We probably won't be camping any time soon.

The weekend was a hot one, and so on Sunday afternoon, we put the girls' bathing suits on and took them out to the back yard to play with a new sprinkler we got at Target. I'll spare you the 3 minute video, but I'll summarize it for you:

• Julie runs right over to the sprinkler. She proceeds to stand there and let it spray her. Then she grabs one of the arms and squirts herself in the eye. Then she does it again. Finally, it's squirting her in the face and she doesn't seem to be enjoying it anymore, but she doesn't move away, like she's frozen there and doesn't know what to do.
• Becca and Emma have to be dragged over to the sprinkler. They get sprayed once or twice and then throw their arms up in the air to be picked up.
• Becca and Emma refuse to walk on the grass. They spot the swings, but won't walk over to them. They stand there in the grass, pointing until we carry them over to the swings.

Everyone was happier once we got to the swings.





After they got bored with the swings, we pulled the water table back out, and Julie and Emma went to town. Becca got down for a minute, but then really preferred being in her daddy's arms.



Our adventurous eater... that's walrus.





Those curls!


So serious.


She wanted me to hold her long enough for me to turn the camera over to Greg. Then she wanted her daddy right back.


Emma, eating the walrus, started making "mmmmmm" sounds. So Julie did, too.


Julie feeding the penguin to Emma.


Becca got down long enough to snatch the coveted penguin.


Oh, the curls!


Emma and Becca have grown VERY attached to their stuffed animals, really over the last week or so. Becca has a stuffed monkey that she sleeps with, and Emma has a bear. When we got them up over the weekend, they insisted on bringing their stuffed animals downstairs. Which of course led to Emma stealing Becca's monkey.

And getting awfully cozy with it.

Which did not make Becca happy.


They've all been playing with this puzzle a lot lately, particularly Emma. She gets very frustrated when the pieces don't go in, but is learning to turn them. (Another favorite activity, particularly of Julie and Becca, is clapping the puzzle pieces together.)


The sleeping situation had been getting better since the middle of last week. But on Monday morning, Becca woke up at 5:30. Not too bad, because she sort of went back to sleep once I got her. But every time I'd shift, she's start screaming. On Tuesday morning, she woke up at 4:30, pretty much screaming and writhing inconsolably. It was hard to hold her, but if you put her down, she'd just roll off the bed. We tried milk. We tried tylenol. Greg finally brought her downstairs around 6 and she eventually dozed off for a little while, before we had to wake her up again. And once we woke her up, she was fine. We had an episode like this a few months ago. I actually took her to the doctor that time. I'm not sure what's going on. The only think I can think of is that the drainage from her ear stopped on Monday. I don't know if her eardrum closed back up and now she's got an ear infection... or what. We go back to get her ears looked at by the ENT on Thursday, so if we can just make it until then...

Emma has been sleeping, but has been having some more bad days lately. No biting or anything, luckily, just very very cranky and clingy. We've been having problems dropping them at daycare in the mornings this week, where they just don't want to let go of us. Breaks my heart. This morning we had to trick Emma into letting go of Bear so we could go to daycare, and then it was downhill from there. She was already crying when we went to get her this afternoon, and screamed herself to sleep on the way home.

Speaking of daycare, we have been stroller-free for about a week now. It's like a circus getting everyone in and out, but I am starting to fantasize about the day when one of us could handle pick up or drop off. A girl can dream...