I had all of these things on my mind this morning and was going to share them on Instagram until I realized that it was probably going to be far too long, so here they are.

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been making headbands/wraps out of stretch velvet. Apparently they’re a hit and now I have friends (not to mention my own kids) placing orders for specific colors so I guess I need to get back to the fabric store and get on it. The one on Vivi in this shot was actually just a loop (most of them tie) I whipped together one weekend morning because I had extra velvet. In the five minutes it took me to get the twins dropped off at preschool this morning V delivered a verbal order for a purple one for her friend Lucy. It feels good to make something for fun that people really love, but I may need to get through the science fair before I dive back into another project.

When she got dressed this morning, V told me that she wanted to wear her flannel shirt open with another shirt underneath. “Like Jonah?” I said (he loves flannel shirts, but only unbuttoned with a solid-color tee underneath – yesterday he actually wore a shirt backwards because he didn’t have a clean tee that didn’t have a design on it). Viv nodded, and I smiled because I love that she’s taking fashion hints from her big brother these days.

Two things that are getting us out of the house in the morning with a bit more ease lately:

I finally began following through on the rule that you must be dressed for the day before you can eat breakfast. I know, it’s not exactly revolutionary, but somehow I could never quite bring myself to enforce it because they wake up grumbly and starving and stumble over to the counter and plop down and I didn’t want to deal with their wrath when I told them to turn around and go get dressed. That said, after a few days of that it became self-enforcing because they are so hungry in the morning, so now they do it more or less without complaint.

Also helpful: we have a loose rule that the order in which you get in the minivan in the morning dictates the order of song requests for the drive. They all love music and feel strongly about their requests, so now they hurry to put on coats and boots and grab what they need in an effort to be the first in the car. Today’s three songs: What’s Up Danger (from Spiderman Into the Spiderverse), The Greatest (Sia), No Time To Die (Billie Eilish, the new Bond theme).  Jonah wants to see a Bond movie now that we listen to the theme song on repeat (and I let him see the trailer), but I’m pretty sure we need to wait quite a few years for that.

Happy Friday!