Oh, well.

I am now more intimidated by this remodeling stuff than I thought I would be.  Steve fixed the shower upstairs yesterday (which has not functioned the entire time we have live here), so, naturally I got carried away with my enthusiasm and decided it would be a good time to start ripping the nasty wallpaper/border off the wall.  Which I am convinced is actually shelf liner that some idiot stuck to the wall. So, in true Michaela style, full speed ahead!!  The first section came off easily...but that's about it.  Now I have the papery backing stuff stuck all over the walls of my bathroom.  Nice.  And of course, the previous backsplash was much taller, so there's a charming border of old nasty tile glue on the wall right above the current one.  Yay!  So maybe I shouldn't pick on Steve for being so cautious about everything all the time.  Now my bathroom looks like it belongs in a hotel in New Jersey somewhere.  And it will for probably the next month.  It's a good thing I have no life so there's little chance of anyone seeing it first hand.

I was fully prepared to write about my Adventures with Children today, but I just realized they have all been fairly well behaved and not very funny for the past few days.  This is boring. This is ominous.  This can only mean that they are all about to come down with Scarlet Fever or something.

Okay, I lied, I've got it.

Declan won't talk.  Now, I know he is only 19 months old, but in this family that's the age most of them started negotiating for a ten o'clock bed time and their own phone line.  This kid just doesn't care.  And why should he? He has six other people to talk for him around here, and let's face it, it's a lot more fun to point and grunt than to try that whole enunciation thing.  Anyway, we're going crazy trying to encourage (force) him to start using some actual recognizable words.  We have conversations that go like this:

me:  "Honey, can you say 'juice'?"

D: "Bob."

me: "No, honey, juice."

D: "Bob!"

me: "C'mon, Declan, say juuuuuuuicccce."

D: "Boooooooob!!"

me: "Oh forget it.  Here's your damn juice."

He does have a few "words" that he uses whenever he feels like it.  They are:

Deh-deh: kitty, daddy, baby, and more recently, bird.

Na-na: bottle, milk, banana

Ah-wah:  Blue's Clues

Buppa: ketchup, salt, maple syrup, hot sauce, or anything else sitting on the table that mom pours on food.

He's a huge Indiana Jones fan; he walks around the house singing the movie theme song all day. Of course he gets this from his older brothers, who are the embodiment of Dr. Jones at the moment (this month anyway).  We have several sizes of action figures lying around the house and we own all the movies.  Yesterday Declan walked up to me with the tiny Mutt Williams action figure.  He thrust it in my face, smiled his best I'm-a-charmer-like-my-daddy smile, and said:

"Mutt!!"