes to play "Squeezy Pie" - a game where we hug eachother again and again. But Not the Hippopotamus is a favorite book, along with Beautiful Oops (awesome book!!!) and Pat the Bunny.

Oh, and Sasha got stitches. In her chin. From falling from a standing position on the floor while playing with Lauren. This child climbs everything (she's gotten on top of the kitchen counter to turn on the microwave before) and she needs stitches from falling at ground level. Of course. Anyway, she was a trooper. Hated being papoose-d, but it was absolutely necessary to keep her still enough for the doc to stitch her up. She beat Lauren to needing stitches. But I figure Lauren's expensive, holey mouth makes up for it.

(Oh hey, about that expensive mouth... so when she was 3 we had to remove her two front teeth that had been capped when she was 18 months old. Grown up teeth are nowhere near to coming in. While in Colorado, a tooth next to her hole got knocked out. Another capped tooth. With no hopes of fixing it. She's got a 3-tooth wide hole. And, no joke, the most expensive mouth in the house.)

Today I am 28 weeks pregnant. Andy took a picture of me at 26 weeks. I am HUGE! Definitely looked bigger than I felt at that point. But now I kinda feel as big as I look. Bending over, squatting down to get something off the floor is really tough. Getting out of bed is a production. Enough of a production that when I wake up in the middle of the night needing to pee, I weigh how badly I need to pee against the effort necessary to get out of bed. Staying in bed is often the winner.