eternally chaotic

Piper and Violet spent this past weekend playing with Whitley, Cassidy, and Riley.  Well mainly it was Piper doing the playing and Violet getting dressed up and chased around by the older girls while they called her Ursula.

Saturday was a play date with the Thompson’s and girls spent the afternoon playing at their house.  The main game was obviously “I want to be <insert princess name here>” dressup where each of the girls picked an outfit and various accessories, chased each other around, grouped up and chased Violet and Riley, got bored with dressup and played with toys.  At some point Zana turned on some music, I think she said it was Hewy Lewis, a favorite of Whitley’s rock and roll selection, and all the kids started dancing.  I wish one of us would have had a camera to catch a few pictures of them dancing together.  All in all Saturday was a lot of fun.

After a good Saturday playing with the girls I was a little bit anxious about Sunday.  I offered to let Whitely come over and play with Piper for the day.  This was the first time we had ever had any other kids over to play without the parents there as well.  I was hoping that we had been around Whitley enough times to understand how to manage her and Piper should the time come.  It ended up being a pretty great day.  The girls played, even included Violet in much of their fun.  Dressup was a priority, as were puzzles and Candy Land, all of which were enjoyed several times.  I think the favorite though for bothh of them was what Piper calls “the lot of princess puzzle” which is actually a short game where each player rolls the die, moves a princess around the bored looking to land on her images (vs. the other princesses).  The first princess to collect all the appropriate accessories, a purse, flowers, and a crown, gets to go to the ball.  The game is fast and fun and after a few times around is easy to put on autopilot.

An interesting part of the day was quite time.  A typical quite time for Piper, and I think for Whitley as well, includes getting into bed with a book and perhaps a quite toy.  At worst she will get some peaceful rest for about an hour.  While at best she will, by some miracle, fall asleep and truly wash away all the grumpiness a three year old collects between morning and lunch time.  I decided to try putting the two of them into Piper’s bed with a few rules of “try to be quite, don’t talk loud, and don’t get out of the bed”.  This seemed to go okay for about fifteen minutes at which point I had to get them back into bed, take away the toys, settle them down and try again.  On the forth or seventh time doing this, I don’t really recall how many times I went up there, every three or four minutes it seemed like, I finally separated them and put Piper in our bed and left Whitley in Piper’s.  They both did eventually fall asleep, even if only for short while.

Zana came to get Whitley in the afternoon and I learned later that she received a strict talking to about making Whitley leave.  Piper informed us as well that Whitley would be coming over every Sunday until she turned four.  I am not sure what happens around turning four, maybe that is when they start to drive or go hang out with boys or something.  I guess we will be informed when the time comes.

I was able to get a pair of pictures from my phone of the girls dressed up and pretending to be lady bugs.  Not great quality but the real camera is still MIA.

I can say that taking care of three is about as hard as two.  Maybe after having the two, adding any number past that doesn’t really add a lot of work over top of what is already being done.  (I am sure there is a tipping point but three was not it).  Not looking for a third but it is good to know that we can handle the extra company – I do wonder though how it would be with boys or a mix of boys and girls around the same age.

Related posts:

1. Weekend with Friends
2. Zoo Day