That's Sassafras to You

I often call the girls "Sassafras" when they are being cheeky or just sassy.  Last night at dinner I said something silly to Harper and she replied, "Ok, Sassy Trash!"  Unfortunately, Ian, Lucy and myself all laughed, which spurred her to say it over and over again.  I only heard it once today and while it is very funny, I won't be disappointed that she might forget to call me "Sassy Trash" at the playground.  Of course, if there is one thing that is true about Harper these days it's that she is completely unpredictable.  Sassafras.

She Just Doesn't Want to Know

Recently we pulled up to a stop light and Lucy yelled, "There's a mouse!"  and sure enough, clinging to a tree was a little mouse.  Us girls watched as the little mouse hung out on the tree in midday traffic until the light turned green and we were off.  Lucy said, "that mouse is much cuter than the ones we are trying to catch in the traps at our house."  Uh, sure.
Then, while we were entering a restaurant in Annapolis, "Look! there are lobsters! Why would they keep lobsters in a tank?"  I said, "so folks can eat them."  Her faced dropped.
We have had similar conversations about chicken, turkey, shrimp, etc.  She knows, she just doesn't want to know.

Can I Get a Cold One?

Why is my oldest daughter carrying around a big bucket of blocks yelling, "Who wants a beer?"  And why is my youngest daughter saying, "I do! I do! I do!" and jumping up and down.  Why is their little brother taking the cylinder blocks from his sisters and pretending to throw one back?

Honestly, where have they seen this and why do they know the routine so well that they look like a group of bachelors at a Redskins game? 

These are the questions I am posing today, should anybody have the answers.

Around the house

Just some video of some of the nonsense and fun that happens around here.  With an almost-one year old who insists on cruising and getting into everything and a two-year old who likes her own brand of mischief, you can either label our house a fun-house or a mad-house.  Either way, somebody is always doing something that will make you want to laugh at the sheer silliness of it all.

Harper putting on makeup and Graham in one of Harper's pool cover-ups after I forgot his clothes at home- doesn't he look pretty? (and a whole lot like Lucy's baby pics?)

Soccer Camp

Lucy and her bed bud, Ronin, did a week long British soccer camp last week.  Every day for an hour and a half they learned how to handle the ball, some of the rules of the game and did soccer drills, played games and scrimmaged one another.  Each day, she loved it, even when the weather was fiercely humid and hot.  On the last day they did an extended scrimmage for the parents and a short awards ceremony (think clapping, high fives and a glowing report card for each child).  Her coach was Coach Rufus, from Ireland, and he was great with the kids.  Lucy loved him and loved coming home and telling me all about him, Ireland, and his family ("Did you know that it rains a lot more in Ireland than it does here?  Did you know that Coach Rufus has 5 brothers and 3 sisters?  Did you know that Coach Rufus is going to London when he leaves here?).
The final scrimmage was great and they actually played better than I thought they would.  The funniest part is that they would celebrate so much after each score that they would allow the other team to score immediately afterwards.  Ronin and Lucy were also very concerned with keeping score and keeping tabs on who scored the most.  Not really competing with each other, more trying to make sure all was even.  I got a video of one of Ronin's goals and the other video shows Lucy scoring right at the beginning, it isn't very clear that it is her, but it is.  I think they each scored 2 or 3 goals.
It was a good week and a good second introduction to soccer and Lucy is asking if she can play more this fall.  We'll see.  She also has been asking for more gymnastics this fall and has actually been told by her current teachers that she has "natural talent" and is "very strong and athletic" and that maybe she should try a more structured gymnastics class at a real gym, not a rec center.  Add swimming to the mix and we have quite the budding athlete on our hands. 
For now, we wrap up tumbling this week and the pool will be closing in a few.  We'll look at fall soccer leagues to help her burn off some of her energy and to see if the interest continues.  Looks like I might end up being a soccer mom afterall. Or a gymnastics mom.  Or swimming.  Or whatever she tries next.

