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About twenty minutes ago Henry crossed over the threshold of good humor and stepped squarely into its negative counterpart. We were decorating Thank You cards when we hit an insurmountable wall of angst owing to not having enough room for both a cat and lizard stamp. After talking it out with him didn't help, he dejectedly trudged up to his room to rest for an hour. Or two.

We're spending a quiet day at home. Well, Henry and I are. Dave and Holly are currently braving the wilds of an apparently jam-packed grocery store, gathering provisions for this evening (fondue! mini hot dogs!) and I'm using the unexpected alone time to download the 284 pictures we took over Christmas. We had a great week in Boston. On Christmas Eve we decorated a special cookie for Santa and made him lemonade. On Christmas morning, the first thing Henry said was that "Santa had eaten the WHOLE COOKIE!" and that he'd left his empty plate and cup on top of some presents. He was thrilled that his cookie had been appreciated by the Big Guy himself. The day after Christmas a major snowstorm hit and we spent the next two days cozied up inside, being lazy, eating, making snow volcanos, and playing with our presents. Frankly, I can't believe it's over and we're back home. Time sure has a way of flying by.

Earlier this morning, Henry and I had a quiet moment at the dining room table while Dave and Holly napped. He worked very hard at making confetti for this evening while I made the deviled eggs for lunch that he had requested yesterday. It was a nice moment to have on the last day of the year.

Happy New Year everyone!

Posted by Jenn at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning Henry left for school for the last time this year. When he gets home he'll be stepping off of the bus and stepping right into our car for the long ride to Grammy and Grandpa's. While I was packing our suitcases this morning, I couldn't help reflecting on the last Christmas we spent at my parents' house. I was in the throes of first trimester morning sickness, which hit me seemingly seconds after I found out I was pregnant. At the time I remember wondering how much of it was psychological because it seemed too coincidental how quickly it came on. I spent most of that Christmas vacillating between napping in our room and sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, willing the nausea to go away. So, despite having been given the gift of Henry and Holly's cold, I'm looking forward to doing it up right this time around.

The next few days will be filled with cookie- and ornament-making, Christmas light peeping, train rides, and general merry-making, so if I don't get a chance to get back on before the holiday, let me just say now that I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Posted by Jenn at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did anyone else haul themselves out of bed early this morning to see the lunar eclipse? It was beautiful. I tried to take a picture, but I'm fairly inept with my camera and couldn't even get the moon to register on the screen, so I put it away and just enjoyed the moment. Then I went inside to get Dave. It took me more than an hour to get back to sleep, but it was worth it.

We got my parents two presents that are difficult to wrap. It happens every year, there's always the awkwardly shaped gift that results in bunched up paper, lots of tape, and oodles of bows to (mostly unsuccessfully) disguise the whole mess. My original plan was to send them ahead of us via UPS with a bunch of other presents, but there wasn't any room in the box once everything else was in there, so they're going to have to brave the seven hour trip to their house in our trunk. They're not showing it, but the presents are very afraid. Meanwhile I've been trying to decide if I should bring them unwrapped and sneak them into the house to wrap while I'm there, or risk their paper being shredded by the journey in the car.

Enter a Very Good Idea. Last week on soulemama, one of her posts was about how her family had, a few years ago, eschewed wrapping paper in favor of fabric. Brilliant! It's eco-friendly, produces much less Christmas-day trash, they can be used over and over again, and they handle awkwardly-shaped presents with great aplomb! On Friday Holly and I went out in search of fabric, and yesterday, after Henry came home from school, we set about making two gift bags for his Grammy and Grandpa's presents. (Henry works the sewing machine pedal like a champ!) They were so easy and satisfying to make, we made two more. The end result:

Aren't they cute? We tied them off with yarn. They look like loot bags to me, or money bags from cartoons; they should have big dollar signs appliqued on them. I'm thinking I might have to head out after Christmas to see what kind of deals I can score on holiday fabric to make more for next year.

Posted by Jenn at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's been a pretty quiet Sunday. Actually, the last week in general has been pretty quiet, although I'm so tired by the time the kids' bedtime rolls around, it feels like physical proof that we've been getting up to quite a lot. This time of year always yields impressively large to-do lists that seem like they'll never get done until I realize that holiday list items generally get crossed off all at the same time. I like that, a flurry of activity that comes to a sudden end all at once, usually the minute we climb into the car to travel to wherever we happen to be spending Christmas.

