Dear Santa

I regret to inform you that it is now almost March and you are still here. Yes I know that Lily is attached to you lately quite a bit. But you need to move on and head back to the North Pole very soon. I think a couple of your friends are stilling hanging out with you here too. Please let them know that they need to head back to the North Pole soon too since we need to start getting ready for a new friend that is coming to town soon. We will look forward to your return after Thanksgiving. Till then we have so many other friends to play with that we are looking forward to meeting while you are gone such as the Lucky the Leprechaun, the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin and Tom Turkey.

With Love,

Mommy Ringen

Presenting Princess Lily

So it started innocently enough... we were basically trying to get the girls to wear nightgowns one night and they weren't really into it till we told them that Princesses wear them.. Then they discovered Angelina Ballerina and all the nightgowns and dresses that we own turned (almost magically) into Princesses and Ballerinas.. so now whenever they want to wear a dress they tell us that they want to be a Princess or a Ballerina.

Cut to tonight and getting ready for bed. Lee and I had decided that the girls would wear their blanket sleeper pajamas to bed since it's going to be somewhat cold tonight and they don't always like to have blankets on them while sleeping. Anna usually wears hers happily and doesn't usually ask to switch. Lily is another story entirely. The girl strips at the drop of a hat. I'm never surprised to see her running around with just a diaper and a smile. If you ask her nicely enough she will usually put on her jammies again (she loves the zipper) but sometimes she just a girl on a mission. Tonight was one of those nights.. Tonight she unzipped herself, ran around for a while in her diaper and then proceeded to the closet and asked (very very nicely) to be a Princess tonight.. luckily I have some warm nightgowns for them so she got to have the Cupcake Princess tonight. She even put it on all by herself.

The ABCs of me...

A friend of mine who has a blog that I LOVE had this type of blog today and she challenged everyone to do their own on their blogs and report back and even link back (I have no clue how to do that).. So without further adou...

A is for Anna my sweet girl who has been so good lately about listening but has been winding up in our bed by 6 or 6:30am lately.. I see stickers in her future for staying in her room till the sun is awake.

B is for Babies.. which I think I no longer have here anymore with the exception that the girls still wear diapers..

C is for Cheerios my favorite snack food ever.. probably my first snack food ever

D is for Dolls.. since I feel like we are overrun by the sheer number of them that we have at the moment.

E is for Excess and I'm working on getting rid of as much of it as I can. Mostly from the basement since there is stuff down there from when we moved in almost 12 years ago on the first floor and now we live on the 3rd.

F is for Fun even on the dreariest of days by playing Tea Party and building with blocks

G is for Girlfriends. They truly make life grand and are there when you need them.

H is for Healthy. Knock on wood let's hope we stay that way for a while.

I is for Indecision. I have a hard time making decisions at times and lately they are getting harder to make.

J is for Juggling. I've been doing quite a bit of juggling lately with my job at the toystore, care for the girls, and being a Mommy and a Wife.

K is for Knitting. It's keeping me sane lately. Which is a really good thing right now since I need some sanity in my life at the moment.

L is for Leland and Lily.. my hubby and my Baby Girl. I love them so much even though they are both giving me a run for my money at the moment.

M is for Mini Eggs and my one salvation at the moment. I only get to eat them one time of year and lately I have been really stressed and I am really trying to be good about not eating too many to get me through the current rough spots in my life.

N is for Nieces. I have two really cute ones that I got to hang out with last weekend at my Mom's and at their house.

O is for Osmonds.. Donny and Marie specifically since their CD is in my car and I don't care what anyone thinks of me.. I love to sing their songs.

P is for Potty Training (Learning). We are in the midst of this lately.. Oh what fun.

Q is for Quiet. My current favorite sound since it usually means that the girls are asleep and all is well. Though sometimes quiet is something that I don't like cause it means that the girls are doing something that I'm not going to like.

R is for Running. I haven't been running in a while now and I really need to get back into the habit since Spring is coming again and I have a few races to train for on my radar.

