Cherry Blossom Festival

Lucy had a school holiday on Monday and since the weather was going to beautiful and warm and Lucy has been really wanting to visit the Lincoln Memorial, we headed to the Cherry Blossom Festival.  We took in the Washington Monument, (between the two we ran right smack into the Slagels who were visiting from KY!) the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the FDR Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial where we sat and had lunch on the steps.  Some playtime under the blossoms, and running around the National Mall and the kiddos were tired out.  Taking in the sights, holding hands, and really loving all the cherry blossoms, a holiday indeed!

Only one day old...

It just occurred to Ian and me tonight that Harper's 2nd day of life was such a forteller of her personality and demeanor. Harper was only in her second day of life when she had been asleep for 13 hours.  13 hours!  The nurses and I hung her upside down, tickled her feet, stripped off all her warm blankets and clothes, and tried to encourage her to wake up anyway we could.  And all she would do was smile in her sleep and continue to snooze. All she wanted to do was sleep and avoid eating.  Eating was just not important.

Flash nearly 3 years forward, Harper is just the same. I have to strip her blankets off of her and turn on the lights, open the window shades and sometimes even the windows, just to get her to wake up from nap.  And when it comes to eating, she generally just doesn't want to.  And yes, she will still give us one of those sly little sleepy smiles while we are waking her. And once awake, she likes to "wake up slow" by laying in bed, sucking her thumb and listening to what is going on in the house before she decides to get out of bed.  And she'll always cuddle, just like when she was just a baby.

The Megapost

Ok, so we have come out of the last two weeks with no vomit (and the crowds go wild!)  And I have finally gotten our lives back on track, house cleaned, sanitized, playdates resumed, full weeks of school and activities and I am now getting back to the blog.  Don't worry, amongst all the sickness we did manage to squeeze in some fun.  Here are some highlights:

For St. Pat's Day I took Harper and Graham to a storytime at the library.  They read all about trolls, rainbows, leprechauns and made these hats. Both loved coloring, glueing and showing of their new creations. They wore them for two straight days and Graham still goes and puts his on for an hour or so, usually when we have to go to the grocery.  A boy's got to look his best!

As the weather has started to warm up, the kids, especially Lucy, are looking for every excuse to be outside.  A tea party outside in the driveway keeps me from having to clean up the kitchen after the world's messiest eater (Graham) and keeps the kids happy as can be.  All three like to pour their own drinks from the tea pot.  Graham likes to pour his all over himself, the girls fare much better. 

A block with two cheeks.  Love it.  The mega-man among tiny little ladies.

Lucy with her Daisy troop at the playAnnie.

Graham and Harper wasting time at the playground waiting for Lucy to wrap up running club practice.

The little guys at Tate Butler's 2nd birthday party.  Sweet tally for the party: Graham 2 cupcakes, 1 iced cookie, fruit snacks, juice box, a handful of pretzels, 1 lollipop.  Harper: 1 cupcake, 1 iced cookie, crackers, pretzels, 1 lollipop.  Naptime was delayed by and hour due to sugar high.

New accomplishments:

-Harper can now climb the "big ladder" at the playground, "all by myself, because I'm almost 3!"

-Graham is picking up new words daily, my favorites are "ok!", "what?", "you silly!" and "get blanket"- this last one is his new requirement for when we are reading books, and he must be snuggled up with you under the blanket before reading.

-Graham playing and "choo chooing!" all over the house with his trains

-Lucy is participating in a running club

-Harper is learning the names of all the different flower types in the neighborhood

- Lucy went to her first "school dance" during their spring fling.  She led a group of her kindergarten friends as the head of a conga line for about an hour.  The best part was then a group of older kids, including 6th graders, joined her line.  She was pleased as punch.

-Harper has now learned the words to every song from the Annie soundtrack.  And she sings them over and over again all day long, usually with Graham chiming in from time to time. 

Daddy's boy

Graham has become such a Daddy's boy.  He asks for him all day, he cries when he leaves in the morning, he has started standing at the window in the evenings waiting to see his car and when he gets home, there are lots of jumps, smiles, exclamations and real joy at seeing him.  And this pretty much happened all because Ian decided two weeks ago to take Graham, and only Graham, with him to Home Depot and then to a bakery for a treat.  The next weekend they went back to Home Depot.  It seems they have bonded over looking for a new basement door. 
It really is cute, though, especially when he tries to mimic everything Ian does.  If Ian wears a baseball hat, Graham grabs his hand and shows him where his is so he can wear his too.  If Ian wears his vest, Graham yells "Best!" and grabs his as well.  Two peas in a pod. 
I'm not to worry though.  When Ian isn't here, I'm still tops.  Graham has taken to kissing me only on the lips, walks up behind me and yells "hugs!" and gives my legs a big bear hug and he walks by and says "love you!"  He may be Daddy's boy, but he's my little man!

What's new with Lu?

Lucy is obsessed with making books, having slumber parties and being outside.

Every day Lucy sits down at our dining room table with a stack of papers, a giant carousel of crayons and makes a new book.  They have plots, colorful illustrations and lots of details.  Each book is about 5 or 6 pages long, as a front cover or "title page" as she calls it and a back cover, where she usually dedicates the book or writes "THE END" in giant letters.  I wish we could keep every one of them, but for now, she insists they are gifts for folks for birthdays, teachers for "just being great" and friends. 

 

Slumber parties. We hosted our first slumber party a few weeks ago and had 4 girls, plus Lucy and Harper, slumber in our basement. Actually, Harper was allowed to partake in all the fun, but had to sleep up in her bed, "since slumber parties are for kindergarteners and other big girls".  They decorated cookies, painted their nails with glow in the dark polish, watched a movie and ate everything in sight.  Dance parties, freeze dance contests and lots of silliness and they were all asleep by 11:15 and awake at 7am.  Not too bad, although a bit like a zoo for a while.  I realized that this was the first party many of them had been to where adults weren't running the show the whole time and they definitely preferred when I was leading the way.  I'll take it.  In a few years, I'm sure I will be shut out of the room while they gossip about boys and talk about how weird their parents are.  For now, I was happy to be chief nail painter.

Finally, Lucy is crazy about the new warmer weather.  She wants to be outside as much as possible and since we are trying to grow grass in our backyard, we have been playing in the front for a few weeks.  Lucy and her friends have decided that a tree in our side yard is their "fort" and they have a pile of sticks in there for a "dogbed" and other randrom piles of odds and ends.  They love it and disappear into the fort for hours at a time.  My only concern is that it is a holly tree, but they don't seem to mind, as long as I don't enter the sacred ground.

Harperisms

Harper is full of her own little chatter these days, and most of it ends up in song, or Broadway musicals, to be exact.  There is nothing greater than hearing a 2 year old, with no "r" or "l" sounds, singing, "It's a Hard Knock Life!" while wearing her glitter shoes, a pink tutu and singing into a glitter baton- not so hard knock, but cute. 
She also makes up her own songs.  Most involve "taking sunshine away" or "rain".  At this moment she is singing: "I dreamed about you while you were sleeping and you take and take and taked but she take and take and taked and taked from yoooooou!"  Nonsense and maybe not climbing the charts any time soon, but this is what our little crooner is singing.
She is also amazed at all the new flowers popping up and wants to know each and every name of them, what color, exactly I would call it (pink is not correct, reddish pink or pinkish purple are far more exact) and what they smell like.  My favorite is that she calls pansies "Japansies".  She wants to run up into everyone's yard to smell the flowers, which makes our 3/4 mile walk very long on the way home from school each day.
She is into calling people names.  Fortunately, her "name calling" is pretty harmless and usually consists of calling me "grown-up" or Lucy "donkey" or Graham "tootie" and most of the time it is in response to a question or demand I make of her: "Harper, can you turn around in your seat and eat your dinner?"  "Ok, grown up!"

4...

And the sage continues, Harper is ill.  Again.  Great day, picnic, park, vomit, movie: Snow White, while the others ride bikes outside.  I would be worried, except that she's happy as a lark sitting in her room, asking for snacks and apple juice and watching movies. 

We got Spirit!!!!

Lucy has been doing "Cheer Club" for a few months now.  Every week she skips off to school, happy as a little, well, cheerleader, and learns some absurd cheer, set of jumps, etc.  She comes home, sometimes acts too cool for school and won't show us and sometimes, it is all she can talk about and performs for us nonstop.  Two months of Cheer Club culminated in a pep rally.  Now keep in mind that they are not cheering for any team, or particular sport.  Let's just say that they are cheering for their school- yeah!!!  Families poured into the gym and awaited the big show.  And it did not disappoint.  Videos below- go team!

Video and photos from Gramzie's video

Disney Fever

The girls have Disney fever.  They talk about it nearly every day.  Lucy tells me constantly, "remember, I get to go when I'm six!" and Harper tells me that it will be "so exciting to see Cinderella's castle." They talk about what characters might be there, what they will do there, etc.
When we were at the Air and Space museum the other day, Harper noticed that one of the suitcases that you can open up and check out the contents in, was full of Disney World goodies.  She opened that case up at least 10 times, admiring the Mickey ears, the Minnie Mouse doll and the princess items. 
Lucy lives to see the commercials for Disney World, you know the ones where the kids are clueless and then are told they are going to Disney World and they nearly pass out with excitement and happiness.  She loves those ads and we have promised ourselves that when the time comes we will surprise the kids with the big news.  No worries, we'll get it on video- screams, jumps, happiness and all- ahhh, the thrill of it!

Gramzie, Pop Pop and Hunter visit

Just short of running a bed and breakfast this week, we had a full house.  First, Gramzie and Pop Pop visited for the weekend, Pop Pop leaving Sunday and Gramzie staying in DC for a couple of nights while she worked on the Hill for a few days, in the meantime, Hunter visited, then Gramzie came back, left on Thursday and we saw Hunter again on Saturday. Needless to say, the kids were spoiled with attention, gifts and lots of fun activities.
We went to the St. Pat's parade with Gramzie, where Graham spasmed everytime he saw a car, a motorcycle or a dog (and there were lots of dogs!)  Harper loved all the bands with the drums and bagpipes and Lucy's favorite was seeing Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers.  Oh, and of course, Graham made friends with some gray haired man sitting next to us, whom he high-fived everytime he saw something cool.
With Hunter, we went to the Air and Space Museum, where once again, Graham spasmed over airplanes, helicopters and more airplanes.  Harper loved the walk-thru airplane and being able to look into the suitcases to see what people packed. 
On Wed we went to see an African drum and dance concert with Gramzie and our friends the Butlers.  The kids loved the music and Harper even got on stage to dance with the dancers.  Then we checked out the "Nemo" tank where Harper and Gramzie marveled over the vibrant colors of all the fish and Harper told the story of Nemo a million times over again.
In between all the outings, there was much game playing, "zoo" playing, book reading, and movie watching.  Good times!

Three's A Charm?

AHHHHHH!  Here we go again.  Same time, same bat channel, sort of.  Midnight rolls around last night and then we hear it, the sounds of one of the kids gettig sick in their sleep.  Ugh.  We go into battle the beast and find Lucy crying, claiming to have thrown up.  We can't find it, only to realize she is holding a very nasty surprise in her hands.  I take Lucy, clean her up and console her, Ian cleans up any remaining mess in her room and then we get her set up for a nasty night of throwing up into a garbage can.  At least she made it into a receptacle every time, unlike her little sis, we didn't have to strip the bed, shower the sick, etc each and every time. 
Sat morning rolls around, movies and naps for Lucy, the little ones are fine... until Graham throws up at naptime, and then again this afternoon.  We're just hoping that Harper doesn't get sick again.  Or Ian.  Or me.  Ugh, I feel like a skipping record!  
Time change tonight, spring starts next week.  We are ready to put this winter behind us.