My parents' Christmas tree fell over earlier this week. They're not sure how it happened, although conspiracy theories abound. A lot of glass ornaments that my mom has been collecting over the last thirty-five years broke and so they've had to regroup, tree-trimming-wise. My mom told me she's going to enlist Henry's help in making some glittery paper snow-flakes and some paper chains. I mentioned to him this morning what had happened to Grammy and Grandpa's tree, and what his Grammy had in mind, and he immediately went over to ours and picked out a cinnamon ornament and said he'd like to make a bunch of those for them, too. He can see the tree in his mind, and it's glorious. Later in the afternoon he started expressing concern that our tree might fall over too. Dave reassured him but I think he remains a bit skeptical. I wouldn't trust Dave either.

Posted by Jenn at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just vacuumed the house and then mopped the worst bits. These aren't very Saturday night-y activities, or at least they wouldn't be if I hadn't yanked the cork out of the wine bottle at 5 this afternoon. Everything's looking a bit rosy, even a little housework, especially housework that helps clear the way for other activities, such as sewing bean bags for the game we're making Henry for Christmas, which is what I had planned on doing after vacuuming but which I have officially put off until tomorrow night in favor of snuggling up to chips and dip and a little tv. Hey, I'm tired. I vacuumed. And mopped. A little.

Anyway, on to some firsts. Holly had her first hair cut today. She wasn't thrilled. She didn't fully grasp the idea of looking in the mirror to see what was going on, and so she kept turning her head around to try and get a glimpse of the scissor action. It didn't work out very well for her, other than she got a cute little haircut and a Christmas cookie to help her feel better. Hmmm, so I guess it did work out pretty well for her. We are now the proud owners of an envelope full of Holly's baby hair. My baby. Excuse me while I go have another little sip of wine.

The other first was we watched the San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker this evening. We started out watching it on PBS. Henry was pretty into it. He asked lots of questions about everything that was going on. When the first act ended, we watched a few ads, learned about the inspiration for the productions sets, and just as Kristi Yamaguchi was about to talk about the costumes, they cut to ads showcasing construction stuff, then aired an episode of "This Old House". Now I'm just as much a fan of Tom Silva as the next person, but that was very badly done, PBS. Fortunately, we were able to rent the same version on Amazon's Video-On-Demand. Act II is not to be missed. Henry's favorite was the russian dancers. 30 seconds into their dance he said "Now this is the Nutcracker." I grew up watching the 1977 Baryshnikov version, so I'll always be partial to that one, but it was a lot of fun to watch it with Henry.

Posted by Jenn at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few months ago I ordered six play silks (plus a free silk scarf since it was my first order from that particular store) thinking that Henry and I could dye them for Holly as his Christmas present to her. This past Monday night it was very clear that Henry was coming down with a cold. I heard him coughing a few times during the night, and when he woke up in the morning, he looked pretty done in, so we kept him home. The best way to describe how he was feeling would be: too sick to go to school, but not too sick to not drive me nuts". He was bouncing off the walls, so before Dave went to work later in the morning, I asked him to pick up the usual sick kid necessities at the store, plus three packs of every flavor of Kool-Aid that they had. While Holly was napping, we got to work.

The instructions I used were a combination of these at the Artful Parent and these at Make Baby Stuff. Henry and I soaked the playsilks in hot water with two cups of vinegar mixed in while we got our first two dye baths going. For the baths I used large white soup bowls because they were large enough to hold all of the liquid, but deep enough to keep the silk submerged. For each bath we mixed two cups of water with 1/2 cup of vinegar, then added either three packets of Kool-Aid, or food coloring, depending on which color we were going for.

Henry mushing the silk down into the blue bath.

Once the playsilk was fully submerged, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and we microwaved them for two minutes. We uncovered them, mushed them around a bit, covered them back up, then microwaved them for another two minutes, after which most of the dye was taken up in the silk. We carefully poured the liquid out because it was really hot, then rinsed out the silk and hung it up to dry. Henry was enamoured with the green one:

It was the first one that came out of a dye bath and I think we were both amazed by how beautiful the color came out, and, at least on my part, that the whole process worked at all (I'm a fatalist, what can I say?).

