To nap, or not to nap?

That is the question. Lillian used to be a really good sleeper; she went down without a fight say 95% of the time, whether for a nap or overnight. But these last couple of months, she's started to fight nap time big time. She cries and cries when I say it's time, and often is still crying when I leave her room. Some days she ends up sleeping up to two hours, other days she never does go to sleep. We can hear her in there, talking to her stuffed animals and moving about. Regardless of whether she actually sleeps, I'm going to keep giving her (and me!) that quiet time for as long as I can. Bedtime in the evenings isn't as much of a fight, but she has started stalling a bit, and being defiant when she's told it's time to clean up her toys so she can get ready for bed. We give her warnings that if she doesn't help clean up then there will be no story time with Daddy, but then that punishes Daddy too! I know what you Moms are thinking. You're laughing inside, because you know this is just the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Most of the time Lillian is just really entertaining. Her vocabulary is growing exponentially, and she surprises me every day with some new word or grouping of words. One of her latest hobbies is "cooking" with her foam letters. She uses some bowls and pans and spoons and mixes them up, then puts them in the "oven" - a little nook in the coffee table that Gramma showed her. She even warns us that it's hot, and blows on the letters before we get to taste. Love that :)

New outfit from Oma... ta-da!


Checking out the flower...


Ooooo - dots!


I made a batch of 50 cards to send to Operation Write Home (www.operationwritehome.org), a volunteer non-profit organization that supports U.S. armed forces by sending blank handmade greeting cards to write home on. I've never made so many cards in such a short time! It was fun, and nice to be able to put a bunch of my supplies to good use.


A question on that note for those of you that make your own cards - or anyone else who wants to weigh in. What do you think about me re-using the handmade cards I've received over the years and sending them to Operation Write Home? I keep them all because I can't bear to throw them away, partly because I know what goes into making them and partly because they're so cute and pretty! So I have a handful, and I was contemplating cutting off the card fronts and attaching them to blank white cards to reuse for OWH. On the one hand I think it's great to give the cards some new life, but on the other hand they're not my own work so I'm not sure what the makers would think of their cards being used that way. What do you think?

The other day Sally went through a cedar chest full of wonderful old things. She had been holding onto some things that belonged to a local man that passed away some time ago, because although she knew no one to pass them on to, it didn't seem right to throw them away. There was a mix of her own things, like blankets her mother had made (I LOVE those), and a few things belonging to this man. Well Sally finally got in touch with a relative of the man who said she'd be glad to have those items, so everything got unearthed and sorted through. There were some really cool items that I had never seen before, like World War II ration books - and tucked in the back of the folder holding those books was a note, something that has really stuck with me. It was a handwritten note written in 1936, with a newspaper clipping pinned to it. The clipping was a death announcement. The note was written by the mother of her now deceased son, expressing how heartbroken she was. I was close to heartbroken just holding this note in my hands, knowing that 74 years ago that woman wrote these painful words as she grieved for her son. But aside from the sadness of it, I was amazed at the piece of history that had been kept in that little folder all these years. I'm not much of a history buff, but seeing first hand such a personal piece of it was pretty amazing. I have a much better understanding of why Sally loves doing genealogy so much. Finding these personal items and stories is more interesting than I thought!

Well I've been all over the map in this blog. Better cut it off before I meander in some new and strange direction!

Ooo ooo but P.S. - 15 weeks down, 24 to go!