Naomi recognizes classical music

The other day an instrumental version of Ave Maria came on while we were listening to one of our CDs. Naomi turned to me and said something that at first I couldn't figure out. She's used to that, so she repeated it, and I eventually figured out what she was saying: "Ave Maria, Mommy, Ave Maria! Ave Maria, Mommy, Ave Maria!"

If you're trying to get a bunch of baking done

and you have two small children in the house, my advice is to hire people to come do crown cleaning on the trees outside your kitchen windows. It provides at least a couple of hours of entertainment. Guys swinging around on climbing gear from treetops seem to have a special fascination for children, especially if accompanied by the occasional tree branch falling or ladder being used.

Play imitates life

sometimes a bit too closely. The day we got the new-to-us Little People, as Michael and I were on our way to bed, here's what we saw in the bathroom:

The potty that came with the house is by far Naomi's favorite part of the set. There *must* be a way of taking advantage of this in toilet training.

Hannah is amused

by the kids on the radio who think we celebrate Jesus' dying on the cross at Christmas. We were listening to a station that has little kids say things about what Christmas is all about, and one child said we're celebrating Jesus coming to earth and dying for us on the cross. I could see what he was talking about, although I was just thinking to myself that the Incarnation itself is a pretty big thing to consider and celebrate this time of year when Hannah piped up with,

"We celebrate Jesus' birth at Christmas, not his dying for our sins."

So we had a discussion about how Jesus coming led to his dying for our sins, but how it's an amazing thing that God came as a baby. What a mystery, and a reason to celebrate. When another child later on as we were listening talked about the baby being wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, Hannah was relieved. "That child knew about why we celebrate Christmas."

Hannah is disappointed

that we won't be doing all our Christmas shopping in a hurry. Um...what? She heard a radio commercial that assured us that we could do all our Christmas shopping in a hurry.

"Why don't we get to do all our Christmas shopping in a hurry, Mom?"

Did that sentence have the phrase "get to" in it? Good grief.

"Well, sweetie, we do our Christmas shopping earlier so that we're not stressed out by shopping right now."

"Oh."

A key to parenting

is to learn patience early. And often. And exercise it when your 4-year-old decides she'd like to fingerpaint. And you (we're not mentioning who, but starts with an M and ends with an L and has ichae in the middle) particularly dislike the dirty hand feeling, even to the point of it bothering you to witness others having dirty hands for more than, say, a few seconds at a time...And you still facilitate fingerpainting. And even take pictures of the destruction for posterity and loving friends and relatives around the country. Even if said pictures give you the willies. Because just look how happy you've made said 4-year-old. She adores you.

Never give up!

Someday, somehow, you might just learn how to boof your own belly.

If imitation is

the sincerest form of flattery, than Naomi is doing some serious flattering lately. To everyone. Some of the cutest are when we are saying goodbye to people and her versions of "See you soon!" and "Goodbye!" "Drive carefully!" "I love you!" all tumble out all over themselves. The drive carefully one is especially funny if we're the ones who are going to be driving away. :)

A while back Naomi realized that when I nurse her I always get a burp cloth first, and often when she asked to nurse I would say, "I need to get a burp cloth." Well, this wasn't difficult for her to solve, so now when she wants to nurse, *she* goes to get the burpcloth -- or "buppoff," in Naomese -- and follows me around with it. Now she's taken to "nursing" her stuffed animals and dolls, and if she decides they need to nurse, she'll tell me earnestly, "Nuss...buppoff," and go find a burp cloth, then sit on the couch and "nuss" the baby.

Good grief, how did I keep myself entertained before children?

Snippets

I have been neglectful of the blog, but that's not because nothing is happening, so I'll try to give a few cute stories.

Naomi has started saying, "Bless you," when someone sneezes. It's very clear and VERY cute.

Hannah puts her babies (dolls, stuffed animals) that she's currently playing with in the front hall closet so that Naomi doesn't get to them. Hannah has something of an overactive fear of Naomi getting her stuff. It's amusing, though, to open the closet to put something in the recycle bin and find that Baby Gretel is sleeping on top of the recycle bin. Also amusing to host guests and offer to take their coats, open the closet, and have Nanny the Rabbit and Charlotte the Bear fall out.

Naomi loves saying,"Look at me, Daddy!" She usually has an impish grin on and is doing something vaguely dangerous.

Hannah realized today that guests are coming soon. "We're going to have to clean up!" was her observation. It's not actually that bad around here, so I was a bit surprised, but then she said, "You tell me the day before they're coming so I can clean my quiet time things out of the guest room."

Naomi has also figured out the shape sorter and is having a great time putting the shapes through.

Snow!

