Modesty? BAH. Fugettabautit.

I know, bad poster, bad poster. Blah blah blah let's get to the good stuff.

So it's President's Day and I have off which I don't remember happening for the past few years, but I decided to take full advantage of it since I've felt less than fun lately with the girls - just SO much to do at night including getting things ready for Valentine's Day (girls and myself, had to make a dessert for a work meeting), homemade valentines, etc. Work has been nuts and it all just seemed to come to a head this past week. I decided to take today and spend the whole thing with the girls and have a blast. So far, so good.

So...what is there to do in good ol' Muscatine, you ask? RIGHT! Nothing! So while it sounded fun-ish to battle huge crowds and try not to lose a girl at the newly renovated (and newly re-opened) Children's Museum in Bettendorf (45 minutes away, something Morgan has been BEGGING to do every other day lately), I decided that wasn't in our cards right now and we'd find something in town instead. Library? Yeah, that sounds like fun but that's not SUPER fun. We can do that any time. Wait! The Y! It has a kid pool (water is chest-height on me, where Morgan has her swimming lessons) and after checking family swim times, it was magic. 12-1pm. We were THERE.

Adam had to fly out this afternoon for a coworker's funeral in PA unfortunately, but he was home at lunch before leaving to help me put twogirls together in swimsuits. We jumped in the car and off we went. Getting undressed to go in? Fine. Getting in the water safely and having a BLAST for an hour in the pool? Mission accomplished. Getting out? Ok...(starting to get more difficult) Putting things down, showering/rinsing, good...getting dressed...EVEREST. Hadley's lips were blue and while Morgan was 80% independent getting dry/dressed/etc, she HAD to go behind a curtain today to get dressed which is fine but she had to crawl over Hadley and I to get there.

Someone walks by? Hadley flips over. A noise? Hadley's flying out of my hands. Mom wants to get dressed now? HA HA HA good luck, lady. Now that Hadley was dressed (and Morgan too), I thought it would be a good time to get myself in something dry. Fail. Hadley did everything in her power to use her legs while on dry land to run EVERYWHERE she could. Great balls of fire - if I had any modesty left after having kids, it might have gone out the window while trying to get dressed, corral the monkey, and try to keep her from falling into whatever she tripped over and onto/into. Finally, mission accomplished and next time, it might be worth the wet ass on the way home to just throw clothes on over my suit and leave. SHEESH!

Then we were on the way home and I made a new rule - no sleeping in the car for the next 12 minutes. Morgan ended up in tears b/c she wanted more swimming time (translate - I'm exhausted and looking for reasons not to sleep after I just said I'm so tired). Hadley did her best to pretend she wasn't taking her shoes off but I'm a mom and have super hearing so I can hear velcro from a shoe 10 miles away. She wasn't fooling anyone. 15 minutes later everyone was pottied, drinks of water/milk consumed, and BED. It's been bliss for almost an hour now and I'm loving it. Wait. I'm tired, too. I should probably take a nap. And do a core workout. And start the diapers.

In other news, not much else is new although I will now type no less than 1,000 words about what's going on in our lives while watching House Hunters.

Hadley is on the cusp of a vocabulary splurge. She is imitating us lots and has at least 10-15 spoken/signed words. Her words are still not super clear or anything, but she can moo/arf with the best of them, call for me and scream for Adam when he gets home, and sign lots of things like all done, more, please, up, help, and others. She still only has 8 teeth but I haven't dug in her mouth lately for anything other than Play Doh retrieval and I wasn't feeling around for teeth then. She's hilarious and does funny things all the time. Happy baby. I realize she's a toddler but I'll probably call her a baby until she's 2 b/c I once heard one of my student's mother call him a baby past the age of 2 and she sounded nuts. So, baby Hadley for now. Big girl Hadley tomorrow. :-/ Oh, and for the record, she had a grand time on the way to swimming saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" when I was singing along with Bruno Mars in the car.

Morgan continues to be a smarty smart cuteasaurus rex. She's counting higher and higher all the time and most recently was up to 40 although she has something against 17, 18, 27, 28, 37, and 38 and always skips them unless prompted. She writes her name on everything and is doing marvelous with her chore chart. She loves earning money and putting it in her respective envelopes on "payday" (Saturdays). Morgan PINKPUFFYHEARTS Sunday school and creating art projects both there and at Mary's. Speaking of, Morgan calls me Mary all the time. Poor Mary. She must wish her name was something else most days as I'm 99% sure Morgan isn't the only one saying her name over and over and over again for one reason or another. Morgan also loves singing to the radio and is learning songs faster and faster. I don't think I blogged about this - one night we were on our way to Culver's (Adam's bday??) and Alicia Keys' new song came on (This girl is on fiiiiyaaaaa - fire) and I asked Morgan if she was on fire. She freaked and said, "NO!!" and I explained to her it actually meant awesome, great at something, etc. She then said, "Mommy, you are so awesome, you're on FIRE!" Aww! Adorable. The next night, Morgan said a prayer while we were reading her bible story and then asked me to say one, too. I did, and then she said, "Mommy, that was good. You're on FIRE." Love.

I'm doing fine. Work is busy busy busy and sometimes I don't agree with others but I'm doing my best and trying to get things done in a timely manner. It's working but the bottle of wine I had at the Valentine's party in the Quad Cities with work friends this weekend helped. ;-) Lots of water and ibuprophen also helped on Sunday. ;-) Things are good otherwise! Busy, good, missing home as usual. We are planning a trip to WI mid-March for Chase's baptism and I think we might be able to make it a 3-day weekend since I have some non-contract time for spring breaks. Woo!

Adam is also doing well. He's lost almost 10lbs in the past few weeks/month due to hard work and eating right. He looks great. He's also got a goatee until next week and it's a fun blast from the past. He had one all through college until he moved here (and they made him shave it off so he could wear a respirator if needed, whatever, who needs to breathe...) and I always liked it. Shortly after starting to grow it, though, he gave Morgan a kiss goodnight and Morgan said, "Daddy! I need to be careful of your fur!" Anyone who knows anything knows that goatees can be rather picky. And funny.

Speaking of funny, one more thing. Hadley would eat Play Doh for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not bat an eye. So.Gross. Morgan must have wanted to know what the fuss was all about b/c yesterday morning, she had some time with PD. She must have missed some when putting it away b/c all of a sudden she was coughing, eyes water, the whole ball of wax. I thought she was just choking on spit/something and she told us she was choking from Play Doh. I almost peed my pants laughing b/c the poor kid must have done everything in her power to swallow it without vomiting and came thisclose to doing so. HA HA HA serves you right for eating PD! Adam thought I was being mean by laughing hysterically and almost crying myself. Note to Morgan: PD is not what Hadley thinks it is and the commercial kind is not for consumption. I'm still laughing.