Neighbors...

...can't live next to them, can't afford to move to my own private island.

Okay, so we've owned this house for 10 years and not had any real problems with neighbors until now, so I don't really have much to gripe about.

Oh, we've had some little problems...teenagers from across the street being too loud at night. I did have call the cops once on their little domestic showdown in the front yard at 2 AM, but they were sufficiently frightened and have straightened up since then.

Most of the other people on our street are elderly and very nice. They have their moments (blaming us for actions of all stray cats, simply because we have cats) but since they are usually pretty nice I overlook that. Plus they are old and I feel they've earned the right to be crabby.

We have new neighbors across the alley from our backyard. I mentioned them once before and I'm still not sure about them.

Tuesday the little boy came and knocked on the door, wanting to know if he could come in and play with Jordan. I sent him away as we're potty training Celia and she was running around buck naked at the time. Plus I was really crabby (surprise!) and didn't want another kid in the house.

Ten minutes later the doorbell rings again. I go to answer the door and find another little boy, standing on my porch in shorts and a t-shirt (it was less than 50 degrees out) and his hand in his pants.

That's right. He had his hand in his pants.

Not like way down in there digging around some perverted way or anything....but his fingers were completely covered by waistband.

Plus he was only about 10...I don't think he was a pervert.

So I opened the door and asked, "Can I help you?" (Doh! Why did I say THAT? I certainly don't want to help!)

He replies, "I came to talk to you about one of your sons. He was messin' with my dog."

I respond (straining myself to NOT look at the hand) "Well, I only have one son, and he's standing right there (Jordan was being nibby and just about falling over himself to see who was here). He's been in the house since he came home from school. I can assure you he wasn't messing with your dog."

We then proceeded to discuss the phantom boy in a yellow toboggan that his sister had seen messin' with the dog for several minutes. He was polite and apologetic, but the whole the his hand stayed IN HIS PANTS!

Anyway, I briefly considered that the first little boy may have been the culprit, even though he wasn't wearing a yellow hat. But since I'm not exactly sure what "messin' with my dog" entails, I didn't rat the little guy out.

I mean, he does seem like an okay kid. And these tho kids live right next to each other. The kid with the dog...well I know I don't like them as I heard his family swearing at each other with they moved in last month. And that freaking dog does bark ALL of the time. So "messin' with the dog" may have been nothing more than the first kid walking through his own yard, yelling at the dog to shut up.

I don't know, and I'm staying out of it.

So yesterday, we had guitar. In my rush to get Jordan, his guitar, my panty clad toddler, everyone's snack, my tea, purse, and pile of ECB into the car I didn't get the big door shut all the way (we have a storm door that was closed). This happens pretty frequently (shhh, I know, I know, I need to lock the door. I know. Stop lecturing me.)

Chris beat us home by just a few minutes and found the nice (but persistent and irritating) little boy on our porch. We spent quite a few minutes wondering whether the kid had wandered through the house looking for us.

I hope he didn't. But I will be locking the door now. Just in case, you know?

Anyway, our big triumph of the week....Celia is wearing panties!

She's going really well staying dry...but she is still scared to poop in the potty. So she gets up early in the morning to poop (she still sleeps in diapers) on the sly. Whatever, she's wearing panties all day now.

It's another one of those bittersweet milestones. That cute little diaper butt was about all the "baby" she had left in her. She is very verbal and talks like a child. She runs like a child. She's got pretty hair like a big girl (or Goldilocks, which is what she thinks). She's not my baby anymore. It's breaking my heart.