This afternoon we had some friends over for the afternoon and dinner, but this morning, despite some necessary preparation, we had some time to hang out together. Some of us were a bit tired, due to some others of us having a bit of a rough night and early morning...

This afternoon it started snowing. The girls were very excited, and I took the opportunity to take some pictures with snow in the background.

When I brought Naomi down after her nap and it was snowing, I said, "Look, Mimi, it's snowing!" She looked outside and said, "BUBBLES!" It was very cute, and really the highest compliment she could give to it, since she absolutely loves bubbles. She persisted in calling the falling snow "bubbles" for the rest of the day.

Hannah was beside herself watching the snow. "A snowstorm! I can barely see anything because of all the snow!" [Probably brought on by the Little House descriptions of blizzards, since it wasn't remotely snowing that hard!] "Can I touch it? What happens if I go out and sit in it with my snow pants on?"

And as you can see, it wasn't a paltry little fall, either. The footprints are from Michael going out to move our deck bird feeder. It was getting a bit weighed down by the snow. We've got probably 3-4 inches on the deck. It's still lightly coming down, too.
You can see the newspaper Michael put over Hannah's cilantro on the end planting box there. Yes, cilantro is growing in our planting boxes at this time of year. It may not survive the snow, but not because we neglected to cover it up!

We all know

that you don't come here to read stories day after day after day. So today I'm posting pictures.

It's rough when you're out like this *before* the Thanksgiving meal.

Apologies

We've recently entered the period of our lives in which we teach Naomi about making apologies. Most of the time they're made to Hannah, and Naomi now knows that when I say, "Apologize to your sister," she should say, "Sorry, Hannah."

Of course, when she throws a book at me and I ask her to apologize to me, she also says, "Sorry, Hannah."

Me: "Say, sorry, Mama."
N: "Sorry, Hannah."
M: "Sorry, Mama."
N: "Sorry, Hannah."
M: "Sorry, Mama."
N: "Sorry, Hannah."

It appears that we're not *quite* clear on the concept yet.

Michael refilled

our bird feeders yesterday. He's been running around in the lovely weather, getting all kinds of yard work done. So when he noticed the empty feeders, he decided to fill them up.

This morning when we came down for breakfast, there were TONS of birds out, having their breakfast. Hannah is a great birder -- she knows many of them and identifies them as they fly around and use the feeders. Naomi promises to be a great birder, too, since she can already identify chickadees, flickers, and jays. I was impressed. We also had juncos, towhees, and wrens out there this morning.

They were happy with their Thanksgiving meal.

We're thankful

For beautiful weather.

For health.

For a delicious Thanksgiving meal with family and friends.

For our family and friends.

For our planet (that's Hannah's particular one).

For naps.

Rain

has set in. Although yesterday we did get some sun, which was nice. It's overcast with rain scattered throughout the day here now. It gets dark around 5, and I'm not entirely sure when it gets light, because (thankfully) I'm often still asleep. Hannah definitely notices the change in the light and begins wondering why we haven't had dinner, why Dada's not home yet, is it way past her bedtime. I remind her about the change in seasons and she looks somewhat skeptical. Naomi doesn't seem to care one way or the other, but has been somewhat disappointed at the lack of time outside. I've still been trying to get out for a daily walk with them, but we are not going out in the yard nearly as much -- go figure.

It's very interesting trying to make the shift to more fall and winter activities. The girls are enjoying dancing with Michael after dinner most nights, which is amazingly cute to watch. It's a bit tough to find ways to get them enough exercise, and many days will see Naomi climbing whatever she can grab onto, and Hannah running back and forth in the kitchen while I cook.

This morning Michael has taken them to the zoo, rain or no rain. He's a brave, brave man, but I'm sure he'll be rewarded for his efforts, since the girls haven't been there in a while and dearly love going. He'd been thinking, since it's overcast, that he'd take them to the aquarium. That was pretty much squelched when Hannah was prepping him on how busy it would be, since it's raining and all the kids would go to the aquarium. This was after I'd mentioned that he probably wouldn't want to bring a stroller inside because of crowded conditions. He looked at his two bundled daughters and pronounced that they'd be fine at the zoo. It's probably good practice for them anyway, since as Seattlites they'll need to get used to doing things in the rain. Plus, he brought the stroller with the rain cover -- something I didn't even know existed when I lived in Houston!

More sentences

Naomi: "Daddy likes bacon." "Mama, you're silly."

Breakfast

is in the works. Michael is making cinnamon rolls and bacon, and Hannah and Naomi are circling like sharks.

Growing up

Naomi uttered her first 3-word sentence the other day. She said, "More bacon, please." Bacon can be a very motivating substance, apparently.

Every so often Hannah will say something like this: "Hey, Mom, this says HOP!" or "Hey, Mom, this says WARM!" or something else that she's read.

