Eric and I went on another date last night.  I know, I know…it’s like our 3rd this year I think!  Our girl J is going back to college in about 2.5 weeks so we had to take advantage of her willingness to give up a weeknight to watch the kids.  I can’t even describe how awesome it is to leave the house knowing that she can put them to bed without a problem.  She knows them so well and is so on-board with our parenting choices it gives me warm fuzzies knowing how confident I am in her.  I wish everyone had a J in their lives to give them that security.  I feel great too that the kids are at the age where they understand what is going on and I guess Paige had some worries last night but J explained that Mommy and Daddy were at the movies and we’d be home later.  She said “come back?” a couple of times and then accepted it.  That’s incredible.  I do believe that if you explain something to death to Paige she is more comfortable with everything.  And she is getting more comfortable with leaving me (or me leaving her) after she asks me if I’m coming back.  Drew is also so comfortable with me not being around and I think it’s because I haven’t always been there for him.  Well 99.9% of the time….but there have been occasions where I’ve dropped him off at my mom’s or left him with J for an errand…so I think he doesn’t have the same anxiety that Paige developed.  I wish that I hadn’t been such a worry-wart when P and C were babies and left them more.  I think the situation demanded that I be with them 100% of the time…but maybe that contributed to Paige’s anxiety.  Oh well, what’s done is done and we are making such huge strides to get over that Mommy crutch so it’s all good.  Preschool will definitely help too because she’ll be leaving me twice a week knowing I’ll come back for her.  20 days until preschool.  EEeeeeee!

Oh by the way….Eric and I went to dinner and ate garlic fries which I still taste this morning….gross!  And then I gorged on popcorn and we saw Stepbrothers where I brushed up on my profanity.  I can’t wait until our next date (whenever that is…)!!!!   

So I know the articles about BPA contaminated sippy cups came out a long time ago (Eric tells me it’s been at least eight months).  I finally got Cole off his “baby” sippy cup about two weeks ago and was able to transition him to a Tractor print sippy cup.  Got to love the garbage truck and tractor fascination!!!  Anyways, so I was feeling guilty that the other two were still on BPA contaminated cups but we KNOW which cups are ours.  Drew had the racecar topped cup, Paige had the solid colored no-spout cups, Cole had the Playtex cool-designed cups.  Now all chaos has erupted because they all have the same style Playtex cup but I’m going to have to teach them they all have an assigned color.  Sounds easy, right??  Well, Drew hasn’t taken a sip yet this morning and keeps saying “no, Cole” as he’s looking at his cup and Paige has also yet to drink and kept saying “new cup” in a not-so-happy voice.  We’ll get it eventually….

So another thought on this BPA-free sippy cup madness.  There really isn’t a whole lot out there for variety.  Playtex seems to offer two choices of sippies, the ones we bought and a straw kind.  And there’s a Dora/Diego sippy which we were previously using that leaked all the time and that’s it.  I know I could probably go on-line and find a thousand different varieties, but when I was looking at the hundreds of sippies offered at Target I was surprised there were only three different BPA-free cups.

Other thoughts:  I finally took the bumper pad off Drew’s bed.  He’s fifteen months and I know you’re supposed to do it at ten months.  I can’t let go of him being my baby apparently!!

Another thought:  remember when I was bummed my kids didn’t watch TV?  I have to limit our time now in front of the boob-tube.  It’s ridiculous that’s all they want to do!  Another funny thing is that I know they hear people call me Tobie a lot and there is a Toby on Thomas.  Whenever there’s a story about Toby, Cole comes up to me and says “Toby” and I don’t know if he’s making that connection or he thinks Toby is funny.

Ok…got to start this morning.  Got to make bacon for my crew. 

Tonight when Tobie was leaving for Tennis, Paige out of the blue says “Bye mommy, have fun, come back“.  She actually said come back.  How funny is that?  Of course mommy will come back Paige, I don’t think she’s been away from you for more than a hour in the 2.5 years you’ve been around!  When Tobie came back, Paige immediately grabbed her tennis racket and said “I’m going to tennis”.  She then proceeded to put on Tobie’s hat and shoes and racket around her shoulder and tried to open the door and walk out of the house.  I wonder if Paige has Tobie’s backhand.

Okay..I’m so excited about this I had to write a post ASAP because I feel Eric just can’t get as excited about this as I need him to be.  We just got our Scottsdale Parks and Recreation schedule for Fall and I absolutely love this city and what they offer all ages.  So anyways…they have a Garbage Truck Day for ages 2-5 where kids can see garbage trucks up close for 45 minutes.  Does that sound like heaven for Cole??  I was bummed when I saw the day it was offered because it was a Thursday during preschool hours and I was torn about whether to pull him out of school for this special occasion.  But then I was debating to my mom on the phone and she said the day it’s offered is during Fall Break from preschool.  It’s Fate I tell you!!  Fate!  Now all you readers in Scottsdale…don’t you dare sign up for this and block my little Cole-man out!!!