S is for Sleep... I really need more of it lately.

T is for Time which I feel like I am lacking as of late. Everyone seems to need me to be everywhere at once and there just isn't enough of me to go around.

U is for Understanding and compassion. Everyone needs a bit of both.

V is for Vet. I need a new one for my kitties. Any recommendations ?

W is for Weight. I have been losing some as of late.. not really sure how much since I'm not really a scale watcher..but I'm guessing it's close to 13lbs.

X is for X-rays. Lee had some done today and we are waiting for results on them.

Y is for Yarn Harlot.. I am loving her books right now and I love reading her blog. I want to be her someday.

Z is for Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..

Oh what a (Knitting) Night

Just about every Wednesday night at about 6pm and till 8pm (closing time) I go to a Starbucks to participate in a Knitting Group. We never know who or how many people will be there so every week it's an adventure and there is quite a bit of table rearranging going on as people arrive. The past few weeks with all the snow and such there have been very few knitters on Wed nights and usually we have the place to ourselves and we can hear most of the conversations that are happening at our tables.

Tonight was an exception.. there was barely any parking available (it happens even with noone being there) and within 30 min of being there, the Starbucks was bursting with people.. 2 knitting groups (us and one other that is there occasionally), 2 guys that might have been doing an interview (they were behind me and I could hear some of their conversation), a guy on his laptop working away and various other customers that were going in and out along with the usual suspects (like the delivery guy that usually blocks all the cars in). At the end of the night I stopped and counted the number of knitters just in our group and we were one short of a dozen people. That number does not account for the one knitter who usually brings her husband along with her when she comes (he doesn't knit). If I did count him then we'd have been an even dozen. I knew of a couple people that were planning on coming but due to other stuff they didn't make it. Had they made it we would have had nowhere for them to sit anyway.

I love when this happens even though it drives my brain crazy from all the background noise that is happening. I'm still amazed that I didn't come home with a headache.

That was waiting for when I got home.. the mess that the girls made of the living room was astonishing and they even got into some birthday cards that I had bought for my best friend, her twin and my brother. I'm thankful that they "only" ripped the envelopes and not the actual cards themselves. I can repair that type of damage. Time for mommy to continue moving stuff up another level that the girls (hopefully) can't reach until they grow again.

I'm a Little .... what???

Thursdays are a fun day around here... The girls have a school day.. which means that Mommy and Daddy have 2 glorious hours to be alone in the apartment, do some much needed chores, errands or whatever else we can find to do that the girls would usually disturb us doing. After school is over for the girls and they are picked up - Mommy's here - I usually take them over to my mom's house for some Grandma time while I go to the toy shop to work for a few hours. Once I am back at my mom's house, I eat some dinner (sometimes with the girls and other times without them) and then give the girls a bath and get them ready for bed before we head home to see Daddy, watch some Caillou or Angelina Ballerina and then put the girls to bed.

This week was filled with all sorts of cuteisms from the girls...

My mom has all sorts of things hanging on the walls in her kitchen and one of them is a flat wooden teapot... Anna has seen it before but this week she decided to take it off the wall and play with it. This lead to my mom trying to sing the Teapot Song... I'm a Little Teapot... she didn't know the words at all so I had to help her with them... If I hadn't been trying to eat my dinner I would have even done the dance that I learned in PreSchool to help her remember the words.. It was hilarious to listen and watch... We got through a couple of rounds of the Teapot song before Anna tried her hand at singing it on her own.. 'I'm a little tea cup... I'm a little teacup.. tea cup tea cup... " "See me jump"... Total cuteness..

At bathtime Anna said to me (very proudly).. Momma I pooped.. So I peeled off her clothing (a dress jumper, shirt, undershirt and tights) and left her in a diaper and turned my attention to Lily and getting her clothing off (same as Anna) and taking her diaper off after I checked for any presents from her.. As I'm getting Lily done I hear the toilet flush and Anna say "Bye Poopie.. Yucky". She had taken her Pull Up off and taken the poop out and put it in the toilet all by herself before flushing it away.

