Start wearing purple

This is a photo from yesterday, when Ari and I were helping Brooke in the garden. Well, by helping, I mean "alternately lounging around on the grass not doing anything useful, or physically impeding Brooke from being able to garden". As in the picture. ;)

Ari was mostly pretty good today. I'm wondering if her teeth were bothering her, though- she fought sleep tonight, and was pretty fussy and unhappy in the latter part of the evening. Earlier, though, she was totally sweet (as she usually is). She tried and mostly failed to eat cheerios. She can- and will- pick them up and put them in her mouth, but doing anything with them once she gets them there is the issue.
Today, we did very little except clean. Alot. I finally had had it with the horribleness of my house, and we spent the whole day cleaning it sparkly. To the left, you can see a "before" picture. Note the bunches of graded papers lying around, the piles of books, the random Stuff lying haphazardly around... Ari couldn't play in this room at all, between the mess and the table that got left in a non-baby-friendly spot in the room.

Anyway, it took us about 7 hours, but this is the "after" picture. Mind, 7 hours was the whole rest of the house as well, not just this one spot. ;) My bathroom is shiny, and my living room is vacuumed. I dusted, even. I'm hoping that some of the organize-y stuff I bought a bit ago will help us keep it clean, which is the real trick.

Oh, and we also made a whole searchable database of our games collection. That's cool.

And in exciting baby news: Ari climbed down the stairs today. Not well- she would have fallen off if I hadn't steadied her- but she still did it. That's good, becasue I'm tired of having to pull her off the stairs all the time.