Dude got an email the other day from someone who was letting everyone in his address book know that he was planning to be in Europe January 16-24 and his Washington DC apartment would be available for rent during that time for anyone who was looking to attend the Inauguration. Guess how much for this "luxury apartment" a mere six blocks from the White House. No really - guess. Six thousand dollars. Six THOUSAND dollars. Let me say this one more time because it makes my head spin and that's fun for the girls to watch: SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS. Can you imagine??

We are kicking ourselves a little for selling the house when we did. I know we should count our blessings that in this crap economic climate it was on the market for only 42 days and we made a nice profit, but what if we'd waited until February to sell and had instead rented it out in January? It's sheer greed that drives those thoughts, but still. I'm fairly confident that, through certain connections, we could've rented it for a few months to someone from the Obama advance/transition team. That extra income would've been used to pay for a family vacation this coming spring, certainly some new shoes (of course), groceries ('cause I can't believe how much I'm spending every week) and all kinds of other stuff that would've helped us be better consumers in this time of national economic need. I'm just sayin.

On a different note, I took Belly and The Bug to an "indoor park" at the local community center on Friday. That was the day that I decided maybe it was time to transition from two daily naps to one (for the record, I think the girls made that decision about a week before I did judging from the yucky nap times of late). The indoor park is for kids ages 1-5 and is three days a week smack-dab in the middle of morning nap time. Therefore, we'd never been before. We paid the $1 per kid entrance fee (so cheap!) and rolled our big ol' stroller into the gym. There were about 30-40 kids in there with their parents and Belly and The Bug were absolutely blown away. They constantly have each other as playmates, but never in their whole little lives had they seen so many OTHER kids. And they were wowed. Totally wowed. I set The Bug down and she stood there - mouth agape - for the longest time. I set Belly down and she took off across the gym, sqealing in delight. Another parent even commented that she had a "great squeak." Their reactions were the complete opposite of what I would've expected from each of them. I basically kept bringing The Bug around with me as I followed Belly all over the play area. This lasted for about 45 minutes. Then it was like she flipped her fun switch. She gave a hoot and TOOK OFF. The Bug ran all over the gym, playing with the bikes, the balls, the toys, the other kids. Meanwhile, Belly befriended a little boy (probably about three years old) who very patiently pointed out all of the different parts of the Little Tykes car in which he was sitting. "Mirror. Mirror. Door. Door." She just made googly eyes at him and laughed and laughed. It was pretty dang cute.

I also talked for a while with our neighbor three doors down (now I have that song "Kryptonite" in my head) who has a little girl a few weeks older than ours. She was pretty nice. And there were some other cool parents there, too. It was a relief to see people with dreads and tattoos instead of the Stepford moms I often saw at the parks in DC.

When we got home, Dude couldn't believe how giddy Belly and The Bug were. If they could speak English, I'm sure their excited chatter would've been punctuated with a lot of "AND THEN...!"

Needless to say, they slept VERY well that afternoon. I think we just found our new morning hangout.