Small Successes-April 22nd

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. The bathrooms are all clean, with the exception of my shower that will be cleaned today.  I clean the toilets frequently [enough] but the sinks and tubs generally don't get the attention they deserve.  I'm trying to get better about that.  I suppose when I have two kids in school full day this fall my home will start to sparkle.  I'll be overpowering my inevitable loneliness with the overpowering smell of cleaning products.

2. I have managed to cultivate amazing amounts of patience this past week.  I didn't flip out over the sword fighting cranberry juice spill, the chocolate that someone got on my beige dining room carpet, the sandy hair incident, or the lip gloss incident that found me on my belly yesterday for 15-20 minutes trying to extract a runaway lip gloss out from under my oven.  I'd be remiss if I did not explain that the vinyl floor has curled away from the wall under the oven and I had to use a decorative curtain rod in a chop sticks fashion and packing tape to retrieve it.  All these opportunities to practice patience have led to the institution of a few new rules.  There's the "sword fighting with people who do not live in this house is strictly prohibited" rule from which a second rule was instituted that declares that juice cups must be emptied before you may leave the table.  Those rules, if obeyed, should reduce the number of hours I spend on my hands and knees cleaning up concealed juice spills.  I also had to verbally declare what I thought was a  common sense rule pertaining to sand and hair.  Ellie can never say that she hasn't been formally informed that sand is not to be poured on her hair.  I also had to ban the use of wheeled toddler cars on our back yard swing set after witnessing some of the neighborhood kids demonstrate that an all girl version of MTV's Jackass is a very real possibility in the next 8-10 years.  Oh, and rules about the transport of lip gloss in the vicinity of major appliances that aren't easily moved have also been instituted.  Do normal people have to institute such insane laws?  I think there must be something in the air this week that's making the kids go crazy.

3. Ellie can read a little bit.  I started teaching her about two weeks ago and she seems to have really caught on in the past week.  She can read the following words: Dad, Mom, Ellie, at, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, can, fan, man, pan, tan, is, I, a, has, pop, cup, pup & on.  I am so proud of her.  I took a few videos last night, but I haven't figured out how to upload them yet.  The past few days she has been pretty excited about reading.  So far using Starfall.com and the letter tiles from the What's Gnu? game have gotten the best response from her.  She's not a huge fan of me writing the words on the paper or reading out of a book.

Bonus: Today marks 10 years since I converted to Catholicism!