Make-up Party!

Lucy was wanting to do a make-up party "with the whole family". She asked all weekend until we were all together and able to join in the fun. We gathered around and Lucy spread out all the glitter and vaseline-based make-up one girl can find. I was thinking, "Yeah! Lucy wants to do something girly!"
The girls begin covering themselves in glitter. Lucy covered both of her arms entirely in pink glitter. Then she adds, "I am putting on my football make-up. This is what you wear to a big game." So much for some girly-fun.

Heard around the ol' homestead

• "Oh, I didn't REALLYize that"- Lucy's form of "realise". There are a lot of things that she does not "reallyize".
• "No, Man (Graham)! Don't pull hair!" - Harper... "Ahhh! Help! Graham has my hair"- Lucy (Please keep in mind that both of these are heard several times a day and are in response to Graham pulling hair. Of course, you have to be in the poor boy's face to have your hair pulled and both girls spend a lot of time talking in very close range to Graham's face.)
• "Suga. Suga." This is Harper asking to listen to "Sugar, Sugar". It is her new favorite, a close front runner to "lollipop, lollipop". Both are listened to several times a day, in the guest room, the official dance party location in the house, especially when Graham is sleeping. I am thinking that we will eventually have to install a disco ball above the bed- for dance parties, that is- get your mind out of the gutter!
• "Hey Graham, stay cool!"- Lucy to Graham. Not sure why he needed the reminder.
• "Harper wiped her nose on my blanket!" (L) I ask Harper if that is true, she responds, "Yes, I wiped boogers on Lucy's bed." I ask why. Harper replies, "I dunno. I had boogers."
• "I need a backpack"- Harper as we are walking out the door to get Lucy at school. This results in 10 minutes of her filling a random backpack with even more random items. Items include a princess cell phone, plastic keys, old, used gift cards, baby toys, diaper, a flashlight and a hat. Then her stuffed moose ("moof") is stuffed in as well.
• "Daddy, I need to get something!" While Ian and the girls were working outside doing post-blizzard clean-up. She would not tell him what she was going to get. He allowed her to go in and get said object. She returns, carrying her child safety scissors to "help cut down bamboo". She apparently went at said bamboo for a while cutting leaf by leaf with her tiny little scissors. She would then "bundle" them up by wrapping an entire length of twine around a single branch and dragging it to the curb.

Snowed In

This is how we spent many of our days snowed in at home. Lucy was out of school for about a week and a half so we had lots of time together and lots of time to do projects that we haven't done in a while or have been meaning to do. First on the list for Lucy: make ice cream in her new ice cream maker that Santa brought. This consisted of a lot of shaking of a canister for about 10 minutes and another 10 minutes to enjoy the ice cream. Who would have thought that ice cream on a snowy day would be such a huge hit?

Surprise Tea party! The girls were playing/fighting in the basement and I decided to surprise them with a tea party upstairs for lunch. That was fun and Harper had a grand time trying to figure out exactly how to drink out of a cup that doesn't have a sippy top on it. She also enjoyed pouring her own drinks. The real fun came afterwards when I filled up their play sink and a bucket of water with suds and let them "clean up" their tea party. I think we actually got about 2 1/2 hours of fun out of these activities.

Since the snow was so deep the girls couldn't really play in it for very long so we decided to bring some inside for them to play with. They filled cups, made mountains for their animals and ate a fair share of it, all without gloves and snow bibs.

Dance parties. Harper had a dance party about every hour but every once in a while we would all join in. Of course, SugarHill Gang is the "house music" around here.

The day the snow began falling we took the chance to go to the pool and get some energy out of our systems. Graham was ordered to hold Barbie for Lucy- his lot in life. Now it's Barbie, one day it will be her purse.

I took Harper and Lucy to see "Princess and the Frog" on our first snow day, before the roads were too bad. They were psyched about the movie (Harper's first in a movie theatre) but not so hip to having their photo taken.

When all else fails? Dress up! You may not know it, but this is the girls in Hockey gear. The mask is their face mask, the tails are their "gear belts", the high heels on Lucy are her skates. Usually Lucy's jockey silks are donned as well as that has her number and is her "uniform". Wouldn't they look tough on the ice? Sometime Lucy also adds her gold rimmed "rock star sunglasses" and her riding crop to make the outfit a ski outfit. She usually just ends up looking like a blind weirdo in stripper heels.

It was fun while it lasted and while we still have plenty of snow on the ground, we are happy to be back at school and work, but always looking forward to the weekend!

Harper 21 months

Harper is a repeating, singing, dancing little pixie these days. She repeats everything Lucy says and she loves to chime in on songs. My favorite is when Lucy says "I'm going to play by myself" and Harper taunts her by saying, "I'm going to play by self!" , all along following Lucy to wherever she is going.

She can catch onto songs hearing them just once and will then try to sing them with you. She requests "sic" (music) all the time, in the car, in the front room, in the basement and she can even be caught dancing all by herself to "Candy Girl" or "Sugar, Sugar" in the guest room.

She is getting opinionated on everything and wants to help choose her clothes, he activities, her snacks and what movies we will watch.

She is getting more independent. She wants to get into her high chair by herself, take off her own shoes, get her own snacks, help with chores and start her own cds.

She cracks Lucy up every night with a discussion or monologue about toots. She has been overheard claiming "Mommy toots, Daddy toots, Graham toots, Lucy toots, Harper toots...."

She can strike a pose which Ian describes as the Jc Penney Sunday ad for "mom jeans". I am still working on getting the best picture of this and will post it as soon as it is truly captured.

She is growing and is finally in 18 month pants! Her birthday is around the corner and I am sure she will have an opinion as to how it is celebrated. Let's just hope that the theme is not "everybody toots"!

Our Little Valentine

Graham is 5 months old today and after a couple of nights of needing a reset in the sleep department, he is doing great again. You can see it in the video, he is happy and smiling and trying so hard to play with his big sisters.

He is eating one meal of solids a day although it may be 2 very quickly since he is grabbing at food and watching each and every bite that anyone in the house takes with such anticipation. Today he ate a bowl of oatmeal with sweet potatoes, a bowl of prunes and another bowl of pears and oatmeal. He would have kept on going except I didn't want to wear whatever else I fed him since I knew he had to be close to exploding.

I have finally seen him roll, and roll he does. He is also sort of dragging himself along and will spin himself in any direction.

His exersaucer is a new favorite and being in front of the window allows him to check out the world outside. He loves looking at himself in the mirror as well and peek-a-boo can go on and on and on. He is getting very long and is once again on the fattening-up plan that he was on a month or so ago. When Harper holds him he is beginning to dwarf her and just this weekend I bought them the same sized diapers.

He is starting to show an interest in books, beyond looking at pictures. He will actually sit in my lap and look at the book and listen while I read, rather than squirm and try to look at my face. He loves songs and has started to recognize "Twinkle, twinkle" as a bedtime cue. This is great when he is ready for bed and very upsetting to him when he is not.

He has officially outgrown his baby tub and has been transferred to the bathroom sink where he makes a big effort to splash all the water out of the sink. This is applauded by his adoring fans, Lucy and Harper, who squeal when he splashes, therefore he provides an encore, drenching me in the game.

Since he and Lucy darn near share a birthday it is fun to think back and remember what she was doing at this time of year and look forward to Graham being on the same track. I can't wait to take him to the Cherry Blossom Festival and let him look up at the flowering trees or to put his fat little feet in the new spring grass. In June of Lucy's first year I remember her sitting at the pool with a bucket of water and toys and watching her throughout the summer as she eventually used that same bucket to pull herself into a standing position and then would cruise around the lounge chairs. So while we can't wait to get rid of all this snow for all the usual reasons, I also look forward to what Spring and Summer mean for Graham. For now, we celebrate his first Valentine's Day and Mardi Gras and start looking to his first St. Pat's parade and trip to Kentucky in March.

That's Amore!

Our Valentine's Morning:
Lucy came in to tell me about making banana pancakes with coconut today for Valentine's Breakfast. I asked her if she knew where Ian and I first learned about this wonderful concoction and she said, "No, but you are probably going to tell me."
Then I told her about our honeymoon to Maui and all about the island, etc. She asked what a honeymoon was and I told her. Then she proclaimed, "I'm going to marry Graham and he is going to be my husband. We are going to live with you (mom and dad) and we are going to go to Hawaii for our honeymoon." Then she added, "I'm going to marry Graham because he is handsome and I really want a handsome husband."
The second anyone was out of bed Lucy presented each of us, including Charlie the fish, a special valentine made especially for them. Mine had Tinkerbell stickers on it because, "you like girls to be girls." So true.
After a night of constipated unrest, Graham was doing his darndest to "work out" his problems. Mid-grunt he fell asleep. Gotta LOVE that!

Just under 3 feet

You know you have gotten a lot of snow when adding another 10 inches to the 2 feet that you already have doesn't seem like much.
No school this week- too much snow.
No work this week- too much snow.
No sanity this week- too much snow.

Enough already. Where is spring? Where are those glimmers of hope that we occasionally get in February with a 60 degree day tossed into the mix? If I had to guess, they are snowed in.
When Ian starts looking forward to returning to work, you know that we have had enough.

We have a date night planned for Saturday- Taylor Hicks in Grease. Then afterwards we are heading to a bar to watch the UK game vs. Tennessee. I think that even if we were suppose to get another 2 feet of snow, Ian and I would be at the show in rubber boots and snow bibs, no questions asked. Poor Taylor. She has also been cooped up with kids all week and now she will be heading to our house to hang with our kids. At least it will be a change of scenery for her. I think afterall, that is all we need- a definite change in scenery, where snow is forbidden.

Here we Snow again

We have survived snowegeddon (24 inches in our neck of the woods), but are preparing for snowverkill, as the papers are calling it. We are looking at another 10-20 inches tomorrow night. We have survived the snow, it is cabin fever we are risking our lives with. Lucy is happy and happy to play inside or out (no school one day last week, and so far, no school until Thursday of this week). Unfortunately, Harper does not share the same philosphy. She is spending her time being naughty. Naughtiness includes antagonizing Lucy by coloring on Lucy's artwork, hitting Lucy in the head, smothering Graham, throwing things down the stairs, climbing the furniture, "washing the windows" with her lunch, taking whatever Lucy or Graham is playing with and so on and so on.
The only things that keep Harper happy are dance parties, books, playing Lucy's curious George beach game, and anything that makes a total mess (tea party, tea party clean up, play doh, etc.) She will also sing Wheels on the Bus and I've been working on the railroad ad nauseum. With her short attention span, each of these is performed several times a day. It doesn't make things any better that she is getting up about an hour earlier each morning due to Graham's early morning feeding time (6am).

Graham is 41/2 months old. In December when we got 17 inches of snow the weathermen we proclaiming that for our region, this was a once-in-a-lifetime snow. In his short little life, he is looking at his 3rd such snow. Let's hope for a once-in-a-lifetime quick arriving Spring. Grammy spends his time drooling, taking notes on how to be naughty from Harper, and being his happym content self. He also likes to watch the snow, and the girls playing in it.

As for Ian and I, Ian has been shoveling not only our sidewalk and driveway, porch but also the street since a plow could not get down our street due to a fallen cable line across the road. And we've both been entertaining, cooking and cleaning for the brood. As for weather damage, we had one large branch fall off the tree in the front yard, falling between the house and our car. Other smaller trees have snapped in two and all have had some natural pruning done. We are trying to help out the birds that we love in our yard but it is hard when food gets covered with snow. We now put out a daily offering for our feathered friends.

It's been a little bit like an unexpected Spring Break having Ian home from work, except that it isn't warm, we can't go anywhere fun and well, it isn't Spring. Maybe it is more like Christmas break, without the promise (and threat, in Harper's case) of Santa.

Anywho, we have food, heat, and a lot of time to spend together, be that happily or (again in Harper's case,) in time-out.

One of these days...

Graham wants to join the girls. One of these days. For now, a seat at the back door watching them play on the porch is what he has to settle on.

Graham is almost 5 months

We are nearing 5 months and Graham has made drastic improvements.

For one, he is the happiest kid on the block most of the time now. Why? Because he is sleeping. On most nights he simply turns his head away from me when I put him down awake and he is asleep. That doesn't mean that he is back to sleeping through the night, but he isn't waking up every 15 minutes anymore and doesn't need to be rocked back to sleep or his paci anymore. When he does wake up he eats, burps and is back to sleep, sometimes he fusses for 5 minutes or so, but usually he just nods back to dreamland.

Naps are a different story. He is better in the mornings but in the afternoons he has a hard time napping for longer than 30 minutes although he is begging for more sleep. He will work it out, in time.

No bottles. Don't care about bottles anymore. We have moved onto cereal and applesauce. Yesterday the kiddo couldn't get enough of the sweet stuff. He was grabbing the spoon and shoving it in his mouth and getting upset if I took too long to get it to his mouth. Harper sat with me while I was feeding him and she actually called him "oinky".

He is rolling over, although I still haven't seen him do it. He likes to wait until I turn my back and then he flips over. It is as though this is a game of his because he is always smiling and thrilled to see my reaction when I see that he flipped over.

His feet are his two new best friends. He will work to pull his socks off just so he can chew on his feet. He will also be in a seated position and will fold over completely to chew on his feet. His feet smell like drool. Not good. Boys aren't suppose to have stinky feet until they are much older. Graham doesn't care about stinky feet, he still wants to chew on them at all times. Shoes are his nemesis. But he will chew on them if he has to.

Unforgettable

Harper has a new saying that is my new favorite. In any situation, when I ask her to do something she replies, "Oh, I forgot." This is the response I get when I ask her to:
"please clean up your puzzles." H- "Oh, I forgot."
"Harper, you need to throw away your gross tissues." H- "Oh, I forgot."
Upon throwing her Cheerios across the room I tell her that she must clean them up. H- "Oh, I forgot."
This response also applies to random facts:
"Harper, did you see the helicopter?" H- "Oh, I forgot."
"Harper, I like your pink sparkly shirt." H- "Oh, I forgot."
Her cuteness? Unforgettable.