Your 3 year old is watching too much tv when...

walking into the kitchen where a tub of oxyclean is sitting next to a bowl of a soaking clothes exclaims "It's the power of clean!"

Biking is just another of those things that proves you're not going to get this child to do anything before she's good and ready. She's just decided that she wants to ride her bike and go really fast and she finally figured out how to use her brakes. So of course this means that she wants to ride really fast down the driveway and then slam on her brakes about two feet away from the garage. We'll have to work on training wheels next.
Oh, and she wants to ride her bike ALL THE TIME right now even when it's freezing. Which is exactly what Meredith is saying. Can you tell? That's amusing to me considering the child would stay in a swimsuit 24/7 even in our basement that's not heated very well.
She'll always smile for candy though! At least what she considers a smile.

Eureka!

After a looong break from school we attempted to start up again after Christmas. Yes, I said attempted. Evie had started this thing where she was acting like she didn't know how to do anything and thinking it was funny. Very, very aggravating and of course it resulted in many battles. So I ordered a new phonics set and got two of everything so Rosie could do work too. We sat down today to try it and I didn't have a smidge of trouble. I guess having your little sister show you up is quite the motivation. It was very nice to have fun this morning instead of battling with her!
And yes, it really is that bright in there. We need curtains up so bad! The problem is that our windows are twelve feet long - that's a lot of curtain!

Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

This is the law that they've come up with in response to the contaminated toys that were being sold. Remember Barbie and Dora being full of lead and other scary stuff? Honestly, I think this law is scarier so I'm passing along this site where you can read on your own about it and contact the people that control this stuff.

http://sites.google.com/site/handmadetoyalliance/

The law itself is so gooblygarbled that no one seems to be able to exactly agree on the outcome (and it's actually been sent back for modifications) but the the gistfrom what I've read is that everything(yes, please make sure your 10 year old is not chewing on their bike) sold for children under 12 will have to be tested. That sounds wonderful in theory, right? But basically what it comes down to is that only a company like hasboro or walmart will be able to afford the testing and sales of childrens products and that only new products will be legal.
So say goodbye to handcrafted toys or European imports. Say good bye to etsy, ebay, craft fairs and thrift stores and consignment sales and say hello to only being able to purchase from the companies that actually brought us the toys with the lead in the first place. Oh the irony.

Christmas - the condensed version.

Just some random snaps from Christmas. I think we spent most of our time on the beach - we had wonderful weather. We were very blessed this year to spend the whole week in Charleston with my family(including ALL the dogs), Nate's family and Allison's family too. We decorated a beautiful tree and yummy cookies, spent a foggy day sightseeing in downtown, taught Mom and Josh about oyster roasts, took bike rides to the river, played with some awesome marshmallow guns, ran in the ocean and just hung out and ate a lot! We also made a quick unplanned detour to Charlotte on the way home to spend some more time with Aunt Ali and Uncle Wes. It was wonderful to have Nathan off for two whole weeks, it's going to be awful for him to head back to work on Monday!