Busy week

We've had a ton of stuff going on this past week, yet we don't have a single picture to show for it.

I spent the weekend in NYC visiting my brother, my first night ever away from Molly. I missed her terribly the whole time. We had a great time shopping in the garment district, riding the Staten Island ferry, heading out to Queens in search of strange ethnic food. But everything made me think of Molly and Jim -- all the cute little girls everywhere, daddies bouncing fussy babies, playgrounds, basketball courts, just about anything.

I came home expecting everybody to be cranky and exhausted. Instead, the living room was vacuumed, the kitchen clean, the refrigerator full of freshly made food (even a peach pie). Molly bounced over and hugged my knees and then went back to exercising with Daddy on the floor, as if I had just been in the other room the whole time. Well. I'm not sure what to think about all this. Maybe I should go away more often. :)

The closest we have to a picture is this, Molly in her NYC t-shirt the night I got home. This is the only way we can get her to talk on the phone lately. Can you tell that Jim's on the cordless? She hops on the other phone and chatters away.

Then, in yet more excitement, we had a visit from Oma and Beppe this week. Molly showed them her library and Beppe took us for ice cream. We went swimming in the hotel pool. Molly was full of kisses and hugs for her grandmother and great-grandmother. We were all sad to see them go.

Today we went to another neighborhood kid's birthday party, where the dad gave Molly two servings of cake, and she left with a sack of candy from a pinata, party favors and a goodie bag full of more candy. We let her eat a lollypop for dinner (cringe).

It was actually kind of funny. She started the meal chattering about "pop starts with 'puh'" and "Daddy, do you want a lick?" and "this silly band is a sailboat and it's yellow and it matches the yellow towel." By the end, Jim was playing Greensleeves on the ukelele (which actually didn't seem unusual until I typed it) and Molly gazed off into the distance and said, "This song sounds like saying good-bye." Huh.

OK, so I was only half paying attention just now as I helped Molly zip up her backpack. I just found her by the front door, about to walk outside with her sippy cup in her hand, the backpack on her back and entirely naked from the waist down. Time to go pay more attention. Clearly it's not safe to leave a kid alone after this much sugar.