Chumpy!

Harper is a talking machine.  She gabs day and night and has recently added nightmares and might terrors to her repertoire (she dreamsof bumblebees, her least favorite thing on Earth, and flies flying into her eyes).  During her waking hours, she talks about "anyting" she sees, hears, or thinks of.  She is full of questions, which she usually answers herself or answers with a "No, that's not right!" when given (the correct) answer.  She bosses Graham around, lecturing him throughout the day and tattling on him the rest of the time.  When Lucy is home she chats but also makes up nonsensical stories or words.  And, especially at mealtimes, she seems to come up with her own vocab for what's around her, here are some of our favorite Harperisms:

-"I don't care!"- She says this all the time, even when not being addressed.  This is her two-year old self thinking that she is really sticking it to us.  She even sings a song that has the very complicated lyrics "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!"  In the end, she usually does care.
-"Chumpy"- this is her version of "Chubby" and she frequently calls Graham "Chumpy", often without even looking up from what she is doing.
-"Tootie!"- Another nickname for Graham.  It is usually combined with "ok" as in, "Ok, Tootie!"
-"Anyting"- it means anything, but it is far cuter

A peek at Spring

Plague, round two?

Today is suppose to be gorgeous outside.  It is going to be near 60 degrees, the sun is shining, birds are singing, little buds are popping up from the cold ground.  We have a big playdate scheduled with Lucy's friends: a set of twin girls and her other girlfriend.  We got an email that asked for help in the school's garden today so we had a plan: go to grocery, pick up picnic supplies, have a picnic at the playground, help out in the school garden for a while, head home for a snack and get little ones ready for bed and let the big girls watch Cat in the Hat (it's Dr. Seuss week at school) and then all the friends will go home and we will carry on, probably with more outside time and thoroughly wearing everyone out until dinner/bedtime.
BUT... we drop off Lucy off at school (dressed like a Who from Whoville- hilarious!) and make the 15 minute drive to Trader Joes to pick up picnic supplies, park and then... Harper throws up.  All over herself and the car. 
Plan aborted.  We head home, strip her down, clean her up, start Snow White on the DVD player.  She is hunkering down in her room.  Graham is following me around everywhere (EVERYWHERE) I go since his buddy is taken out of the picture, yet once again.  No friends, no long outside fun, no picnic, just cleaning up vomit, taking temps and administering gatorade.  Lucy has been diverted to a friends house for the afternoon to help avoid the plague, version 2.0. 
Please, don't let Graham get it.  Please don't let Lucy or Ian get it.  Please let me avoid it again.  Please let it be gone while Gramzie and Pop Pop and Uncle Hunter visit.  Please!

A visit from Bon Bon

Bon Bon came to visit over President's Day, which for all was a long weekend, until they made Lucy make up the Monday off due to all the snow days.  Not to worry, Bon Bon got a chance to work in Lucy's school on Friday, go to Harper's "gymnastics" class on Monday and squeezed in a trip to see the baby lions at the zoo on Sunday.  They played at the playgound, outside and had a fasion show.  And played lots of games.  Lots and lots of games.  Some were board games and some were just "games" that Harper made up.  This is Harper's new thing: games.  She asks for them nonstop and she doesn't usually mean a 15 minute game, she wants someone to play a "game" with her for hoursm usually entailing dressing up, play food, assorted stuffed animals and baby dolls and usually NOT her brother.  

Lucy came down with the nasty stomach bug that has gone around our house and school for weeks now.  She missed a day with Bon Bon as well as a birthday party she had been talking about for weeks.  But Sunday she was back on track and leading the way to see the 7 baby lion cubs at the zoo (she has chosen to study the baby lions for her science fair exhibit). 

We had a nice trip with Bon Bon and the kids are already asking when "can she come back?" and "I'm sure she'll be back in the Spring" and "why doesn't she just live here?"  All signs of a great time!