Molly & Kate: April 2012

I hesitate to even mention it because it never lasts, but for the moment everybody in our house is mostly healthy and things are just chugging along normally. Ahhhh!

Molly started back to school today after April vacation week (which was almost two weeks considering I was throwing up and couldn't take her to school the day before vacation and her school week is only three days long).

We had a lovely, long vacation doing a whole lot of nothing. Intentionally. I like doing nothing. :)
Actually, I assumed anywhere remotely fun for kids would be packed during vacation week and since we routinely have free weekdays when others are at school we should hide out at home and save the fun stuff when all the ~~suckers~~ older kids are back at their desks.

However, an empty week was a little frightening. I decided to work on what they call "rhythm" at Molly's school. Basically it's having a schedule of ordinary daily stuff without being too crazy about clock time -- just doing things in the same order most days. We already do this anyway somewhat. We have normal bedtimes, wake-up routines, meals at the same time most days, etc. But on non-school days we just kind of drift and Kate's naps are all over the place, which means it's really hard to know when we can go to a playground or invite neighbor kids over or do Molly projects. We're either waiting for Kate to nap or about to go out the door when Kate gets sleepy. It's so different from school days when we leave the house at the same time, Kate sleeps when I get home and things are more predictable.

Thinking back, I guess all we really did for rhythm was take a short walk around the neighborhood every morning around the same time we would usually leave for school. It really did help, though. We even made it to a playground once. (Of course we drove all the way to one playground, I opened the door to let Molly out and found her barefoot with no shoes in the car. Grrr. Not the best moment of the week.)

The weather has been a bit confusing for all of us. It was so hot early in the week that we had the sprinkler out. Then it cooled off but Molly still wanted to use the sprinkler. Here she is a bathing suit in 60-degree weather. She came in after a few minutes of water play and said she was cold an needed a towel. Ah-ha, I thought, she figured it out herself that it's too cold for water play! Nope. She wrapped herself in the towel and then ...

back in the sprinkler! See Mom? Now I'm warmer!

We did take one extremely last-minute expedition to DeCordova Museum one morning at the invitation of a neighbor. They have an outdoor sculpture park and it was beautiful weather and surprisingly not crowded. Molly mostly just loved playing with the neighbor girls. We stayed a few minutes after they had to leave to see more of the exhibits but she wasn't at all interested. She made, I believe, only one comment about the art the entire time we were there. This sculpture was named Flex, or something like that.

I mentioned it to Molly and asked if she thought that was a good name. She said no. It should be called Dragon. Or Snake. Then she asked to go home.

Lets see, Kate's been here the whole time, too. I must have some stories about her. Umm ... we've reintroduced dairy to her diet and noticed absolutely no difference. Hooray! Or boo. Her nose still runs all the time, so I guess it's annoying that we still don't know what that's all about. But at least we can eat ice cream while we wonder about it. She's been so hungry lately, too. I think we might finally see her gain a little weight. Fingers crossed!

She's into hats. If she sees any of her hats she points at it furiously and says "ah" until you put it on her head. It was especially cute this evening when she kept a hat during most of the bedtime routine. (No pictures, sorry).

She's also into cats. She was screaming and crawling away from me yesterday as I tried to change her diaper. I randomly made a "meow" sound, not sure why, and it was like hitting a switch. Silence. Curiosity. Clean diaper.

Oh, and she really, really likes the swing in our backyard. She makes a sign that's kind of like a karate chop and she says "geee" when she wants to swing. This happens any time you say the word swing, any time she sees Molly go out to the backyard and often when she simply looks at the deck door. She cries when you try to take her out of the swing. I think she finally picked up the sign for "more" so she could communicate her desire to PLEASE stay in that swing.

I have no pictures of that, either. All I have is this goofy shot from this morning of the girls playing with a pair of sunglasses. Silly monkeys.

We're back from our Easter trip.

Here we are at Mendon Ponds park. Molly has been telling me that hills she sees out the car window would be good running hills. I told her if she wants good running hills, this is the place to go. She wasn't disappointed.

You might have to zoom in to find the running kid in this one.

Kate didn't run but she did seem delighted to watch her sister.

We had a big birthday party for Kate at Oma and Grandpa's house.

Kate and the cake she refused to eat. Oh well, more for Mommy. :)

Here's the video I made for the party (posted here with kind of cheesy royalty-free music. If you want the original, play "Fireflies" by Owl City as you watch)

Then Easter morning we did baskets in the bird room. At one point I felt eyes on the back of my head and discovered the alpacas staring at us. They inched closer and closer until they were right outside the door.

On to the Easter egg hunt ...

And the big game of T-ball.

We've had a rough week since getting back. Molly threw up in the car just as we were getting on the Thruway. Kate threw up in bed after we got home and has been throwing up for three days now. Molly somehow didn't have any other symptoms but has a wicked cold. I got the stomach bug.

Today I let Molly make cinnamon critters from leftover pizza dough (I couldn't take her to school because Kate and I felt so yucky) and the one she made for me came out with a fantastic face -- exactly how I felt last night.