Rubble shoveling

Every once and a while (like when we can't get her door all the way open anymore) I try to sort toys in Emma's room. It's brutal. It's best done when she's not around...which is NEVER. Yesterday while her father was mowing the yard (which she insisted on watching), I set her up on the front porch with a variety of Dora toys. Dora talking minivan, Diego talking jeep and trailer and Fairy tale Dora horse and carriage. It was a Nick Junior Marketing Executive's dream come true. She was happy as a clam and I issued one of the standard MOTHER COMMANDS "and STAY on this PORCH!" She nodded happily and stuffed Diego upside down into the driver's seat of the van.

So I went back in the house to her room (don't worry, I had the window open where I could see the front porch to watch for child abductors and aliens from other planets) and I started THE SORT. I'm telling you...the worst was the ankle deep layer of Happy Meal toys. I think she has every HM toy ever produced and two or three of some of them. Which doesn't say much for the nutritional habits of our child, but then again that's why my mother calls her Saturated-Fat Girl. Anyway...I was about half way through sorting the castle people from the farm and the zoo people, and had all the naked babies in a pile on the bed when I heard a little voice in the doorway. "MOMMY. WHAT are you DOING??" Busted. I scooted the pile of "weird" HM toys under the bed that were on their way to the garbage and said "Em! I'm cleaning up your room!" She looked at the piles and the already organized bins in her closet and started to point out which toys could NOT be in the bins with certain other toys. Pretty soon she had it all dumped out again. Naked babies mixed with teddy bears, pink feather boa wrapped around her neck, HM toys, toy horses, farm people and castle people were all intermingled into one big conglomerate pile. I mentioned that Dora and Diego were getting awfully lonely on the front porch. She picked up a naked baby wearing only blue Cabbage Patch shoes and said "I'd rather help you Mommy". Finally Joe came in and distracted her long enough with something so that I could finish picking up the Lite Brite pegs from under her bed, in her closet, in her shoes, under her TV etc and get them into one Little Mermaid Tea Set cup. We had everything finally off the floor, in it's proper bins, castle people living in the castle, farm people communing with the cows. Bed was made, pillows fluffed, Care Bears all arranged at the head of the bed. You could walk! You could close doors! You could SEE THE FLOOR! She was playing happily on the floor with several horses from the castle in a room that had been mayhem only a couple of hours before. We'd done it. The beast had been tamed! We turned to leave the idyllic scene of our daughter playing on the floor in the room and as we left, Joe accidentally tipped over one of the horses she was playing with. "DAD! You're MESSIN stuff UP!" Well now we know where she gets it.

At the ready....

So this is what I'm talking about. We actually FEED and HOUSE this dog and this is what we get in return. Sleeping like a slug on the back of the sofa for hours and hours at a time. Gypsies, tramps and thieves (music comes up in the background) could break into our home and steal all of our money and precious metals and she'd open one eye to look at them, but only to see if they might be carrying a tray of hamburgers or perhaps be eating a tortilla chip. Now...if a ladybug fell off a leaf in the back yard...YAPORAMA begins and ends with all of us being hoarse from yelling "SHUT UP PEACHES" and Peach being carted off to the laundry room. I don't think her gene pool was chlorinated.

Yapzilla

This is Peaches. She is a pomeranian (read as CONSTANT YAPPER). A fly farts two counties away and she will bark for an hour. She sleeps roughly 18 hours a day, perched on the top of the sofa so that she can be aware of any interlopers that may wander into perimeter of her kingdom (the front and back yard). God knows she wouldn't want to miss any yapping opportunities. I spend most of my time yelling "PEACH...PEACH...PEACH... SHUT UP" as she happily barks until we drag her to the laundry room so that we can have 30 seconds of yap-free time. Notice how her eyes seem to take up most of her head...which is very very small. I don't think there's alot of room up there for neurons to fire, if you know what I mean.

Can't beat a sprinkler

If you really want high intensity screeching from a three and a half year old...put the sprinkler on in the front yard. Glass shattering screeching. And then add two parents yelling "EMMA STOP SCREAMING". I think we broke several village noise ordinances. Once we got her to breath in between screams, she decided that she would try to drink the water coming out of the sprinkler which resulted in mostly water going up her nose which of course caused her to...you guessed it...SCREECH. And a good time was had by all.

Tea party at the puppy hospital

Emma has a friend over today. Excitement is running high. They've been catching grasshoppers, picking tomatoes and generally screaming every four or five minutes as little girls tend to do. We had locked the dog, Peaches the Pomeranian AKA the POM (Peaches insists that her name be documented that way), in the laundry room as punishment for constant YAPPING at the friend. Oh..PETA people, you'd do it it too after an hour of YAPPING. Anyway...we released the POM from the punishment after she quieted down. The girls SQUEALED when they saw her and snatched her up and made off with her to Emma's room. They've put a pony tail holder on her tail and attached a tiny crown to her head and are playing "puppy hospital" and "tea party" . Emma just proclaimed "She's STYLISH!". They've just decided that they are going to have a "tea party at the puppy hospital" because "those are ALWAYS good!". Peach just came running out of Emma's room wearing the crown, with a silk flower stuck through the pony tail holder on her tail and a pinwheel attached to her collar. Laundry room looks good now, doesn't it Peach?