Lil' Lynch Update

Paige has recently been obsessed with a few things. Totally normal things:
1. Jail
I think the jail thing started after we went to Skyline Taverns. Afterwards, we were driving around a small town and we passed the jail. Either Dave or I were like, "oh, the jail..." and thus started Paige's hang-up with jails. She puts everything in jail. For example, I'll say, "Paige, will you put the peanut butter away (let's face it, they eat PB&J more than I will admit)?" She says (to the peanut butter), "You're going to jail." Then puts it in the cabinet. She puts Izzy in "jail" (her crate) every time we leave the house, and tells her what her indiscretion was that put her there. I used to find dolls and other toys in Izzy's "jail" also, so we had to institute a "no-playing-with/in-Izzy's-crate" rule. So now the dolls are put in dresser drawers, their personal jail. Paige has also started pocketing small toys from her daycare and bringing them home, so I was all, "you know people go to jail for STEALING other people's things," to get her to stop this bad habit (her teacher and I also pat her down before she leaves). Unfortunately, this may have only encouraged her, because she was like, "oh, I can see the inside of jail?"

2. The tires on my car
My tires are worn down. I know this. My car is also about to die after 9 wonderful years of carting me around. So I held off on getting new tires because I wanted to see if my car would even outlive them. Well, the tires are now unsafe, the car is still running (kind-of) and Walmart is going to have a Black Friday special (guaranteed for an hour!!) on tires, so I'll get them about 50% off. Paige asks about my tires 20-50 times a day and whether I snuck off to get new tires without telling her. She doesn't want me to get new tires because she "loves" my current ones. She apparently had a dream last night that I got new tires and she was sad.

3. Monsters/Witches and their Brews
We often play a game where I am apparently a monster, and the girls run screaming anytime they see me. I am also supposed to roar when they see me, which I sometimes do. However, if I am not enthusiastic enough about my roar, I am scolded by a 4 year old for not doing it right. She also talks a lot about witches and what they put in their brews (I'm not sure where this one came from). The other day they were studying Indians at her school, and she came home and was all, "Where do Indians live?" I said, "Some live together on reservations." She says, "Oh, maybe they drank a witches brew and the witch turned them into real people and they live right here." Uh, okay, guess my answer was wrong.

Rylie, on the other hand, has her own things going on. She dances and stares at herself in mirrors, wears footie jajamas to bed, told Paige today to take her fingers out of her mouth because, "only peakut butter sammiches go in there," and is terrified of public restrooms (did I mention she's potty trained?!?!). I'd like to personally thank Uncle Andrew for passing on that final trait.

Time Out

Rylie has been put in lots of time outs recently because she is now getting one every time she shrieks/screams while inside. Apparently this is her "go to" move when she doesn't get what she wants, and also, apparently, she does not get what she wants a lot. Yesterday afternoon she got (at least) two time outs within about 20 minutes. Here's how they went:

Time out #1
Me: Rylie, why were you in time out?
Rylie (smiling): I in time out.
Me: Why?
Rylie: Why?
Me: You were in time out for screaming.
Rylie: Hug time?

Time out #2
Me: Rylie, why were you in time out?
Rylie: Cause Bingo was his name-o.
Me: No, for screaming. Do you have anything you want to say to Mommy? (I was looking for "sorry.")
Rylie: B. I. N. G. O.?

We may need a new tactic for teaching lessons around here.

Summer is OVER

So we took a little hiatus from The Lynch Family website, but we're baaaaack. See, our laptop died back in May, but the only thing we REALLY needed it for was photo storage and adding to this site. We thought, eh, let's take a break. Then we went off, did lots of stuff, and now we are back to work and the real world (and I've had a few people asking why there are no new pictures) and it's time to start blogging again.

So we got this bad boy:

And we're back in business.

Let me summarize what we did during our computer-less summer:
-Paige finished dance (forever)
-we got a porch swing
-we celebrated lots of people's birthdays
-we went swimming a lot
-we travelled to Seattle
-Rylie got a big girl bed
-Paige got a double bed
-we went to museums, concerts, baseball games, etc
-Paige got a new pet (a caterpillar)

I think that's it.

"I already know how to dance."

A few weeks ago, Paige started dance lessons (again). She is doing them with her best friend, Juliet. She was having a difficult time listening to the dance teacher for the first few lessons, so we talked a lot about listening and watching her teacher (and not playing hide-and-seek with Juliet) during dance class. During one of these conversations she told me, "I don't need to listen to the teacher. I already know how to dance."

Shopping Used To Be Fun

Dave has been working insane hours recently, which means the girls and I have been given the gift of A LOT of time together. Hanging with the girls is a good time and all, but at some point I actually have to run some errands. I'm fine grocery shopping with them, they are actually pretty well behaved there (and, I'm pretty efficient now, thanks to my list app on my phone). But, there are just some errands that I would like to do without ever having to sing the ABC's, spell "hungry," or tell anyone to take their hands out of their pants (which, coincidentally, is why I also don't like to shop with Dave). Anyhow, this is the 4th weekend where Dave has worked during all business hours, so I realized that I was just going to have to suck it up and take them out.

