"Beep Beep the Boxes" and "Open Your Mouth Mom"

In the process of talking to Maddie about the baby coming the other day and where the baby would sleep, sit and eat, Ben came over and interrupted our conversation. He asked me to open my mouth for a minute. Weird, but okay, I did it. He got close to my face, looked in, waved and said, "Hi baby down there!" Then he walked off.

Maddie has been so worried about where the baby would sleep lately. When we first moved her into Ben's room, she loved sharing with him. After two weeks, the fun was over and she wanted her crib in a bad way. Finally one night I put her down for the 10th time and went into "her room" to hide the crib. I disassembled the entire thing and "hid" it behind the futon in the nursery. With it out of sight and out of mind, she adjusted and everything was fine. We still couldn't get her to call the nursery anything but her room and Ben's room wasn't her room. The other day she finally referred to her room as "my room" instead of just Ben's room. She is also willing to call the nursery the "nursery" now.

Now Maddie is really concerned about where the baby will ____________ just fill in the blank. She was having a mental breakdown over where the baby would sleep the other day, so I decided she was solid enough in her big girl bed and the baby was coming soon enough that we put the crib back together. Both Ben and Maddie thought that was pretty fun. Ben helped tighten the screws, Maddie just liked climbing under the crib and looking up through the wire base before the mattress went in. Now it's their cool new cave with the dust ruffle around the edges they can really hide in there.

Everything was going okay until she realized that I had put all the basement junk that was displaced during the sump pump installation in the crib. She keeps telling me to "beep, beep the boxes, Mommy!" I tell her I would if she'd every give me enough time to go through the boxes to ditch the stuff we don't need anymore. I'm totally serious about decluttering my house and nothing goes into the basement without at least a once over. Mostly the boxes are full of clothes the kids have outgrown. I've made lots of progress though. I have a huge box to mail to Marti in Ethiopia that are too worn for us spoiled Americans but will be treasured by the street kids they meet everyday there. I filled a box and mailed it to cousins Parker and MacKenzie in Buffalo that my kids don't need. So, Maddie, I'll beep beep the boxes when I have time...which I'm soon to run out of anyway.