OK – to write this post, I have to ‘fess up to something very shameful for a stay at home Mom to admit.

I use a maid service once a month.

I know, I know. I am a failure as a homemaker. But I DO perform all of the upkeep cleaning – they just come in and do all of the spotless, deep cleaning stuff.

Before you rain down condemnation on me, here’s a bit of background and explanation (aka excuses). We used a maid service when I was working full time as a Manager, because it was long hours and lots of stress, but quit once I came home. Chris always offered to let me keep me using them, but I knew that it was a reproachful thing to do. But when I took over the books for Chris’ company as well, I couldn’t see how I could manage to work two jobs from home, be a good mommy, cook, AND clean the house, so I took him up on his offer. And now that I’ve taken on a third job as well, I definitely need them. For the record, between pre-Ali-wakeup time and naptimes an our occasional trips into the offices, I work 5 to 6 hours a day. Hard to fit cleaning in there.

OK, now that I have that out in the open and have attempted to fully defend my weakness, on with the story.

Ali has this thing about breakfast. I feed her fruit and a Nutri-grain bar and maybe grape tomatoes From Gramamma’s garden, if we have them (her FAVORITE food right now). Sometimes while I’m feeding her, I’ll warm me up a plate of mini-pancakes, with a few extras for her. Since the pancakes are “special treats”, she absolutely LOVES them, and she will devour them as quickly as possible in order to ask for “more peeease” before I eat them all. It’s like a game to see how many she can manage to get before they’re gone.

The other morning, we were eating breakfast (including an aforementioned pancake race) and getting ready to vacate the house when the two cleaning ladies arrived. They spoke and read VERY LITTLE English. So little that I saw on their sheet that told them what to clean that someone had written out for them the words for Kitchen and Bathroom (“Cosina” and “Bano”). Surely they could have figured out that they needed to clean the kitchen and the bathrooms without the translation. But nevertheless.

They were talking back and forth fast and furious in Spanish (I was shocked at how much I understood – I have never taken Spanish, but I could tell that they were arguing about whether we had three or four bathrooms).

Ali has never really been exposed to foreign languages, except for her Baby Einstein singing dragon from G’ma Kitty that says “Hello” and “Goodbye” in three languages in a row.

So she was utterly mesmerized. She quit eating completely, INCLUDING THE THREE BITES OF PANCAKE LEFT ON HER TRAY, and just stared at them, looking back and forth while the conversation about our number of “bano’s” continued.

And for the record, I didn’t break in and clear up the argument, because they definitely didn’t speak enough English to understand me and I speak NO Spanish.

I kept saying, “eat your PANCAKES. . . don’t you want more PANCAKES???”, and even those tempting words did nothing to pull her back to task at hand.

She was so confused, and so focused on trying to understand them. I just think she had no idea of why she couldn’t understand them like she can understand Mommy, Daddy, and everyone else. Because she definitely understands just about every word that comes out of our mouth these days, and repeats them all as well. But she just couldn’t get it. She had no idea what they were saying, and she didn’t like that at all.

I now know the one thing that is more important to a toddler than eating: understanding what everyone else is saying and doing! Yes, nosiness definitely trumps food.

Today we discovered today that 9 A.M. is a wonderful time to go to the zoo. All of the animals are so much more awake, interactive, and active!! The monkeys were howling, the flamingos were talking to everyone who walked by, the kangaroos were actually near the fence, the tiger was right up against the glass, and the giraffes were quite intent on watching our every move. We went with the P’s and had a delightful time.

As I said, The tiger was right up against the glass pacing. Ali loves to watch the tigers and say “ROAR!!”, but the tiger being just inches away from her definitely robbed her of her brazen friendliness with the tiger.

Here she is walking up to see the tiger at Mommy’s excited urging, seeing as how the tiger was so close!!
Running as fast as she can away from the tiger after realizing how very close he was!!
Finding a safe distance from which to watch the tiger. Notice that Hannah is MUCH braver than Ali!!
Of course I wanted a picture of Ali with the tiger, so I urged her to go see him again. All of the pictures that I got show her looking VERY trepidatious about being so close to him, which is kind of fitting.
The exhibit right after the tiger was the bobcat. Ali was VERY comfortable with him, seeing as how his size was much more manageable than the tiger!! She chased him back and forth, and even petted him through the glass.
Here are the girls watching the monkeys. As interesting as they were and as obliging as they were to come up to the glass and see the girls. . .
. . . looking at themselves in the mirror was just as fascinating.
All three of our cuties in front of the “fishies” home
After the tiger, Ali had quite the courage to comb the goat – a first!!

You know how girls can carry on about seven conversations at once, and guys are just completely unable to follow the different trains of thought all intermingled? Well, Chris actually lost me in multiple conversations the other night.

Wednesday evening, I was reading the comments on my Guantanamo post, and I told Chris “Oh yay! Lindsay thinks I found my sense of humor!! That’s good!”, to which Chris immediately said, “I can’t read your blog without it!”

I was taken aback and said . . . “wh-wh-what?” in a meek, sad little voice (luckily for Chris, my response to getting my feelings hurt is sad, not mad!!). He said “you know, without Google Reader! What we were just talking about!! My iPhone locks up when I try to go straight to your blog”.

We collapsed into laughter after we both realized that he had NOT, in fact, just told me that my blog is unbearable to read without my sense of humor.

Now that I think about it, though, he never said that it wasn’t unbearable to read. . . hmmm.

We went back to the Botanical Gardens today to let Ali run around and play. Ali loved smelling all of the roses and playing in the water!

There were two weddings going on, and one of them most definitely caught my attention. They had about 58 people in the wedding party, and they were all wearing pink. Pink bridesmaids, pink ties on the men, pink Mothers-Of-The-Bride and Groom, and most of all, the bride was wearing the brightest hottest shade of pink wedding dress I’ve ever seen. But the bizarre part was, it wasn’t a cheap looking gown – it was gorgeous – it had intricate lace and beads, and jewels holding up all of these folds in the skirt. I can most definitely say that of all of the hot pink wedding dresses in the world, this was the most beautiful. But still bizarre. Take a look:
Ann Marie, I think you need to add this to your wedding blog. It’s okay for the bride to wear hot pink as long as it looks like they spent a BUNCH of money on the gown, right?? I would LOVE to see the look on Ann Marie’s face if one of her brides told her that her dress was hot pink. THAT would be a priceless moment!

We let Ali play in the fountain today. She loved it!! She didn’t want to get out, even though she was starting to drip.
Water in the eyes!! But SO worth it.
Me and Ali hanging out.
Daddy and Ali splashing in another fountain.