Girls Weekend

The girls and I spent a lot of time together this weekend having special outtings.  On Friday, the girls' bffs, Ronin and X invited them to join them for an outdoor showing of Wizard of Oz at the neighborhood pool.  Needless to say, Harper's favorite movie, free popcorn, glow sticks, lemonade and cookies and best buds, the night was a late one, but a huge hit.  They talked nonstop on the way home about how much fun they had.
The next night, it was a true girls night out.  We started getting ready around 5pm.  Getting ready included the selection of princess dresses, tutus, jewelry, the "right" sticker earrings, purses, objects to fill purses and lots of glitter for face, nails, eyes and hair.  Harper went through 3 outfits before settling on the fourth, a "princess ballerina" ensemble that she felt was appropriate for the occasion, complete with purse, plastic high heels and leg warmers.
Lucy said, quite solemnly, "Mom, I think I need to wear a dress tonight", a concept that would normally go against all her principles.  She ended up choosing a fetching pink princess gown, blue star wand, a pink wooden box purse and navy blue sunglasses.
For my part, I decided to dive right in with them.  They chose a tiara, jewelry and a purse for me.  I decided that a dress-up dress might be too hot considering it was very likely that I would end up wearing half of their accessories before the night was over so I wore as much pink as I could muster to make up for the lack of princess dress or tutu. 
Once dressed and covered in much cherry lip gloss, glitter and vaseline-based make-up, we headed to a local church production of "Cinderella" where we ran into many other little girls dressed in their costume-finest and little boys who (for some reason) were all dressed like magicians.  One said magician did performa  trick for me, which included punching me in the nose- quite the trick I might say!
At one point during the show, the performers called all the little girls who were dressed-up onto stage.  Harper would not budge and so we sat back while Lucy stormed the stage, with purse and wand in hand to show off her gorgeousness and to "curtsy like a princess".  She was quite pleased with herself, to say the least.
After a show that never seemed to end, and, as predicted, my being handed one accessory after another to keep tabs of, the girls were thrilled to get in the car and tell me all their favorite parts. Harper's favorite part was when one of the stepsisters feet werer stinky when she tried on the glass slipper (I know this was her favorite part because she said, "that was my favorite part" and retold the story 10 times in the 5 minute car ride home).  Lucy's favorite part was the stepsisters endless fighting.  She said, "I loved when the stepsisters were fighting all the time and their mom would come in and yell at them." I thought it all sounded quite familiar and Lucy said, "No, it's not the same at our house, you aren't old like the stepmother."
One night in Oz and the other a pinkalicious play, it was a very fun girls weekend.

By the way, if you are wondering what the boys did while we were out, I was told their was wrestling, and lots of milk-slinging on Graham's part, and then off to bed.  Oh, and Redskins. 

And he walked on the ceiling!

After many months of anticipation, we finally took Lucy to see Mary Poppins at the Kennedy Center.  She chalked up the fact that she was the only kid going to the fact that she is a soon-to-be-kindergartener and therefore quite eligible for such big outtings.  She loved "Let's go fly a kite" and "Step in Time" but her favorite was definitely "Supecalifragilistiexpialidocious"- she is still singing this one over and over again.  The magic in the show did not dissapoint either.  She loved when Mary flew over the crowd, when Mary pulled a coat rack out of her carpet bag and when Bert danced on the ceiling. Now we have the soundtrack to both the movie and the theatre production and the girls listen to one or both every day.

Prince of Peaches

You are what you eat

If the saying is true that "you are what you eat", then Graham is a peach.  You see, we have made friends with a very generous farmer at the Farmer's Market and he sends home oodles of free peaches, nectarines and plums for us each and every week.  For instance, this week he sent home two crates of peaches- free!  You might think that with weeks of free, never-ending, bottomless crates of peaches, the kids would be tiring of anything with a pit. But no, they love peach ice cream, peach jam, peach salsa, grilled peaches, peach cobbler, peach slices, frozen peaches, peach popsicles, and just fresh out of the crate.  Graham especially.

With counterspace a precious commodity in our house, the crates often get put onto the ground to get them out of the way.  This is when he plots his attack. 

