The saga continues

This morning I heard loud weeping from the living room, which happened to be where Hannah and Naomi were playing. I went in to find Naomi crying on the couch.

Me: What happened?
Naomi: The train bit me!

Okay, this is a pretend train that Hannah and Naomi have been playing for a while. She told me it bit her on the cheek. Um....

So now she's scared of the pretend train. Yes, she cried when Hannah brought up the train again and told Hannah, "I'm scared of the train."

Well, I suppose I'd be afraid of a pretend train that bit me, too.

Really, though, I'm wondering where she got all this and where it's going to end up.

On our walk

This morning we walked to the local library, which isn't as good as the big ol' one in Bothell, but is walking distance and has books, so we're not really complaining.

We passed some of our neighbors loading things into their car and exchanged pleasantries about their vegetable garden and my pregnant state.

As we were walking away, Hannah asked, "How did they know that we're pregnant?"

She's referred, in the past, to the "we" who are expecting and the "we" who are going to have a baby, and I can see her point. All of us are expecting a baby to come, and once he or she is out, we'll all have a baby. But the "we" who are pregnant is a bit more confusing. I'm feeling like it's pretty much me...

Approved

There's a little Italian restaurant down the street from our house. It's only a few blocks. We visited it tonight. You never know what you're going to get, of course, especially bringing a couple of kids to a restaurant.

It was delicious. The pasta didn't have eggs in it (good, since then Hannah could eat it). The kids loved what they got. Michael and I loved what we got. They had desserts that the kids could eat.

Thumbs up all around.

Whoops, haha

I just discovered this post that wasn't published earlier for some reason. It's funny, so you should check it out if you have a minute or two.

Gardening

We now have a small strawberry bed in our new yard. I'll post pictures eventually, but for now, suffice it to say that Hannah insists that we check on the strawberry plants several times a day, to see if they're bearing, to see if they're doing okay, etc. It's very cute. She's on a crusade to get as much garden goodness going here as we had at the old house, which may take a while. She has high hopes, though!

I got each girl a round container to put a few plants in for a little garden of their own, and they are very excited about them. Hannah is especially excited, and is very diligent about making sure hers gets watered on a regular basis. They are both quite interested in making the snapdragons snap.

Weddings

We're going to a wedding tomorrow, and Hannah is beside herself with joy. She loves weddings. She has since she was pretty young. Today she told me that she was going to do quiet time early tomorrow, since if quiet time ended early, the wedding could start early. She was a bit chagrined to find out that the end time of her quiet time would not affect the wedding timing.

More words of Naomi's

This morning I told Naomi I would need to clip her fingernails.

She replied, "And my feeternails."

Heehee. She meant toenails, but it was pretty descriptive!

Words Naomi uses

When Naomi asks, "Ham I use Hannah's toothbrush?" what she really means is, "May I use Hannah's toothbrush?"

Ham I is Naomi's way of saying May I. I'm not sure where she got it, but I'm glad I finally figured it out a few weeks ago, because I had no idea (for a couple days) what the HECK she was saying.

Fun with food names

Little did I know how amusing making similar-sounding foods within a couple of weeks could be. We've recently had falafel a couple of times, and both girls really like falafel, so that was a success. Tonight for dinner I was making waffles. Let me tell you, it's terribly confusing to try to figure out, when you're 4 and 2, which you're supposed to be saying: falafel or waffle. So I had a falafel iron, I was asked for more syrup for falafels, could I put butter on this falafel, could Hannah have a falafel to take bites of, etc.

And, of course, there was this exchange:

Naomi: What's this, Mommy?

Me: It's a waffle iron.

Naomi: A falafel iron? It bit me.

Killer Whale

...original lyrics by Hannah Bernstein

(overheard this morning)

Killer whale, killer whale,
kill so slow.
Killer whale, killer whale,
kill so fast!

Killer whale, killer whale,
watch the blood!


