Bohemian Rhapsody

Emma likes to go "bye-bye". I can't understand why, since she hates the actual car ride. So we went out as a family the other day and Emma was thrilled and eager until she was strapped in her car seat and the car was moving. The protests began. I asked her if she would like to listen to some music, and she said (miserably) yes. I happened to flip to a station that was playing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. It was right at the beginning and Emma let me know she did not appreciate my choice of music. So I told her to wait, it would get better. Of course, it did! Jim and I became highly animated (while cruising down Ford road) and sang the different operatic parts to entertain our 2 year old. Of course, it also entertained us, but we wouldn't have done it by ourselves (I think). Emma laughed and giggled and enjoyed the show, as did Mary, whose eyes were wide with disbelief. Upon completion of the song, Emma immediately began moaning again about the slings and arrows one must endure in the shape of car rides.

Jim and I tried to figure this out. Emma escpecially enjoys going "bye-bye" with my parents. We came to the conclusion, since they always say she is wonderful in the car for them, that they must engage in some sort of entertainment to pacify the toddler. This led to the mental image of my parents rockin' to Queen with Emma in the car.

That needs to come out in therapy.

Cookie Time

Today we decorated Easter cookies. I don't know why I think a 2 year old would know the difference between these and any other cookies, but it seemed like so much fun anyway. Mary got to watch from the highchair and Emma graciously shared her own cookie with Mary since mean old Mama was not giving her any. I had made the dough the other day and stuck it in the refridgerator until the girls' nap time today. Jim helped roll out and cut out 40 some cookies in the shapes of bunnies, eggs, tulip, and butterflies. I made the frosting and divided it into three different bowls and colored one yellow and the other purple, leaving the third one white. I stuck the frosting into Ziploc bags, flattened out all of the air, and refridgerated them until it was time to snip the little corners and use them as pastry bags. After a family walk around the neighborhood, since the thermometer was topping a sultry 45, Emma got to get messy. She was very excited, although I must inform you that she is not at all selective when it comes to decorating. So she has to put frosting and every type and color of sprinkle available on each cookie. As she squirted piles of frosting on a cookie, Jim would take it and smooth it to a fine layer, dumping the remainder of the pile onto other cookies. At one point, Emma decided art was hunger inducing, and without missing a beat she picked up the cookie she was decorating and ate it without blinking. Chipmunk mouth covered in random frosting and sprinkles, she looked at me and said, "mmmmmmmmmmm!!!". Decorating was pretty much over for her at that point. The focus changed and brought clarity to the countertop full of frosted goodies. She was nice enough to share with Mary, who really didn't need the frosting, either. But it was difficult to persuade her that the entire 3 dozen or so cookies were not on the menu for dinner tonight. We left off with that and I have a couple of dozen cookies to frost myself after they go to sleep. I think I may have to hide them in the freezer if I want them to last until Sunday Brunch. I'll be lucky if I don't eat them all tonight - just to save Emma all of that work....

Colors of Fun

Emma and I died Easter Eggs today. It was only four, yet somehow my hands are stained all over. Emma's, too, but that goes without saying. My little decorator had certain ideas about how long each egg should be left in each color. She would check them carefully with the egg loop, and proclaim them non acceptable and drop them (from a greater height then necessary) back in. Once they had steeped for an unspecified amount of time, she tried to dump them out. That didn't work so well, so I took them out and she directed where each on should be placed on the paper towel. When we had done 3 eggs we mixed the blue dye into the pink and watched it turn "burple". The purple egg was about to stay in the solution forever, but I rescued it. I let Emma play with 2 of the empty egg cup and some (plain) water while I cleaned up. I watched what she would have done with the colored water, had she gotten the chance. There was some not so specific transferring from one vessel to another, and then the contents eventually ended up on the newspaper covered counter. Sure glad that wasn't the dye.

Mum and Papa

I packed the girls up today right after breakfast and trucked up to my Mom's house for the day. Emma had a blast chasing the "Meow-meows" and playing in her "house" and on her "dide" (slide). She has named my mother "Mum", which is her version of what she hears me call her on the telephone. Mary mostly ate, which is what Mary does. My mom even mentioned that it seems that am always feeding her. Like you had to tell ME. Oddly enough, she (Mary) only wants to eat if it comes in a bottle form or on a spoon. Don't even talk to her about nursing, since it obstructs her view of the Very Interesting Things occurring around her. That is only one of the many reasons I am weaning her - or more correctly, she is weaning herself.

