Anyway. We have moved past Leah wanting to be someone else and instead have dealt periodically with wanting to be named something else. Fair enough. All kids go through that.

But only my kid would decide that the most lovely name in the world is "Drahavelyn". Drah-HAYVE-uh-lyn. Yes. On the other hand, perhaps this just means she has a future as a budding fantasy writer. Can Harry Potter Mary Sue fanfiction be far behind? I think not.

We ordered pizza tonight because I was worn out; Lori and the kids came over and we had a nice visit, and my dad dropped by in the middle of all of it because he's leaving on a business trip for a week, and sometime in the middle of all that Howard decided to go rolling in his own shit somewhere in the yard. That was quite the phone call to KC.

"Hi! Lori and the kids just got here and Dad is stopping by in about an hour so I made coffee, but that means you'll need to pick more up because we're out. Oh, and Howard just rolled in shit again. Yeah. Yeah, this has all happened in the past fifteen minutes. No, that's Adam crying because he need to eat. Yeah. OK, bye."

Chaos. But it all settled down fairly quickly, as such things do. My poor dad has yet to see his grandson awake, no matter how much we pinch him. (KIDDING!)

Oh, so anyway, we ordered pizza. And we ate in the living room and watched a movie, and as we started to settle in KC jumped up and yelled.

"What the hell?"

"I JUST SAT ON MY PIZZA! It was frickin' hot!"

Oh god. I have not laughed like that in a long, long time. My midsection is tender anyway and oh my god, it still hurts. He went hopping away to change his pants and left Leah and I howling on the couch. He came back, pointed a finger at me, and said:

"This does not need to go on the internet."

Oh, I think it does.

To hell with it. You also get dust updates. I am here to tell you that I vacuumed the living room and dusted the TV screen. I RULE.

Also, I managed to win a round on the Leahfront. The current battle is keeping her room clean. She...doesn't, and it is an absolute pit. We periodically fight, and she clears a path, but for the past four months or so I have not been in the condition to really get at it myself, and KC...well, anyway. The key is to get rid of her for thw weekend, because we cannot do it while she is there. Everyone can roll their eyes and talk about parents being the boss and that's fine, but I can tell you right now that I can get shit thrown away faster when she is not there, end of story. (It does not help that she comes from a long line of packrats. I fully cop to my share of the blame, here.)

Oh, so anyway. My brilliant parental moment came courtesy of FlyLady, whom I have never subscribed to, but nonetheless I have still picked up on some of her stuff. I split Leah's mess into three sections: clothes, toys, and books. I gave her fifteen minutes on a timer and she could concentrate on ne thing for that fifteen minutes. At the end she could take a short break and do whatever she felt like doing to reward herself; read a chapter of her book, have a snack (sadly, I only thought so far ahead and most of her ideas were food-related, but I tried to keep it as healthy as I could. She's more pleasant if she's eaten anyway, so.), and my favorite, which was her idea, a chance to sit and hold Adam for five or ten minutes. And when I told her that she could take her clothes and throw them down the stairs into a pile at the bottom, she was fully on board.

This, my friends, got me through an entire morning, to the point that Leah was still getting dressed when Lori and Griffin showed up. So awesome. And it made quite a sizeable dent in the clutter. There is still a long way to go, but all things considered, I am calling it victory.

Especially after the wonderful progress report I got from her enrichment class teacher, praising Leah for her willingness to learn and what a pleasure it was to have her in class. I guess maybe I'm not the bad guy all the time, huh?

(Now I am sure to get a call from her teacher tomorrow. Stuff like this is why Adam was a stealth baby; I feared the jinx.)