The weather did not cooperate for C's birthday party, so we ditched our outside-group-game plans the morning of and came up with several carnival-type indoor games to do instead- throwing balls in a basket, driving remote-control bumpers cars over Xes on the floor, getting timed on the Sit-n-Spin, etc. This change, however, solidified Dan's insistence that we needed plenty of dollar-store-plastic-crap prizes for all the kids. (Another party activity was decorating t-shirts, which I had bought to limit the plastic-crap we were handing out. Just the day before, C attended his friends' pirate party and was handed a bag of what is best described as garbage as we left, and I really didn't want to contribute any more to our local landfill. But I was overruled.)

Luckily it stopped raining so we could do the t-shirts outside. We had the kids lay leaves, stickers, cardboard cutouts, etc. on their shirts and I used a spray-on dye over them, so when it dried and we took away the decorations they were left with the image in white. Then Dan supervised an egg-in-spoon relay race and we brought out dessert. (C wanted chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. Could I go out and buy Chipwiches? Of course not! I spent forever making a double batch of enormous cookies from scratch and spreading ice cream onto them instead. They were excellent, I've been told- not that I could have any since A is still offended by dairy. And I'm not bitter or anything.) And then it was 3:00! Time to go home! We made it! And we're never having that many small children in our house again!

(Well, Ashley stayed until about 3:30. She wasn't actually invited; she's Megan's little sister. But she wouldn't leave. Dan said she could sleep under the pool table in the shed with the dog, and she was okay with that. But her mom ended up carrying her kicking and screaming to the car.)

A's been trying hard to crawl for the past couple weeks, but isn't quite there yet. She is able to sit up from a prone position now, though, and she likes to do that when she's supposed to be going to bed. So what used to be a 10-minute naptime routine has morphed into at least 25 minutes, and tonight nearly two hours. Given that she wakes up at least every hour in the night as it is, we're not too thrilled. She's been pretty cranky too, but doesn't seem to believe us when we tell her that getting more sleep would solve her problems.

Pictures are coming soon. Starting tomorrow, we will be spending a week at Twin Trees, so expect no updates until we return. (Should that be if we return?)