Last night we went to a wedding reception and danced the night away. Needless to say, the girls did
not want to wake up this morning to get ready for church. I knew it would be a tough day for Rachel since she had had a very restless sleep (she growls in her sleep sometimes and it's a
bad omen for the following morning) and had to let her lie in bed moaning for a good fifteen minutes before she finally got out of bed. Miriam woke up grinning, as per her usual, but acted very sleepy the entire day.
We had stake conference today, which was nice because it meant that I didn't have to teach Sunbeams by myself (that will be next week) but it was also not nice because it meant
two hours of making my children sit still and listen to adults speak instead of the one hour we have on a regular Sunday.
Aside from multiple trips to the bathroom and drinking fountain and spreading their stuff all over the aisle and one terrific Rachel-meltdown, the girls did fairly well. And I even got to listen to what some of the speakers said. It helped that we sat beside my parents...
After church my mom and dad came over to our house for lunch; we ate party leftovers. Then Rachel went to watch
Matilda at my parents' house while I put Miriam down for a nap. I took a nap, too, since Rachel was gone and Miriam was sleeping and when I woke up I thought, "That's weird. I woke up before Miriam. Why can't I fall back asleep?" Usually I wake up to her knocking on her bedroom door.
Then I looked at the clock and...two-and-a-half-hours!?
I woke Miriam up and she did
not greet me with a smile. She usually wakes up from nap time less happy than she wakes up in the morning but she was quite upset about being woken up today. I picked her up to carry her to the rocking chair (our post-nap ritual) and she asked to be put down, so I did...and she ran back to bed.
"Why are you so sleepy?" I asked.
"'Cuz I didn't have a long, long nap!" she said.
"You
did have a long, long nap," I assured her.
"Didn't!"
She decided that she could stay awake, though, when I told her we were going on a walk to Naanii and Bumpa's house and got herself all prettied up—in pants and a skirt and a shirt and a dress. I had asked her to put a pair of pants on (she had taken hers off before falling asleep) because it was a little chilly today and she said, "'Ow 'bout a skirt? Know what? Skirts
are pants, Mom! They are because they are in my pants drawer."
Whatever. So she wore her self-selected outfit and we went to my parents' house and then to the park where Miriam out-swung every child who passed through. I should probably check the Guinness World Record for the amount of time a two-year-old has willingly swung (without fussing or getting bored or asking to get down) because I'm pretty sure Miriam could give that record a go.
At one point, before my mom had joined us, both girls were swinging. Miriam was on one of the baby swings and Rachel had chosen the swing on the farthest end of the swingset. Then they were both yelling at me to push them higher. I was like, "Really? You couldn't have chosen the swing next to the baby swings? You had to choose the swing at the very end?" Apparently she had to choose the swing at the very end. Rachel's getting better at pumping but isn't quite self-sufficient yet.
Near the end of our time at the park Rachel asked me to help her climb into a tree, so I did. So Miriam had to climb a tree, too. And then I had to take pictures. And therefore you get to see the outfit she cobbled together:
That would be pink halloween pants with black bats and orange blobs, a white skirt with blue flowers and green foliage, a long-sleeved ladybug shirt, and a pink dress with blue and purple flowers.
