3 weeks...

That's how long Doug made it as the primary caretaker of the children before the police were called. I made it 3.5 years.

He took the girls in the double decker stroller out of our neighborhood, down the walking path, and to a gravel parking lot. He took the girls out of the stroller and took both of them down to the stream, where there are huge boulders to play on. As he's packing them back into the stroller, a cop pulls up and ambles over. The cop asks him if that's his stroller. He wisely kept his snarky remark to himself and just said yes. The cop told him that some concerned citizen saw an abandoned baby stroller and called the police, thinking there might be a baby in it. As the cop said, what kind of concerned citizen who thinks a baby has been abandoned in a stroller doesn't actually stop? Anyway, Doug didn't end up in any trouble, but it did provide us with a lot of laughs on Friday.

Last night, Elisabeth showed us that she'd make a fabulous lawyer, probably even now. She was apparently trying to put as many black beans as she can into her mouth (as an aside, our dear heroine can eat almost an entire can of black beans in a sitting). I told her not to shove "too many" black beans in her mouth. She managed to swallow what she had in there and then asked, "is 2 too many, Mommy?" No. "What about 3.5?" No, that would be ok. "10? How many is too many?" Somewhere between 3.5 and 10 is too many, and too many must also vary with age.

We all survived Tropical Storm Hanna. The flood plain behind our house was higher than anyone in our neighborhood remembers it being. The access road to our neighborhood (the only way in and out) flooded with probably 2.5-3 feet of water stranding and flooding at least one minivan. Elisabeth and I foolishly went out to the library yesterday morning to read some books and got soaked. Driving was hazardous to say the least, lots of pooled water on the side of the roads and road closures.

Elisabeth starts preschool again this week. She'll be the youngest in her class, but I'm not too worried. As someone at the wedding last weekend said, "she's got some sort of leadership ability." In her class, each morning when the kids get there they are supposed to find their little name tag on one chart and then pick a "daily task" on another chart and stick their name on it. In other words, tasks are on a first come, first serve basis. I'm just telling you now, she is going to harass us to death to get there first. Our prediction is that "line leader" will be her position of choice since "dictator" is unavailable.

OK, new deal - I resolve to update this at least 3x/week from now on. You are allowed to email me and harass me if I do not. See - if I don't, entertaining and noteworthy things happen and then I promptly forget them. Remembering these things was the entire purpose of this blog.