Slow days

Our exciting season of birthdays and holidays begins this week -- my birthday then Thanksgiving then Jim's birthday then Molly's birthday then Christmas. Molly is giddy. She makes new plans for her birthday party daily. We were going to have a formal ball, now she wants an art party (where everybody does art, or something?). She has also requested I knit her a birthday sweater and I'm having a terrible time finding yarn to meet her specs. We colored a picture of it so I'd get it just right -- bright pink, bright orange, red sleeves, purplish-pink back .... It's going to be an act of love. :)

We've had some instruments out lately. Molly's into the guitar .. in the sense that she likes to strum it and sing songs she makes up. She gets furious if you try to show her anything about how to play for real on any instrument. :) That's fine. I like her songs best anyway.

Kate is all chatty now. It's hard to bring her into the bedroom at night (where Molly's just falling asleep) because she talks and talks. "Light? Dark. Dark. Milk. Nap. Rock. Blankie. Sock." I've even heard her a few times in the night saying "Molly?" and I hold my breath to hear if she's going to wake up her sister.

She's also into pretending now, mostly pretending to be a cat. Out of nowhere she'll flop down on hands and knees and crawl around saying, "meow." She has a sudden new capacity to focus on toys occasionally, too. The other night at dinner we looked over and noticed her sitting at the little table with a plate of wooden food, pretending to cut it with a fork and knife. And she likes to run around pretending to fly -- flapping her arms and saying "fly, fly."

We've had some lovely walks around the neighborhood and a few really warm days that were nice for playing outside.