I was so hard to please

Tonight I'm headed up to Erie to help my sister in law with her baby registry. I know Babies R Us can seem like a minefield to someone new to the game, so I wanted to give her a hand. It's going to be fun, and hopefully I'll be able to help without being too bossy. Yes, I can be a bit pushy sometimes, can you believe it? But I don't want to make my poor expectant SIL crazy with my awesome baby gear knowledge, so I'm going to try to keep myself in check.

I'm trying to get the house in shape for the holidays, as I realized yesterday that Thanksgiving is next week and I really want things to be in good order when folks start showing up at my door. I painted the living room two weeks ago, and I'd really like to get the dining room done by this weekend, but we'll see how it goes. Christmas is lurking too and there's shopping and baking and lots of other stuff to do, and I might be fooling myself thinking I can get it all done. But I'm going to try. Where the hell are we going to put a Christmas tree?

I'm also going to try to get video of Grady saying "apple". Mike's mom taught him that over the weekend and he's doing well with it. He's been slow to acquire language--he still says less than 10 words at 17 months, but I know he can understand a lot more than that, so I'm not worried. Yet. It's funny to realize how much he gets now though, his comprehension is really starting to take off. So are his climbing skills, and he's got the bruises to prove it. G has such a personality now, and he's so much fun, but he's becoming such a challenge at the same time. It's hard to keep him happy when he wants to be doing everything like a big boy, and he just can't. I smell those terrible twos coming around the corner.