5 months on Friday!

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I am that person.

So I always said I would never be the person who said "I'm too busy for Xanga, so find me on Facebook instead..." But now I realize that's exactly what I've been doing! I don't have the time to sit down and write up a post, so it all gets condensed into 2-sentence blurbs on my Facebook status. Plus it's so much easier to upload pictures there, that I just don't have the motivation to upload them here too. But I know I'll regret it eventually, so I figured I should spend the time getting caught up. I figured I'd go back through my Facebook statuses (stati? statusi?) and basically do a bullet post to get caught up.

• It was soooooooo hot for a while here. We still aren't using our A/C, but it's been much more tolerable lately. For a while, we spent every possible second down in the cool basement. But with fewer toys and no food, it was limited!
  
  
• Marissa had a long stretch of time where she kept waking us up at (or before) 7am - and it was miserable. Finally, I managed to teach her to look for the number 7 in the first spot on her digital clock, and now we've moved on to the 8. She's allowed to get up and play in her room, but can't come out (except to go potty) until that magic number!
  
  
• I got a bunch of money for my birthday, and had a BLAST spending it all as fast as I could. Lol. Shopping is just so much fun for me, and in our money-saving kick, I haven't been able to do it in a while! I got a bunch of clothes for myself (desperately needed!) and a few decor items for our house (desperately wanted!) and it was so much fun!
  
  
• Arianna has been teething for several weeks now. I am shocked by this for a few reasons. First of all, it's pretty early! But mostly I'm shocked because Marissa didn't even make a peep for any of her teeth! Arianna has been a drooling, sucking, chewing mess! And just in the last few days, she's all of a sudden snotty and runny and all stuffed up in her nose. I've had to use the Blue Ball of Death several times, because she can barely breathe when she's nursing, so I feel like I just can't do anything to make her feel better! Somehow she manages to breathe just fine when she wants to suck her fingers though!
  
  
• We've had a few storm/tornado watches, and they always freak me out. I LOVE that our house has a basement, but if we're all sleeping upstairs I just don't trust any of us to wake up to the tornado sirens! I think very soon I will be investing in an emergency weather radio for my sanity.
  
  
• Arianna's been sleeping wonderfully still. She always sleeps 12 hours at night. For about a week now, she's been waking up once or twice to nurse, but always goes right back to sleep. I don't mind at all, since I've been getting enough sleep since she was born! I think it's probably related to her teeth/nose issues.
  
  
• I told Marissa that Michael Jackson sings "songs on the radio" (now sure how else to define him?) and her response was "is he scary?" I laughed. I ended up flipping on his memorial service, but I was so disgusted by it! Sure he was famous, and impacted the music world greatly. But he was NOT a god or an idol, and it was just sickening how people spoke of him that way.
  
  
• Marissa still cracks us up. For example, she is still stuck on having a baby brother! I really don't know where she came up with the idea, but she is persistent!

me: I don't want to eat your crust today. I'm all done eating.

Marissa: Is your belly all full?

me: Yup.

Marissa: Did God put another baby in your belly?

me: No, not yet.

Marissa: Why?

me: Because we already have a baby. Arianna is still a baby. Maybe when Arianna gets bigger.

Marissa: Hold on, let me call God. God, when Arianna gets bigger can we have another baby? Cuz I need a brudder (brother).

me: What did He say?

Marissa: He said not until Arianna gets bigger.

• My parents and grandparents came for 4 days last week. I spent a lot of time cleaning and organizing our house, and it felt so good! I have a problem though. I make these nice long lists of everything that needs to be done, with an initial next to whoever's job it is (Dan's or mine). And I get started on something, only to distract myself with something else that needs to be done but wasn't on the list. So I accomplished SO MUCH, but it took extra long to cross things off my list. Lol.
  
  
• I would also like to announce that my second daughter is also a sleep-talker. That makes me the only normal person in my family! I think it was a Saturday morning, since Dan was here, and my family was still visiting, so Arianna was sleeping in the p-n-p in our room. Her eyes were closed, she never woke up, but she was making noises like "ahhhhhh...mmmmmmm...uhhhhhhh" Dan went to her bed to get her, and she was still sound asleep!
  
  
• Dan has had a few episodes where he gets up and walks down the hall in his sleep. It's only been when I was awake and nursing Arianna in her room, but it freaks me out! I feel like I'm the only person I can count on in the middle of the night! Anybody know a cure for sleep-talking/walking? Lol.
  
  
• We decided to go downtown for fireworks on the 3rd. Marissa was up til 11:30pm that night, so we put her to bed at 7 the next night. 8:01pm she comes running down the stairs with her dress for church, all excited because "I can get out of bed, there's a snowman (the #8) on my clock! Let's get ready for church!" Hahaha...poor girl doesn't understand AM and PM yet!
  
  
• I am getting very excited for this weekend. I am going to paint Marissa's room medium purple, and then eventually add white and dark purple polka dots. She has been begging for "purple walls" for a long time, and I can't wait to see her reaction when she actually gets them!
  
  
• I took the girls to Marissa's first movie theater experience! Our local theater does free family movies during the summer, so we went to see Charlotte's Web. She loved it, and Arianna did great during it. But we got there a few minutes late so it was already dark in the theater. She didn't know that the orange lights mean stairs, so she tripped up the first stair. Then she thought there were lots more stairs, so she tried to climb up the stairs. But there weren't. So she was walking really funny. But she's still talking about "that big movie" and I'm looking forward to next week - Horton Hears a Who! I'm especially excited to take her to see the Veggie Tales pirate one in a few weeks, since she's so obsessed with all things pirate!
  
  
• Marissa has discovered that it will always be "ok" to go potty when she's supposed to be sleeping. We're sorta working on staying dry for nap and nighttime, so I never want to turn her request down just in case. She was awake til 10pm last night, when I went in to check on her before I went to bed! I would still call her a "good kid" but she's found ways to work around rules that I never would have thought of!
  
  
• This afternoon she asked me if we could "go to the bike store and buy a skateboard." Apparently there was an episode of Dragon Tales where Ord (?) used a skateboard a lot, and she is obsessed. She wraps play diapers around her knees for knee pads, and balances (quite impressively, I might add) on her baby car seat to "skateboard." Then when I told her we could not go buy one, she got really upset. She is strange. Lol.
  
  
• I am obsessed with Swagbucks. I've earned $30 in Amazon gift cards, and I just got a $5 Paypal gift card. All just for searching on their search engine instead of Google. If you'd like to join, please use my referral link:http://swagbucks.com/refer/rccalyn and I'll earn points every time you do! Then you can refer people, and earn points every time they do! I know, I know, I sound like a commercial, and it sounds too good to be true. I'm still kinda nervous that all of a sudden they're going to say "nevermind, you can't have the gift cards you earned." But it's working for me, and I'm saving up my Amazon cards to buy a handheld vaccuum. So exciting, I know. Lol. If you're confused, go here or here to find out more. Only one account per household. But don't forget to sign up from my referral link. Now I sound like a broken record. Lame.

I guess that about covers everything. Both girls are still sleeping...I just love a quiet house!