When I was in college, I wrote a paper for Ethics class on the ethical dilemma I faced in trying to decide whether to discard a plant I loved that had scales. I think that's what the disease is called--little brown hard half shell kind of things clinging to the leaves.

I wrote about how I'd had the plant for years and had tried to medicate the plant without success, and how the disease was getting worse. But I couldn't bear to throw the thing out and was it fair to keep a plant around, knowing it was going to die a horrible death by having these things suck out all of it's juices instead of just dying for lack of water or something if I threw it in a dumpster.

I think I got an A.

I'm always like that with plants. I torture my plants by not watering them for weeks, literally weeks. They do OK regardless, and when certain sentinel plants droop excessively, I water them all and they come back, repeatedly.

Most of my plants, if not all of them, need to be repotted. I've got golden pothos-philodendrem thingys with big stretches of vine that are dead and therefore should be cut out and restarted.

I need a live-in horticulturist. Madison is a pretty educated town--I bet I can find someone with a horticulture doctorate (is there such a thing?) who's driving a cab and looking for a second job, helping out horrible houseplant people. I'll sign right up.

I love James Bond movies. Even the bad ones. Even the ones with Roger Moore, which Greg can't bear to watch because he says Roger Moore doesn't act, he just smirks his way through films.

American Movie Classics has been running another of their periodic Bond series this weekend, so I've seen at least parts of about six or seven different Bond movies. They range from ones in which Bond still wore a hat everywhere to the awful one where Bond fights the voodoo-Tarot influenced African American bad guys in Louisiana.

That one made me cringe because it featured a caricature of a Southern sheriff who called everyone, "boy." Such a product of their times, these films were.

That chase scene through the long-changed downtown streets of Las Vegas in "Diamonds are Forever." The time when Bond "died" after being shot in a Murphy bed, only to be buried "at sea" in the harbor in 15 feet of water, so divers could pick him up and take him to a submarine for his next mission. And who could forget the car in "The Spy Who Loved Me" that turned into a submarine and then back into a car as it drove out of the ocean.

What's not to love in these movies?

And yes, I also worked for three hours on Saturday and got plenty of fresh air and playtime with my daughters and watched my husband spend hours on the computers. When is spring coming???

When we ride in the car, Allie is usually talking to herself, telling stories to entertain herself while Greg and I are talking about grown-up stuff. Julia is usually pretty quiet, unless we all decide to sing songs.

Then the girls take turns entertaining us, with Allie singing her ABCs or Mary Had a Little Lamb or We Are Santa's Elves (from her All School Sing in December, mustn't call it a Christmas Concert). Julia always, always, sings Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and only Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

The rotation takes place, Mommy or Daddy throwing in a song occasionally and everyone applauding between each number, with Julia always, always singing Twinkle Twinkle.

Until tonight, at home.

My parents are visiting and my mom was trying to get the girls to sing a song together. That never works. Julia hates it when Allie sings with her, so she'll stop singing immediately and yell at her, "No, I sing!" And Julia won't chime in on Allie's songs.

Somehow, Mom convinced Julia that singing together was an OK idea. The girls sang Twinkle Twinkle together and did a wonderful job. We all applauded and Mom asked what they wanted to sing next.

Allie spoke up and said ABCs, then started singing. And, lo and behold, Julia sang her ABCs along with Allie, not missing a letter. I've never heard her do that before. I didn't know she even knew the song.

It was cool. Ah, the power of grandparents.

Julia has a new game. She sits on the potty chair, which she's been doing a lot but completely successfully lately, and she reads a book.

Her favorite book is "Everybody Poops," which actually belongs to her daddy, for reasons I won't go into. Great book.

She likes to have company, so she'll often insist I sit on the rug at her feet.

This weekend, she finished her book and kept one hand inside the pages. With a sly grin, she said, "Mommy, where's my hand?" Actually, it came out more like "where my han," but that's just cute, so we don't correct her.

I played along and told her, "I don't know, Julia, where did it go?"

She got a huge smile on her face and said, "Here it is," as she revealed her missing hand (once thought lost forever but now miraculously found).

I smiled the first time, then started laughing when she did it another six times.

Greg thinks I'm weird when I laugh at this stuff. I don't care.

Another one of her favorites is to take her booster seat off her dining room chair. She puts in on the floor and stands on the seat, about four inches off the ground.

Then she calls your name until you look at her. She says, "Are you ready?" and then she STEPS OFF THE SEAT AND WAITS FOR THE APPLAUSE.

I never fail to give it, so needless to say, she does it over and over again.

I was almost sorry last Friday night when she started hopping off the seat, which is actually pretty good. I miss the old ways, and my little baby. She's a big girl, and getting bigger every day.

Julia has been wearing big girl panties fulltime for 9 days now and she hasn't had another accident since the first day. This is a big deal. Last night, she protested about having to wear a pull-up to bed so she went completely big-girl with pajamas for the first time. And there was success! No accidents.

The only problem with this system is that when she wakes up in the morning, she doesn't play quietly for a little while any more. Instead, she immediately start yelling, "Mommy, I gotta go potty. Mommy, I gotta go potty." Needless to say, you don't dally in bed.

But why do they always have to call for Mommy?

Allie called for me twice in the middle of Friday night. "Mommy!" "Mommy!" She had bad dreams. Last weekend, she threw up in the middle of Saturday night. Frantic calls of "Mommy!"

All right, I shouldn't complain. I'm the one who wanted children and this is part of the package. I'll sleep all night through and late on weekend mornings when they go to college.

We forgot that today was the day for Allie's third kindergarten field trip. An exciting excursion to the Madison City Bus Garage!

Yes, you read that right. She went to the Madison Metro Bus Garage, I guess to look at busses (buses, how do you spell the plural of bus anyway?).

She said she liked it, except that it was dirty and she got her pants dirty. Allie is nothing if not a girly girl.

I don't know how they could keep things clean though. We got about an inch of snow this morning that later melted and made dirty, slushy sprays out of every vehicle's tires.

Meanwhile, Julia has spent the last two days at daycare wearing big girl panties, not pull-ups. This afternoon, she had her first accident when she pooped, but she hasn't peed in her big girl pants yet.

She's only 31 months. It seems early to me to try this considering that we potty-trained Allie at 33 months, but she seems ready. Onward to the end of diapers!!!