I had brought home 2 boxes from the toy shop to box up the vases that I would be bringing to my cousin's florist shop so that they can recycle them for new arrangements. While boxing them up Anna followed me down to the basement and tried to help me wrap the vases. Then she and Lily found the shovels that my mom has for them to use when they want to help her shovel the snow (little kid sized). Uh oh... they wound up bringing them upstairs and pretending that they were shoveling the snow outside. Totally fine and great till I told them that we needed to go home.. they insisted that they take the shovels home... but not before they tried to 'help' Grandma shovel some of the snow that is now frozen in place.. but they wouldn't stop attempting to get some snow shoveled. My mom told me that I should start up the car and get it warm for them since they'd probably be freezing once we got them into the car. So I started the car and kiddingly said 'Bye Bye Girls".. That's all they needed. They hightailed it to the car and sat very nicely in their seats while we buckled them in while they still were holding their shovels. The drive home was fun to say the least since they kept bumping each other with them and when I finally asked them to "Stop !", Anna said "Sorry Momma... I stop now... you welcome".

Bananas now equal Gananas in Anna speak... she can say Banana or more precisely Nanas.. but lately it's turned into Ganana. It's cute but I can't wait the actual word again.

Love this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38Wo8PdgRU&feature=relatedhttp://

Should be Disney Girls as performed by Captain and Tennille.. one of my all time favorite songs.. Dedicated to my girls... Anna and Lily...
I didn't even know until tonight when i was surfing youtube that it originally was a Beach Boys hit. But I love it so much.. need to show it and play it for the girls at some point. I also love to sing it (I know most of the words anyway).. maybe the next time I go do a Karaoke night with friends and actually have the courage to get up and sing, I'll sing it. No promises though..

Snow much fun

So with all this snow around we need to do something with it... 2 year olds are not fun to be around when they can't go outside without possibly being lost in the snowbanks. So today I brought the snow inside for them to play with instead of bringing them out to the snow. They didn't exactly understand at first what I was doing but once I showed them, they seemed to like it and had some fun with it. We used some of their bath toys to scoop the snow and I found a small funnel for them to use to shape the snow into a cone.

We've also been doing some dancing and singing around here lately too. I was cleaning in the basement and found a Barry Manilow CD. I showed it to the girls and Anna made me put it on. I had to remind her that it was music only and no pictures.. once the music started we had a great time dancing to the music and I pulled out 2 more Barry Manilow CDs for them. They loved jumping mostly to Jump Shout Boogie and Bandstand Boogie. They also renamed Weekend in New England as the Ballerina Song. Though they only danced to it once with me.. after that they told me .. 'no Ballerina' when it came on.

Enough already

It's been snowing lately here... so much so that schools have been closed left and right... We've been shoveling out for what seems like weeks now.. there is nowhere left for the snow to go.. We've been lucky here in Malden. Our landlord has been coming by and helping us (mostly me) uncover the car and get spaces plowed out. Over at my mom's it's a different story. She lives on a corner and on a walk to school route in my hometown. So even though her sidewalks are plowed constantly and look great, there is a HUGE pile of snow on the corner of her street and the intersection of the street that leads to the school itself. The pile is so big that you can't see if anyone is coming when turning onto the main street from her driveway. Hopefully the city will come by and make the pile smaller so that it's a bit safer for everyone but until then we all need to be really careful in that area. Her street is not the only one like this. There are quite a few like this.. How do I know??? Well for the past 2 Monday afternoons I've been volunteering in the Mayor's Office and answering the phones. The phone calls that I get are sometimes funny... like the little old lady that wanted to talk to the Mayor himself.. about the snow and how she lives on a Dead End street and they have nowhere else to put the snow. I forwarded that one to the Exec Asst. I also get people who need birth certificates for their kids.. I transfer those to the City Clerk's office.