Because I can’t think of ANYTHING useful to say (maybe tomorrow) I’ll just tell you that the kids are winning behavior awards around here (except for their random hollering). Noah has been reading to Madison every night after I read to her and then he stays in the room with his book to keep her company while she falls asleep.

“Well, I love her,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t mind helping her fall asleep.”

That is really nice of him because me? I always beg off by pointing out that there’s housework to be done (she falls asleep just fine on her own anyway — Noah is just thoughtful because HE always liked someone to lay down with him).

He’s a good big brother. He even shared out his Halloween candy when she blew through her stash in the first few days.

Madison is excited to have a new room and the pink walls (it’s a rich, deep pink — more of a coral) are much more soothing than the bright green we did have. The green is that green that you saw everywhere a few years back — that Martha Stewart only brighter green that always got paired with bright pink. I don’t know what we were thinking and pretty much the minute it went up on her walls I hated it. It just took us awhile to get our sorry butts in gear to repaint.

So now she has her pink walls and we cleared our her busy patterned carpet with a soothing beige (it’s amazing how a busy area rug will make a room look even more cluttered than it is). My mom gave her one of those bed veils — the kind you hang from the wall? The gauzy netting? And we used it over her little housekeeping area just to make it feel more set off from the room. We cleared a ton of toys OUT and a ton more down into the playroom basement where they will remain unpacked and will perhaps if unnoticed after a period of time will join the other toys out into the wide, wide world of the thrift stores we frequent. (In fact, as a younger kid Noah more than once attempted to talk me into buying back toys that we had donated.) She decided that she wanted her room to be more of a playing house place so her non-playing house toys went into the playroom. So her cars, blocks, art, etc. are there and upstairs is her own little house. We also took her closet door off the hinges because her room is small and the door just made it hard for her to manage things. We used one of our old sheers to screen it a little and she is very pleased with her new “dressing room.” We also hung one of those closet extender bars so she can hang up her own dresses.

She is very determined to keep it clean. Last night when it was finally finished she stood in the middle her whole body just glimmering with glee and she said, “Isn’t this just the kind of room for this?” accompanied by a dainty pirouette.

Noah is now inspired for us to get his room done next, which is nice since he’s steadfastly refused any upgrades. Come spring we hope to get our room straightened out. If Madison ends up sleeping more in her bed than in the family bed, we’re going to get rid of the space-eating king size mattress and scale back to a queen.

Brett is convinced that this has stirred up good feng shui energy. Madison’s room is our career corner and wouldn’t you know that we finished it all last night and then this morning I got an email about a project I expressed interest in. Brett is rather smug now, let me tell you! But we’ll see how this all pans out, eh?

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