Lily & Eric at the same age

Eric woke up at 6 then went back to sleep. I had managed to get 6 hours of continuous sleep so I just stayed up and wrote that last blog post. Then, I started looking through my blog's old posts of Lily at the same age that Eric is now. It is easy because their birthdays are only about a week apart. Friday night was the Marlin's home opener so I put Eric in Lily's old Marlins jersey. Lily got to go to the opener when she was a baby, but unfortunately, Ross is out of town, and I'm not organized enough to take two kids to a baseball game solo, so we didn't go. (First one I've missed in 5 years!)

I didn't get Eric smiling, maybe he was sad that he didn't get to go to the game :(
but I love being able to compare these pictures. Eric has much more hair than Lily did and although he is a little chunkier, has a thinner face. I'm also glad that it was the girl child that got the Carney ears so that they can be covered by hair. Lucky Eric got Mitchell ears!

Lily's Monster comes to Life

I've wanted to do this project for ages, and finally made time to do it last week. Lily always draws monsters, I'm not sure why, I've tried to get her to draw other things, but for some reason, it is always a monster. Ever since she started doing "art", I've picked a few here and there and put them in a box to save. I usually put the date on them and sometimes a description. I came up with the idea to turn her work into a stuffed animal (or more than one, so I can sell them.... you know me... always out to make a buck) so I chose this one:
As you can see, it is on the paper from the Race for the Cure. At the race, they give these papers to the runners to pin to their backs. Some say "In Memory of" and some say "In Celebration of" and you write the name of the person for whom you are running. It is very powerful as you are running to read these, but back to my story. There was some confusion last year pre-race and we ended up coming home with several of these, so they went into the stack of paper that Lily is allowed to draw on. It doesn't really have any significance to the monster story, just thought I'd explain.
Lately, Lily has come up with this new thing that she has to sleep with my pillow and since I can't sleep without MY pillow, I go in her room every night and take it back. Well, the night I finished the monster, I took my pillow and replaced it with the monster. Here is Lily in the morning when she found it.
She was so excited. She loves the monster, but I think I was just as excited about it as she was. I told her that he needed a name and she named him "Monster". Very original right?
She carries him around and told me that he is her 'helper' and when I asked her to explain what she meant, she said that he is her helper just like she is my helper.
Monster details: He is blue, because the plans were drawn in blue. The face and hair are made from scraps of the fabric used to make Lily's curtains. It is stuffed with fiberfill and PVC pellets (like a beanie baby). One arm is longer than the other and he only has one ear.
It was a lot of work actually, so I don't think I'm going to go into the child-designed-monster business. It was kinda funny that just this week my friend Jaz posted a blog about her daughter's artwork as well, and one of her friend's posted this site in the comments section where they take kids art and make it into jewelry!

Recycling

The city changed their recycling program last month and now has a program with Recycle Bank where we get points for the amount that we recycle. They replaced the little plastic box with a huge can with a lid. Our recycle bin is now the same size as the big trashcan!
I've always recycled, but Ross never really got into it. I was always pulling things out of the trash and moving it to the recycle bin. I guess this program was the kick in the pants that Ross needed because now it is the other way around. I'm pulling things out of the recycle bin and moving it to the trash.
We are now recycling more than we are throwing away!
I haven't really found anything really great that we can redeem our points for, but it is kinda cool to track. As you can see from our widget, we haven't quite saved a whole tree yet but we sure have saved quite a bit of oil!

First Sleep Over

Lily had her first sleepover at our house a few weeks back. Well, I don't know if it really counts being that it was her cousin, but we are counting it anyway. Sandy dropped Allison off on her way down to the keys on a Saturday and then they stopped back in on Sunday and Aunt Charlotte took us all out to dinner.

Lily is so in love with Allison. Ever since, she has been saying "I miss Allison" and putting on her sad face.

Lily & Eric share a bedroom and although there is a bunk bed in there, we had the girls sleep in the pool room on the futon instead because we weren't sure if Eric's mid-night wake up would bother Allison or not.

We spent Saturday shopping and then made our own Pizzas and the girls stayed up about two hours past Lily's regular bedtime. They giggled and giggled on that futon forever and then fell asleep holding hands. It was so sweet.

The next day we went and had lunch on the beach. Allison didn't have her suit so Lily didn't wear hers either. It is great beach weather but I think it is still too cold to swim (although both Ross & Lily usually do)

Lily, although very shy with strangers, is so proud in her own house. She took Allison around and showed her everything. Kinda funny hearing a 3.5 year old explaining things to a 9 year old. I love this pic because it looks like Zelda is playing the game too.

Totally unrelated to the sleep over. I told Lily to go get her shoes on because we were going to the store. She took a while to do this (totally normal.... she is easily distractable) and when she came back this is what she looked like.

I asked her if she had been playing with my makeup and she told me that she couldn't go out with no eyebrows!

dance dance dance

I bought Lily some new shoes for Easter and when we came home, she told Ross that I bought her 'Dancing' shoes. So we got dressed up to dance. Eric likes to dance too.