Cabin Fever

I've been caught lately in what Madeline's TAG teacher from last year calls "the nap trap." Baby #1 takes her morning nap, then she wakes up and it is time for Baby #2 to take her nap, and then when she wakes up, it is time for Baby #1 to take her second nap of the day. Then when Baby #1 wakes up from her second nap, Older Sisters #1 and #2 race inside the house tired, hungry, and scared of the neighbor's dog chasing them all the way up to the front door. (Hey, I'm scared, too.)

Let's just say that this cabin fever this week has been making me a little bit of a monster. I wish I were in the tropics, maybe lying on the beach wearing an outfit like this . . .

. . . catching up on a good Junie B. Jones book like Madeline is. (Or maybe she could wear this outfit as she gets off the bus. That'll really scare the dog!)

We have been holding mandatory exercise sessions for the girls each day to give them (and me) some much-needed energy expenditure. Monday night, though, they just about did me in, and all I wanted to do was sit on the recliner and tell everyone to stay away and not bother me. But . . . it was FHE, so I had to interact. ha ha! This is a funny post. But it's the truth. You are supposed to interact with your family on FHE night. And . . . I wasn't in the mood. But I participated.

I finally cracked a smile when this action started going on:

It usually goes down like this: the girls line up in the kitchen back by the table, they run full-force to the couch, and when they reach the arm of the couch, they jump up and flip over, landing on the cushions. Then they run around the kitchen island back to their place in line.

Choobies always bonks against the arm of the couch and is stuck in mid-air, never quite flipping over the top because she is too short to make it over. She always laughs, looks at Dallas and me with an expression of, "How did that happen again?" and then she runs back for more of the same thing.

Madeline always splats on top of the arm because she isn't a natural flipper. She gets her face stuck in the cushions mid-splat and never makes it over either. She'll kind of roll off sideways if she makes it over at all and then looks at us with an expression of, "Oh well. I'll go back and try again," and then she repeats the same move every time. Run, run, run, run, half-flip, bonk, splat, r-o-l-l off, run, run, run. It's hilarious.

Madeline's moves would make the grouchiest mom crack a smile.

Now Raleigh is in an element all her own. She has enough creative and physical and mental energy to make your hair stand on end. Which ours sometimes does when we are with her, but we love our little firecracker girl. She runs and runs and runs and does a beautiful flip or some other athletic move with grace and agility. And most of it is an "accident." A "did you see what I just did - I didn't even mean to!" kind-of-a-move. It's all so very entertaining.

Enjoy the blurriness of it all:

It lasted for 20 minutes. We timed them to see how long they could go. It was very impressive.

And thank you, Georgia, for the 60-degree weather this weekend. I really needed that.