Part-er time than usual!

As of today, I am back at pre-crazy work levels, and only 20 hours per week.  Phew!  What a long haul that was!  I sure got a lot of actual work done for my job, though, and I've received a lot of nice praise from my boss for it, both during my mid-year review and at other times when he just drops by to tell me how great I'm doing.  He says he continues to be impressed with both quality and quantity of my work, and that I showed "exceptional leadership" for our group during my coworker's maternity leave, which I thought was odd coming from the person who was supposed to be the leader of our group, but it's still pretty great, right??  I'm not really sure what to do with that much positive feedback!  Travis tells me I should pick one of those opportunities to turn it around and ask when I'll be getting promoted, then, but of course I'm going to play that more carefully.  My boss did tell me that if I wanted to work full-time, he would be very adamant that they place me in a senior engineer position.  I'm pretty sure he'd say the same thing for the other part-time person in our department, so, if she and I are essentially splitting one job, and we're both doing senior-level work, then why are they not paying us that way??  I floated that idea past her yesterday (her first day back from maternity leave), and I'm guessing it won't be long before we're conniving to make this a reality.  Because, really!  My life these days, working part-time and having great at-home days with my kids, is definitely something to savor!

I absolutely love summer.  Emily wore a swimsuit most of today, and Audrey had on a blue dress with fishies on it (they say "*smack*, *smack*"), and they looked so comfortable and beautiful.  Sandals are so easy to get on, and no coats, and it just makes everything so much easier when trying to leave the house.  They run around the backyard in our little utopia out there (the sandbox is done! yay!), and it's fenced-in and super safe, and just awesome.  Ashby Park opens next week, and then I'm sure we'll be spending quite a bit of time there, too. 

My parents celebrated their 40th anniversary last weekend by coming to Des Moines to hang out with their kids' families.  It was such an awesome weekend!  We went to the science center, the farmer's market, the sculpture garden and the pedestrian bridges.  We spent downtime at my house and Dan's house, just hanging out and enjoying each other, and enjoyed a dinner out downtown with more family and friends.  Emily's 3 older cousins slept with her in her room, so she had her sleepover night that she was so excited about, and they had a fantastic time together.  It was a great reason to celebrate, and a great way to do it.  And because of the holiday, we actually had a day off after the weekend to recover - perfect!

Audrey is finally through her two week tummy illness.  This morning, there was finally something flushable in her diaper, and I just about jumped for joy (yes, I was that excited about poop).  She had been having 3-4 horrendous, soupy disasters daily that would get on her crib sheets, blankets, clothes, EVERYWHERE, and the amount of laundry I did was just phenomenal.  finally, we resolved to take her to the doctor on Monday morning, and she actually woke up clean that day.  Emily was suffering from it a little bit, too, so I hope that we made the right call in letting them work through things without a doctor's help.  It seems that doctors are quite unsympathetic to the plight of a parent who is concerned about the consistency of her kid's poo.  If she had acted sick at all we would've taken her in, but she was totally happy and normal - just very, very stinky.

The more expressive Audrey gets, though, the more she cracks me up.  She's SO funny!  Tonight I laid her in her crib with one of her (five) blankets, and kissed her forehead and said goodnight, and she gestured and cooed over towards her changing table, where a bunch of laundry was piled up.  I asked her if she wanted another blanket, since she prefers to have two or three, and she smiled and nodded.  So I went downstairs and found another of her favorites, and when I gave it to her, she giggled and snuggled it and rolled over, went to sleep.  She's just so tickled that she can communicate now!  I suppose I should've done more signing with her, because it is so satisfying for her, but she'll get the verbal stuff down soon enough.  She tells me when she wants to get dressed (or doesn't!!) and when she wants a turn sitting on the potty (all show, no go - no biggie!).  And she knows that a good loud squeal will tell me that she's trying to fend off an older sister who is either being inconsiderate or overly helpful.  I wish those two scenarios weren't so similar - Emily really genuinely wants to help sometimes, and really sometimes just wants what she wants at other times.  If I could reward the former and redirect the latter, it'd be great, but it's hard to keep it all "fair" based on the squalling that alerts me of the situation.

Anyway, that's what's been up here lately.  My girls sing, play, and look beautiful, and I love it. :) Oh yeah - Travis finally turned 30, which is the end of the two most awkward weeks of the year where I'm two years older than him.  It's hard on my fragile ego ;)