Birthday muffins

One follow up to Lizzie's birthday. At school there is a birthday celebration, and children bring in muffins or cupcakes to share with the class. Lizzie brought in more pumpkin muffins. On the way home from school, I asked here about the birthday celebration and the muffins. She said they "tasted like fart." When I asked her if that was a good thing she said, "Yessss, I ate it."

Finally 4

Lizzie has finally turned 4. Seems way overdue, all her friends from school have been 4 for a while. We celebrated with Irene, Ronan & Sarai, Alma & Axel, Liam & Ruthie, Emma & Abby, Olivia & Maddie. Lizzie liked the idea of a cooking party, so we did the following. Phase 1: kids decorate aprons and chefs hats with markers and fabric markers. Phase 2: kids decorate pre-baked pizza crusts with toppings of their choice, cook the pizzas, and then eat their pizzas. Phase 3: kids decorate cupcakes, and eat the cupcakes. Lizzie chose pumpkin muffins, no loud singing and no candles because she might get shy. The party seemed to be a great success. There were no tears, no fights, and everyone had a great time with the activities. Yay!

New Pictures Posted!

Finally -- we've posted some new pics for the girls.  You'll find some summer vacation pics that hadn't already been posted, then new pics through fall.  Enjoy!

Cleese, Clackers, Lions & Bears. Ah-some

Well, that is what it sounds like when a 2 year old (Alice) is trying to say the following words: "cheese, crackers, wine & beer. Awesome." Yes, Alice's favorite snack is cleese and clackers. Her favorite (non-bedtime) book is "cleese book," aka Ratatoulli mini-book about food. The other day, Lizzie and Alice were saying lions and bears back and forth across the table. It was a funny day, especially because when a 2 year old says lions and bears, it sounds like wine and beer. Actually the game may have started with Alice saying wine and beer... Ah-some!

Pop-Pops

In a previous post, Eric wrote about 'Cair', Alice's love of the before-bedtime ritual of 5-15 minutes of time with either mom or dad in the rocking chair.  Officially, it's a time to cuddle and settle down; unofficially, Alice often uses the time to jump in my (or Eric's) lap in a weird sort of cuddle-mosh-lovefest with her bunny and the parent du jour.

Recently, through some joint initiative, Alice and Lizzie have established their own bedtime 'cair' routine.  But it's not called `fair' at all.  It's called "Pop-pops."  (I have no idea why, of course; I never do.  I am an obtuse parent with an opaque atrophied sense of imagination...)

In Pop-pops, Lizzie gets on the rocking chair and invites Alice to climb up with her in a sort of nested straddle, then the two rock together while Lizzie says sweet soothing things to encourage sleep.  In true young-kid fashion, the gentle snuggle quotes suddenly when Lizzie says in a totally matter-of-fact tone, "Okay Alice, that's it.  Tim to go to bed now," while unceremoniously shoving Alice off of the chair.  So sweet.  Sort of, anyway.  We don't raise the bar too high around here!

It finally happened.

One of Alice's favorite activities this fall (and late summer), has been picking and eating "teeteetoes," or tomatoes. She'll lift the electric fence over her head, and go into the garden and start picking and eating cherry tomatoes. She's pretty good, and gets ones that have turned mostly orange or red. Strawberries are a different story...she likes them green. Anyway, today she was picking teeteetoes when I looked over and she had a thai dragon chili pepper in her mouth. She bit off the end, and I yanked it out of her mouth. I don't know what made her cry, the pepper or me prying her mouth open to fish out the end of the pepper. Luckily for her, and true to form, she picked a green one, not a red one, so it wasn't that hot (I checked).

Crash!

Alice fell down the stairs the other day. A real fall. You see, going down on a small riding tractor doesn't count (Alice did that a few months ago). After she fell, she cried, I comforted her, then she climbed from my lap onto the side table, jumped onto the couch, and did a somersault off the edge of the couch. I told my lithe Ron law that I wished she would get hurt sometime so she would have some fear instead of none at all.

Cair

Alice's new cair game is to stand in my lap and press Bobby to my face and then press her face against Bobby. Its very cute, but unfortunately sometimes she gives me a head-butt. Update, she also likes to take my finger and point to all the "tars" in yaddie when we read it during "cair." She'll alsopoint to the sharks face.

Me and Mommy and Daddy and not Alice.

Today on the way to school, Lizzie proclaimed that she wanted to do pasting work with Mommy and Daddy while Alice was sleeping. Then she turned to Alice and said, "me and Mommy and Daddy and not Alice." So sweet!

