How does this make sense?

Nick is going to stay with us during the school year!  We're very excited and think he's going to thrive in CCISD.  However, never having to deal with school registration before I didn't realize how ridiculous it is.

To register Nick, we had to provide:

Deed to our house (if we were renting, we would have had to provide the lease)
Electricity bill
Immunization record
Birth certificate
Social security card
Previous transcript

Which I know, doesn't really sound like a lot.  But if you're dealing with exes, it can be hard to come across paperwork.

But my problem is this.  If you are homeless or illegally in the country, guess what documents you have to provide:

None

Zero, zip, nada.  So are immunizations important or not?  Because if they're not, then don't require documents.  But if they are (and I think they are) require docs from everyone.  If birth certificate and ssn card aren't important, than don't require them of anyone.  But why do some have to jump through hoops and not others?  And if proof of residency is important because tax money goes to the school then everyone should have to provide them.

To me it comes down to this - if rules are important, everyone should follow them.  If some don't have to obey them, none should.  And I've yet to hear a reason why that's wrong.

Happy 22 months, Elayna!

Another month come and gone.  It feels like I'm updating every few days instead of every month.  Crazy how quickly time flies!

At 22 months, Elayna is:

Still in size 3 diapers
Wearing everything from 12 months to 24 month clothes
Won't sit in her highchair anymore :(  it's all big-girl chair now
Uses real silverware (when not using her hands, that is)
Obsessed with Dora.  Tries to imitate Swiper with the "oh, man!"
Hair is almost down to her butt.  She rarely lets me comb it but comes home with a cute 'do every day from daycare
Loves water.  Pool, bathtub, doesn't matter.
Jabbering up a storm, says lots of words - Dora, bye bye, Herro (Hello), Hi!, 'Layna, Bubba (brother, Nick) , Memma (Emma), Daddy, Mommy, Daynel (Daniel, mimicking me when I called Daniel), Nana, Papa, birds, moon, clouds, uh oh (this is her new favorite), hep (help), boppy, kiyyi cat... I know there are others I'm missing.
Very stubborn.  Shocking, I know.
Still in her crib.  I have no desire to get her to a big-girl bed, she's still so small she has growing room.
Still rear-facing in her car seat.
24 pounds
~30 inches tall (she's squirmy)

Daniel took a bunch of picture while I was at work but he's cleaned them off the camera to an unknown location :(  I will add once I find out where they are, he took some amazing pics!

Pinterest strikes again!

Above our fireplace the wall is longer than it is tall.  Which has made decorating up there challenging.  We couldn't put the painting we had in our old house up there, the dimensions were wrong. So I put the picture of our feet up there, and it was dwarfed by the space, but I wanted something, anything up there :)  Free-standing frames, candles, coasters, etc, were also added to the mantle.

On pinterest the other day I saw a beautifully done mantle that I want to replicate.  It had a large black and white photo of an adult holding a child's hand.  Layered in front of that was a smaller piece that just looked decorative, not a picture, and then a small medallion.  There were tall black candlesticks to balance it out.  I don't want to do exactly that, but pretty darn close.

So what to do with all the pictures that were collected on the mantle?  Put them up the stairwell, of course!

Before, boring white stairwell...

Using newspaper cutouts to arrange the pattern...

First photo goes up, our feet from above the fireplace...

All done...for now!

As I went to hang some of the photos, I realized not all of the frames were able to be hung.  But I love that I'll be able to add onto it as the years go by.  We can change out photos as needed or just hang more frames.