A bit gory for my taste, but fun to chant repeatedly, apparently.

I couldn't make this stuff up

Naomi: What's that, Mama?

Me: It's a dead bug, Naomi.

Naomi: It bit me.

90 degrees plus

in Seattle means one thing -- we're looking for a cooler activity than yardwork today!

So...we took the ferry to Bainbridge Island this afternoon, got dinner, and came back. It was a beautiful day, and being on the water really cooled us off after a very warm morning spent trying to get a few things accomplished.


Some of us were excited about the ferry ride.


And some of us were EXCITED about it!






Can you see Mt. Rainier?





And both girls were fast asleep within about 5 minutes of getting back in the car. We had a fun time getting out of the house, and Hannah has requested that we go on ferry rides "on a regular basis." "How about we go again tomorrow?"

Send it back/Keep it

I recently checked out the book The Ugly Duckling for the girls. It's a long story, so Naomi didn't care for it too much, although she was impressed by the various animal pictures in the book. Hannah, when asked today if any of the books we got last week could go back to the library, said The Ugly Duckling should go. She was horrified at the other fowl pecking at the poor little guy. She told me she didn't know why they wrote a book like that for children, and she didn't want to read it again. Apparently, turning into a swan didn't make up in her book for being pecked at and ridiculed throughout his childhood. So...it's going back. The book Polar Bears, by Gail Gibbons, gets to stay, even though the bears kill and eat ringed seals in it. It's all right -- you hadn't really connected with the seals before they're eaten. Plus, there are some cute pictures of polar bear cubs.

Naomi has completely latched onto the book Bus Stop, Bus Go, by Daniel Kirk. I'd never seen it before Hannah picked it out and thought we might like it. It's a bit young for her, but it seems to be perfect for Naomi. It's rhyming and even has a hamster that escapes on a bus so you can do the hamster search in many pictures.

Doctor's appointment yesterday

Everything looks great. Everything's right on target. The ultrasound looked good. Hannah and Naomi and I got to hear the baby's heartbeat again, which is always really cool. So, praise God, and we'll keep up with our usual stuff!

Drawing and writing

Hannah has recently discovered the joy of writing. She loves to write notes, stories, and letters. Usually she'll have me tell her how to spell things for her letters, which is good, because she's recently been introduced to the idea of "sounding things out," and loves it. She's not very accurate, however, and often leaves out spaces, vowels, and other pesky details, so the end result can be a bit hard to read. CRSMSDA = Christmas Day, and so on. It's very endearing, even if difficult to decipher, so I thought I'd share some with you:


This one reads: "Grace: Another little Fairy." Hannah was organizing a play and handing out parts. Grace was another little fairy, so this was her paper.


This one is a family portrait. Hannah doesn't often write from right to left any more, but I thought this was darling. The one on the far left is the new baby, which I think is what she wrote below, but what with it being backwards and phonetically written by a 4-year-old, I can't promise that's exactly what it says. I do love how she's given each of us the appropriate amount of hair.

I know I'm going to miss these days when she's writing beautifully in script and correcting everyone else's spelling!

And today

it was a snail that bit Naomi. A snail the size of my thumbnail. Who knew they were so vicious?

Biting

Naomi has recently taken to saying, "It bit me." about most living things. Luckily she hasn't quite figured out the art of biting herself, so we're not dealing with that yet.

Michael took the girls to the park today and there was a small dog that they were able to pet. Naomi apparently had a great time petting the dog, telling Michael, "It's so so cute, Dada!" Then, as they walked away, she said, "It bit me." Michael, who was watching the whole time, of course, was able to reassure her that she had not, in fact, been bitten.

This story is not the height of the biting frenzy we've been experiencing lately. It's topped by the day that Naomi and Hannah were playing in the garden and found a worm. They were mesmerized for a good long time, then came to tell me about it. "It bit me," is what Naomi said. The same day, they found an enormous slug in the yard. That one bit Naomi, too. Strangely enough, none of these creatures ever bite Hannah.

