Big Doings

It's school vacation week and so far, Mother Nature has cooperated and given us 2 beautiful sunny days to enjoy. Unfortunately, I still have no camera to capture these days. That might not be the worst thing. I've had fun playing with the kids and following them around the park without rushing to get my camera or catch the perfect shot.
My parents were in town this weekend and we had a great dinner with them on Friday at the 99. Lucy is out of the phase now where she is constantly trying to escape the highchair and we don't have to bring her own food with us which makes eating out a fun outing rather than a chore again. It was sad to see Grandma and Grandpa go home on Monday so to cheer everyone up we went to our favorite store to create our own Spring Break Survival Kit. One of the items we got was a huge roll of paper so the kids could color. Usually a roll that big lasts us a few weeks but yesterday the kids decided to spend the afternoon drawing a zoo and used up the entire roll on animals that they taped along the wall of the playroom. I am not one to discourage their creative endeavors (and I got to watch last weeks DVRed episode of Glee) so I don't mind, we'll just go back for more paper tomorrow.
Today our only errand was to buy a bag of birdseed but on the way we decided to go to the big park and then we spent a half hour or so checking out all the animals at the feed store except the lizards. I told Ace the lizards gave me the willies and he was confused and asked the clerk why they named the lizard Willy. Then the clerk was equally confused and I didn't want to hurt her feelings by explaining that I found her lizard creepy so I asked what the cat's name was to change the subject. The cat's name was Misty. Ace kept calling her Willy. He was obviously more confused than I realized.
Julia was on tv this morning. She did the Barnyard Boogie with Danisha on the Sunny Side Up Show. If you have a child that likes PBS Sprout I highly recommend submitting a picture of them for the Barnyard Boogie dance. I have never seen Julia so proud, we've already watched it 3 times today.
Lucy is going through the 18 month sleep regression phase. For the past two weeks she has been screaming her head off whenever we even approach her crib at bedtime. And she still wakes up multiple times at night. Yesterday we skipped naps and she went down without much fuss at 8 and stayed in her bed until around 11. Then she woke up and I brought her to our bed where she proceeded to stretch out and take up the entire queen sized bed. After a few hours of clinging to less than a foot of space I tried (unsuccessfully) to take her back to her crib. At 2:30 Julia came to the bed too and I was considering just giving up the bed completely and sleeping on the floor. Instead,  Andy took her to sleep in the couch. We are all exhausted.

I don't really know how to wrap up this entirely too long update, so here is the picture we submitted for Julia's television debut. Seriously, if I had known she would really be on tv, I would have spent a lot more time choosing the photo. This just happened to be the first picture of her face that I had on the desktop. She didn't mind but Andy was confused as to why in the world I would have picked this goofy shot for her first chance at stardom.