Small Successes-November 17th

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. Our school district has this thing called Power School that allows me to check on Madeline's grades.  A year or so ago I set up our account to send me weekly updates with her grades in each subject.  I was skeptical when I saw that she had an A in every subject.  Monday afternoon a very happy Madeline came through the front door waving a report card with straight A's.  We're very proud of her.

2.  I went shopping with my mom on Tuesday and found a Christening gown for Katie.  When Madeline was baptized her godmother Bryan's aunt, who is also his godmother, spent an obscene amount of money (more money than my wedding gown and veil cost) on a beautiful Christening gown for her baptism.  When I tried to use this gown for Ellie she screamed like it was the end of the world each time I tried it on her.  I never understood what the problem was and I eventually resigned myself to the fact that Ellie would not wear it for her baptism.  She ended up wearing a pretty ivory silk dress from Gymboree for her baptism.  The end result was she was happy and comfortable.  On Monday I tried Madeline's gown on Katie and while she didn't react the same way Ellie did, I noticed when I removed the gown that she was all scratched up on her face and neck from the beading on the bonnet and gown.  Then I noticed that her armpits were all red and irritated.  It was then that I realized that Ellie's problem must have been that the gown was very uncomfortable.  So I proceeded to try Ellie's Christening outfit on Katie.  It was a fail.  3-6 month clothing is way too big on a baby who is just four weeks old.  Since Katie's baptism is in just nine more days I realized that I needed something for her to wear.  I stopped at my mom's and tried my Christening gown on Katie, but since I was a big baby and wasn't baptized until I was seven months old, my gown was quite big on her.  We ended up finding a pretty Christening gown for her at JC Penney at a very reasonable price.

3. The laundry is under control.  Everything is folded and put away, too.  Everything but my and Bryan's clothes, that is.  Our bedroom has piles of clothes all over the place.  There's clean clothes for me and Bryan that I never find a moment to put away and then there's the piles of clothes that the girls have outgrown.

4. I boxed up all the hand me downs we've been given for Katie according to size and removed them from the floor of my closet and bedroom.  I realized I needed to do something with the hand me downs for her when I could scarcely walk into my walk in closet without tripping on something.  The catalyst behind organizing these clothes came on Monday when Bryan came home from work with two big boxes and two big bags of baby clothes from two different families.  We're very blessed to have several families who send their little girls' outgrown baby clothes to us for Katie.  I've never even met one of the mothers who sends me her little girl's outgrown clothes.  She's a friend of Katie's godmother and she just bags the clothes up as her little one outgrows them and hands them off to my friend.   Aside from the fact that getting hand me downs gives me that shopping high without having to spend any money, I love digging through the clothes and finding that I can mix and match pieces from different families since all three of them have little girls born within a month or two of each other and they all seem to buy different pieces from the same clothing lines.  I'm also rather amused when I open up a box and find the exact same sleepers or outfit that I have for Katie in the next size up.

5. On Sunday Bryan and I did some yard work on the front yard.  Bryan ripped out all the shrubs that were either dead or disliked by me.  I spent a couple of hours weeding the gardens.  The retainer wall where Bryan removed the shrubs looks very sparse now, but it will look better in the spring when we have pretty flowers  instead of dead or ugly overgrown shrubs.

6. Katie turned one month old yesterday.  It's hard to believe she's already a month old.  The past month has certainly passed by quickly.  To celebrate, she and I braved the rain and went to the office of vital statistics for the township where she was born and got a copy of her birth certificate.