Win some, lose some..

It is still very, very busy in our household, and hence still very, very quiet in my blog realm.  I'm starting to make some "back to school" type modifications (not that anyone in our house is back to school, but as fall sets in , a greater sense of order and stability seems to go along with it, which I associate with "school time").  One of these changes is getting dinner on the table by 6:30 instead of 7, and then LW in bed by 8:30 instead of 9+.  I'm hoping to push bedtime back even earlier once daylight savings rolls around, but for now we'll take what we can get :)

Anyway, I don't have time (surprise, surprise - but I promise I will again someday!  Blogging is about fifth on my to-do-list each day and I just never quite get there) for a long post.  But I thought I'd share a couple of this week's wins and also losses:

First, in the category of losses, fails, or "things I hate":

1)  The lawnmower starting up outside and prematurely waking LW from a nap.  It happens at least once a week, I have no control over it, and it makes me want to kick something.
2)  Hot sticky weather that makes it almost impossible to get LW to nap in the first place, and shortens her already short span of patience.  I'm convinced that being overheated is contributing to her new found problem behaviors of scratching and biting (me, and also herself... poor little girl has started biting her *own* fingers when she gets frustrated.  It is kind of heartbreaking to see)
3) The grand finale of "fails" for the week, and of things I hate, or that make me want to kick something:  last night I went into our bedroom to a t-shirt after putting LW down for bed.  I obviously didn't want to turn on the light, so I wandered around in the pitch black.  I went to bend to reach the bottom shelf of my bureau.. unfortunately not realizing that I'd left the second to top drawer open, which I hit, full force, with my mouth.  BAM instant punctured, fat lip.  Today I am sporting the "tattooed lipstick/collagen implant" look, very naturally.
4)  A bonus fail for the week - I was working on making a plaid skirt for the fall, perfectly matched the plaids only to not take into account that the pattern, which had multiple seams, was going to make weird chevrons in obvious and unintentional places.  I'm not very happy with the result.

However, the week hasn't been a total loss:

1)  I managed to complete a guest post that I needed to submit by Sept 1st, and was even happy with it.
2)  I've been putting my crockpot to good use, to try to have less hassle at dinnertime, which has mostly been a success.  I need to find better recipes, but it is definitely easier to fix things early in the day and then just eat dinner, rather than cooking for an hour, then eating, then all the cleanup.
3)  We have actually managed to have dinner at the desired time all week, which has left time for an after dinner walk (instituted as a habit last week, when my cousin was visiting, and a tradition that we'll hopefully keep up until the weather gets prohibitively cold; LW gets all excited as soon as we ask her if she wants to go for a walk).
4)  Bonus win for the week: managing to find the time to sit down and write this post.  Yay for finally knocking off that fifth thing on the to-do-list!

Crock-pot recipes, anyone?  Or advice on how to soothe frustrated toddlers?