Growing and Going

The girls love to attack the piano together.  We love that this piano has volume control . . . and you can even plug in headphones if you don't want to hear it at all. :)  We also love that they can play music to their little hearts content.

I found this note when I was pulling out milk for cereal.  Trust me, I don't feel worthy of such adoration.

Clairey is starting to make grown-up little girl choices (kind of an oxymoron in that sentence but I like it).  When she screams we ask "How do you ask nice?"  and she will stop and say "I 'ont' more juice . . . feeze."  She tends to alternate between "peese," "weeze," and "feeze" in place of "please."  It's cute.  I also love that Claire starts "p" words with "f."  i.e. fetzels = pretzels, fuzzles = puzzles, fuh-wuh = pizza (not sure where that came from)

Our old play tent was in disrepair (torn to shreds and unuseable).  Then, much to our surprise and delight, Target had two tents -- on 75% clearance!  Oh happy day!  Let me also state, ever since we bought those tents toys have exploded on every level of our house.  We used to contain them to the family room and now they have taken over the world!  Oh well, at least I am still caught up on laundry.

Hallie is doing brilliantly with our anti-thumb-sucking initiative.  She earned her Tiana crown on Monday.  And we haven't caught her sucking her thumb since.  We are fairly certain she does it in her sleep, but the elimination of day sucking is huge!  We're very proud of her.

Daddy came home for lunch break on Friday and invited Hallie to go back to work with him.  She was sooooo thrilled.  We packed her preschoool backpack with snacks, coloring books, and reading books.  Chris said she was really well-behaved.  But then, in the last class . . . she took matters into her own hands.  She was reading a Richard Scarry book when she announced to the class, "Okay. . . who wants to be the pig?"  She then assigned roles of Santa Clause, a Hippo, a Lion, a Tiger, a Gorilla, a Big Gorilla, and a Pumpkin.  The class was entertained by her and we might have yet another educator in our family some day.

Claire is taking the world by storm in walking.  Yesterday she walked up and down every aisle at Joann and Target.  If she goes to far, I say "Claire, come back."  She says "Okay" and turns around.  All is well and good until she gets tired.  She was walking downhill in between Target and Home Goods and decided she needed a break in front of Office Max so she parked it on a curb.  It took forever to get her going again because I knew she would not tolerate me picking her up.  Finally the faithful "see you later, Mom is leaving" trick worked and she was up and following me again.  She starts physical therapy on Tuesday.  I am still glad for the help, but I don't think she will be in it for too long.