Where did my tiny babies go?

Boston

We really enjoyed Boston -- our first stop on our trip. Hannah loves the book Make Way for Ducklings, so she was *really* excited to see the statues in the Public Garden. We had an absolutely beautiful day for walking around, and once we'd visited Whole Foods to pick up lunch, we headed over to eat at the Garden and admire the statues.

Both girls really liked the ducks.
Here's where we stayed in the Back Bay:
And here's us shopping on Newbury Street.

Home

is where we are. We got in yesterday afternoon, after a long day of travel. We had luckily discovered Naomi's fever Sunday night, gotten to the clinic Monday, and started treatment so that by Tuesday morning at take-off her ear infection was under control and not hurting her poor little ears.

We're all very happy to be home, although we had an awesome trip! Pictures to come soon, of course. I let the girls out of the van yesterday when we arrived and Naomi went straight over to the stroller and got in. And screamed like I was torturing her when I got her out. Hannah has reconnected with Baby Gretel, and now has about 8 kids, I think. She was beside herself with joy at the jelly bean costumes that Grandma Ellie made. Pictures will be posted of those, too, after this afternoon and evening's festivities.

In the meantime, I should figure out how to reset the laptop's clock. It is still showing Eastern time, and it's already shocked me three or four times. This may be a job for Michael.

How apt

As we were going into Rob's dorm building today, one of the cousins said, "This place smells like a zoo." Hmmm...

However, despite the zoo smells (oh, and Rob's actual room didn't smell like a zoo), we did enjoy our visit to Rob's college campus today. It was a beautiful day, the kids ran around a lot, we soaked in the atmosphere and woke a few college kids up with Naomi's cries when she got her hand pinched. It was 11:30, but I'm still pretty sure we woke some kids up.

Yesterday we visited Lee's, where there were tons of fish -- everyone was *totally* fascinated (and it didn't smell like a zoo) -- and we had a great time. No college kids to wake up there, but Naomi did enjoy going up and down the big ol' staircase over and over again.

Also, both yesterday afternoon and this afternoon were absolutely beautiful swinging days, so Hannah's been as happy as can be playing on the swingset in the backyard.

More things we've learned

1. Hannah and Naomi both like their Baltimore cousins. The youngest one has taught Naomi that just because Mama's holding a baby doesn't mean that she has to panic. He's a cute one, all right.
2. During the Revolutionary War, the U.S. put a huge chain across the Hudson River at West Point. They still have some of the links there. It was a good deterrent -- it kept British ships from making their way up the river.
3. Whole Foods near Central Park on Sunday at noon when there's a convention in the same building is not a calm place. But they do have about 16 express checkers, so takes only about 15 minutes to get through a line of 70 people.
4. The train from New Haven to Baltimore is a fun place for kids, even if you do have to change motors in New York.
5. If it must rain during your 2-week trick to the east coast, days when you're admiring a new baby and playing with cousins are better choices than days when you're touring Boston...or New York...or West Point...or New Haven. And we are so thankful to God that we got that good weather! :)

Things we've learned

1. Hannah likes to try out many different modes of transportation. She liked the airplane, the taxi, the T (subway in Boston), and the rental car.
2. Naomi dislikes (with a consuming passion) taxis. She didn't like the first one, she didn't like the second one. She's hoping beyond hope there isn't a third one. She tolerated the T, but a taxi was too much.
3. Going to New York for the day without a pacifier when thunderstorms are predicted isn't a good idea. You should just turn around and go back to West Point. Which is what we did, I'm happy to say. We'll see the city on Sunday.
4. Naomi loves a certain Jack Russell Terrier named Scout. As long as Scout can't actually get to Naomi, she's wildly ecstatic to see Scout. Hannah, in her own words, is not a fan of dogs, which means that poor Scout is spending more time outside than she's used to.

Trip prep

is taking most of our time today. We'll try to keep you posted while we're away!

A distinct lack of photos

is something I noticed in the past few posts. So I give you photos to illustrate that happiness is...

...having a sister who will let you crawl into her lap

and has your favorite book memorized, so she can "read" it to you

over and over;

...swinging

...swinging

and pushing/being pushed by your sister;

watching the bees in the flowers;

a walk with Dada on a lovely fall day.

Too much renovation

Michael and I were discussing how we're eventually going to remove the popcorn ceilings in our house. Hannah overheard us and said, "That's okay, just don't remove it in my room."

I told her, "When we remove it, it will be the whole house, including your room."

Hannah got a bit panicky, "The whole house will be without a roof?!?"

At which point I realized that Hannah didn't know the difference between a ceiling and a roof. Once we explained that, she was okay with having the popcorn ceilings taken down. It must be bizarre to be a kid who thinks her parents have gone mad and are going to take the roof off the whole house. No wonder she was panicky.