What we used to get the colors: Cherry flavor for the red, food coloring for the orange*, Lemonade for yellow, Lemon Lime for green, Blue Raspberry for blue, food coloring for purple, and Pink Lemonade for pink. One set of the instructions I linked to above recommends you use gloves for this. I would second that notion. I didn't bother and I had some pretty scary looking fingers for a few days.

Henry took great pleasure in wrapping up his gift to his sister yesterday after school. Although I think she'll really like them, if Holly turns out to be disinterested in the playsilks, Henry will definitely put them to good use.

* Our store didn't have Orange or Grape flavored Kool-Aid so I used McCormack Neon food coloring. I used the amount of drops indicated on the back of the box for icing a whole cake.

Posted by Jenn at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Quick video of Holly going for a ride on Henry's scooter:

Posted by Jenn at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of weeks ago I was perusing etsy's Waldorf toy section looking for inspiration for Holly for Christmas. There are so many tempting, beautiful toys. Holly's at an in-between age so it's hard to know what to get her. A lot of what I was drawn to were suited more to kids who are a year or two older than she is. I was tempted to get a few of the wooden animals or puzzles, but eventually I stumbled upon a peg/cup color matching set. Once I had found something I liked, I naturally hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided to sleep on it. A few days later I went back to etsy to look at it again and I couldn't find it anywhere. I was crushed. Holly loves putting things into other things, and this seemed like a toy she would have a lot of fun with. A few days of pouting later, it occurred to me that I could probably make it for her. I'd seen the wooden pieces at craft stores before, so it was really just a matter of painting them. Benjamin Franklin's had exactly what I needed, so yesterday I got the watercolors out and went to work:

I'm pretty happy with the result. I went with watercolors because it shows the grain of the wood. There was a minor moment of panic when I put the yellow guy into his yellow cup and realized he was too big for his "home". It was doom and gloom for a minute there until Dave pointed out I could just sand the opening a bit wider. Why didn't I think of that? Last evening I noticed the paint dusts off in your hands when you play with them, so I'm going to have to seal them before wrapping them up, but I think Holly's going to enjoy them.

Posted by Jenn at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday morning, after breakfast, we headed out to our tree farm of choice to procure the Perfect Christmas Tree. The place where we go is in an area that's not very sheltered by anything that would cut down the force of the wind, and while we start off as a happy go-lucky family, we usually end the excursion as popsicles. This year we were determined to be warm, so over the course of five minutes we bundled up the kids to within an inch of their lives, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to locate our own snowpants, scarves, boots, and various other winter wardrobe paraphernalia while the kids slowly melted away in our living room. When we finally arrived at the tree farm, the weather was stunningly beautiful and nary a cold breeze blew across our exposed noses, and while it normally takes us an hour and a half of trudging through bitter, and cold, and snowy in order to find our tree, this year we found it five minutes after we got to the place. It was so fast, we decided to look around at other trees, but after a very quick two minutes, during which Dave and I came to our senses, we decided not to tempt fate and high-tailed it back to The One, which Dave had very carefully marked with a pile of rocks.

Henry could hardly wait to decorate it. He was literally chomping at the bit. We got the tree set up, then broke briefly (and agonizingly, depending on which of us you were) for lunch, after which Henry and I put the lights up. After the lights, Dave took a nap, I rested on the couch, and Henry very graciously let us. When he couldn't take it anymore and managed to rouse us, Dave and Holly went out to procure food for our traditional tree decorating meal (mini-wieners, cheese, crackers, sparkling apple cider) and Henry and I got started on the ornaments. By the time dinner made it into the house, we were almost done. This was the first year that Henry seemed to be really curious about the ornaments and where they came from and what they were. We had a good time. Dave, for his part, was extremely pleased he came in after it was mostly done. (My Dad is now officially jealous of Dave.)

A few weeks ago Henry and I went to our town's tree-lighting ceremony. Carols are sung, "The Night Before Christmas" is read by a Professor from the University, and the town's enormous tree is lit. It made quite the impression on the young man. So much of an impression that we now have a tree lighting ceremony every day. Sometimes twice. I get to read the poem and Henry gets to plug in the tree. It's very serious business. At this rate, I'm going to have "The Night Before Christmas" fully memorized by the night before Christmas. Perhaps sooner.

Posted by Jenn at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This evening I was finishing up Henry's bath when Dave, who had just left the house to take the dog out for a walk, came rushing back in, charged up the stairs and told me Henry needed to "get out and get dressed, fast...FAST!!!" So Henry pulled the plug, got out, and just as he was finishing drying himself off, Dave came back up and between the two of us we got him dressed and jacketed in under 15 seconds. I told him now he knows what it feels like to be a Disney princess, even if we aren't bluebirds, and he giggled and said "Wow! You guys are fast!" just as Dave pulled his hood up over his head, picked him up, and carried him down the stairs.

Dave discovered that the house on the next block that has had lots of tantalizingly unlit Christmas lights up for the past few weeks not only finally had them going, but had them synchronized to music. Henry's dream is to someday do that to our house, and it's something he talks about all the time. Just this morning after hearing a five minute monologue on what we're still going to need and how many more lights we're going to have to buy and how it's probably going to cost "like, $140!" I turned to Dave and told him he created a monster when he showed him that first video on youtube ages and ages ago. Since we've only seen such a thing online, seeing it in real life is akin to...well...gosh...I don't even know...all I can come up with is making out with 1960's era Paul McCartney and even that doesn't seem quite right.

When they came back in a few minutes later, Dave said they caught the tail end of the last song, and when Dave told Henry that he was sorry, but they had missed it, one of the guys (supposedly it's a bunch of University football players) who lives in the house overheard him and asked if they'd come down just to see it and when Dave said yeah, he yelled up at the house to play "Carol of the Bells" for Henry. And he was in heaven.

Posted by Jenn at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The first few hours of the day were jam-packed. Things have slowed down since. It's currently snowing outside, so Holly and I are celebrating with some cinnamon toast.

Henry's Kindergarten class is decorating their gingerbread houses today. I was one of a few people who volunteered to make fresh icing for affixing candies, so that's what I was doing at 7:30AM. We ended up driving Henry in and you should have seen him clutching the bag with the tub of icing in it. It was clearly precious cargo. I hope they're allowed to bring the houses home today; I'm looking forward to seeing his.

Holly and I had an hour to kill before my chiropractic appointment so we went to the grocery store and picked up a couple of gingerbread kits for us to do at home this weekend with some friends. We also stopped by Michael's to pick up some supplies for a couple of presents I want to make for Holly and Henry, as well as a bag of old-fashioned clothespins with rounded heads. Dave was going to toss the giant tin that his popcorn came in but I felt like there was something I could do with it for Holly. I rescued it, cleaned it up, and pondered and thought and pondered some more but couldn't come up with anything, so I emailed a friend of mine who happens to be a Montessori-trained creative guru and asked her if she had any ideas. Naturally, she had tons. One of them was to line up clothespins around the edge. This would help Holly develop her motor skills with the added benefit of making a great noise when she drops them into the bottom of the can (not to mention being excellent drumsticks should the need arise). While Holly was napping I painted hair on the "heads" and drew on little faces.

They came out kind of cute! Holly's not quite dexterous enough to put them on the rim, but she'll get there. She does enjoy the noise they make when she drops them in the can. She also likes making them "run" around the edge.

It was a nice, quick, and fun project.

Posted by Jenn at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They really put kids on the fast track in Kindergarten. Henry's learning things that I know I didn't learn myself until much later. He knows what a trapezoid is, and it is now his favorite shape. He's working out addition and subtraction, which I'm not sure they're officially teaching yet, but they have been actively laying a heavy foundation that has led to him internalizing all sorts of math...well...stuff, the natural conclusion of which, for him, has been addition and subtraction. Then there's "language arts". Ahhh, language arts. He's being stubborn about confessing what words he knows. He refuses to read anything that hasn't officially been taught to him from the list of high frequency words his teacher is working their way through. This many weeks into the year, though, the list of words he knows has become rather long, and it's only a matter of time before he doesn't remember which words he's been taught and which he's taught to himself. Once that happens, I'll do a big happy dance and Henry will be blazing through the books we read at night. In the meantime, one of the things he likes to do is practice writing sentences on my computer. At school they've been working on punctuation marks a bit, and he's been taking a few out for a test drive. This past weekend, this is what he came up with:

They remind me of a philosophizing Hemingway. Short and sweet, slightly existential. He was very pleased with the end result. (For the record, four of the words he typed out in those sentences are words he would refuse to read in a book.)

Yesterday when I was helping out with the gingerbread houses, one of the other mom's told me that her daughter came home from school a few weeks ago and was talking about Henry. She said he's a little loopy, that sometimes when they're walking to another activity, for instance gym or art, Henry will forget where they're going and start wandering off in another direction and the class has to call him back and remind him where they're headed. When I told Dave that story, we both agreed that it epitomizes Henry. That's my boy.

Posted by Jenn at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This morning, after making Henry's lunch and snack, getting breakfast on the table, and rushing the young man to the bus stop in time to catch the bus, I came home and made a double batch of my Grandmother's famous baked beans to bring to Dave's department's holiday party. Actually, this recipe is so good, I really need to capitalize that last bit to give it the proper dignity so: I made my Grandmother's Famous Baked Beans. After a quick shower, I headed out the door to a fellow Kindergartener's mom's house where, along with four or five other moms, we assembled 22 gingerbread houses over the course of an hour and a half, which the kids will be decorating on Friday. Henry's not the only one going through Kindergarten-related Rites of Passage. Right now I'm glad I don't have to transport the houses to the school because that's going to be one nerve-wracking drive. As soon as I came home, Dave and I gathered up Holly, the beans (sorry, The Beans), and rice krispie treats that Dave made while I was gone and headed for the luncheon. It was fun and low-key, as it is every year. Holly and I came home full and happy and played for a while before I put her down for a nap. Right now, I'm tired and my eyes are droopy. The sun shone in through the windows just before I sat down to write out this post and it really highlighted what a state of disarray the house is in, not to mention how desperately I need to vacuum, but I'm choosing to ignore it, for a little longer anyway.

I don't know if it's because of the spread that was proffered at the holiday party, but I sort of want appetizers for dinner tonight. I wonder if Dave would go for that...

Edited to add: It's official. I've eaten too many Beans. Take that however you'd like.

Posted by Jenn at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dave's brother gives us Godiva chocolates for Christmas every year. This year's package arrived late last week, so last night we sat on the couch and sampled some. More than some. Quite possibly a lot. Usually we're pretty good about clearing out evidence of the previous nights depravities before Henry gets up, but when rosy-fingered dawn made her appearance this morning, the coffee table was littered with boxes of chocolate. Despite having made note of that fact, I did nothing about removing them because we were in full two-hour-snow-delay-on-this-particular-school-morning swing, and Henry didn't seem very interested anyway, not with Mickey Mouse doing the hot dog dance on TV. So I went about making his lunch, getting breakfast for us, and getting myself dressed for the day. At one point I heard the slightest of rustles, but after a moment's pause, didn't hear it again, and so I carried on. Finally I gave my hair one last fluff, came back out to the living room, and what vision should greet me? You've probably already figured it out. Several of the boxes no longer had lids, and next to them stood Holly, contentedly sucking on what was left of a dark chocolate truffle. She looked very pleased. She was probably wondering where we've been hiding the good stuff while she gets stuck with the cheap milk chocolate from her advent calendar. I'm sure the oatmeal she got for breakfast right after was a total letdown. I'm kind of proud of her though. She chose well.

Posted by Jenn at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This afternoon, while Holly and I were enjoying a late lunch, it started to snow. A beautiful snow, with nice, big, fluffy flakes. It started off slow, then it started to grow. (The Grinch has been on the brain lately.) By the time we were done eating, we were in the throes of quite the little squall. I felt bad for the guys across the street who were doing some work up on a neighbors roof. Holly and I bundled up and went outside. Kids have so much more stamina for being outside when it's cold and snowy. I was ready to go in after about five minutes, but Holly was in it for the long haul. She transferred her love of climbing to various outdoor fixtures such as the back stoop, our swing, the patio, various chairs. Every once in a while she'd vehemently say "MILK!" over and over again, so we'd trudge inside, tracking mud everywhere, I'd take off my coat and shoes, enjoy the warmth, start to get Holly out of her coat only to have her start to cry and stumble back over to the back door. I'd rebundle myself up and out we'd go. That happened twice before I smartened up and just stayed in my coat while she drank. Once in a great while I can be a quick study. The last thing she did before we headed indoors for good was to climb up the hill of dirt around one of our trees and attempt to slide down it. She worked hard to get herself to the bottom, but I don't think it was the thrilling experience she was hoping for.

The snow petered out for an hour or so but returned full force when it was time for Henry to come home. It's been falling steadily ever since and now everything is covered. It's great. If it's going to be cold, it may as well be snowing to help ease the chill.

Posted by Jenn at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Right now Dave and Henry are outside hanging up even more lights on the outside of our house. This year they're really bringing it, but that's a story for another post.

On Friday I mentioned to Dave that it had been a long time since we'd made a run for indian food, so we decided we would dedicate today to that particular quest, since it's a bit of a drive. At some point between putting the kids to bed last night and late this morning, we completely forgot. Instead we spent a quiet morning at home, and once we had remembered about going to get indian, it was too late. Dave suggested we run up to Grizzly instead so he could make use of some gift certificates he got for his birthday. So we all got into the car and hit the road. Naturally Grizzly was closed because it's Sunday, so we went to the mall instead. It was a mob scene. Fifteen minutes in and I was begging Dave to please let us go home. Henry had other ideas that included a carousel ride and sitting on a bench to people watch while munching on a post-carousel pretzel. Despite my fretting while waiting (and waiting) (and waiting some more) in line at the Gap, I managed to score Holly a totally cute furry hat, with ears and pom-poms that will no doubt spend no more than a second on her noggin before she rips it off and tosses it aside. It's worth that one second though.

So, the rest of the evening will apparently be spent doing laundry, watching football, and doing a puzzle instead of driving home through the wilds of central Pennsylvania. It's a good trade-off. I will miss the curry-induced dreams though.

Posted by Jenn at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We just got back from our town's Victorian Day parade. All of the parade participants get dressed up in Victorian era garb and walk down Main Street. We had never been before because we're usually in western Massachusetts visiting with my Grandma. It was a lot of fun. Henry scored lots of candy. He's gone from being totally shy at parades to completely working it. He stands roadside, makes eye contact with people and waves. What follows is a shower of candy, a mad scramble, and polite "Thank you"'s (which, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes pop out of their own volition, and sometimes come only after vigorous parental prompting). Holly had the bejeebus scared out of her by the Grinch. She got a candy cane out of it, but I don't think that assuaged her fear at all. Santa isn't going to go over well this year, I can already tell. On top of a touch of stranger anxiety, she seems to have a general fear of men with beards.

After the parade, we headed to the downtown shops to take care of the rest of our Christmas list. We've got only one person left, and we have a general idea what we're going to get that person, so we're doing pretty well. On the way home, we stopped and got hot chocolates (Henry's with the marshmallows on the side, thankyouverymuch). Holly went to town on hers and is currently sleeping it off upstairs in her room. Dave, because he's a Scrooge, didn't get anything. I don't understand how he could resist, but he did.

I love days like today.

Posted by Jenn at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

henry: Oh man! That house's Christmas lights aren't turned on.
me: I know! I'm *so* bummed!
henry: And I'm *so* toot!
me: You're so toot?
henry: Yeah, and we're not supposed to say those words because they're bathroom words.
me: Bathroom words?
henry: Yup. "Bum" and "toot" are bathroom words.
me: How right you are. My apologies.

Posted by Jenn at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I talked with my Grandma on Thanksgiving, she mentioned that almost every day she watches the video of Holly talking. I told her if that was the case, I should probably get cracking on making another one, so last night at dinner we helped Holly get her talk on again. It was easier this time; her verbal skillz have improved a lot, and quickly.

Posted by Jenn at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We're experiencing torrential downpours in this here neck of the woods. Dave and I were a bit sluggish this morning so we ended up driving Henry to school, little realizing that every other parent was doing the same thing, although their reasons for doing so probably had something to do with the rain whereas ours was born of sheer laziness. Dare to be different. Anyway, some of the roads were starting to grow pretty significant puddles. Henry informed us with great certainty that there would indeed be flooding. I don't doubt he's wrong. All of this is a lead-in to the part of the story where I tell you that with all of the rain coming down outside, I felt a bit silly turning on our dishwasher. It seems like a waste, like I should throw all of the dishes outside, squirt some dishwashing soap on them, and let Mother Nature take over. I don't think I'll be doing any laundry today.

Posted by Jenn at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)