If this was a preview of summer.....

well  WHOPEE!!!  What a fantastic weekend filled with swimming, Grandparents, running, strawberry picking and jam making, movies, friends and lots of great food.

Happy Hat Day!

Working to keep the kids excited Captain is having Spirit Week this week, with a hat day today!  7 more days!

The Walking Hamburger

Not long ago we ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  It happened to be next door to a burger joint which was advertising their place with a man in a hamburger suit.  The walking hamburger roamed the parking lot for much of our meal.  We were sitting on a patio right off of the parking lot and had a perfect view.   Lucy was terrified.  She kept hiding her eyes and crying "ho ho ho".   She calls anything in a costume a ho ho ho...guess it reminds her of scary Santa.  She says the same thing for people wearing motorcycle helmets and animals that walk upright. 

 We were reading Yummy, Yucky the other day, one of the pages reads "Burgers are yummy".  Lucy immediately started shaking her head and saying 'ho ho ho".   She then began telling me a whole story of which I only understood a few key words "no, ho ho ho, mommy, Emma, Ellie, daddy!"   We read on but she kept turning back to that page and repeating her story.  

We keep finding her reading Yummy, Yucky to herself.  She stares at the hamburger picture, sort of daring herself I believe, to face her fear!  

Of course it's never long before someone comes along with a little support! 

You make me feel like dancin'!

Little Flower Dance Season 2012 ended yesterday with a darling performance.  The girls were in six numbers (so six costumes between the two!) and came home exhausted but totally enthralled by dance!

21 months...and a few days!

In her new favorite jammies, real jammies, no footies, drinking a smoothie out of a glass.   Where is our baby going?

Lucy suddenly seems so big, so independent, so sure!   Lately she's insisted on wearing a bib, the SAME bib, all day long.  Do you know what that thing looks like by bedtime?   I choose my battles and for now that nasty bib doesn't even come close to making the list for "worth it".  Her independence makes her so much fun to be around though.  I laugh my whole day through.  Yesterday we were looking for new shoes.  After trying on one size I wanted her to try on the next larger size just to see if they were a better fit.  She told me "no".  We negotiated, I explained, she said "no theeezz".  Finally, I convinced her after a bite of granola bar, to try on the second pair.  She tried them on and we walked over to the fake rock set up for trying out your shoes.  She got half way up, stopped, sat down, took off the shoes, threw them down and said "NO"!   A girl who knows what she wants.
Not only is she working hard to learn how to negotiate with her family, Lucy's language is also developing.  Right now Lucy speaks in teeny tiny baby sentences.   It kind of feels like we're living with Cookie Monster.  The other night she picked all of the feta cheese out of her salad and then turned to me and said "Chez YUMMY!".   Ahhhh...Me love Lucy!!!

Mother's Day-2012

It was a sweet, simple, fairly ordinary day around here.  Hooray!  

A couple of my favorite moments...

*Snuggling in bed with Lucy this morning and saying to her --I wish you could get momma a cup of coffee, and having her hand me her bottle.  We feel the exact same way about our morning drinks!

*Emma's mother's day card which included "Thanks for saving money for me to go to college"  only Emma!

*Napping for 2 hours, I thought I'd watch a movie but just feel asleep, it was lovely!

*Waking up from my nap and laying there just listening to all the happenings in my house, so full, so happy, so fun.  

We shared a cookie after dinner,  she licked all of the icing off and then handed it to me "for momma" she said!

Good Old Nothing...

 Tonight we had plans to go to Twilight Tuesday at the History Museum.  Boy were we excited.   The girls aren't yet steady Eddie enough on their bikes to safely ride on their own so Emma was going to ride the trail behind and Lucy and Eleanor were going to ride in the bike trailer.   The girls and I  took our bikes out of the shed, packed a picnic dinner and anxiously waited for Kevin to get home.  Around 5:20 Kevin squealed into the drive, and took only enough time to change clothes before trying to attach the menagerie of parts on all our wheels.  Quickly, the happy scene soured.  It's been over a year since our last family bike ride, in fact it's been close to two years.  Since then, we've lost a piece to the trail behind, without which it won't attach to my bike.  Makes riding it a bit tricky.  Another crazy thing has happened over those two years....Eleanor has grown!  So much so that unless we cut a hole for her head to stick out of she's not going anywhere in that trailer.  We all stood around dumbfounded, what had happened to our happy evening?   3 disappointed girls and a  heap of useless wheels.  "Well we just did all that for a lot of good old nothing" Eleanor huffed as she stomped away.  UGH.  I wanted to stomp away too.  Say something like " why do we even try to do anything fun, why can't things just work, it's not FAIR!".  But, I"m the mom, and you know just like there's no crying in baseball, there's no whining in momming.   So, I threw our quilt in the front yard, spread our picnic dinner out and called everyone to join.  Unconvinced and only because they were hungry, they came.  And then, as if on cue, Lu stepped in the hummus.  And we all cracked up, because really, if you can't laugh at a baby covered in hummus then you might as well just go to bed.  The night wasn't what we'd planned, but life rarely is.  It's a constant game of turning what could be a lot of good old nothing into something.

Not only did she fall in the hummus, she sat in the pizza. Thank God for Lucy!

Heaven...

We have a sick baby.  Hopefully just a quick virus, but it has her sisters worried.
Tonight as we were having a snack before bed Eleanor asked why God had to make Lucy sick.  I explained God didn't make her sick, sometimes crummy things happen for what seems like no good reason.
After a moment Emma asked "Mom, have you ever thought why God lets bad stuff happen to good people?".   Her question took my breath away.  Have I ever thought that?  Maybe more like, do I ever stop.  I said yes, I have thought about it.
And then, the flood gates opened.
"Yea, like God made the bad guys"  responded Eleanor.  At this point, my grocery list turned into a  writer's tablet as I scribbled down all they were saying.
"Well, most bad guys are bad because they had a bad childhood" Emma chimed in.
"Mama, will the world ever end?" Eleanor asked.  "Of course!  It's how the story goes, we just don't know if it's going to be a big burst, if it's just going to be gone one day, maybe martians will invade, no one knows"  Emma explained.  "But before the story ends we'll be in heaven, right?"  Eleanor asked.  "I'll be able to see you there won't I, mama?"  she said.  I explained that what we know about heaven is that it's better than anything we can imagine, so I'm certain we'll be together.  "And probably they'll be corn casserole for every meal" Emma imagined.
Eleanor sighed, "I've wondered if in heaven all the people are invisible, like maybe all the heaven people are all around us right now, and we just can't see them.  Like heaven is right here but we don't even know".
Indeed.  Right here.

My tiny philosophers.  Early 2006.

Smile!

Today when Hollywood and I were in the backyard I decided to snap a few pictures.  I said "Smile BIG Lu" and she promptly stuck her finger in her nose.  The more I prodded the more she prodded.  I gave up.

  I did finally get my smile though,  no prodding required!