Happy Mother's Day!

We've gone to Mass, eaten lunch, and are settling down for naps and quiet time. After that, we'll have a nice, relaxing afternoon and Michael will make dinner. It's going to be nice and quiet.

Our kitchen floor

is vinyl of an amazingly active pattern. It's dark blue, off-white, and gold. I've mopped it before and been really disgusted by what I took from it. I mean, really grossed out by the amount of filth on the thing. And I always left off mopping before I was really satisfied that it was fully clean. Really. Yuck. It's disgusting.

OR I should say that it WAS really disgusting. Today, a friend of mine (and you'll see that she's a *really* good friend!) came over and HELPED ME SCRUB THE FLOOR! She actually did most of the scrubbing (although she did let me use the power scrubber -- that she brought! -- part of the time) with me doing the follow-up mopping.

So now I can rest easy that the floor, although it's still ridiculously ugly, is clean. It's not spotless, since a floor of this age and texture and pattern will probably never qualify as spotless, but it is clean, and that makes all the difference.

This also means that our house can officially become a no-shoe house, since I will no longer feel like our floors will irrevocably stain visitors' socks if I ask them to take off their shoes. Which in turn means that the floors all stay cleaner.

Didn't I tell you she is a great friend?

Summer Cut

In today's bath, Hannah got a summer haircut. Not that summer has shown any great propensity to come, but we're hoping it'll be here soon. So here's before and after.

Hannah's thankfulness

At bedtime during prayers, we all say something that we're thankful for. Today we had a busy afternoon, with a trip to the library, karate, a trip to the fruit market (where both girls got to push their own kid-sized carts), and dinner with Dada before his karate class, then headed home. When Hannah was asked what she was thankful for today, she said, "Seeing the ice cream truck." We saw it go by just after we got home from all of these activities. And she really did have an enormous grin on her face once it had gone by -- the driver had even waved at her! -- despite the fact that she has never once had actual ice cream from an ice cream truck, and because of her allergies and intolerances, probably won't ever do so.

It's the little things.

Naomi's job

Okay, she's really a bit too young for an actual job, but she's assigned herself the position of primary gate operator for our new back gate. When we go out to the car, she opens the gate, lets everyone through, and then closes it. When we get home, she waits until someone unlatches the gate (she can't quite reach it through the fence yet), opens it, lets everyone through, and then closes it again. You should see the look of satisfaction with a job well done on her little face when she has everyone through and the gate is safely closed.

We have a taker

for the mattress and boxspring in our -- well, now it's in our dining room.

And I got rid of all the dandelion heads that were in our lawn, so we're making some progress. The lawn has been somewhat neglected during this move, so it's going to take some time to get it to a normal state again. And of course we have lots of plans for the garden! We're not doing anything too crazy this year (we think) with the garden, but I did go to a plant sale the other day to get some herbs, veggies, and strawberries, so those will be going in soon.

Wow!

We still have a mattress

and box spring in our living room. They're leaning up against the wall behind the couch. Not my preference for decorating, but the basement is somewhat unreliable at the moment, what with occasional water hazards showing up unannounced, and we're hoping to get rid of the bed within the next week or so.

However, unpacking is coming along, and we've managed to clear all the boxes out of the kitchen, which has revolutionized our kitchen experience. Michael put together our bed frame the other day. Soon, we hope, we'll be living in a house with few or no boxes. We are getting to the point that it's feeling like a home, so that's good news.

Yesterday I brought up a few toys that had been in storage for a while, and the girls have been enjoying getting reacquainted with them. Naomi is currently dancing to one of the toys that plays a different song for each button pushed. She is most pleased, because she found a button that plays "The Wheels on the Bus," one of her favorite songs. Hannah and Naomi both spent a long time playing with some horses that were unearthed yesterday.