I love three day weekends. The only thing I love more than three day weekends are three day weekends we spend at home. It isn't just that I have Andy home to help out on a Monday (which is awesome) but that both Saturday and Sunday (and Friday evening too, come to think of it) just feel so much longer and more relaxing. Don't feel like doing the laundry on Saturday? No problem! We still have two more days of weekend left! Want to stay up a little late Saturday and watch MIB for the 200,000th time? Go for it, we still have two days of weekend left! Want to review all your family financial information with your husband in case he gets hit by a bus? Well, no... but that is one of those things you somehow manage to find time for in a three day weekend too. Somehow, and I don't know how, there just seem to be more hours in a three day weekend than simply 24 more than a two day weekend. Of course it also doesn't hurt that after this three day weekend there are 24 fewer hours in the work week too.

Eleanor especially took full advantage of our Monday at home to stay in here pajamas absolutely all day long. Okay, it's not like she asked to stay in her pajamas, or like she can dress or even undress herself, but she did seem pretty happy about the situation. This photo was taken after she got up Monday morning and insisted on taking her favorite three toys out of her bed and carrying them around the house. These toys, in case you were curious, are named Dolly, Other Dolly, and Duck. Not the most creative names, but very fitting. I don't think Eleanor really has many more words than the boys did at her age (I recently went back and looked at a bunch of videos from when Fraser and Hammie were 18 months) but she does immitate noises very often, which Fraser and Hammie really didn't do. If you look at her and say "Doo doo doo a da da da" she will repeat the sounds back to you, whereas Fraser and Hammie would just look at you like, "Well, that's very nice, but don't quit your day job." Eleanor also chosen to focus on a different group of words than the boys did. While Fraser and Hammie were mostly interested in words like tractor, dog, goat, rock, and boat, Eleanor seems to prefer words like shoes, sweater, coat, barrette and brush. When I had two boys I thought there was much to be said in the nature versus nurture debate, after having a girl I am 100% convinced it is nature all the way. (And don't even get me started on the girl shrieking. Fraser and Hammie can yell like crazy, but Eleanor has a pitch that I swear would shatter glass, or at least ear drums).

Speaking of nature vs. nurture, Andy I decided to try to work with Hammie's insanely strong willed nature this weekend in the potty training department and started Project Potty Timer. Hammie sits on the potty right when he gets up, and then we set the timer on Andy's watch for 40 minutes. When the timer goes off, it's potty time. At first Hammie resisted, but we would just say "The timer went off, so the potty timer says it's potty time." For whatever strange reason this actually seems to make sense to Hammie and he figures there is no use in arguing with a timer, so that's it. Don't get me wrong, he is still having accidents, but I finally feel like we are at least on the road to making progress, which is HUGE for my sanity right now. Unfortunately, the poor guys still has a totally abnormal amount of mucus in his poop, so hopefully the allergist will have some answers for us tomorrow.

While I, and almost everyone else in New England, am desperately looking forward to rising temperatures and shrinking mounds of snow, I think Fraser would be happy if it were winter forever. He now wants to watch the weather report almost as obsessively as Andy and I do, and if he wakes up and there is even a dusting on the ground we have to force him to eat breakfast before he is outside with his shovel scraping off the driveway. As Andy says, sometimes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He is also borderline obsessed with sledding now and can stay in the backyard with his sled for hours regardless of the temperature. Luckily Hammie seems to have come around to Fraser's love of the snow, and will usually stay out with Fraser long past the time I think any sane three year old would have thrown in the towel and come back inside.

It is particularly comforting that Fraser and Hammie are getting along at least somewhat better these days since I have finally enrolled them in preschool for next year, and they will be in the same class. When they were beating the snot out of each other on a regular basis this seemed like a very risky proposition, but now that they have established some sort of unspoken truce I am really hoping it will work out well for both of them. We decided to give Fraser an extra year of preschool to give him a chance to mature and be more comfortable with his peers before starting kindergarten. Fraser is much more talkative and outgoing when he has Hammie with him, so hopefully Hammie's presence will encourage Fraser to be more social with the other kids. I am still a little concerned that Hammie, despite being so talkative and social, is going to freak out when I take him to school and actually leave him there, so hopefully having Fraser there will be comforting enough to stop him from totally melting down into a screaming puddle on the floor in classic Hammie style. Of course the entire plan could also backfire in a number of ways which, though I have obsessively played them out in my head a million times, I try not to dwell on.

The other totally fabulous thing about this past three day weekend is that even though the "work week" has only been one day, it is already time for NCIS, which is usually my reward for making it through two entire days without killing any of the kids or totally losing my mind. Well, NCIS and wine. Cheers!