Playdates, Pouts, and Pianos

Will is gone again. This time only for 5 days, then home for one day and off again for two months. Lets just say it isn't going over well with my bratlings. Luckily Rhayn had a play date today and that helped. I had planned to take them swimming, however Gwennie was losing it every few minutes this morning. Her crying was so bad I turned on the telly so she could watch Sesame Street (she loves Elmo.) I think it stayed on for 2 hours. I hate doing that, but they had woken up early in order to spend a few minutes with Will before he left and it made the grumpsters.

I want to keep the girls busy for the next two weeks. That is all that we have left of summer. I am planning play dates in my head and activities (Any one want to go to a water park with me? Or want to watch Gwennie so that I can take Rhayn to the water park?) Then there is the sewing I want to do. Seriously I have a few projects in my head. And possibly a few scrubs tops to sew for a great sister and sister in law.

Last night Rhayn was a mess. She had a cheap hand held fan from a birthday party and it had broken. She worked herself up so much over it, crying and sobbing. Will became upset, telling her to stop pouting. Now this is a source of contention between us. I understand that he doesn't want the girls to be hindered by pouting. However reprimanding them while they are upset only makes them pout/cry more. Also I want them to feel like they can cry to us, tell us what is wrong and feel like we will listen to their feelings. I know he wants them to feel like that, too. It is such a fine line between an OK amount of being upset about something and crying about it, and just pouting too long. I also think that Rhayn was allowing herself to cry over the broken fan instead of crying about Daddy leaving. I mean she gets upset about things breaking, but that was excessive I think.

I think I may have found a sewing cabinet that will work for me on Craigslist. I love perusing the listings on there. My most recent searches have been for "sewing machine cabinet", "Sewing machine table", "craft table", and "piano." Heck, I can pound out a tune on a piano and it would be nice to have one for the girls to tinker on. (I know I will regret buying one, when the girls are banging away.) Will wants to buy one when he gets home. I am searching our options and seeing how much it will cost us. Thus far it seems $500 will get us a fairly decent, needs to be tuned, piano. I grew up with a piano in the house and although I am not musical in any way other than the musical fruit way, I like to try. Will probably can play better than I, especially if we get a metronome.