Petrificus Totalis!

Lately A has been really exercising her independence. It's a good thing she's SUPER cute because sometimes I think she goes a little beyond normal two-year-old defiance. Take last night, for example.

J was trying to do bedtime stories and every time he turned his back, A was trying to provoke her big sister. Now - G is generally an awesome big sister. She's usually very patient and very generous and kind... but let's A push her until she (G) has total emotional (we're talking drama llama) meltdowns. That's what was happening last night. G had arranged her bed just so and had the books set up and ready to go. A saw this as an opportunity to examine cause and effect. What would happen if the blanket tent fell (was pushed)? How would G react if her carefully ordered books were tossed on the floor?

I'll tell you how she'd react. She reacts the same way every time. Wailing and waterworks. Which amuses A tremendously.

So J had left the room to retrieve some absolute bedtime necessity when G began crying. He hurried back into the room. A, caught in the act of demolishing the bedtime tent, began waving her arms at her Daddy, shouting "Petrificus Totalis! Petrificus Totalis!"

Those of you unfamiliar with Harry Potter may be entertained by the fact that this is the spell the young wizards and witches use to petrify (freeze) a person or moving object. Apparently A was hoping that she could delay the inevitable parental intercession by freezing her Daddy.

Good times.

Meanwhile, in the nesting/painting issue, I'm coming to an uneasy realization. Yesterday I took A to Lowe's with me and picked up a billion paint chips. There was one color I really liked. It's a greenish gray. But I'm looking for beige... cafe au lait, if you want to get all snobby about it... Anyway, when I got home, I taped my six favorite cards up on the wall and sat back to contemplate them. I had taped my favorite (though least practical) in the center, and as I sat back I realized that it matched the wall.

Yup. Nearly a perfect match.

So all day my poor preggo-addled brain worked uneasily on the issue.

My favorite chip already matches two of the walls. But what has been really slowing me down on changing anything is the fact that I love... I mean LOVE the purple that's also on two of the walls. I think it would be good - peaceful - to make everything a uniform beige (cafe au lait!). Beige with white trim looks very pretty in the magazines.

When J got home, I told him if he really wanted to be annoyed, he should guess which of the chips was my favorite. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to be annoyed, he played along... and guessed the color that I thought would be the best choice (Behr Pony Tail... it looks great in all the staged shots). No, I told him... look at the one in the center... it's kind of hard to see because it blends into the wall. J was not as amused as I'd hoped he'd be.

I've been thinking (it hurts but I do it anyway) - maybe the real problem is not the colors that are on the walls but that I didn't "finish" the project. Maybe I should begin by painting the trim white. No matter what color the wall is, I want white trim anyway.

Maybe, if I took an hour or two and painted the trim on that one gray wall, I could find out that's all I'm really missing... I mentioned this to J and you would have thought I'd just invented a new microcontroller or something. Big thumbs up. So guess what I'm doing today?