Random Bullets

• About 3 weeks ago Clara learned how to open doors on her own.  We have been fortunate that she hasn't cared much about this for a long time but now that it has happened I find it is not so bad as I feared.  At least she still can't reach the deadbolt on the front door yet.
• I caved at the farmer's market tonight and bought a small olallieberry pie since I have been denying myself one all summer long every time I went past the baking stall.  Of course, then I had to stop by the grocery store on the way home for vanilla ice cream.  Somehow my ice cream to pie ratio was off and I had to have an extra half slice of pie to go with the leftover ice cream.  Like, HAD to.
• Paul sends me cute texts during the day reminding me to get a babysitter for the weekend or to rave about the leftovers I sent with him for lunch.  Last week when I was sick he actually called during his lunch break, which just happened to be during Clara's naptime and I just happened to have successfully fallen asleep (daytime napping is practically impossible for me) for the first time in the middle of the day in ages and ages (probably the first time this year).  He felt pretty bad, which was good because I was not super happy about it and needed appropriate remorse and groveling before I could forgive.
• Clara's imagination is taking off!  Today she was giving her Minnie Mouse figurine "swimming lessons".  She would set her up and then Clara would bend herself in half and do the "crawl" stroke around the room while pretending to blow bubbles.  She never successfully did this during her own swimming lessons this summer.  If you can't do, teach, right?  We also spent the afternoon running from room to room "catching" butterflies that had apparently infested our house (this was all her idea once she spotted her butterfly net in the corner of her closet.  I had to describe each butterfly (blue with white stars! yellow with green stripes!) then she would say "flutter-flutter:  it got away mommy!!" and off we went to catch another one.
• Clara has been able to count to 10 for a long time but she absolutely has refused to do it for months now.  Then she watches one episode of "Super Why" with a character called "Math-a-Million" and now she counts anything and everything perfectly all the way up to twelve. 
  She has also started identifying letters and is pretty good at it too, getting most of them correct.  Although she always calls them "Super Letters". 
• Paul has become a lighting genius and has turned our front yard into a crazy beautiful paradise with spotlights on the trees and mood lighting in the flower beds.  It took him pretty much all of Saturday and Monday to get them installed, but it is seriously my favorite place now and we have spent part of every evening sitting outside on the bench just admiring the glow.  He is still tweaking some things and we still need to put sod in part of the yard where we had bushes before, but hopefully we'll get that done soon and I can put photos on here since the difference is huge (at least to us). 
• I am already obsessing over Halloween.  I am trying to keep things in check and I haven't actually put out any decorations yet or anything (Paul says no) but I am working on our costumes (so excited!) and when I walked into the grocery store I noticed they already have Jack-o-Lanterns topping some of their aisles and a seasonal section that is already half-filled with bags of candy and Halloween paraphernalia and it made me all happy inside.