Is this gate really necessary Mommy?

Ummmmm....yes. This gate is indeed necessary. Along with one on every doorway. :) I've pretty much gotten the living room under control...Sophie-proof. Or at least it's not a death trap. Although she did discover the shelf of tea cups that, quite frankly, I had forgotten all about 3 years ago. I managed to save her from banging them together or eating the petals in one of them. Yeah, petals. Pre-kids I thought that was so romantic to have petals from my wedding bouquet. They were thrown away today. Now, my idea of romantic is keeping the girls and me alive for one more day. :) Ok, ok, "alive" might be extreme.... sane. Yeah, sane. And any day that I can avoid calling a doctor or poison control seems like a success. I've realized that the second child's job is to point out all the things you thought you were good at with the first and show that the first child just missed those things.
Sophie was pulling up the other day on a cabinet and to her surprise....IT OPENED!!! She looked at me, I looked at her....and she thought "what???!!! there is a world behind these shiny knobs that I didn't even know existed???!!!".... I'm bracing myself for when she discovers we have a lot of them! Don't worry... death or injury doesn't lurk behind all of them. Just chaos.
Sophie is also my diligent student. :) She wakes up at 2 am and studies her vocabulary words for the day. Mama, dada, baba, *blow raspberries*, practice laugh....repeat. She's quite a character.
Sarah is my natural student. We finally did some school work after taking 4 months off and she picked right up where we left off. Math is her favorite because we are counting money. It's finally sinking in that a dime is worth 10 whole pennies....she had no idea!!! And then wanted to know how many dimes it would take for that new Barbie Maraposa doll and DVD. "A whole lot of dimes I'm afraid", I told her. "oh, ok." she said. I guess she's going to find something cheaper to like. :)
Well, Sophie is about to wake up. She still takes her afternoon nap in my bed so I have to go make sure she holds off on her gymnastic lessons for a few more years.
ta-ta