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.

Done Part Two...

I did it. I made it to the end of the lace sock. Once again I had a small issue since I needed more yarn than what was in the ball that I had. Trying to remember if I had cut anything off the ball when I started for the Fourth time, but I doubt that I did. Thankfully I had thought ahead and found an extra ball on Ravelry - in the same dye lot - for the second sock since the very first ball I used got a bit shortened when I had to rip out the entire sock the first time and I was worried that something like this would happen. So to help me finish the first sock I had to use the ball of yarn that I had rerolled - rewound? - and find the section of color that I was currently using and go from there. It came out really great.

Here are some pretty pictures for you ..

I totally love the details.. So many people have asked if the lacework is actually a cable. It's not. It's just the way that the pattern went.

I'm jonesing to start the second sock.. but I'll wait till tomorrow.. It's probably going to be a(nother) Snow Day and it's already getting pretty late.

Time for bed.. maybe before I start the second sock I'll make myself some check off charts since this was a nightmare of a pattern to follow and it was written completely wrong in many many places. My notes are all over the pattern and I need to streamline them somehow or there will be major hairpulling, screaming and screeching going on otherwise. Plus I'll already know how many times I need to do the repeats and where I need to go in the pattern to get it all done correctly the First time... or so I can hope.

Done

Stick a fork in me... I'm done...
Today was the funeral.. it was small but poignant and went well.. the girls attended and they did great. Took them to the Funeral Home with us and I made sure to show them Great Grandma and tell them that she is sleeping now and that she was a beautiful lady that I will tell them more about someday. I also showed them the DVD movie that my brother put together in tribute to Nana. They really liked the section with Baby Mommy in it. We moved on to the church for the Funeral itself. That went really well. Anna was very quiet and thoughtful during the ceremony. Lily at one point would up with my SIL, Brother and their kids since I presented the Gifts along with my Cousin Jen as the only Granddaughters of our Grandmother. Anna wound up with them too after Communion.

On our way to the cemetary, we wound up witnessing an accident on the highway. There was a car that swerved to avoid our procession (we had just gotten onto the highway) and wound up making other cars swerve and a van wound up going up a snowbank in the fastest lane and flipping on it's side. I still am shaking a little after seeing that happen. When we arrived at the cemetary we had to all take a collective moment to catch our breaths and talk about what we had seen before continuing on with the burial.

Once that part was over we all started gathering roses and other flowers to take home with us. I made sure to grab a red rose and started asking those that might know where approximately my Dad is buried so I could leave him the rose. My brother wound up helping me figure it out and gave me a nice hug of understanding and even asked if I felt ok enough to drive to the restaurant that we were having lunch at.

Lunch was loads of fun.. We sat five of the six (6) little girls at a table mostly to themselves. My SIL and Lee sat with them. My brothers and one of our male cousins (there are 5 boys and 2 girls in the grand kid line up for Nana and Papa) sat at a table that was at the opposite end from the kids and the rest of us (my 2 aunts, uncle, mom, cousin Jen, her daughter, my Nana's niece, her husband,daughter and myself) at the table in between. Lily joined us at one point but then wound up playing with the rest of the kids once they had mostly eaten.

We talked, reminisced about Nana and generally relaxed after the stress of the past couple of days.

Once home I got word of the death of a good friend of mine's mother. I didn't enjoy making the phone call to my mom to let her know since we are friends with the family. That funeral is Monday morning and I hope that I can make an appearance to be supportive to my friend and her very extended family.

I think that I might be turning in early tonight.

Nana's wake

We celebrated Nana's life tonight... it went pretty well. Relatives that we weren't sure would show came and paid their respects. My brother had compiled a DVD with my Dad's old home movies starting in the early sixties and ending in the mid 80's (we think). It was entertaining to watch and nice to see and be reminded of so many relatives that had already passed. There were so many pictures there too. The minister from my church came and paid her respects to my remaining uncle and other relatives that were there.

The funeral home did a great job on Nana and making her look more like the Nana that we all knew and loved so well. In the words of my cousin's almost 3 year old daughter "Meme looks like Meme again".

Tomorrow will be an even longer day for all of us.. There will probably be some tears shed... and probably plenty of laughter too. But most importantly Nana will be totally in peace tomorrow and reunited with my grandfather, Dad, uncle, her brothers and sisters and parents.

Nana, you were so loved here and you will truly be missed. I really hope and pray that someday I get to be as lucky as you and get to live a life that was full like yours. I just don't want the Alzheimer's diagnosis. Love forever, your little Cherie.