Potty-mouth

Yes, Lizzie is almost 4, so she is learning her swear words! Just kidding, although we have heard a few... On the other hand, Alice is spending a lot of time on the potty, and she is learning lots of new words from the books that have been dedicated to the bathroom. Good thing...her vocabulary could use some improvement. She seems to be interested in animals the most right now. A week or so ago it was colors -- she knows most colors, but gets them wrong most of the time. There's a page in Yaddie (where's that fish) that has many different colored starfish. First she wanted to look at the stars ("tar, tar, tar"), but then she started getting interested in the colors. Now we need to get some ABC books and some counting books...

Bou, Teedalee

Lizzie and Alice's favorite games to play together are Bou and Teedalee. Bou is the game of bouncing on their beds before going to sleep. I'm sure there are some movies on Picasa. Teedalee is the game of romping on the couch, or other piece of furniture, or Mom or Dad. Very silly. Update, there are two other games similar to teedalee. They are called teedala and teedaloo.

2

Alice's birthday isn't for a few weeks, but oh my she is acting like a 2 year old. During a meal she'll exclaim "yucky," then "more," then "no," followed by eating whatever is in front of her. Its very funny. Sometime she'll say "yucky" and then throw her bowl...

Writing

As well as the recently mentioned drawing spree that Liz has been on, she has also been writing words lately. Mostly this means she is stringing together random letters, but she's trying. When we coach her, she can sometimes put together a simple word. As well as her own name, I think she can write Mom and Dad, and maybe Alice.

Potty time.

Alice made a nice big pee on the potty on Saturday (the 8th). This is her first real pee on the potty, i.e. the first time she's tried to pee on the potty and succeeded. She's done a number of pees on the potty before bath, but this was a real one during the day. So, yes, Alice is potty training. She had a nasty diaper rash, which turned out to be fungus, so we decided to put her in underpants to help clear it up. Side note: medicine works better. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, its hard to get her to wear a diaper any more. Time to get with the program kiddo!

School

Lizzie started her third year of Montessori preschool last week. Seems to be going OK now, but there war some hiccups. First is that as the youngest kid in her class and the only one who is not 4, she doesn't get to stay for the afternoons. On the first day of school, I had to fetch her from the classroom and as we were leaving, one of her classmates told her that she was a big girl and she could stay late. In the lobby Liz got very upset that she could not stay late. I think she feels like she is not one of the big kids. Second, there is a new teacher in Lizzie's classroom. Lizzie clearly misses her old teacher, Miss Danielle. Today I asked Lizzie to draw a picture for Miss Caitlin and then gave Caitlin some advice on how to break the ice with Lizzie. Once they got talking, Liz was happy to go into the classroom. You see, there had been some crying and clinging to parents at drop-off previous days. Hopefully that is behind us. Lizzie's job in the classroom right now is to prepare snack for the class. She seems to like it, and its good that she gets some responsibility. Miss Michelle tells me that the kids do 2-3 week rotations on different classroom responsibilities. Lizzie's best friend at school is Irene. I'm glad she's bonded with another kid there. Last year Lizzie and Seton became good friends, but Seton moved away to Colorado. Liz still talks about her, and each time I explain that Seton had to move away. When I tell her that we moved from Virginia to New Hampshire, she seems to get the analogy. That reminds me that the other day we were looking at pictures on the computer, and we saw a picture of Anastasia. Liz claims she remembers who Anastasia is (friend from Virginia). She also claims to remember her old house in Virginia after seeing pictures.

The artist

Lizzie has turned into a prolific little artist. Her primary tools are markers, paper, and a stapler. She draws wonderful pictures, creating scenes that use the whole piece of paper. She draws people, monsters (eek!), the sun, grass, the sky, clouds, cars (for her sister, who loves cars), butterflies, jellyfish, hearts, and much more. She makes books, using a few drawings stacked together, folded and then stapled at the fold. She makes paper plates by drawing on a piece of paper and then folding/curling the edges up. She makes fans by folding a piece of paper like an accordion and then turning the end over and stapling it. She makes bags, by folding a piece of paper in half and stapling around the edges and leaving an opening. She makes paper airplanes, which don't really fly (but she's a bit young to be making ones that actually fly). The list goes on. There must be many great pictures hidden in folded and stapled paper. This has been Lizzie's primary activity during the last half of the summer. I swear she's used more than a ream of paper in less than a month. I'll try to get some pictures up on Picasa, and maybe post some down below.

Water-girl

Alice is totally water obsessed. Much of this surfaced at PEI, where she would not come out of the water. Trips to Post Pond and the water park at Granby Zoo were more of the same. She's in the water every chance she can get, and will stay in until we have to pull her out shivering. fortunately, she has gained some respect for the water. After walking up to her neck, stumbling, dunking her head and taking a few mouthfuls of water at Post Pond, she seems to have got the hang of holding her breath and getting her feet under her before opening her mouth again. She learns! Bathtime and outside playtime are similar. The water table outside has been a favorite toy all summer (unfortunately she is always wet from dumping water down her front). She loves dumping water back and forth from bowl to cup and then drinking it! Eliminating sippee cups was very easy, because she essentially taught herself to drink from a cup during her play and bath sessions.

