Appreciatin' What You Got

So my cousin and her toddler came over this afternoon. It was a lot of fun, especially since I hadn't met Mercedes yet and she hadn't met Stella. They live about 5 hours away (6-8 hours on baby time), and last time I went out there, Mercedes had strep throat and so we couldn't meet. She's so cute! She turns 2 in April and she was just running around, totally loving on Stella and Lucy. Absolutely adorable. Mercedes is hispanic and my cousin and her husband are white, so it's obvious that she's adopted. And my cousin told me that people actually stop her all the time while she is out with Mercedes and ask her, "where's her mother?" What do you mean, where's her mother? You're talking to her, you asshat! I cannot BELIEVE people would say that. But they live in a very small town in East Texas, so there you go.

--Did you like that word? Asshat? I heard it this weekend from someone at my church, (I go to a pretty liberal church), in reference to the SXSW people. He referred to the industry people as "asshats with an expense account". I love it! It's my new favorite cuss word.--

--Crap, Stella just pulled up on her bookcase and now can get books off the top shelf. Where we put all the books we didn't want her to destroy. Guess it's time to do some reorganization.--

Anyway, my cousin kept going on and on about how much she loved our house and our neighborhood (she lives out in the country on 80 acres with horses and cows and she was jealous of having a neighborhood with sidewalks and neighbors and such). Seeing our house through someone else's eyes made me realize that it is really quite nice and cozy. I guess I knew that, but you just get tired of it, you know?

--Stella has like 5 pacifiers in here and she has one in her mouth and one in her hand and she keeps dropping the one that's in her hand on the floor and then picking it back up and putting it in her mouth and then dropping the one in her mouth and doing it again "over and over like a monkey with a miniature cymbal".--

But we did a major cleaning this weekend, both because our office/guest room had become a junk pit and because my cousin was coming and I knew she'd want a tour of our house. I'm kind of digging my house right now as a result. It helps that it is a gorgeous day outside and sunlight is streaming in and it's just beautiful. Rather than bitching and moaning about how bored we are with our house, we probably should just re-do it a little bit to get less bored. It's just you get stuck in a rut and it's hard to think of what to do differently. Especially when you get nothing but compliments on what you've done with it already.

I wanted to post a picture of Stella and Mercedes from this afternoon (crap, we totally should have gotten a picture of Stephanie and I together with our babies!), but my computer doesn't seem to be reading my memory card. So for now I'll just close off this long, rambling post!