Taking a break

So, I have lots of things I need to be doing right now, but I am letting myself have some down time first. Brett didn't come home today, went straight from school to working for our friend (which he's been doing a lot of lately), so I was getting a bit thin on patience this evening, but I almost made it. I had Hazel and Jethro go to bed really early and told them they could look at books for awhile, but then I decided I wanted to curl Hazel's hair for tomorrw (bad decision), so they came out again, and it's really frustrating trying to curl Hazel's hair when she's whining and moving all the time and Ethne's pulling all the curlers out and strewing them around. Anyway, I truly had them on their way to bed before I saw Jethro's clothes all over the floor and I had a little loss of control moment and got after him pretty good. Ruff. Why couldn't I have made it two more minutes? Oh well.
So Kami had her baby yesterday, by cesarean, and it was a girl and they named her Isabel Grace. She is in the NICU right now because she's not feeding too well on her own, but otherwise things are good. I told Kami on the phone tonight to tell Leo to post some pictures when he went home, but he gave some song and dance about not knowing how. Husbands these days. I tell you, they're just not as tractable as one could wish. And now I just don't know--Brett tells me he knows we're having a boy, but I've ALWAYS had babies that were the same gender as it's closest two cousins. So....we'll see.
So, today on our way into a store, Jethro and Hazel and Ethne were all holding hands, and it was all cute, right, but when I was grabbing a cart, Ethne headed out the door so I told Jethro to run and get her, so he did, and then they were all holding hands again coming back in, but then someone tripped (not sure who was first), and all three of them fell like dominoes. Nice. Two of the store workers were just standing there watching. I think I would have laughed if I were them. Then, Hazel stands up and walks three more steps and completely biffs it again. That girl.
I was going to mention a while back that I bought Jethro a birthday present from a garage sale. It's a Rescue Heroes robot, that you can put a Rescue Hero in, and then remote control the robot to move. Anyway, the first day I got it I showed Brett, and he thought it was so cool. Much to his chagrin, however, the robot's batteries were dead and we didn't have the right size. So he played with the three rescue heroes that I bought as well and messed around with the robot a bit. Then a couple nights later, I had bought batteries, and I was in the tub reading a book, and all of the sudden, in comes this really loud robot. Brett played with it for a long time. Silly my honey.
I got all of Hazel's and all of Jethro's birthday presents this year at garage sales. I'm so good. Although, I just left a bucket of legos in my closet, and Jethro found it the other day. He came up and asked why there were legos in my closet, and I said "What are you doing in my closet? Don't go in there again!" I wasn't quite sure how I should react--just tell him they're for his birthday, or what? Oh well.
I decided our mid-year family resolution was to be tidier. I even had a family council about it (well, at lunch time when Brett came home yesterday, but still). I said that we all need to pick up after ourselves better. If we bring a toy out, we put it away when we're done. If we bring out a dictionary, we go put it back instead of leaving it out. If we come in with a backpack on, we put it where it goes. If we leave crumbs on the counter, we wipe them up. Normal stuff, but we are sooooo bad at it. I am too--there's no denying it. I have resolved to be much better at cleaning up the dinner stuff immediately after dinner. Hopefully not every inch of flat surface in our house will have collections of papers and STUFF on them. (Maybe part of the reason I was unreasonable tonight when Jethro's clothes were all over the floor. Seriously, I tell him 500 times a day that clothes should never be on the floor. But I'm sure you don't want to hear my lecture.)

Okay, I should have written that earlier, and left on a more cheerful note. Anyway, I thought these pictures of Hazel from today were gorgeous. I really just think she is so beautiful. That's all for now.