Saturday - goal: buy new blue jeans and a bathing suit
I set out for the Dulles Town Center and I thought I had a secret weapon in hand, I told Paige that we'd go on the train that rides around the mall, but ONLY IF they were well behaved while I shopped for the perfect pair of blue jeans. Knowing I had little time, and that I would eventually end up there, I started at Old Navy. I grabbed a bunch of jeans, hit the dressing room, and things were going well. As I was admiring myself in the mirror though, I looked down and saw Paige spitting a big loogie on the bench in the dressing room. She saw my look of horror and, I think, thought it would make the situation better if she "cleaned up" her mess...by LICKING it off the bench. I never even looked for a bathing suit...

Sunday - goal: go to Costco, Kohls, Dollar Store, and Best Buy
Stop 1: Costco - This one was the easy one. The girls both love Costco and we go there as often as we do the grocery store, so they were both well behaved. Only hiccup is that Rylie really doesn't want to sit in the infant seat anymore (this is the case for all shopping carts, she wants to sit in the big basket part), where-as Paige wants nothing more than to be considered a baby and insists on sitting there. So we look somewhat absurd with the baby in the big part and the big girl in the baby seat, but whatever. We walked around, I covered snack time with samples, and we grabbed what we needed and left. No issues.

Stop 2: Kohls - This was our shortest stop, because we didn't get to actually shop. Paige went into hysterics because Kohls has those dumb carts that only have one baby seat that faces out and she couldn't ride. So I left. Failed attempt #2 at getting a bathing suit.

Stop 3: Dollar Tree - I needed to get prizes for my prize bin at school. I knew this would be difficult to do with the girls because they usually want me to get them every single item in the dollar store. Today was no different. I think I had to say, "no, put that away," 472 times in the 10 minutes we were in the store.

Stop 4: Best Buy - I needed a specific charging cord, and I had no idea where to find it, so I bee-lined it to the first employee to see if he could point me in the right direction. He looked at me, at Paige, then at Rylie and was like, "Why don't you just hang out here and I'll run around and look for the cord, that'll be easier." I was all, "yes, yes that will be much easier." So we were just standing in this one area and there was music playing, and the girls love to dance, so they started to bust a move. I believe the song was, "we didn't start the fire." Paige was so into the music that she danced right out of her pants; as in, they fell down to her ankles. Of course this happened right as the employee returned, and to say he was mortified would be an understatement (3 year olds in their underwear must be a new thing for Best Buy).

While I already do 90% of my shopping on Amazon as it is, I think I'm going to have to increase that percentage. No more shopping with the girls.

Home Renovations

A few months ago, we had a light fixture installed in the toy room. The installer managed to put 6 holes in the ceiling and one in the wall. After a few months of walking past these very obnoxious holes, we finally decided to do something about it. We patched, we sanded, we patched and sanded, then we patched and sanded some more....and then we were finally ready to paint!

Here's the old toy room (this was the only picture I could find where the drapes were still up):


Then we painted the walls (3 cream, one pink). My addiction to Pinterest gave me the idea for an artwork display for the girls:


Then we put up decals on the pink wall:


I would have felt satisfied with our progress, except for this one pesky little problem--that there is no break in our walls where we can just stop painting. The entire main floor of our house must be the same color. So this meant that I had to also paint the cream walls in the tv room and kitchen.

Here's the "old" tv room:


I started painting, one wall per weekend. Oh, and we moved the tv:


On the list of things to do is to order new shades for the tv room, get a new tv stand, mount the tv on it's new wall, put some of the wall decorations back up, and, of course, paint the kitchen. We'll get to it...

Our girls are hysterical.

We think (know) our girls are pretty funny. This will get them far in life. Here are some of our favorites:

Paige
-We were playing a game where we trapped the girls and they had to say, "open sesame" to get out. When we trapped Rylie, Paige decided to offer some advice to her as to how to escape. She said, "Just say open up sesame....wait, it would be open up sesa-Ry for you."

-The other night Paige came in our room around 2 am saying she was scared. When she got up in the morning she said, "I had a bad dream last night, so I came in your room." I asked what the dream was about, and she said, "Izzy's poop."

-At bedtime, Paige has this routine of crying 5 minutes after we put her to bed. We go up, ask what is wrong, she asks for a hug, and we're good. A few days ago her reason was that she wanted some pickles. Except, she was serious. We offered hugs, but she wanted pickles.

-One of Paige's friends was coming over for a playdate, and I made the ultimate mistake of talking about it at dinner THE NIGHT BEFORE the playdate (these things are usually discussed only minutes before they happen). I told her that it wasn't going to happen until the next day (to try to stave off some of the incessant, "is he here yet?" questions), so she asked, "Is Noah coming over after my dark nap, or my day nap?"

Rylie
Rylie's funny moments are better captured by video, so enjoy: