Saturday, December 31, 2005

Requested Pictures



Pictures of the dollhouse, which is currently living under a tarp in the living room that is continuing metamorphisis (pictures of that later).

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Christmas Time is here!

I bet you are checking this to see how the whole Christmas thing went with the girls. Well, you will not be disappointed! We had a wonderful time at Jim's sister, Karen's, house the Friday before. It was the inaugural family dinner at her new dining room table. This is the table's 4th incarnation and it begins a happy life in her house. My new dining room table arrives this Friday, assuming the room is ready for it. Christmas Eve we went to Papa Saunders and Grandma Linda's house for nibblies and gifts. The girls had such a good time and enjoyed time with their grandparents. We stayed longer than we anticipated and then it took a lot longer to get to Jeff and Lisa's house than we thought. Party start time was at 3 pm and we arrived at 6. Turns out the turkey was on our side. It wasn't done cooking yet. Dinner was ready around 7 and then the true chaos begins. You have to understand that chaos is part of the requirement for my family Christmas gatherings. There is always this awesome, unrestrained period of ripping paper and squeals, with people trying to pass out other gifts and not beingheard above the commotion. It is a grand and wonderful thing. Then we came home (Emma did not sleep all the way home, but thanks to some ingeniously procured bells, caught glimpses of Santa and his entourage) and set you milk and cookies for Santa - with an extra one for Rudolph - and sent the children packin'. Let me tell you that I am on the verge of never buying anything again that says "Some assembly required". We were tired and crabby and the Dora on Dora's Talking Kitchen is large and scary.

The girls loved Christmas morning. Santa did not wrap the large Dora kitchen or the Cinderella table and chairs (slacker), but he did cover up the ENORMOUS hand ma nde dollhouse that dominated the room. The girls didn't even see it because they were so distracted with the other presents. The kitchen was a hit - Emma and Mary both started moving things around and 'cooking' things on it, and pushing buttons and making noise with it. That toy went immediately to the basement, where it can be enjoyed in brief spurts of sanity. The amazing thing about this toy is the ability of the toddler to climb into it and fold herself up like some sort of Houdini wannabe. Honestly, you wouldn't think she would fit - and within 2 minutes time. This picture should explain it.

The girls are still coming down from their week-long high, although I have put away all of the gifts and decorations in their appropriate spots - with labels, of course. Jim is still working on painting wall frames and hopes to get some help from his father on the living room. Just to throw in a wrench, it seems Emma has all but given up nap time. I can't believe it. If I thought I could get nothing done before this, I will be assured of it now. And I am going to try the potty training thing again. We have promise her a big girl bed and her own big girl room if she can do this. Ugh. I really hate potty training.

Monday, December 19, 2005

The Busy Husband


My busy, busy husband has been, well, busy. He began his vacation last week Friday when, consequently, he also began working. Now he will tell you that I am doing this to him, but understand this is his quest. He has decided to put crown moldings, chair rail moldings, sub moldings, and wall frames in the Dining Room and Living Room all by himself. So much for his vacation. He is really making some wicked progress, all things considered. By that I refer to the whole sleeping and eating thing that gets in the way of so many productive moments for all of us. He is about 3/4 of the way done with all of the wood work in the first of the two rooms. To do this he had to, of course, move all of the furniture out of the way. Emma wasn't too happy with all of this commotion. She saw the living room filled with furniture and random wall decor and said, "WOW. This is a Really Big Mess, Daddy. You better clean ALL up. Mama be very, very angry, Daddy. This is a very, very big mess." Leave it to my daughter to point out the obvious. But once the wall frames started going up, Emma was less concerned about the mess. Today after nap time Emma peeked in there and said, "Mama! Daddy's making squares and rectangles for the wall! I LOVE rectangles, Mama!" She even went in and caressed the top of one special wall frame while repeating her undying affection for the shape. I am just glad she hasn't asked him to put up a triangle or a circle. I can't imagine how that would effect the room in the end. Then again, I never considered a crush on a parallelogram.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

