Catching up

The appraiser came today to evaluate our house for the refi. Luckily he was scheduled to come at 12, so I was able to do some cleaning before he arrived. I vacuumed all of the second floor and the kitchen and dining room before he arrived. He was a nice guy and took lots of pictures, he said he'd look up the comps this weekend and have the appraisal ready by Monday. Unfortunately he came right at lunch time so I wasn't really able to have my son clear his dishes from lunch (he did do it later at snack and dinner time though).

Since the kids were slow cleaning up the other day, I put some of their toys in "time out". Today my son came to me and asked for one of the toys back, I told him that he needed to earn them back. I told him that he needed to help his sisters clean up the toys tonight of he wanted it back. He agreed and put his hands behind his back and sulked off doing his little granddad walk. Very cute.

After the appraiser left I cranked some tunes and did a top down cleaning of the powder room, guest bath and master bath. I timed myself and the powder room only took about 5 minutes, the guest bath took 20 minutes and the master took 30. Not bad. I figure if I take care of the kids bath and the kitchen tomorrow I'll be back in track.

After school and my daughter's piano lesson we all had a snack and got out the Crispix and Ritz for some food play. I started with having the kids smush the crackers and cereal, and he was fine with that. He even licked one of the Crispix and held it in his mouth no problem. He even picked up one of the Ritz and had us all pretend we were pirates by using it as an eyepatch. After a bit of that, I brought out some of the wet stuff and tried to get him to put some on his Ritz. He wouldn't do it. Finally I put some on for him, and then he sprinkled dome of the dry on top. Meanwhile my daughters were getting into it, pretending they were making pies with frosting and sprinkles. Again I had to slow them down and explain that we need to take small steps. Although at this point, he's doing well with the dry stuff, he just needs to get comfortable with wet stuff. Hopefully we'll get to that part soon.

For dinner tonight I made shaved Parmesan chicken and rice pilaf. It was a recipe I found on Jules's Diner and for the first time ever both kids asked for more chicken. Usually they fill up on the carbs and grumble about eating the rest. Tonight it was the reverse, they complained about the nuts in the pilaf and asked for more chicken.

Tonight I met with a neighbor to coordinate the activities for our school's Screen Free Week. We've got some good ideas for each night, just need to do some coordinating. Ideally, the PTO would like us to have most of the details nailed down before spring break.

I ironed and pinned the long sides of the curtain for the storage room, so can hopefully finish that tomorrow night.