Are you threatening me?

Posted at the dojo where Hannah and Michael do karate is a sign that reads:

"Unattended children will be given a shot of espresso and a free puppy."

Let the record show that my children have never been -- and never will be -- unattended at that dojo! :)

A litany of the saints for kids, by kids

Yesterday the girls were a bit restless in the car. So they came up with this game:

Hannah: Who loves Mama?
Naomi: ME!
H: Who loves Dada?
N: ME!

They moved rapidly through the family members and Hannah started in on the saints:

H: Who loves St. Joseph?
N: ME!
H: Who loves St. Maria Goretti?
N: ME!

After a few minutes more of naming saints:

H: Mom, what are some more saints?
Monica: St. John?
H: I've already done St. John.
Monica: St. Rose?
H: Oh, yes! Who loves St. Rose?
N: ME!

This went on for quite some time. Of course, Naomi will answer ME! to almost any "Who?" question out there ("Who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?" "ME!" "Who's making dinner tonight?" "ME!"), but I don't think the saints mind.

Correction

to my "It's not 97 degrees" post. It wasn't 97 in Baltimore. It was 93. So I guess I don't have to change my packing plan after all! :)

Snuggles

What good is it to have two little girls if you can't snuggle? Michael often acts as the human jungle gym when he's home -- "Dada, be a slide! Dada, help me jump! Dada, UP UP UP!" -- but he also gets to do lots of snuggling of both girls at once. Any time he's sitting on the floor or lying on the couch, they descend to make the most of Dada time.

He doesn't seem to mind.

And if you can get Dada time and a snack...it doesn't get much better!

It's not 97 degrees

which is what it is in Baltimore, apparently. We're going to the east coast for a couple of weeks soon, so when my sister (in Baltimore) mentioned this, and told me I might need to pack accordingly, my carefully laid packing plans began to be reshuffled. It's definitely fall here, although today was 63 degrees or so as the high.

But warm jammies are a must!

We've been taking advantage of the lack of rain to get out and walk and do yard work and play. When we go on walks, Naomi provides the music. Or zeezick, as she calls it. When she says it, it sounds almost like she's saying "seasick." Selections vary from The Star-Spangled Banner to Amazing Grace to Bingo. It's an interesting mix.

Hannah sporting her "Uncle Rob" hat...made by Uncle Rob! She tells this to everyone who compliments her on her hat.

Walking on "the grass."

I usually let the girls out of the stroller to walk the last little bit home, and Naomi has begun to anticipate "the grass." As soon as she sees it, she begins her chant of "the grass." She and Hannah get out and run along...or walk along...or stop and look at flowers and buses and the sippy cup that someone left behind. Everything is interesting.

Quick, easy meals

For all you out there who may have some reason not to have tons of time to cook dinner, Danielle Bean has a post on her blog today about quick and easy meals. Some of them look really good.

Cold season

...is here. Yet another way to tell it's fall. Poor Hannah has a cold. She's been pretty cheerful about it all, but it's hampering her style a bit. I asked her not to kiss Naomi on the face while she's sick. She doesn't think that's a terribly reasonable request, but she's doing okay with it.

The cold has not affected her appetite. Yesterday she was able to eat dinner and then the rather large slice of apple pie that Michael gave her for dessert. Yes, he made another pie on Saturday. MMMM...

Hannah seemed better today, so we went on our walk. The girls were bundled up and enjoying a bit of sunshine. Naomi is very funny on walks -- she sings almost the whole time, and usually changes songs from day to day. It's a great accompaniment to a walk.

It's hard to begrudge the fall cold season too much when beautiful sights like this are right outside your front door:

Extreme Home Makeover Update

The home was revealed last Thursday morning, and there was a good article and some great pictures in one of our local papers. You can see the house from the front, but of course they don't allow the media in to see the inside, since that will be on the show, which they're saying will air sometime in January.

Happiness is...

...a visit with cousins. And their toys.

We went to P&G's today, and then they came over for dinner. It was quite fun, with only a couple of skirmishes about who got to do what when and who had to share. The littlest ones are getting along pretty well now that Naomi doesn't scream about every toy she has to share. They definitely both agree that it's great fun to try on other people's shoes.

Wherever she goes, you can bet Naomi will find the stuffed animals.

Oh, and the shoes.

Did I mention she'd find the stuffed animals?

The Mom Song

This was pretty funny. I recognize many of the phrases. I haven't had a chance to use them all yet, but I'm sure my time will come.

Another way to tell it's fall...

...is that the girls are wearing their new Halloween dresses from Grandma Ellie. Aren't they precious?

I got a new lens for the camera...

...so you get to see some of my experimental shots: