Hi

It seems as if all I have time for these days is a quick update every two weeks or so! Oh well, here goes another one:

Here are Sweet Pea and The Bug during one of their good playing-together moments. Sweet Pea is teaching The Bug about kitties (what else?)

Grandma S. and Boopa brought Sweet Pea one of those funny little Klutz books and this one had a plastic envelope attached containing googly eyes. The pictures in the book show how you can make anything look alive and silly with googly eyes. We now have googly eyes on our back fence to complete a Scooby Doo face that Grandma S. has been seeing in the wood grain. Sweet Pea also decided that the dining room table and two of the chairs needed to have eyes, and for four days or so she asked me to be the voice of the dining room table at meal time... hee hee! The pink baby hat on one of the chairs was my idea. One morning Sweet Pea put two googly eyes on the dishwasher and had me making that talk, but when The Bug saw the eyes on the dishwasher she backed away and started crying! The table and chairs didn't bother her, though... hmm.

The Bug thinks that her big sis is the greatest thing in the whole wide world and is always trying to emulate her. This is why we have a 17-month-old who draws on paper with pens, sticks tiny suction cups (which are from another Klutz book - thanks, grandparents, for all the many, many choking hazards that are impossible to keep away from the baby) to the bathroom sink and door handle, and is getting to be a real whiz on the stairs!

The other night our whole family made dinner together. Slipshod was behind the camera when the shot above was taken, but another reason he wasn't in the picture was that, regrettably, he doesn't have a kitchen apron. He has been having a really fun time trying out cooking this year, though (I love you, Alton Brown!) so maybe Santa Clause needs to be alerted to Slipshod's need for an apron of his own!

As for Thanksgiving - well, we had a nice one. Two, actually. The weekend before we went to my parents' house and celebrated the holiday with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. On Thanksgiving itself we had intended to have one family over who has a little boy some months older than The Bug. We were going to have our first ever small, quiet holiday with friends (not family).

Well, Slipshod's mom's & her hubby's plans with hubby's family got canceled so they pretty much told us, "you're having 18 people at your house for Thanksgiving!" We did more cleaning than we might have otherwise but of course that is paying off now - we're able to enjoy a much cleaner house than we had before the holiday. And did I mention, Slipshod's mom and sister did nearly all the cooking? Yeah, that pretty much rocked. Hey, if you're going to crash my party, offer to do the cooking and I'll happily change my plans. ha ha! The day with family and friends was lots of fun, but unfortunately both our girls had fevers that day, and ever since then they've had big ropes of snot coming out of their noses all day long. I think that they must be mostly recovered by now, but Sweet Pea is still coughy and snotty enough that I am not taking her to school today.

And speaking of school, when Slipshod, The Bug and I went to pick up Sweet Pea after class last Tuesday one of her teachers came out to us to say, "I know you have cats, but would you be willing and able to take the classroom parakeets for the holiday?" I guess the teachers had forgotten to set up holiday homes for all the pets and they were pretty actively trying to get most families to take pets home, because that classroom is FULL of pets. We agreed, since we figured we could lock the birds, in their cage, away from our cats pretty easily. The birds have been doing just fine and the girls are enjoying visiting them a few times per day. Last night we kicked the cats outside, brought the bird cage downstairs, and gave it a good cleaning job. We scrubbed their food and water cups and vacuumed and wiped out under the tray at the bottom, and replaced the paper towels in the tray (the birds' "potty"). Sweet Pea was having so much fun that she wet a wash rag and wiped down the bars of the cage, which benefitted from her attention since there were little parakeet down feathers stuck to them in places. We also took all the little mirror toys out of the cage and washed those to get the birdy nose schmutz off so they could see their little faces in the mirrors again. The birds themselves are pretty chill. You'd have to imagine that in a preschool classroom they have gotten quite used to sudden and loud attention. They're pretty unflappable. ha ha!

That is all for now. I am trying to decide whether or not to take Sweet Pea to see the doctor. I think that she is just at the end of her cold where you have to wait for the cough and snot to go away, but her left nostril has been bleeding today, and last night she WILLINGLY took Motrin before bed because she felt generally yucky and achy. Her fever has been gone for days, though. I guess I will just call the pediatrician's office and ask for advice. I don't want to schlep the girls over there and pay co-pays for nothing, y'know?