A few minutes in Ella's morning

I can no longer keep anything clean or neat. At. All.

Ella has suddenly become mobile. She was scootching, but within the last week she has started pulling herself up and crawling up and down the stairs in the den. (Post about that following this one)

I had to capture the chaos this morning. I took these pictures over the course of 5 minutes. FIVE.



First Lily decided to make an "ammamal train" and demanded that I make it move. After explaining to her in detail why I couldn't make it move, she left it there and went to the other room.


Ella scootched over to the cabinet in the dining room and promptly emptied it.


I actually cleaned the entire couch last night. Kibbles, in her older age, has a habit of licking her front paws ALL DAY LONG. She leaves little dog spit stains on the couch and it makes me crazy. I put out this towel for her to lie on so if she did her licking thing it wouldn't get on the couch. Of course she sat just off of it.


"Hmm...what can I get into here?"



"Screw that, what's happening in the kitchen?"


"Dishwasher!"


"I'm goin' in for a closer look."


This is the look that kills me. She already knows she's bad AND funny and totally works it.


Out of the dishwasher and angry that her glasses aren't on



"Ah, that's better."

FIVE minutes.

Since she's been up from her nap this afternoon she has wrecked the den and screamed at Lily, then stood by the ottoman and swept everything off of it onto the floor. Now she's got her detangler spray in her hand and she's holding it like a bottle of beer and biting the nozzle.

I'm SO doomed.

Lily the Hero

Yesterday I went upstairs to fetch clothes for me and Lily to wear. I left the girls in the den, which is 2 steps down from the kitchen (which leads to the basment, living room and dining room). I was upstairs for about 3 minutes when I heard Ella screaming and Lily scolding her. This isn't unusual. I yelled down to them but couldn't quite hear what Lily was saying. I ignored it thinking that since Ella was "trapped" in the den that nothing too bad could have happened. I heard Lily say something else, so I went closer and asked her again. She said, "Mommy, Ella's trying to go down the basement stairs."

I bolted down the stairs to find them both sitting on the top step of the basement. Lily had her arm out across Ella's chest preventing her from going down. She wouldn't get up because she didn't want Ella to fall. And Ella screaming was when she tried going down and Lily physically blocked her.

What a good sister!

Last one for now...

My friend around the corner has a son who was born with severe heart defects. He's had several surgeries and will have many more.

He turned 2 the other day and this is the shirt they asked me to make him (otherwise I'd *never* make something like this, unless it was someone I *knew* would appreciate it):