Verbatim

Scene: Tuesday night. Al is out. Post-dinner, we are upstairs for a rousing game of Hssss!

Chava: Mom! I have to poop!
Me: Well, then, go poop.

Chava runs off to make her deposit. A few seconds later, we hear, with much excitement:

Chava: Maddox! Come here! You've gotta see this!

Maddox runs over (thudthudthud).

Maddox: Wow!

Chava: I know! I pooped a turtle! It looks just like a turtle.

Maddox: She really did, Mom. You guys should enter her in a talent contest.

Chava

Post nap, in a cabinet. Too bad this wasn't taken with a better camera!

Crazy Hair Day

Today was crazy hair day at Maddox's school: You pay a buck (all proceeds went to help Haiti) and you could wear your hair some crazy way. If Maddox's hair looks a little different in this picture, it's because he took it upon himself to trim (and by trim I mean CUT OFF) his bangs on Tuesday night. He was very proud he got all the clippings in to the trash.

Milestone

Maddox can now tie his shoes. He likes when Chava helps.

Music

Chava LOOOOVES this song... Al has been introducing her to the dance numbers from Glee (which you should be watching when it returns in April, if you are not already) and this, along with You Can't Always Get What You Want, are her favorites. Maddox is a fan of this one:



Go figure.

Anyway, try starting your day by dancing to All the Single Ladies in the kitchen in your pajamas. It's a real pick me up.

A few from last year

Our friend Lisa passed along a few pictures taken in December that made me chuckle... Maddox trying on a moustache for size (his friend Cavlin was the leader in this artistic endeavor), our kids at the zoo (I love how Chava and her friend Carter are holding hands), and the kids table at New Year's eve... maybe we need to work on Maddox's table manners, you think? I'm going to focus on my beautiful children instead of the terrible election results because, as I learned in social work school, "denial in the service of the ego" is a high level defense. I'm nothing if not highly evolved!

Also, Maddox wanted to know last night where the first person came from. We talked about possible options - he does not believe God does magic. He thought evolution was interesting but then wanted to know exactly how apes came about. I was stumped, although I went with an explanation that involved morphing sea creatures. Chava was listening carefully to this discussion but not participating, until bedtime last night when she demanded to know "Who painted me and Maddox?" which I did not understand at all, but finally figured out that she wanted to know who created her. Sheesh. More wine, please.

Quote

Chava to Maddox: Do not wear my high heels on the stairs. It is dangerous and you could get deaded.

last night

Last night our friend Chauncey came over with his daughters Isabel and Carter. Isabel is a year younger than Chava but the two girls just luuuurve eachother. They are also like a bad science experiment together - the two of them have WAY more energy than any two little bodies should have. They always work each other in to a frenzy by the end of the night. They love to play babies together and spent the evening putting Chava's dollies in bed and taking them out of bed, changing their diapers and pushing them around the house in doll strollers (until the realized that Chava could push Isabel around in a doll stroller so then they did that, at breakneck speeds). All to say that when they left there was dolly detritus all over the place. I am trying to get better and follow Al's lead in pushing the kids to clean up their toys every night before bed, so I was being the enforcer to get all the crap put away. Chava did the whole thing with a swim diaper on her head. I can't believe I missed the photo opp.

New year, new post, new resolution

I've decided to give up all pretense of actually being a blogger and use this more as an on-line scrapbook that I will hopefully pass along to the kids some day. There is so much day to day stuff that I want to try to capture and I'm not sure how else to do it. Like Maddox's dreidel project, which sort of breaks my heart but also kind of makes me laugh (easier to laugh now that he is on a kickass stretch of sleeping). Or Chava's butterfly wings that Grammy gave her, which she likes to use to fancy up any old outfit.