Good idea, bad idea?

Bryan's birthday was on Tuesday. We had a small celebration at home and I ordered an ice cream cake. The kids went with me to order it and so I let Penny help pick out the decorations - she chose Toy Story (big surprise).

The cake turned out well, but choosing the theme may have been a mistake.

It came with Woody and Buzz figurines, and the Buzz figurine isn't really a figurine at all. It's more like a hologram card. The Woody figurine is about 2 inches tall and he's sitting on a letter block.

Anyway, Penelope (obviously) got the figurines.

And has proceeded to take them to bed with her every night since then. She also took "Buzz" to the zoo with her and showed him the animals. "Look Buzz! Giraffes! Mama, Buzz see's giraffes too!"

It is crazy how in love she is with these tiny, cheap, plastic toys. Crazy.

Also? I have a cloth reusable bag that has the Toy Story characters on it. Penelope took it with her to nap today. I am not kidding. This child is CRAZY for Toy Story.

Jessie

If you've ever seen Toy Story 2 or 3 then you know who Jessie is. I think I've already detailed how much Penelope loves the Toy Story movies so today's events should not be at all surprising.

First off, I have to give a huge public thank you to my parents. Every Friday night they take the kids for the night so Bryan and I can have a date and get some sleep. Last night we went out to dinner, watched Mad Men, and played Rock Band (oh yes, we're geeks). We then slept in, until 8. It was glorious. And while I missed our morning routine, I did not miss the 1am, 3am, and 5am wake ups. Although Griffin slept well for them (brat).

Anyway, we picked up the kids this morning and took them to one of the many parks in Sac. I forgot the name, but it's downtown by where they have the Farmer's Market. It's "space" themed and has a large play structure for the older kids and the younger kids. It's actually a really great park - I think we might have G's birthday there.

We're one of the first families to arrive and have the run of the park for awhile. While running around, Penelope finds a 2" plastic Jessie doll. Probably from some Happy Meal. There aren't many kids around and Bryan said it was sitting there for awhile, so odds are some kid dropped it the day before.

Poe is instantly in love.

She walks around with the toy and they play together. There's a dual slide, Penny sits on one side and she holds Jessie on the other side and they slide down together... hilarious. I have video and I will try and upload it tonight.

Penelope also puts Jessie in this cup/ride thing that twirls around and proceeds to twirl her around. You know those boards with the holes, where you stick your head through and you're a character of some sort? Well this park had an astronaut one and Penelope stuck Jessie through it so she could be an astronaut.

She would also say things like "Jessie's having fun!" or "Jessie's happy!". When we got home it was "Jessie's lunchtime too!"

Jessie took a bath with Penelope today. And she also accompanied her to bed.

I think we need to get Poe a slightly larger version.

Chatty Cathy

Penny has a baby friend named Maddox whose almost a month older than she is, and boy can he talk! After seeing him on Wednesday for Mom's Group, Pen decided that it would be super neat to imitate Maddox. So she's been talking up a storm lately! "Whadawhatcha badabada blah blah blah" All. Day. Long.

This is, of course, when she's not fussing. I'm hoping that whatever it is that's bothering her will be done with soon - teething, a cold, desire to drive us crazy... whatever it is I hope it's over soon. She's been sleeping with us for the past two nights and I'm tired of being kicked in the ribs or head butted from 1am until morning. The restless sleeping can't be good for her either, so I'm really hoping she has a good night tonight.

We cleaned out her toy box today as well and packed up a good number of toys that she's either outgrown or that I can no longer stand. Her activity table was one of them - she doesn't really play with it anymore and it was starting to get on my nerves.

**45 minutes after she went down, she woke up... went back down in her own crib so lets hope it was a fluke.

Anyway, we'll break the toys out again once New Baby is old enough for them and by that time I will hopefully have forgotten all of the songs the darn activity table plays. Toys that stayed out were all her musical instruments (like the xylophone and drum), the balls, a few stuffed animals, her stacking cups and blocks, and a bunch of books. Her favorite thing to do now is read, so we didn't really need all the other toys - they'd just lie there on the carpet collecting dog hair (ew!).

I do have some new video, but haven't gotten a chance to upload and edit yet - I don't know when I'll get around to it since there are so many things I need to do this weekend and next week.

I'll touch briefly on my employment issues, but I don't want to dwell on them too much. I'm still trying to stay positive about the situation and I don't want to turn this blog into my own pity-party - it is, after all, primarily a blog about the babies since I haven't done much in the way of a traditional baby book. But I will keep everyone updated on the job situation so we can all celebrate when I'm gainfully employed again :)

I filed for unemployment, toggled with my resume, and applied for about half a dozen jobs (mostly administration since teaching jobs are impossible without my credential). I'll hopefully know in the next few weeks if I've qualified for an emergency teaching credential, which would allow me to take substitute teaching jobs. Those are super hard to come by with all the teacher layoffs, but it won't hurt to at least try. I've also printed out the paperwork for Medical, Healthy Families, and WIC. I doubt we qualify for Medical, but we should qualify for Healthy Families and WIC which would mean Penelope and I would have health insurance - hooray! Bryan may have to wait until I find a new job until we can afford to get him health insurance, so hopefully he stays healthy until then!

Luckily we don't need any formula or diapers (hooray for cloth!). We do use disposables when we travel, but a package of those lasts us awhile and we can't really afford to travel now anyway :)

So while things aren't great, I'm still super stressed, and the next few months will be very difficult, I'm trying to stay optimistic about the whole situation. We've canceled some non-necessities (poor Bryan has given up his iPhone) and we're going to making more cuts next week. It's a good thing we like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!