Skipping Town

Andrew was gone this weekend, from 6am on Saturday until midnight tonight. He took the car to the airport, so the girls and I were homebound. It was also freezing and raining, so we probably wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway. Still, staying home alone for two full days, with no human contact (aside from the sort-of human kiddos) or scheduled outside activities, is not easy. Yesterday seemed to last a million hours. The girls had little interest in any structured activity, though we did do some Sculpey (tiny pies, tiny fruits) in the morning. Otherwise, we just hung out in the basement. We made a long banquet table out of Keva planks and arranged all our tiny foods on it, for the enjoyment of Playmobil pandas and other animals. We built stuff from Magna Tiles. I was frequently ordered to "be Princess Celestia" (a My Little Pony) and talk in my "pony voice." The day. Dragged. On. For. A. Million. Hours. After a full day in the basement I felt as torpid and foggy ...

Little Lulu, Combining letters this time since I wrote a lot about Christmas, and that was really the focus for most of November and all of December. I have to say this was the most fun Christmas with you yet: so much giddy anticipation; a real awareness and understanding of Santa; an exciting wish list; and little of the worry of prior years of mid-day meltdowns. Five is a good age. A fun age. We're still exploring a lot of the new things from Christmas as we get back into our regular routine. You're still loving pre-K, the best thing we've ever given you. For future decisions, I need to remember how much sleep I lost this summer, doubting my decision to switch your preschool and enroll you in this class, with its longer hours and unfamiliar teachers and classmates. And yet--what a fortunate thing it is that I didn't let those doubts rule my actions. I feel lucky every day that you're there. Now I worry about the year ending; you say frequently that you want to...

As always, our handmade gifts were the best gifts exchanged this Christmas. The lineup this year: personalized letterpressed notecards from Dad; aprons for adults and kids from Mom; tiny notebooks made from Vera Bradley playing cards from Molly; and tiny Sculpey pies and cakes, with a glass cake stand, from me.  When, you might ask, do I have time to make tiny cakes out of Sculpey. The answer is: the girls got crafty this holiday season. We did so many things together, holed up in our basement while chaos reigned above. Greta made a snowman from cotton balls and construction paper. We made clove and orange pomander balls. We made snow globes from mason jars and bottle-brush trees. We made handprint-painted ornaments for Christmas gifts. We did a lot of foam stickers. We did a few Christmas craft kits from Michaels. We cut snowflakes from coffee filters. We made salt dough stuff and painted it. We made Santas out of corks. We glittered. And we did a lot, a lot, of Sculpey. ...

We were in Connellsville for nearly two weeks this holiday, and Andrew and I packed a lot into our stay. Christmas festivities took up the first part of the trip, but after that, we had great plans. Gabe’s again, of course. Wings at Lynn’s. Those are standard fare for any Connellsville visit. There was New Year’s Eve, as well, which we spent with friends in Pittsburgh who were brave enough to host a party that involved seventeen kids under ten years old. This year, we added something new to our Connellsville time: touring residential and commercial properties with a realtor, with an eye toward possible investment properties. Well, one eye was turned toward that; the other eye was simply curious to see what was behind the doors of some of the stately old homes whose faded grandeur seems mismatched with their $30K prices. We saw some interesting things. At one apartment, the door fell off—just pushed over and fell down flat—when the realtor went to unlock it. At a house, though the ...

A few additional tidbits from our Christmas vacation: The Crib's Death Knell Greta decided Christmas vacation was the perfect time to refuse to sleep in a crib. She and Lucia were sharing a room, with Lucia in Molly's old bed and Greta in a pack-and-play, and for the first time Greta seemed to realize that Lucia had something she wanted. There was nowhere else for her to sleep at night, so she had to accept her fate, but she slept in the bed for her naps. It was about 50/50, sleeping vs. playing. I peeked in one afternoon and saw her trying to climb onto an old exercise bike that's in a corner of the room. Other days, she did nap, adorably tucked under the covers. She made no effort to hide her ability to climb in and out of the pack-and-play with ease. Since returning home, she hasn't protested her crib, but its days are probably numbered. Lucia and Her Snugs The girls got a lot of plush things and dolls for Christmas: plush Anna, Elsa, and Olaf; giant teddy be...

We had a really fun Christmas this year. Both Lucia and Greta were incredibly excited about Santa Claus, and we even made out lists to mail to the North Pole (courtesy of a local shop with a “Santa” mailbox outside). Andrew and I were excited for a different reason: we were heading to Connellsville for nearly two weeks, which meant a blissful escape from frozen/boxed food and an increasingly dirty, chaotic, unpleasant, renovation-inundated home. Molly and Luca were in Connellsville with us for the first week, and Luca, Greta, and Lucia happily played together, running around the house, piling into beds, screaming “Snowman!” and dashing around manically. They all enjoyed watching Rudolph, accompanied by popcorn and hot chocolate. We left all the kids with Mom and Dad to go Gabe’s shopping, where Molly and I brought home a wonderful haul reminiscent of the Gabe’s of yore: among much else, we both got $200 Seven for All Mankind pants for $3, and Molly got a shirt for 50 cents. Andrew...