2 for Two. Or Two for 2. Whichever.

I’ve been meaning to update—Samantha’s been doing great in her bed, but she does have a tendency to wake a little earlier than we’d like. I think when she was in a crib and she woke up early, she’d get bored and fall back asleep again. Now she knows she can get out of bed. And empty out her drawers. And pull all the wipes out of the warmer. And read books. Amazing what she can do in the still-dark hours of morning, too. Naps are a little bit more difficult keeping her in bed, but she still does pretty well. Oh, we had to remove her crayons from her reach in her room when I discovered that she had been using the gate we have at her door as a blank canvas. I caught my budding artist in the act on Saturday.

On a verbal note, Sammi’s finally using 2-word sentences a bit more consistently. We’ll often hear, “elp pees” (help, please), “more aiooo” (more Caillou—she’s totally, completely, hopelessly addicted to the little bald 4-year old Canadian cartoon character), “more cookie”, “ehmo potty” (Elmo potty—she has a potty ring w/Elmo on it), “morning daddy”, “vaffle cooking” (LOL! She loves her frozen waffles for breakfast!), and the list goes on. Each day it gets a little better. Oh, and she’s unfailingly polite—yesterday she literally pushed Steve with both hands to get past him, saying “Mo-Mee!!” (Excuse me!), repeating it more urgently when he didn’t move fast enough, and laughing hysterically. *sigh* And if that wasn’t indication enough that this child is truly 2 years old, we were in Home Depot on Saturday afternoon and she was having a mini-meltdown in the shopping cart (for no particular reason, but the main word continuously coming out of her mouth, loud enough to find a dozen generally unhelpful salespeople, was “No!”), and a man shopping near us turned and said, “Two?” Yep. Totally. What gave it away? And for all of you that have told me that 3 is worse, I seriously find that hard to believe.

Settlement on our new house is on Wednesday! I can hardly control my excitement, and have been constantly looking at the photos I took there during the home inspection. I’ll even study them—increase the image size to 100% or 150% (or more!) and look at all the little details with a fine tooth comb. We had thought about having the carpets professionally cleaned and cleaning the rest of the place ourselves, but on one of my detailed photo inspections I discovered that in a corner of the kitchen, near the fridge and under the window sill, there were spots of spilled ketchup. Heck, if that’s there, who knows what might lurk in the bathrooms?? (hehe! I’m really not that prissy—I can clean if I need to.) Steve’s got a cleaning company coming in on Friday morning to give an estimate… Oh, and if anyone knows anyone who wants a hot tub, they’re welcome to it (they’d have to dismantle it and haul it themselves). We don’t want it. It needs some (probably fairly minor) repair, but we don’t want a) the liability, b) the work to maintain it and c) the increased costs in electric to run it, all for the novelty of having it that would wear off after about a month. I’d much rather use that space to make our yard bigger. The darned thing is the size of a small room.

Okay, enough for now. I’ll probably post again on Wednesday evening after we have the keys in our hands!