Progress on Many Fronts!

My 3 year old son announced in his very loud voice to the library this week, "I'm holding my (I'm not going to type the word on my blog because I don't want to turn up in those Google searches, but begins with a "p" and end with an "s") because I need to go pee-pee!" Yeah, there was no end to the number of stares as people reacted to hearing that word shouted across the quiet library! And to think it was just a little over a year ago that I was worried about that child's verbal abilities! Praise God now he can communicate very clearly, but perhaps a little too loudly!

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On a very positive note, my 7 year old is beginning to be able to fold dish towels so they actually look folded at the end of the process!

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And my dishwasher is really clean. There's just nothing like scrubbing the inside of the dishwasher door hinge with a toothbrush! And the crazy thing is I kept thinking, "This is so gross, I really need to do this more often!"

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The fact that, that chore went undone for so long leads me back to the subject of some sort of household chore management system. I tried out one months ago that involved writing all the household chores on index cards and filing them by days in a little box and rotating them based on how often they needed to be done like daily, weekly, monthly, annually, etc. But, I couldn't stick with it. The sheer number of index cards overwhelmed me and I'm ashamed to say I didn't really even make it through a week using it! But, my system of tackling tasks only when I happen to notice they need to be done doesn't seem to be working too well because by then it's so bad I need a Haz-Mat suit to tackle the job when maybe just a rag and some water would have worked if I'd addressed it months earlier!

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However, I do have a latest cooking-from-scratch success -- homemade yogurt!It really is not that hard! I followed these directions nearly exactly and it turned out great!

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A highlight of my weeks this summer has been watching my daughter at gymnastics! We did Mommy & Me when she was really little, but I took her out of gymnastics once she was doing dance because it was just too much to manage with her brother's activities. For 2 years she has asked me when she could take gymnastics again, but she loved her ballet/tap class, too. This summer, though, while she was off dance class I signed her up for gymnastics at a nearby gym that intimidated me a little because they've trained Olympians, but the experience has been great! The gym is not too pushy or intense for her like I feared, they are really good coaches, and she LOVES it! It is so fun watching her tumbling, flying through the air, jumping, and climbing -- all the things my little daredevil just craves doing! And I have to say with her new outlet, she is climbing the counters and sides of the stairwell inside the house much less and the jumping down the stairs from the 5th stair up has stopped, too!

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Look what arrived in the mail recently!
If y'all were not around this blog for the Spray Paint Mania of 2009, well, this just may rival that! There are already upwards of 8 different surfaces in my home now coated in chalkboard paint and by the end of the weekend there may not be a spot left that hasn't been transformed into a chalkboard! Now if I just had some chalk that wasn't the sidewalk chalk kind!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Find more Friday Fragments, Finer Things Friday, and Friday Funnies at Homesteader's Heart, & 7 Quick Takes Friday.