Nothing funny to note, except one incident that we keep recounting from last week. Since we are still laughing about it, I should tell it here. Here's the setup: I am sitting on the floor holding Mary in a sitting position when she spits up on herself, me, and the rug. I asked Emma to get me a tissue for Mary, which Emma is very adept at doing. Usually she gets a tissue and pretends to sneeze so convincingly that I sometimes mistake it for real sneezing. So she got a tissue and figured Mary didn't really need it, since she was having a full blown hay fever attack. She took 2 steps and sneezed - fake sneezed, but with her WHOLE body. Kind of like a spontaneous crunched up bow. Then she sneezed again (covering her mouth politely with the tissue she had retrieved). And again. This child could not take a step without "sneezing". Even once she reached me she could not stop sneezing long enough to relinquish the tissue. As a matter of fact she would not let go of it because she was in such dire straights with her "sneezing". I had to get up and get my own darn tissue in the end, because hers was in tatters. By that time the spit-up had nearly dried and left stains. But we keep laughing, and we tell ourselves it was because of the sneezing.

Emma the Conversationalist

Yesterday we took advantage of the sunny weather and went for a nice stroll, the girls and I. We called up Tricia and her 1 year old daughter, Zoe, to join us in some brief exercise. As we were walking along, Emma greeted Zoe ("HI!") a minimum of 4 times and then pointed to her new shoes and said (predictably) "Shoes". Zoe looked indifferent, so Emma repeated the whole conversation with more emphasis. She did this periodically for the whole walk. It occurred to me that she was telling her friend about her new shoes (see last post). They learn so young.

While riding in the car yesterday, Emma and I had a conversation in the way of 20 questions. If I asked the right questions, she would give me answers. Real answers, not just "yes" or "no"! So here was the very first interactive conversation I had with my daughter:

"Emma, what's next to us?" Long pause.....

"Car."

"Yeah! Emma, what did you have for breakfast?"

"Food." This kid is a laugh a minute.

"What kind of food?"

"Toast."

"What else?"

"Milk."

"Yes, and what else?"

"Traw-berries."

"Good job, Emma! What do you want for lunch?"

"Food."

"What kind of food?"

"Noodles."

"Noodles?"

"Yes." This refers to mac and cheese, if you were wondering.

"And what else?"

"Tea." (She likes iced tea)

Emma then lost interest in my banal conversation and pointed out that there were houses we were passing. This was my first real conversation. If you are bored by it, wait until she is 4 and I post conversations. Then again, check back when she is 13 and you should be greatly entertained.

Shoes and other abductions

To set the record straight; I have not ceased to exist. Although my nemesis would want otherwise, I thrive as you read this. So where have I been? Being Mommy. Some weeks the mommy chores get bigger somehow and they all back up with astounding speed. This weekend I managed to make some headway on the encroaching laundry piles and sticky kitchen floor. I won’t say that I’m ahead, merely treading water. My problem has been using the girls’ nap times for something other than housework. That will kill me everytime. So, enough about me, let me tell you about the girls.

Jim and I took Emma and Mary to the mall yesterday. We needed to get them some new shoes and find out what sizes they actually should be wearing. Emma is a size 7 ½ - last year at this time she was a 4. She picked out her own shoes. I couldn’t believe it. She found some tennis shoes (I was looking at summer sandals for the upcoming season) and wouldn’t give up on them. So we tried some on (including the sandals I picked out for her) and put her tennis shoes in a line of 3 and asked her to pick out which one she wanted. The single-minded focus of a two year old is amazing. They are actually very nice white Keds with little flowers embroidered on the toe. Something I would have picked out, so that made me happy. I also bought the sandals. Mary got a pair of pre-walkers because they were on sale and I needed to have something to put on her feet that has not been worn through by Emma. She had some great Robeez shoes that Emma wore, but Emma learned to crawl and walk while wearing the leather moccasins and they look like they are 50 years old. I would love to get her another pair in a pretty spring color but I cannot buy any more shoes for these girls. How many shoes do kids need? Not that many, I tell you. So Mary (a size 3) got a pair of cute white Mary-Janes to get her through half of the summer. As a note on Emma’s Robeez shoes, she inherited a pair from Fiona (Diane’s daughter) that she loves and wears all of the time, even when the red shoes do not match anything she is wearing. However, she has outgrown them and I have to retire them soon - when she is not looking. I have to thank Diane for both of the girls having Robeez - they have been a great gift. If you have not seen these shoes, check out http://www.robeez.com/ .

Well the girls are sleeping and I want to do touch ups on some scrapbooking pages before nap time is over. I will blog soon!

The Fun Never Stops

So Emma had the family party yesterday. Everything was very nice and my mom surprised us with a tasty meal - Thank God for Moms. We had a cake that Jim made (with faboo buttercream frosting) and little Dora sugar candies on top. Emma ate it faster than any of us (surprise!). Children got tours in Emma's new wagon, then they ran around, gifts were opened and Emma now has 1,000 stickers. That is not an exaggeration. Thanks to my nemesis, Derek Brautnick, she received a nice package of 1,000 'stinky' stickers - scratch and sniff for the aughts. With a penance like that I should be immediately transported up to heaven for a glorious eternal life RIGHT AWAY. That should occur just for having received that many stickers. I have hidden the stickers until I can figure out a perfect rebuttal to this gesture. It will surely involve Emma using 1,000 stickers - I just have to figure out how.....

2 Too Quickly

Emma is two today. We had a few friends over and ate Jello Jigglers on Elmo plates and napkins. There were smiley faced cookies proclaiming the happiness of the day. Two! Two years is half of high school. It used to seem like an eternity. But today I cannot understand how two years could compactly create my little girl and her personality. This is a passing from baby to little kid (except for the diapers). I am just horribly confused as to where the time went and why the first two years are over and done with. I sure hope the next years don't fly by without me.

Saturday we will have the family birthday party and she will get her gifts. I think this will be fun. When she woke up today and I told her it was her birthday, she said, "PARTY! PARTY!". Someone has been coaching her, methinks. Well I must go clean up the birthday girl from her snack. I took lots of pictures at the little party today. I hope to post one this evening.

Hero, the movie

The truth is I am coming out of the closet. That would be the closet of martial arts fans who will not admit they like karate movies. I like them. I particularly like the ones with silly sound effects and bad dubbing. They are even better with some native flute music. It is something I have hidden from the world until recently. I guess it took being caught in the act of watching a Jackie Chan flick by a friend of mine who will not stop talking about the incident. Most kind people would quietly forget, but not this friend. So, here I am, exposed for all the blog readers to see. I like martial arts movies. I don't normally endorse movies, but I was thoroughly impressed by this one. Hero is a karate action film along the lines of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which I did not see yet). These are the things that amazed me about this film:

· Most stunts done by the actors
· All filming done on location, no green screen add ins
· It was dubbed and I forgot to notice I watched an entire movie with subtitles.
· There was a complex and multi layered story
· There was an unforeseen twist at the end
· The actors were REALLY good

It was "presented by" Quentin Tarantino, who is a brilliant director and a chop-chop movie fan of the biggest proportion (is it also out of character that I like his movies? Kill Bill has a lot of martial arts in it, too). He had nothing to do with the film directly except to tag his name to add credibility. It was a great movie and I think I might even purchase the DVD.

There you go; see the film.

The Great Escape, Part II

It took Emma less than 1 hour to figure out the door knob covers that are supposed to keep her from opening doors. It took her less than 1 week to figure out how to get out of the crib tent. Yes, our darling little Houdini showed up at our door Sunday morning with stuffed animals in tow and greeted us with a confident, "HI!". I might add that Jim and I were prolonging getting out of bed and hoping the children would just be happy in their cribs until we could motivate our sorry selves (that stayed up too late watching a movie). Emma did not think she should stay in her crib any longer, so she unzipped the crib tent and got out. It was, after all, time to get the day started.

Next week she is starting Calculus. Maybe she can teach it to me.