fancy clothes

Last night we went here for dinner, basically because we had a coupon deal we had to use up by today. We did not plan to go to dinner with the girls - we'd been thinking it'd work for a lunch - but that didn't work out. So we billed it to them as a "fancy" dinner out, put on fancy clothes and encouraged best behavior. The girls looked lovely - one woman asked us what we were all celebrating since they were dressed so fancy! Dinner went well, with only a few minor incidents, and the kids loved getting to check out the view from the patio. The best part might have been on the way out, when I had to fess up to the hostess about Eliza dropping her cup of water on the floor in the bathroom, and the hostess (an undergrad herself) said, oh, no problem, we're used to vomit from the undergrads or smashed glass from dropped drinks. So a paper cup of water was NO PROBLEM for them. Yay!

Anyway, after we got home, I decided to take some pictures of the girls all cute while the bath filled up. Surprisingly everyone was on board with that idea! So here are some of the shots. Enjoy!

Hayden got pics taken first, and then E jumped in.

H saw E hugging her, and said, I want to hug E!

SO CUTE!

M spotted the camera, and plopped down to participate. It sort of worked.

and then this happened - choking and nose poking. No more all three.

Then H wanted one by herself - and E totally photobombed!!

a beautiful, trying to be oh-so-sweet looking, Hayden

What did YOU do on your random Wednesday night?!

Molly - 18 months

Can you believe it?! Molly is EIGHTEEN MONTHS OLD. Absolutely, irrefutably, definitely no longer a baby. She's a walking, (sort of) talking TODDLER. And we think she's pretty awesome!

I tried a photo shoot with her, like I did when she was a baby. It went something like this...

I could barely get her to hold the 18 months card right.

she did sort of manage to cooperate while lying down

"Why are we doing this again?"

this was a year ago

but then just flopped over - "like this Mama?"

"yaaaaaaay!"

look, a cat!

we practiced our "arms up " pose (or "touchdown" as Daddy calls it)

look closely, I'm so excited I'm drooling

where did that wet stuff on my belly come from?

"why is my belly wet again?"

one super cute close up - look at those gnashers and baby blues!

and then she tried to escape...

She is one happy and healthy 18 month old. At the doctor check up last week, she is oh-so-close to breaking the 20 lb mark, coming in at 19 lbs, 13 oz. She's still in the 10th percentile for height and weight but since she's sticking with her growth curve, she's doing fine! She's got 6 teeth with 2 more coming through (or so said the doctor, I haven't felt them yet.) She says about 6 words, but signs up to 30. She loves belly buttons and poking bare skin (with freezing cold hands) that peeks out around the waistline whether it is on her sisters or her parents. One of her favorite songs is No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and will sing the no, no, no part and touch her head during it. Around the house, she is into EVERYTHING. She loves to empty things (drawers, cabinets, toy boxes, etc.), carry things and just generally wreak as much havoc as a toddler hurricane can. She also climbs like crazy and loves to get a hold of any sort of drawing apparatus - just like her sisters. Nothing on a table top or counter is safe anymore. She is certainly keeping us on our toes!

guess who got a hold of a highlighter?

at first we worried when she did this, but there was just no stopping her. so now, ehh! She'll be fine.

demonstrating climbing talents

gotta do my hair!

What?! Don't you wear a crazy hat while brushing your teeth?

Happy 18 months little one!

Valentine's Day

With three little girls who love art, candy and the color pink, Valentine's Day was a big deal in our house.  The schools were helpful by sending home a class list at least a week ahead of time, so we had plenty of time to make our Valentine's. Hayden really got into it, and decorated and wrote a Valentine for everyone in her class (20 other kids!) plus several for adults at school. Hayden used foam hearts to decorate with stickers, markers and glitter and she wrote a little phrase (like on those ubiquitous conversation hearts) on each one, along with the recipient's name and her name. Then we attached a heart lollipop. They were great!

Hard at work decorating, you can see the stack of completed valentines in front of her.

 Eliza got to do foam hearts for her teachers, but then we just put stickers on packages of heart gummies for her classmates. A little simpler but she was very focused getting stickers on every single piece of candy! And she wanted to make more foam hearts. In fact, both of them have asked to make more valentines, after Valentine's Day had passed!

E gets creative in her PJs

 We spent much of last week celebrating Valentine's Day, inluding wearing and modeling the new valentine themed leg warmers (called 'warm-ups' by Eliza) that Aunt Jen sent. Both Hayden and Eliza wore theirs to dance class. Hayden was proud to report her teacher had called hers "cool."

snazzy legwarmers!

Then on the big day, we picked out special outfits. Luckily we have no shortage of red and pink clothing in this house! Plus they were all willing to pose for me, before heading off to school.

can you see the new gap in Hayden's mouth?!

I love my Valentines!

 In the evening, Daddy brought home roses for all his favorite Valentine's. Molly wasn't quite sure what to do with hers, but she had fun smacking Jason with it and then trying to sniff it. Hayden and Eliza were tickled to get their own rose but I think they were most excited to check out their Valentine's Day loot and pick out something for dessert.

smack you with the rose

please make sniffing noises for sound effects!

checking out the goodies

 I had a quite fabulous Valentine's Day. Jason did bring me roses that were lovely, and some French macarons to try. We had sushi takeout for dinner after the girls went to bed and had a lovely time eating and chatting without being interrupted. But best of all, we got this Valentine from Hayden that she had made at school.

 

Can you tell what it says? Here's the translation. "Dear Family. Happy Valentine's Day. I love you. You are the best family ever. xoxoxoxoxoxo. Love Hayden." What more could you want?!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Superbowl Party XII

We hosted our annual Super Bowl party (12th!) a couple weekends ago and we had a blast! The kids, in particular, had a super time - running around, throwing mini-nerf footballs, eating the occasional chip or cookie, and just generally enjoying having friends to play with (there were 9 kids, including our 3).  Even with late bedtimes, no one had a meltdown - Molly just ended up rolling around on the floor before we took her up.

Molly, pregame, getting into the sporting spirit. FYI she did not master actually blowing in the whistle

There was LOTS of yummy food of course. We had a few traditional items - our team spirit M&M pudding cookies (do you know how hard it is to find purple M&Ms!? Thanks popop for the special find!), veggies/chips/french onion dip and the soft pretzels and pretzel dogs made another appearance. And then some newbies - homemade kitkat bars, a muffelata, and queso (highly recommend the velveeta queso blanco if you're going the queso route!). Plus others brought grape jelly meatballs (a huge hit - thanks Grandma!), buffalo chicken dip, cheesecake brownies, spinach and artichoke dip, guacamole, fruit salad, and more. Hungry yet?

buffet part 1 - muffelata front and center, flanked by pigs-in-a-pretzel and spinach/artichoke dip

team spirit cookies!

buffet part 2 - fruit, pirate booty, guacamole, cookies and other desserts

 Besides actually watching the game (do people do that? I didn't!), we tried to have alternative activities available, like Super Bowl bingo, football toss, football themed coloring, and the ever fabulous not-ours-so-they-are-like-new toys.

Hayden and Jason consult on football bingo.

Molly mooches berries from her buddy Charlotte.

Hailey and Riley enjoy the toys - love the princess/football eyes combo!

everyone needs a superbowl art table!

Everyone had cleared out by 9:30, since there were children to be put to bed, but we still consider it a successful party, especially since there weren't any meltdowns and people left happy. Can't wait to do it again next year!

On Trend

In case you were worried, we are at least slightly up with current pop culture. As Jason arrived home last night, I was being regaled by Hayden and Eliza's version of Gangnam Style. I don't know how they started it, because we weren't listening to it. (I recently got Vampire Weekend from the library, and we've had several kitchen dance parties to that! Tracks 2 and 3 are our favorites.) When I heard Jason was home, I said - go sing for Daddy! - and they headed to the front door. As he walks up the steps, Hayden goes "hit it!" And they broke into song. Somehow they ended back in the kitchen, and I begged Jason to record them, because I couldn't find my camera. Luckily they were hyped up enough to keep going, and after a brief false start with ABCs, I present to you, Gangnam Style ala Hayden and Eliza! 
 


Maybe not quite as polished as the pistachio commercial version during the super bowl but pretty darn cute! And if you have been living under a rock and don't know what Gangnam style is, check out this link. Then try the horse dance yourself!

Snow Day!

Last week, winter storm Iago was predicted to visit North Carolina and caused much excitement with the anticipation of the white stuff. The girls could barely sleep last Thursday, as we talked about the possibility of snow. The morning dawned with just enough snow to make cover the grass and give us a reason to tromp around in boots and snow suits.

H strikes a pose

working the snow suit!

camellia(?) in the snow

 The snow was actually more like crunchy ice and Molly was NOT a big fan, as I think you can tell by her facial expression in all the pictures.  She kept falling over because it was so hard to walk on it.

 

seriously mom, enough with the pics. get me out of this stuff.

 Hayden was already scheduled to not have school as part of the MLK weekend, so I had been planning for FUN FRIDAY without even knowing it would be a snow day. One of our main projects was to make a yogurt cake, the gâteau au yaourt, that is talked about in the book Bringing Up Bebe. It's supposedly a simple cake that French children as young as 3 learn to make on their own. You use the yogurt containers to measure the rest of the ingredients. With a three and five year old who love to bake and eat cake, it seemed like the perfect project. So I printed out the recipe, got all the supplies together and let them have at it. They had a GREAT time.

let's begin!

sugar! (does her 'concentrating' face remind you of anyone?)

more sugar!

guess who didn't like being stuck on the ground, but couldn't be trusted in a chair?

cooperative stirring

carefully adding in the dry ingredients

 

 

I'm here! Where did the supplies go?!!!

 Part of the process of the French kids making this cake, is that they learn to do it themselves, AND then they have to have patience to wait to eat it at afternoon tea/snack (le gouter). Figuring my kids could learn a little more patience (we always take about having tastes of batter, at the end), we didn't eat the cake until the afternoon. To make a bit more FUN FRIDAY, we invited over our carpool buddy for a tea party.  Everyone was dressed up fancy, and everyone enjoyed the cake!

our finished product! a little bit dense but very tasty

pouring the tea

Hayden, cake and fancy clothes

this stuff is GOOD!

Other parts of FUN FRIDAY included coloring on the floor. Hayden's artwork continues to get more detailed and often has an extensive backstory. Molly has discovered art supplies as one of the many things to wreak havoc with. She does try to color, but mainly she enjoys opening markers, waving them around dangerously close to marking many things and then trying to put the top back on.

different ages, different approaches to floor art :)

a princess, flowers, a tower, sunshine,  and more

it's on my finger, MY FINGER!!!!!

 I also used Fun Friday to try making a whole chicken in the crockpot, plus a potato/sweet potato gratin AND harvesting our broccoli from our back deck. If the broccoli had snow on it, does it count as FRESH or FROZEN?!!!

broccoli ala snow

harvested and ready to eat!

Here's hoping it will snow again, and maybe we can have a REAL snow day with canceled school/work and snow soft enough for snowmen and sledding!