More on the snow requests of Hannah

Hannah, this afternoon:  I hope it snows sometime soon, but not  tomorrow.  I would miss Girlchoir if it snowed tomorrow. 

The concert yesterday was fabulous, by the way.  Northwest Girlchoir is a wonderful organization that teaches girls from 4-18 how to sing.  The concert featured singing from all the groups, and it’s amazing how these girls can sing! 

Naomi can’t wait to start when she turns four in March so that she can start up, and Hannah loves Girlchoir – it’s probably her favorite activity.  Well, besides reading. 

It was pretty funny, though, because Michael, Naomi, Simeon, and I all sat through a concert of about 1 1/2 hours of very lovely music.   Hannah’s choir was towards the end, and then at the end I went and collected her.  I told her a bit about the other choirs singing. 

“Oh, did the other choirs sing?”  she asked.

Heehee.  Her choir had been in a different room, busying themselves with their various pastimes packed in backpacks while the rest of the concert was going on, and she didn’t even realize that others were singing during that time. 

Originally, the plan was for the members of her choir to sit with their families in the audience for the concert, but too many tickets were sold for that to happen – a good problem to have, but it meant that they didn’t get to hear the rest of the concert. 

A new twist on the Christmas story

We have a Christmas book called The Donkey’s Dream.  Naomi really has been enjoying it this year.  As we were reading it the other day, I said, “Naomi, who is that leading the donkey?”  I was reasonably sure that she would say, “Joseph!” because, of course, that’s who it’s meant to be, and she’s very familiar with the Christmas story. 

Imagine my surprise when she said:  “Raffi.”

I took another look.  It did look like Raffi, and Naomi has seen his picture on CDs and a book of his that we have. 

It changes the story a bit, though. 

Flip flop

Hannah loves it when it snows here.  She hopes for snow as soon as summer is over.  “I think it might snow tomorrow,” she’ll say on a day that’s cool – 50 degrees.  “I don’t think so,” I’ll reply.

However, it’s pretty cold here these days, and there are some days of possible snow in the 10-day forecast.  Hannah has noticed, and is hopeful again.  This morning as we were in the car on the way to Mass, she said, “I hope it tries to rain today so that it will snow!” 

Then I reminded her of her Northwest Girlchoir concert this afternoon:  “You won’t be able to go if it snows.”

She immediately had a change of heart, “OH!  I hope it doesn’t snow today.” 

Concerts cannot be rescheduled, you know, but snow days can happen any time! 

She likes chocolate

and play imitates life. 

Yesterday, as we were moving furniture, Naomi discovered the brown things we got at the hardware store to put under the legs of the couch and chair in order to keep them from sliding around and also to keep them from scratching the floor.  She collected them all as we were moving the furniture.  She placed them carefully somewhere, and then got distracted by a long-lost toy found under the couch. 

“Where are the chocolate bars?” she wailed, when she couldn’t remember where she’d put them.

We were mystified, since we hadn’t given her any chocolate bars.  She kept insisting on the chocolate bars, though, and then found them.  When she showed us that she’d found them, we realized that they do, indeed, look a bit like squares of chocolate. 

Then she put them carefully somewhere else, and when we’d gotten the furniture re-rearranged, we couldn’t find them, and she’d forgotten where they were again.  So the furniture stayed on top of the bits of cardboard we’d used while moving it. 

Last night as I was cleaning up a bit in the living room, I discovered the chocolate bars in between two pillows on the couch.  We are heartlessly reclaiming them, because we need them to put under the chair and couch.

But today is St. Nicholas’ Day, anyway, so Naomi got some chocolate in her shoe.  She hasn’t asked for the fake chocolate at all today, because, let’s face it:  real chocolate trumps fake chocolate every time. 

In which Michael’s heroism is greatly evident again…as usual.

We recently got some furniture.  We’ve decided on a few things about the home setup lately, and those decisions have made it possible for us to go ahead with some furniture purchases we’d been considering but putting off because we didn’t know how we wanted to set things up.

I found two pieces that we both really liked, and we ordered them from the one place in our area that deals with the manufacturer.  Then we found out that they don’t do home delivery.  Hmm.  So Michael took the seats out of the minivan, went down there, and brought back our furniture.  With some help from the local brother-in-law, it’s in our house.  (Incidentally, when we were looking at our house and enjoying its big porch and perch on a hill…we weren’t thinking about how we would have to bring furniture up all those steps…)

When Michael was off work the week of Thanksgiving, we went to Ikea to get a few more things.  Michael did most of the heavy lifting, and he’s done most of the putting together, too, much to the joy and delight of his young son, who discovered that he loves hammering.  He also loves screwdrivers and screw and nails and wrenches and pliers and…tools. 

Today, we had all the living room pieces in the living room and assembled, so we decided to try the setup we’d been thinking of.  This meant moving around some heavy furniture.  Even though I helped a bit, Michael did most of the heavy lifting.  We got it all set up as we had planned.  I didn’t like the arrangement.  At all.  (Michael admits that he didn’t, either.) 

So, we moved it around again.  Now we both like the setup.  And Michael, who did most of the heavy lifting again, not 10 minutes after the first set of heavy lifting, didn’t complain one bit. 

He’s my hero. 

Polite babies

Sim has learned to sign “please” and “thank you,” and he’s getting pretty good at using them at the appropriate times.  Particularly “please,” since it seems to magically make happen things that he especially desires.  He will often vigorously sign “please” when he’s asking for something, and now that he’s talking a lot more, he’ll say “please,” too.  The way he says it is “bizz.” 

Lately he’s also started adding a y to the end of words, so dog becomes doggy and frog becomes froggy.  This has happened to please, too.  Of course, he says “bizz” for please, so what he says for “please-y” sounds like “Busy! Busy! Busy! Busy!”  Meanwhile, he vigorously signs “please,” sometimes with both hands.  It’s very cute. 

More Advent play

Hannah has been playing “innkeeper during a census” lately.  She is in the present day, but, “there’s another counting of people, Mama.”

When I told her that we actually do have a census in our day, she was surprised.  Then she asked why we don’t go to our hometowns to register.  Can you imagine the government asking that these days?

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Naomi apparently took to heart Hannah’s opinion that Mary did let Joseph hold Jesus, because he’s being held by Joseph on a regular basis now. 

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Sim likes his little toy trucks.  He also likes the nativity set.  For the first time in our house, there were some trucks visiting the Baby Jesus.  I’m going to bet that’s a bit anachronistic.