Yesterday, I went down the hall to wash my hands.  When I returned, there he was, in a middle of a giant puddle of peach juice, covered from head to toe with three half eaten peaches at his side and his next victim in his slippery little paws.  This was 5 minutes after he had eaten a marathon breakfast that, yes, included peaches.  He then threw his best tantrum to date over the fact that I told him no more peaches.  I put them up on the table to get them out of his easy reach and this is where I found him moments later.  His little hands inside the crate, clawing at peaches.  He can't get them out when they are on the table, but he gets tiny little handfuls and eats them through the crate.  He is obsessed.  As I was telling Ian about his troublemaking a couple hours later, we looked over and he was doing it again.  A peach thief in his own right. 

All of his clothes tell the story.  They are stained terribly around the collar and then his booty tells the story of his juice puddles.  The floors are a sticky mess, I find peach pits in the corners and I won't even tell you about his diapers. 

We will enjoy peach season while it lasts (I'm told we have another month of Graham's vice) and then it is on to apples and pears. We'll see if he shares the same enthusiasm for tree fruits lacking pits, in the meantime, he's just peachy keen.

Little Ladies and Little Lady Bugs and a pest named Graham

We went to our second ladybug release at the Native American Museum a couple weeks ago.  The girls were so excited about it and talked about ladybugs and bees, butterflies (and cockroaches) for days leading up to it.  Once there, Lucy was all aboard.  She walked up, got several handfuls of ladybugs and let them crawl all over her.  Harper, not so much.  She was excited to see them, but was not going to let them crawl all over her.  She would tolerate one at a time on her hands and no further than that.  If they crossed her palm then she was screaming and carrying on.  For his part, Graham made sure that the world did not become overpopulated with polk-a-dotted friends.  He helped those that were having a hard time taking flight by putting them out of their misery.  I tried to keep him away from them, but with thousands swarming and crawling on everything in sight, it just isn't possible to keep him at bay.  I do think I managed to keep him from eating them anyways.

After the ladybugs, we went to meet Ian for a picnic. The girls ran wild around a fountain and park and Graham made himself a muddy mess. Then, he decided that a little head-banging was in order and proceeded to dance, without music for several minutes by himself. Then he decided the old trick of pretending to lay down and go to sleep was called for. This was after he tossed some of Harper's lunch into the fountain, found some of Lucy's and helped himself to it and chewed on a few sticks.

We were suppose to then head over to Ian's office for a visit, but with Graham covered in everything a park had to offer, we decided that we would have to visit some other time.

 

Left behind

Sometimes it hurts when your big sisters get to go and have fun without you.  This is the typical scene when Lucy and Harper leave Graham behind. Not so typical is his lack of pants, but it does make for a good video.

Heard on the court...

• "Mom, I look so cold.  I look so cold in these sunglasses!  Don't I look cold?"- Harper
• "Actually...", "Honestly...", "Obviously..."  These three words begin many many sentences around here these days and are used by both Lucy and Harper and only used correctly about 1/3 of the time, actually.
• "My soccer coach's name is Coach Rufus. I wonder if they call him that because he likes to dance on rooftops like Bert from Mary Poppins.  I will have to ask him."  She did indeed ask him and his response was awesome: "Yes, I do like to dance on rooftops.  Most people don't get that reference, but you did.  Very smart." She grinned and walk away, glad that another man in her life likes to dance on rooftops.
• Lucy: "Harper, I start kindergarten very soon. When I am at kindergarten you will be the big sister and will need to tell Graham what to do."  Harper said, "Ok, I will tell him what to do.  No problem."
• "Blarf!" This is Graham's go to word to get everyon to laugh at the dinner table.
• So, if you add the word, "head" or "poop" to anything, then it makes the statement a joke.  Giggles will abound and multiply and will encourage more usage of these two words.  Try it, see if you laugh.  If you don't, then try it again, because if you don't then you are just a "poopyhead".

Graham's words as of 8/10/10: Momma, Dada, shark, bye, dog, hey or hi, plus more if you count mimicking.