PEI

Our summer camping trip to Prince Edward Island with the Blanchard clan yielded many memories and few pictures. Credit Mommy and Daddy for failing to use the camera enough. So, I'll try to describe the highlights here. For Alice, this vacation was all about the water, or "wah-ber, ah mo waber." Little Al simply could not get enough of the wonderful warm shallow water on the beach. Each day (except for one rainy day), had a morning and afternoon beach session. We'd take Alice in the stroller, grease her up with sunscreen and put on her bathing suit, "baby-uit." Take her down to the beach and let her loose! She'd spend all her time in the water. This year the underwater beach was particularly shallow and gradual, perfect for an almost 2 year old to run around splashing gleefully. Seriously, she would run around splashing in the water, giggling squealing and laughing with utter delight. If you chased her or ran around with her, it was even more enjoyable for both parties. Insert: mommy and daddy apologize for lack of video... Other activities include crocodile swimming, playing with sandy muck and walking out in the water up to her chin. After the morning play at the beach, Alice would have a snack and fall asleep in the stroller on the way back to the campground. We'd park the stroller in the screen house of the tent and get to work on lunch. After waking, Alice would eat her lunch, and then we'd take her back to the beach for more "waber." For Lizzie, vacation was all about spending time with her cousins. Since none of the older gang, except maybe Olivia, were super excited to go in the water most beach time was spent on the sandbars digging various holes and making various mounds out of sand. Glop or gloop was also produced from sand in vast quantities, as was cake batter. Lizzie and Maddie took the initiative to dig potties in the sand, one for girls and one for boys. You can guess what happened next. Lizzie was also fortunate to go with the her cousins and grandparents on a couple outings. First, a trip to Cows for ice cream and some cows PJs, and second to a scrap metal art place. Liz picked out a small purple (surprise) flower which now resides in out flower garden. The rest of Lizzie's time was spent in "big girl camp," i.e. the small screen house that was so graciously supplied with little projects brought by grandma (we brought some). It was about what you'd expect. Notably Alice was allowed in big girl camp, most of the time. It was a big step for her, since she would cry inconsolably if she was excluded, and for the big girls who seemed to tolerate her almost 2-year old destructiveness. Nighttime in the tent went about as well as could be expected. Lizzie was so exhausted that most nights she collapsed and fell asleep in minutes. Alice on the other hand thought bedtime was rumpus-time. Ot course, she was overtired and exhausted too, but her 20 month old brain told her it was play time not sleep time. After we convinced her not to jump around inside the tent, she'd wiggle and wriggle and squirm around on her sleeping mat. Some nights she'd burrow around in the tent, similar to a mole, basically crawling but with her head down and sometimes not really using her hands. Singing really helped get her to sleep. Did I mention that we didn't bring a pack-n-play, so this was her first time sleeping not in a crib? Campfires, roasting marshmallows, eating mussels, scallops, fish and lobster, and Olivia's budding pyromania. I'm sure some other things happened, but I'm forgetting. Oh, of course I should mention that no parent anywhere should attempt a long car drive with children unless they have a portable DVD player in their car.

Summer!

School's out, the black flies are (mostly) gone, and we're ready for summer!  The girls are in full popsicle form most sunny afternoons.  They have these amazing little rituals.  First they go on popsicle promenade: Alice leads the way around the house before they come back to settle onto the popsicle bench.  Then they move to the popsicle chairs.  They giggle at each other.  Alice drops her popsicle, cries, picks it up, finishes, wants more.  Lizzie launches her now-empty possible holder lord-knows-where to be found by the lawnmower.  But it's all good...

This is from last year:

Here's one from this year:

Now that I look at them, they don't look all that different.... but I promise: they are!

There will be more posts soon, but in the meantime, check out the new pics on Picasa.  Kids are thriving, garden is thriving, we're all having fun (most of the time).  On that note, it's a BEAUTIFUL evening, so I'm headed out with a glass of wine. It's important to have priorities!

Welcome to the NEW Co-Blog!

Lizzie and Alice's lives are now so very intertwined that rather than post duplicate entries on independent blogs, or hem and haw over which blog should contain which anecdotes, we've decided to integrate the two blogs to chronicle the girls' adventures as the dynamic duo that they so very much have come to be.  You can still link back to earlier incarnations of the blogs over to the right. --->