Maggie Sez...

... See you later, Crocodile!

Maggie Sez...

Maggie (shout/singing): DECK! the halls wif bells and howwy, fa wuh la wuh la wuh la wuh la!! Mommy, what comes after "deckthehallswifbellsandhowwyfawuhlawuhlawuhlawuhla?"

Mommy: Tis the season...

Maggie: DECK! the halls wif bells and howwy, fa wuh la wuh la wuh la wuh la!!

Mommy: Tis the season...

Maggie: to be jowwy, fa wuh la wuh la wuh la wuh la!!

Mommy: Don we now...

Maggie: our gaze apparel, fa wuh la wuh la wuh la wuh la la la!!!! (feel free to imagine any melody you prefer for this last part because any is appropriate, no need to stick with the traditional song)

Mommy: Troll the ancient...

Maggie: yule tide cawol, (screaming) FA WUH LA WUH LA WUH LA WUH LA!!!!!!!

Repeat continuously without stopping for about 3 more hours.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches...

We had to take our Christmas tree down today. It was kind of sad to be done with it so soon after Christmas, but we really shouldn't have even left it here alone for just the 3 days we were gone last week... it is seriously that dead. Our insurance agent would have an aneurysm if she knew we had gone away with that fire starter still standing in our living room. It was CRISPY and gnarled and curled up on itself like a grizzly old man. As I was removing the ornaments, it became clear that rather than pulling them off over the end of the branch or unhooking the metal hook, it was far easier to just snap the end of the branch off and let the ornament fall into my hand! Half the tree was scattered on the floor by the time Mike wrestled the lights off. We're in agreement that it's the worst tree either of us has ever had. I believe the girls probably just scared it to death.

But let's end on a lighter note by clicking on the following link and reading a lovely anecdote by Louis Armstrong's wife about the first Christmas tree he ever had, at the age of 40! It's a heart warmer...

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21280

Yes, Maggie, There is a Nana Claus

We did some crafts yesterday because my mom sent Maggie this little foam gingerbread house kit. It was so cute and easy for her to do because each piece was precut and self-adhesive. The only messy part was the glitter glue to stick on the red gemstone thingies, but hey, real fun is never tidy! Nevertheless, she said her favorite part was sticking on the mommy and baby gingerbread people. Thanks, Nana!

Maggie Sez...

... no, but thank you for offering.
(after being asked if she wanted a snack cup of crackers)

... I would have to go get The Grinch out of Whoville and put him on my naughty step and tell him, "You are being very naughty, The Grinch!"

... This is the original.
(informing Dad that he was not watching Frosty Returns or Frosty's Winter Wonderland, but in fact the original Frosty the Snowman holiday cartoon)

... Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Because if the bedbugs start biting, you'll never get to sleep!
(said to Kate at bedtime a few nights ago)

Mommy Sez...

... Whatever you are doing that's making her cry, you better stop it right now!

(repeat approximately 15,000 times a day)

Riddle Me This

About once a week Maggie slips out of the kitchen with a cup of some beverage and then leaves it lying around the living room or play room for Kate to pick up, sample, and inevitably take a quick bath in. Today that beverage was juice, the drop point was the couch, and the amount of unsupervised time Kate had to chug half and then dump the rest on the couch and down her front was approximately 30 seconds.

The mystery here unveiled itself as I pulled off her sodden clothes... she had a Cat in the Hat sticker stuck to her chest! I'm POSITIVE that she did not have any decorations when I put the clothes on her this morning, and I definitely had not started drinking yet at that point. And, she was wearing a onesie undershirt with a pair of pants and a long sleeved shirt over it. Pretty much Fort Knox (hey, it's 36 degrees here today), so how did it get there?!?!

I asked her, but she's not telling.

Multimedia Tuesday

Here's a silly video of Kate. This knee scooting/bouncing thing is her favorite form of locomotion at the moment. She has taken a few actual steps and she stands around no-handed quite a bit, but she's still more confident walking on her knees! I think it looks a little like we're pioneering our own new style of baby hip hop dancing (Creep? Crab? Cranky? Crumbcruncher?) in our living room/dance club, especially since you can hear me cheering her on in the background. I feel like I should've been saying, "Go Katie, Go Katie, It's your birthday!"



And in Art news, here's a painting that Maggie did over the weekend. She informed us that she painted it for Kate. Charming, don't you think? So full of sisterly love and joy. I'm not sure if Mike was trying to create a logo for Maggie's future work or if he was just trying to cheer the piece up a bit with the blue bits on the side.

How Not to Achieve The Perfect Holiday Atmosphere

We got our tree today, put it up in the living room, and decorated it, but something is a little lacking. Mike and I both always look forward to the fabulous smell of a live tree at Christmastime (see, I'm not a complete Grinch). My mom is now allergic to evergreen, so they have to have a fake tree these days and it's never quite the same without that lovely, Christmasy, pine tree smell in the house. And then there's the fact that we have been micro-apartment dwellers for most of our married life and always out of town on Christmas and so have only recently begun to decorate for the holidays ourselves. For that reason, having a live tree in our very own living room is a bit of a novelty that we're growing to enjoy. Last year we got a Douglas fir, and although it was very sappy and kind of a mess, it smelled so incredibly perfect. This year we got a balsam, and it doesn't seem to smell as piney. Maybe it's just this particular tree itself, or maybe it's the species...

...OR maybe it's the fact that I burned the CRAP out of a pot roast today and our entire house absolutely reeks of charred meat and onion soup. I don't even know exactly how it happened. I checked it, it looked fine, next thing I know - beef jerky. Kind of hard to bask in the sweet evergreen smell of Christmas when your hair and sweater smell like meat. Pooh pooh to the Whos!

Maggie Sez...

...Katie has a panty hat!



Maggie did this on her own and came to get me so she could show her handiwork off to me. Kate seemed to be enjoying it.

Happy Tuesday Everybody

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--ee cummings

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation...

Remember this Mother Goose rhyme?

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for its living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Mike and I really loved it after Maggie was born because she's a Sunday's child, and I had to admit that I was a bit stupidly anxious when I went into labor with Kate on a Tuesday that she'd end up a Wednesday's child: full of woe. Over the weekend we somehow got to talking about it and started looking up our birth days. Very strangely, almost all of us were Thursdays except for Amy (Monday), Maggie, and Kate! We also decided to interpret "has far to go" as meaning that we all have lots of adventures ahead of us instead of that our lives are one long slog! Luckily, we never did uncover any Wednesday's children.

Anyway, curious? What day are you? Anybody full of woe?
http://www.progenealogists.com/dayborn.htm

Hello, My Name Is... Hallah Lujah

Ok, my friends and relatives who are in the market for baby names, someday will be, or are just curiously appalled by these sorts of things, here is the best baby name resource I've ever run across. If only I'd known about this site before we had the girls. I guess we could change Kate's name to K-8.

The Utah Baby Namer
http://wesclark.com/ubn/

Why name your kid Augustus when you can name him Helamans Warrior?

Come On, Get Happy!

Don't you wish sometimes that you could go back to a time when a couple of pairs of your sister's soft fleece pj pants could bring you such joy?

Maggie Sez...

Two in one day (before naptime even)! Here's another for the vault:

Me: Kate's a little Sugarbooger! Are you my little Sugarbooger, too?

Maggie: I'm a booger digger.

Maggie Sings...

(this morning at the breakfast table while we talked about going to the grocery store)

...Mommy and Daddy and Maggie and Kate/are going to the shopping/and they won't get in trouble.

Mike suggested, "are going to go shopping/and it's gonna be GREAT!"

but Maggie then switched it up to, "are going to the shopping/and are not gonna be nakey (naked)!"

I guess being clothed is how we are not going to get into trouble??

All I Want Is What I Have Coming to Me

Today I tried to write a top ten list of things I love about my house, just as a counterpoint to my whiny rant from the other day. I didn't end up posting my list because I decided it sounded awful and consumerist (I love my huge dryer, I love my fancy dishwasher). The only item that didn't sound like Lucy's letter to Santa in Charlie Brown's Christmas was "#1: I love that the screaming sound upstairs is just my daughters playing and not my idiot neighbors fighting." And while this gem doesn't come off as hideously materialistic, it does reek of misanthropy. I'm turning into a horrible person.

Pass the Ibuprofen, Please

So, what's up with your house?

My house? I don't know. It's turquoise. We live there. I'm trying to forget how much we owe on it and how much work needs to be done. What do you mean what's up with it?

Wasn't this blog supposed to also be about buying a fixer-upper starter home with yard work and decor and being Suzy Homemaker and all that? Not just goofy stuff your kids say? What's up with your house?

To quote the great Liz Lemon... Blerg.

Owning your own home isn't nearly as much fun as people try to make it out to be. I'm going to come right out here and say, "Hey, people, what's the attraction?!" I think people rave about home ownership because Misery Loves Company. And this is coming from the person in our family who has selfishly avoided doing any of the yard work. I also haven't drained the boiler, sawed through the kitchen cabinets, or installed any cat doors. Mike's done all that. (Although, in my defense, I did Murphy's Oil Soap all the hardwood floors, scrub the grime out of the fridge/freezer and off of all the cabinets, and do most of the unpacking. I'm not exactly sitting around eating bon bons and watching Oprah, OK?!) But still, it's kind of a bummer spending your Saturday watching the kids AGAIN so your husband can trim the hedges - after you spent the whole week scrubbing toilets and mopping floors! What day can we set aside for lying on the couch, eating bon bons, and watching Oprah???

So anyway, we moved in, did a lot of fixer-upper-ing, plateaued in terms of how much crafty homeowner projects we could stand - I think I remember myself saying, "I don't even give a CRAP about (fill in the blank) anymore" several (hundred) times - and then we've kind of been letting things lie around undone for a while. But we're kind of anal retentive type people, and those undone things started to mess with our minds after that while, particularly that blue painters tape all around the perimeters of the upstairs bedrooms and landing - most particularly in the girls' bedrooms, especially since Kate is now mobile. That blue tape was really starting to irritate. So this past weekend, Mike took a day off work and we dropped the girls off at Camp Gram and Grandpa in New Hampshire and we painted that dadblasted, frickafrackin', craptastic, primed-but-never-actually-painted wood trim in the girls' bedrooms and part of the landing. Two days and that was all we were able to complete because it takes so infernally long to paint trim and our eyes were going blind from the super white Polar Bear paint.

Disclaimer: OK, so we also did some shopping (LL Bean! Borders! Yippee!) and went out to dinner TWICE - two nights in a row, which is probably a record for us since we NEVER eat out anymore. And for one of those dinners we even went out with some of our FRIENDS (I know, it's true, we really do still have some friends, seriously.) and didn't come home until 10:30! PM! No joke. And we did sleep in both days - until 9:00! And then we ate donuts for breakfast without anything nutritious to go with them. It was wild.

So we didn't exactly just work ourselves down to the bloody nubbins or anything. (What was I complaining about? Oh, yeah...) Still, seems like you should be able to get through more than just the trim in 2.25 rooms in a whole weekend, but sadly, no. And that cabinet in the upstairs hall that needs to be mounted to the wall because it's tall and narrow and tippy still isn't secured and therefore cannot be filled with all the junk in the cardboard box in the corner of our bedroom. And let's not even talk about the grody carpet in the basement that we talked about ripping out. But... there's always next weekend. There will always be next weekend. And there will always be more projects hanging around just waiting to fill up next weekend so that the only bums warming our couch are tiny and wearing a Sesame Street diaper and Dora the Explorer underpants. Blerg.

If It Quacks Like a Duck, It's a Maggie

Here are some Halloween pics. As usual, there are a ton on Snapfish.

Playing in Mike's freshly raked pile of leaves in the afternoon. Maggie liked to lie buried almost up to her chin and make bouquets of leaves, but Kate was more comfortable on the edges of the pile where she could move around more freely.


Another pile in the front yard.


Trick or Treating - we only hit a few houses on our block. There weren't a lot of people giving out candy, but it was plenty for Maggie's first time out. She did beautifully, ringing the doorbells, saying Trick or Treat, and thanking the people. She's an expert now!


Kate chewed up half the candy bars in their wrappers! We had to clean out the drooly ones every time our doorbell rang. We did let her have her first Dum Dum lollipop.


Maggie organizes her loot - of course.

Kitten Sandwich

I need to go to bed, but I just ran across this video in an article on the history of Swedish Fish (yes, this is what I do with my free time after the girls go to bed) on mentalfloss.com, and I just had to share it here in light of my previous post about Maggie's Catburger. Bon Apetit!



PS - Mike wants me to add that he LOVES Swedish Fish.

Maggie Sez...

... I love Earl (pause) with ketchup!

This comes after her recent Catburger Incident, when she raced around the house with the toys pictured below yelling "Catburger!" each time she ran past me.



We're keeping a close eye on the cats for now, but when should we really start to worry?!

My mom has demanded (via phone and facebook) that I get my rear in gear and put up some new stuff on here. Yes, mother.

Last night, Mike carved the girls' pumpkin. Maggie requested triangle eyes, a happy smile and 10 teeth. It's got nine teeth and looks a bit as though it's a victim of British dentistry practices, but she had a marvelous time watching Daddy scoop guts, so it's all good. She insisted on going out on the front porch to check on it this morning right after she woke up. Still there!





As for Kate, she's been up for an hour or so the past few nights hollering crazy stuff from her bed that sounds very much like "Hey Turtle" and "Hey Daddy." She also has possibly said "Bye bye" a couple of times now. Nothing in the Mama category though, of course! I also bet she'll take a step here any day now. She can zip around the house hanging on to the furniture pretty well, so it's only a matter of time. Where'd my baby go??

Mike Sez...

... My tight end just made a huge gain!

No more donuts for you Mr. Fowler. :)

High Five!

Last night was our first attempt at going all night without a diaper and it was a success! Maggie was as proud of herself as we were of her this morning. Fingers crossed that it continues to go so well.

Kate Update

Kate's 9 month check up was today and she is weighing in at 18 lbs. 14 oz. (51st percentile) and about 27 inches (82nd percentile), so she's long and lean and doing just great. She and Maggie both got flu shots and Kate had to have some blood tests for anemia and lead, but she survived. Both girls took excellent naps this afternoon, of course!

Maggie Sez...

(in the car on the way to the airport - this is a bit of an oldie but a goodie)

...We're going to work.

Me: No, we're going to the airport to fly to Oklahoma. Remember?

Maggie: Daddy goes to work.

Usually, but today we're all going to the airport.

Daddy works and Maggie plays.

What does Katie do?

Katie wahs.

Like the babies on the bus - wah, wah, wah?

Yes. Daddy works, Maggie plays, and Katie wahs.

What does Mommy do?

Dishes.

Will He Hold Your Purse?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/10/04/will_he_hold_your_purse/

Seriously. That pretty much sums it up.

Kate's Spokesbaby Career Takes Off

Kate recently recorded a foreign-language TV commercial for her favorite snack treats, Baby Mum Mums. Huge profits are expected to start rolling in any second. Here's the clip (sorry we couldn't add subtitles; that would've made it perfect!):

As for what's been going on with us the last almost a month since my previous post... insanity. In the interest of saving space and not lighting my keyboard on fire, here's the quickie version:

Connecting flights, lots of crying, car seat snafu, Alex's wedding, cute flower girl, lots of crying, missed reception, up all night, lots of crying, fun at Nana's & Papa's, learning to crawl, babbling constantly, sleeping poorly, lots of crying, missed the zoo, Eric's wedding, catching up with old friends, sangria swirls and cheese fries at the Mont, rush to airport, stupid car seats, connecting flights, no stupid frickety fracking changing table, LOTS of crying, 10 days worth of cat barf, why does our house still smell like an old lady?, potty training, poop on the floor, big girl panties, attempted stair climbing and couch standing, falling, lots of crying, teething?, frozen peas, lots of crying, sleepless nights, laundry, laundry, laundry, potty success & "chocolate treats," hissy fits, lots of crying. Whew!

Daddy Gets Time Out

Tonight after dinner, we were hanging out with the kiddos and Mike stepped on Maggie's foot and she accidentally fell down. He immediately apologized and helped her up, but she ordered him to go sit on the Naughty Step!! I joked that he now had to sit there for the next 32 minutes and prompted Maggie to tell him, "Daddy, the reason I am putting you on the Naughty Step is..." (that's the routine endorsed by Supernanny so of course we do whatever she says). We were rolling. But then, in the most serious voice, the most dead on impression of yours truly, she told him as he sat there on the stairs, "I'll be right here in kitchen doing some dishes, but I'll be back in a minute."

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Mad Hatters

Top O' the Mornin' To Ya

PS - I promise that is a clean potty.

Potty Party

Maggie asked to watch her "I Can Go Potty!" dvd this morning. She's watching it right now. However, when I asked her if she wanted to put on panties or sit on her potty and try to go, I got an emphatic NO! I'm not sure what to think of that. I'm torn because I think it's past time for her to be potty trained and if I just buckled down and did it for a week, she'd be trained even though she's mightily resisting it. My conflict comes from the fact that we are going to fly across country in two weeks and then have to fly back 10 days later - 4 flights, hours and hours crammed on a plane and running through airports, with an 8 month old too. I just can't see that working out with a newly potty trained 2 year old who will be crazed from the chaos as it is and eating and sleeping sporadically. Still, I feel like we're losing time here, treading water on this potty thing. I guess there really never is a good time to do it. Will she be 4 years old by the time I get around to it?! I hope not. She's going to want to go to school eventually, right? Should I just bite the bullet and do it or would I be foolishly setting myself up for hauling 3 sets of pee sodden clothes, a weeping toddler, a bawling infant, and a seething husband through DFW airport with another 30 minute flight left to go? I think we're going to have to postpone until late September. Ugh.

Amen, Sister.

http://www.doublex.com/section/kids-parenting/katie-roiphe-my-newborn-narcotic

Exactly. I'm at the point of dearly looking forward to the day when my girls will just be my children and I'll be free to read non-fiction, go out for drinks with friends, watch a movie and actually pay attention to it, have a conversation about politics, care about getting my hair cut, work, wear shoes daily, etc. But I'm totally not there yet. I'm still enjoying my vacation to end all vacations. (However, when did you last take a vacation in which you worked yourself to death? The vacation analogy is a little lacking. It's perhaps more like taking a couple of years off to join the Peace Corps digging latrines in a third world country. Extremely rewarding and exotic, but also dirty and exhausting.)

That's My Girl

I was changing Maggie's diaper just now and I noted that her diaper rash is almost healed up. I said, "Soon you'll be right as rain."

Maggie said, "NO!"

You won't be right as rain?
No!

Will you be...um...left of center, then?
YES!

Sweet.

House Warmed

We hosted a barbecue at our house on Saturday afternoon for 19 adults and 13 kids (including ourselves). What is the aftermath of such revelry? It's 10 am on Monday and Maggie is up in her room singing and reading and playing by herself. She normally gets up around 7 or 8, so by 9 am I was starting to worry that I hadn't heard one peep out of her. I went up there and found her sitting quietly in bed humming and reading an alphabet book. She told me to go away! An hour later she's still up there, and although the humming has escalated to singing, she's still sitting in her bed. No breakfast even! Yesterday she fell asleep on the couch right before dinner and we could hardly wake her up to eat and take her bath. I'm starting to think that it's going to be Wednesday before she returns to her normal self! Kate, on the other hand, hasn't missed a beat. She had a blast, skipped a nap, rejected one feeding and then ate tons with both hands shovelling in food, smiled her face off, and then slept like a log. They're a couple of party animals, I tell ya.

Even though we've only lived here from a couple of months and there was tons of work to be done to get the house and yard ready and the food prepped, we really wanted to finally throw a party for our friends at our house instead of always being the guests. Everything turned out very well I think. We wanted to do real BBQ, not just burgers and dogs, so I made a brisket, Mike grilled barbecue chicken, and we bought some ribs from a good nearby BBQ restaurant (and we did have hot dogs for the kids anyway). I also made macaroni and cheese, my great-grandmother Ruby's coleslaw, and pecan pie. Jane and Dale brought freshly shucked corn on the cob from a local farm stand, green salad, fruit pizza, and peaches and cream pie. Friends brought some buffalo chicken dip and tons of desserts, too much of which is left in our fridge. I confess that I had pie for breakfast! We also have way too much beer left over. What do the parents of two very young children do with tubs of beer sadly getting warm and skunky in our basement? Too bad we don't know any local college kids. There should be a charitable place where old folks can drop off their excess party liquor for needy young college kids. A beer pantry. I'm sure there are adverse legal ramifications keeping such a brilliant idea from becoming reality. The world is simply awash in unjust inequality.

We also got (somewhat) lucky with the weather. It was supposed to be both hot and raining - how is that fair? - but the sun came out and stayed, so it was merely hot and humid and sunny and we would have been dry if not for the sweating. The kids all piled into our kiddie pool and had a ball. Additionally, there was sidewalk chalk drawing, tricycle derby, whiffle ball, and some light gardening. Maggie drank at least part of what appeared to be about ten juice boxes (she says it was "forty") and then suffered the worst diaper rash ever. Well, you live and learn, even at the age of two. She also thieved a baker's dozen of brownies and cookies. I'm kind of shocked that she didn't throw up!

A special shout out to Amy and Lee and Jared, those brave childfree souls who knew in advance that there would be a mess of kids and came anyway! I hope you at least ate well. Come over and I'll give you a bunch of beer as a reward!

Yesterday as we continued to clean up, we found a juice box behind the toilet, a small stack of stones in the corner of the kitchen near the table, a fork in the garden, a beer hidden behind the deck railing, a pair of kid's Crocs (Charlie's), and several indoor toys left out in the yard to get rained on. All telltale signs of a good time been had. Hopefully there will be many more parties to come - although I think our next one will be pot luck!

Maggie Sez...

... I need to get up off my eatin'.

You're finished with your breakfast and you want to get down from the table? Yes.

Apparently you don't actually have to be born in the South to inherit redneck genes!

Maggie Sez...

...Mmmmm starts with donuts!

She's been doing a lot of, "Cat starts with C. Mommy starts with M. TV starts with T and V," sort of stuff lately. Well, this afternoon we stopped by Dunkins to get more ground coffee and since I'm not the kind of Nazi who takes a small child to a donut shop and doesn't buy them a donut - and since she asked an elderly couple in the store if she could have a dunkin donut - I got Maggie a bag of Munchkins. She really liked them.

Maggie Gets a Hair Cut

We've never been able to bring ourselves to cut Maggie's hair so far because we love the curls too much. However, I felt the time had more than come to do it especially since she's in my brother's wedding next month. Nothing drastic took place, just a shaping up and leveling out all the crazy lengths, no bangs or anything like that. She cried a bit at first, but once the stylist gave her a comb to hold - Maggie likes to help - and I started talking to her about the animals on her smock, she calmed right down. As you can see here, by the time she got her 2 lollipops at the end, she was quite cheerful! The certificate has some locks of her hair taped to it - so cute. We'll put it in her baby book.











After lunch we picked blackberries in Gram & Grandpa's yard. She loved it!

Beach Babies

My friend Amy was so nice to invite us to go to the beach with her and her mom last Friday. It was great because I really could not have taken the girls by myself - all three of us were like pack mules hauling kids and gear the block and a half from the car to the water! The girls had a total blast, the water wasn't TOO cold, and the only sunburn sustained was on the top of my right foot! Weird. Anyway, Maggie loved jumping in the surf, chasing sea gulls, and knocking over the sand castles that Amy built for her. She also sidled up to some kids playing nearby and took their pail and shovel! They just sat there watching her play with their toys until I went and hauled her away. Next time we go to the beach hopefully we won't need so much baby stuff and diapers and will have more room in the bag for sand toys. Around lunch time, we went over to Amy's in-laws' house for lunch and a swim in their pool where the water was considerably warmer. Kate LOVED the pool, kicking her feet, splashing with her hands, and laughing out loud. Maggie floated in the pool chair and was Queen of the Pool. Pretty much as soon as we got in the car to go home, I looked back to see both of them sound asleep in their car seats - they slept all the way home! It was a super fun day - thanks Amy and Karen!

Pretty Pretty Princess

Maggie is going to be the flower girl in my brother Alex's wedding in September. We got the dress in the mail the other day and I took some pictures of her in it just to show my sister-in-law and mom how it looks (for the wedding, it will actually have a purple sash without the flower). She's going through a phase of not liking to have her picture taken, so she makes goofy faces and turns away from the camera. Here are a few good shots that I finally managed to squeeze out of her:

Maggie Sez...

... Maggie needs a bike!

She's been saying this now for months and I keep telling her to ask Santa for it. However, around here, by the time Santa comes she won't be able to ride a bike because of the 10 feet of snow on the ground. Plus the poor child doesn't have anything to do in her new backyard besides dig in a weedy dirt "garden." So we got her a trike. And a slide.







Kate likes it too.


And so does Mike!

Impressionism

Our House in the Rain


Snowman with Paw Prints


Maggie is a very serious artiste.

She's Asking For It

Kate does not want to nurse. Kate does not want a drink of juice. Kate does not want any Cheerios. Kate wants to cry.

Kate does not want to play with that toy. Kate does not want to look at that book. Kate does not want to watch cartoons. Kate wants to kick you while she screams bloody murder.

Kate does not want to walk around the house. Kate does not want to look out the window. Kate does not want to lie down in her crib. Kate wants to knit her brows together and make angry barking noises at you.

Kate does not want that Tylenol. Kate does not want you to rub Orajel on her gums. Kate does not want that stupid frozen anything. Kate wants you to attempt to hold her while she screeches and tries to flop out of your arms onto the floor.

Kate does not want you to comfort her or entertain her in any way. Kate wants you to dump her on the curb in the rain, go back into the house, lock all the doors and windows, go down to the basement, sit on the dryer in the dark and eat an entire bag of potato chips by yourself.

New News

A couple of days ago we noticed that Kate has FINALLY cut her two middle bottom teeth. Actually, I noticed when she bit me with them! They're just a tiny edge of sharp whiteness right now and it's done nothing to make her less whiny, but there they are! Congrats to Kate!

Girls Gone Wild

A Little Silliness


Party Hardy


Oops


Maybe She Had One Too Many


Sleeping It Off


Kate Gets the Last Laugh

Maggie Sez...

... But I have more foot dancing to do on the drive walk.

After I asked her to stop jumping in rain puddles in the driveway and come inside for dinner last night.

Lesson Learned

If you have PVC plumbing you can flush those "flushable" baby wipes and cleaning wipes. If you have cast iron plumbing, as we do, you can not. Cast iron pipes are apparently rough on the inside and the wipes get hung up on the sides of the pipes. Toilet paper disintegrates before it can accumulate enough to clog the pipe, but the wipes stay stuck. Also, we learned that if you flush your floss down the toilet with your cast iron pipes, you can build up a floss ball big enough to impress the Guiness Book people while you flood your basement in sewage. All these things are good to know. Also, rather expensive to know. I thought I'd give you guys this info for free. I'm generous like that.

To Make a Short Story Long...

This is how story time goes in our house these days:

Mom: Old MacDonald had a farm
Maggie: Where's the E?
Mom: Right here. EIEIO.
Maggie: Where's the E?
Right here. And on...
Where's the O?
Right here. And on that farm he had a - what's that Maggie?
Fersie! *giggle*
That's not a horsie! You know what that is. He had a ....
*snicker* Fersie!
He had a cow.
*maniacal laughter* COW!
EIEIO
What's this?
A cow?
What's this?
The cow's head?
What's this?
I don't know what you're pointing at. The spot on the cow's hide? It's a brown spot?
It's not a fersie, it's a cow!
With a moo moo here.
That's a bird.
And a moo moo there.
That's a bird.
Here a moo, there a moo.
That's a bird.
Everywhere a moo moo.
That's a ...
Yes! That's a bird! Jeez.
It's red.
Old MacDonald had a farm.
Where's the E?
EIEIO!!!!

This is why people teach their kids to read to themselves. If they didn't get so annoying about it, I guess you'd just go on reading to them forever and they'd end up illiterate. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Kate Sez...

...HA! HAAAAAAAAAArrrrgh! HA!

Mommy says, "Ha!"
Katie says, "HA!"
Ha! HA! Ha! HA!

Katie laughs and topples over.

Too Cute

Yesterday afternoon, I watched from the front yard as Mike and Maggie took a walk down the street, their backs to me. Mike was strolling along completely normally holding on to the hand of what appeared to be a Muppet run-jump-skipping at his side. Mop of curly hair bouncing, gangly arms and legs flying out in all directions, and her OU crocs looking exactly like a pair of gigantic red and black cartoon feet. I couldn't hear her talking, but I'm sure her squeaky (now nearly constant) dialog would have fit the picture perfectly. All she needs now is an orange fun-fur coat! Please send all fan mail to:

Fraggle Maggie
The Big Blue House
Sesame Street

PS - Maggie Sez... "It's a wonderful day to take a walk!"

Calling All Carnivores

Another reason why it's nice to have your own house is BACON! I fried a whole package of bacon this morning for breakfast and it was delicious. MMMM .... bacon. It's the only pork product I really like. And when you live in a crowded apartment it's just not worth it to spend three days being grossed out about how your underwear and your toothbrush and your pillow smell like smoked, fried meat. But the windows are open and the cross breeze is freshening up the air as we speak, so we can have our bacon and eat it, too.

Wonderdad

Today, Mike mowed the grass, went to Home Depot, and grilled hot dogs out on the deck on his new grill. I asked him if he felt like a Dad. He did.

However, in true Mike fashion, he was drinking a cup of coffee while grilling instead of a beer. :)

Maggie Sez...

...I dreamed about sheeps!

What were they doing? I asked.

...Baa-ing!

Were they fighting criminal cyberdogs?

...Yes!

Random Thoughts

...from a person who can't string thoughts together into coherent paragraphs right now!

*I've recently rediscovered Nilla Wafers and they are so delicious. With or without banana pudding. Yum yum!

*Earl has somehow managed to injure himself and has a hand print-sized, hairless, scabby patch on his side. He doesn't seem to care about a bit except that he enjoys licking it incessantly. Thanks a million to my cousin and generously on-call virtual vet, Dr. Sexy Hair, for her advice!

*I'm not sure at this moment why we bothered to buy a house when we could have just driven a dump truck load of dollar bills up Mount Washington and chucked them all over the side. It would have saved us a lot of time and backache.

*We've entered the Age of the Soggy Cheerio around our house. I remember this phase now from Maggie's baby days. Soggy Cheerios stuck to the couch, soggy Cheerios stuck to the bottom of my foot as I walk through the kitchen, soggy Cheerios hiding amongst the toys and in between the pages of board books, soggy Cheerios clinging to the sides of the trash can and the sink and the cabinets and the fridge, soggy Cheerios ground into all of our clothes. But boy doesn't Kate sure like them. Yay for soggy Cheerios!

*We have a sewage pipe in the basement that we discovered to have a rusted hole in the side of it. The plumber comes on Friday to install the new dishwasher and he's going to take a look at it. There's a chance it's old and no longer in use or some kind of vent pipe, in which case it won't be a huge disaster. I'm not holding my breath. The plumber is also going to switch my washing machine hook ups so that hot water comes out when it's set on hot and cold water for the cold wash. How exciting.

*Maggie has started to pronounce things with a funny, vaguely Joisey accent, like: swahft for soft or keyouch for couch or swahcks for socks. Maggie sez... I doh woahna teak a beeyath! I don't think it's really a Boston accent. I have no idea where she's getting it from.

*I think we're going to go for a walk around the neighborhood and swing by Dunkins to pick up some more coffee as soon as Kate wakes up from her nap. It's actually sunny outside!

Maggie Sez...

... Katie puh-tatie, Turtle puh-turtle, Daddy puh-taddie, and Earl puh-terl.

but if Mommy says "Maggie puh-taggie" then Maggie sez...

NO!!!

PS - She never says Mommy puh-tommie. Weird. And Katie and Turtle are the main ones she says all the time now.

Photos

Kate's First Guitar Lesson


Miss America Celebrates the 4th in her Garden


The Girls Relax