The Gingerbread House Fiasco



Mum bought a Gingerbread house kit that she hoped would start a long tradition of joyous bonding time spent meticulously decorating miniature houses with rows of identical candies lovingly placed by her granddaughters while she and I looked on. When we finally unwrapped the prebaked cookies and mixed the frosting it was close to Emma's bedtime and Mary had already given up for the night. I carefully separated the different candies into bowls and lined them up on the counter. Emma was so excited! Look at all of the candy!!!!! I ran the bag-o-frosting, otherwise know as the runny goop. The kit had provided about a pound of powdered sugar with which to make the frosting. Not bad, as I had used the same frosting the day before for cookie decorating, so I felt I would know exactly how to mix the "Royal Frosting" to make the best possible Gingerbread House glue. What I did not count on was that the frosting did not want to stay inside of the flimsy pastry bag the kit provided. Instead, it gushed out of the other end no matter hold I held or rolled the end. It also dripped out of the spout. I tried to put it in the refrigerator between uses, but Emma was too fast and it didn't have any time to harden. Hands were covered in white dripping goop. The counter was speckled with blobs of frosting. My sense of neatness and order was severely challenged. Emma placed candies, randomly, after frosting was placed on the cookie walls and roof. Unfortunately, Emma wanted to use the largest candies in the small areas and the smallest candies on the large expanses of the cookie roof. With foresight that only comes from many cooking experiences with a toddler, we chose to assemble the house after Emma decorated the pieces and went off to bed. After she was tucked in Mum and I used the runny goop to fill the channels where the walls would sit and make the base. The runny goop was very good at filling the channels to create some sort of white lagoon. Then came the roof. The runny goop was piled onto the edges of the walls and the first side was put on. It didn't really stay, so Mum held onto the edge. The second side was carefully balanced on top of the remaining portion of the house. It didn't stick either, so i held it in place. That left the problem of not enough hands to put the remaining frosting on. We held on. The frosting leaked out of the joints and down the house in some awful melting mess that did not really work for cementing cookie walls together. I made more frosting out of Jiffy frosting mix, thinking it would be a lot thicker than the runny goop the kit provided. It held the roof for a little over 2 minutes which was long enough for us to take pictures of the "finished" product. Then the roof began it's slow descent down the sides of the house. So we held onto it again. I added more frosting. The roof would not stay. Mum and I decided that a good stint outside would take care of the frosting being too soft. Seeing as it was 21 degrees outside, we thought it would work nicely. Unfortunately, after some help from Jim, we realized someone would have to hold the roof in place until it hardened a little bit. So I stood, in the snow, in the dark, in the cold and held onto the edges of the precariously balanced roof edges. And I waited. Mom stood in the doorway and tried to make conversation about anything that did not involving frosting or candy. I did ask her why she would buy this for a person she liked. She claims that she thought the kit would be easy! The cookies were already made. I informed THAT was the part I liked doing. I also suggested she might be better off buying such a kit for my sister in law. I think Lisa needs some bonding time with her daughter, just like I had.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Random Thoughts and Diatribes

I have a lot of things to talk about today, but I don't know if I will remember them all. First of all, hot tea, by definition, does not include ice cubes. I just wanted to get that out. Emma wants hot tea every day, thanks to her first experience with it on Thanksgiving. I have hot tea every day at breakfast and during the day, so when Grandma Linda asked if anyone wanted hot tea, Emma piped up. Ever since then, she asks for hot tea at least once an hour. But it is too hot to drink, she tells me, so she wants and ice cube. Let's look at the dialogue that just occurred during dinner - one that drove me to distraction because I couldn't figure out half of it.

Emma: "I want hahtee"

Me: "Happy?"

"No, hahtee"

"Hoppy?"

"Noooooooo, mama, HAHTEE"

"Hot Tea?"

"Yes, mama" (I warm up 1/3 of a cup of iced tea for 30 seconds, making it room temperature tea)

"I want peeping pooting"

"What?"

"peeping pooting"

"Um... Howdy Doody?"

"No, peeping pooting"

I go through 4 or 5 things that aren't really English until I realize she wants her tea in her sleeping beauty mug I just bought her. I clean it out and dump the tepid tea into it.

"Mama, it's too hot. I want icf boob"

"What?"

"Icf boob."

"Ice cube?"

"Yes." I'll skip the explanation I gave her about hot tea versus iced tea and the merits of asking for the one you actually wish to drink and gave her and icf boob anyways. Apparently the tea was warmer than I gave it credit for because the icf boob melted after a while, which precipitated her asking for another one. She rewarded me with, "Thanks, mama. I love iced tea."

The other thing I would like to point out is that dragons are supposed to eat unicorns. On an episode of Dragon Tales today the nearsighted flying unicorn who lost her glasses got stuck between two mountains and Ord the dragon flew up an neatly pulled her out, letting her down gently on the ground. If you are not going to show the dragon eating the unicorn, you should at least keep them far enough apart so that it is believable that the dragon is resisting temptation to devour the fresh mythological meat in front of it. On a happy note, the unicorn found her glasses and the little boy Max found his self worth in the process.

I need to go get the kids into pajamas and change around laundry.