Just today.

Another laundry day at Mom's. Today the laundry took a much longer time than usual. Jeff had three pairs of jeans in the wash, and I had to put them through the dryer separately so everything would get dry. That one little thing ended up adding two or three hours to my usual laundry-doing time. Mom and Dad's dryer could really use some work, because every load has to go through twice to get fully dry, including those pesky jeans.

Despite the delay, the day has been pretty nice. The kids were well behaved and cheerful for most of the day. When the laundry was finally done and we left, I noticed that there are a couple flowering trees in Mom and Dad's front yard, and took some pictures. I also got some fun pictures of Zaylee and Jeff playing in the yard, enjoying the beauty of the evening.

I had to take Zaylee to a WIC appointment this afternoon, during which she was sweet and happy and well-behaved. But she made up for it when we went grocery shopping this evening. It was a necessary shopping trip, as we were out of milk and eggs and baby cereal and stuff like that. So, in spite of the fact that it was almost bedtime, we went shopping.

Zaylee did okay at first, but the longer we were there, the harder a time she had. At first it was just a little cantankerousness (is that a word? It didn't set off the spell checker, so I guess it's okay). Then she wouldn't leave the groceries alone, wanting to put them back on the shelves, or put things in the cart that we didn't want, and getting really upset when I put them back where they belonged.

By the time we got to the checkout, she was pulling to get away from me, yelling and crying, and really just throwing a huge fit. Well, huge for her; she doesn't really do huge fits, but it was as big a fit as she's ever thrown in public. We made it out in one piece, but have talked it over and decided that it's about time we stopped making every shopping trip a family affair. We've enjoyed doing our grocery shopping as a family for over three years. But with two kids at the ages that Zaylee and Thomas are, it's getting more difficult to come out with our sanity intact. So, with just a bit of sadness and regret, we decided that for most of our grocery trips, only one of us will go. We'll treat it as an actual errand to run, instead of a family outing.

So, we put Zaylee to bed as soon as we got home. And she was asleep probably within a minute or two of laying down. She was tired! A while later we put Thomas down. He didn't go down as easily, I had to go in and comfort him briefly a couple times before he would calm down enough to fall asleep. I was surprised but very glad that his screams didn't wake up his big sister.

Anyway, it's been a pretty nice day.