When we sing to Willow, “old mac donald had a farm. . . ” she says, “EEE III OOO!” It is so cute that I badger her about it all day and she often looks at me like she’s bored. She has learned the power of the push and the loud NO. Farewell, sweet sweet baby. Snif. Hello troublemaker.

The boys have way too many possessions. That happy meal toy from 1999? Priceless. The broken (insert one of many things here) that Santa himself brought? Cannot under any circumstances be parted with. Ever.

So, their room is stuffed with a bunch of crap and I have been knocking myself out cleaning it up for them “one last time,” for years. Finally we put about 2/3 of the stuff into big plastic bins and boxes and put it in the garage. What is left in their room they can manage alone. They clean their own room. Without me. This will give me a whole two or three extra days a month of time to do other things. Like clean their sisters’ room or do the dishes. Every Friday they can exchange some of the stuff in their room for some of the things in the garage. It is a very good thing, not only becuase of the decreased mess, but now they will play with what they have more. Why didn’t I do this a long time ago????

I’ve been wanting to subscribe to two magazines, The Sun and All Round, for many moons. I got an offer in the mail from each of them, and yay! if I finish my list of things to do today (on it is “send in subscriptions for Sun and All Round and call for Boomerang subscription”), we’ll be subscribers. It’s the little things.