Mommy Tales

We've been traveling and having so much fun lately, I haven't had a lot of time to remind the world that I have the cutest daughters ever.

 

See? Cute, right?   For evidence of Ela's cuteness, check previous posts, or just read some of these stories.

Ela is at an age where she says something funny about every thiry seconds. I almost always forget what she's said before I have a chance to write it down or share with the world.  For example, today she visited me in the bathroom while I was getting dressed to inform me that I was the big Mommy, and she was the little Ela.  I have no idea where this came from, but I was amused.
Ela loves Dora the Explorer.  Since we have netflix, I let her choose which episode she watches, and while she hasn't picked up any Spanish, she has learned a few things about the world from them.  One of her favorite episodes is a story called "Catch the Babies."  In this episode, one of Dora's challenges is to find three apples to feed a horse so the horse will move and let Dora pass.  About every morning for breakfast she eats an apple. The apple always leads to the same train of thought for her.  She says "Ela wants apple.  Horses eat apples.  Ela wants to watch Dora catch the babies."  I love listening to how her mind works.
While Ela hasn't picked up any Spanish, she is learning a little Japanese at the moment.  One of her current favorite books is one that my students in Japan gave me when she was born.  It is about animal sounds and which animals make which sounds. I read the Japanese to her and then translate.  She's reached a point now where she repeats the animal names back to me, and she won't tell me the animals in English, even though I know she knows them.  She seems determined to figure out the strange words.  It's interesting. 

Lily is at a disadvantage when it comes to cute stories since she's still learning the basics.  She's still precious (as evidenced by the picture) there's just less to tell.  She's recently learned to sit up on her own, and so she spends a lot of time sitting in places playing with whatever toy I can convince Ela to let her hold onto.  She's teething, so everything goes in her mouth.  Lately, she's been making some great smacking sounds, playing with the new teeth. 
Lily is also a little Daddy's girl.  She lights up whenever she sees him.  One of my favorite things about her is that she can smile and cry at the same time, and often does.  It's like she doesn't know how to stop smiling for long enough to tell us she's sad.  It's funny. 

So we're enjoying our happy girls and taking a little rest this week after the busy month of October.  More stories to follow. 

Treats and Tricks

Our neighborhood is not exactly one that inspires trust, at least after dark.  In fact, my husband says we live in the ghetto.  I disagree.  It's really a very nice place to live, with good people all around.  It's just a neighborhood in the middle of a big city, and as such it's a little less safe than, say, the average suburb.  I feel perfectly safe playing with the girls outside all day long.  However, I think twice about going anywhere alone after dark.  This says much more about DC than it does about my neighbors. 

All the same, last year for Halloween, I decided to take Ela to North Carolina to trick-or-treat.  I did this for several reasons, one of which was that I didn't want to knock on strangers' door in DC.  I felt much more comfortable doing so in my parents' neighborhood, where at least they all knew each other.  It was Ela's first trip out, and I didn't want anything scary to happen.

This year, I decided to give DC a chance.  I know a few more people in my neighborhood, and I didn't figure that Ela would be up for a big run anyway, so I made plans to go out with Ela's best friend, Audrey, who lives up the street.  Zack found out last week that he'd be on a business trip, so I felt better going with at least one other adult.  We'd hit a few houses and call it a day.  After all, people do trick-or-treat here. I didn't want to be totally snooty when I know and like people around here and trust them to help my girls celebrate a fun holiday. 

So Halloween arrived and I managed to convince Ela to put on a costume.  She chose her lady bug one:

In the time it took me to get Lily into her outfit...

... Ela was ready to take the costume off again, but then I reminded her that we were going trick-or-treating (which she'd seen on Dora the Explorer), and that (more importantly) Audrey would be there, and she stuck it out until we got outside, only insisting on losing the headband.

We left the house around 5:45, with plans to meet a bigger group at six for a short trip up a few streets.  We met Princess Audrey at her house and then the rest of the group at a playground, which was nice because the girls got to play on the equipment before we headed out. 

As it turns out, Ela liked trick or treating this year.  She said the right words, and got her candy, and insisted on carrying her own bag.  She loved all of it except getting down steps, which was hard because she couldn't see her feet in her tutu.  We were out for roughly an hour, and it was getting dark when she announced that she was getting tired and wanted to go home.  As we were on our way home at the time, it worked out perfectly.  It was a super experience.  I was very glad I had decided to stay in the area.

I sent Ela inside with a piece of candy (her only one for the night) while I waited on the porch for another neighbor friend who was coming by to trick or treat, since we'd bought candy before I knew Zack wouldn't be home.  His mom was watching him from across the street.  Audrey and her mom were still hitting a few houses on our street.  I saw a police car pull up at the end of our street.  That alone didn't phase me. I'd seen them out and about while we were trick-or-treating, and I actually like that they were so visible on a night that begs for minor mischief.  Then I saw the cop come running down our street from the car.  That was when I decided it was probably time to call it a night.

Apparently, my neighbor decided the same thing, because she started hurring her son along. I met him on the sidewalk with a handful of candy and walked back up to the house to close up shop.  I was closing myself in the house when Fiona called.  She had just gotten home with Audrey and she informed me that the owner of one of the houses she and Audrey had been visiting on their way home had called the cops I'd seen.  Some men had been doing some work for him in his back yard and were held up at gunpoint. 

See? I knew there was a reason we didn't trick or treat in DC last year.

So I turned off the porch light, locked the doors, and pretended we weren't home.  I bathed the girls, and put them to bed, and when I came back downstairs, there was a cop car parked right outside the house.  I figured that meant I was pretty safe to take the dog out one more time, so I did.  My neighbor across the street informed me that they had put up crime scene tape at the end of our block.  I thanked her for the information, and hurried the dog back inside.  Then I set the alarm for the night.

Nothing else out of the ordinary happened, but I was glad we did our trick or treating earlier rather than later.   I'm also glad that next year we'll be in Cary, where the odds of running into a mugging are much much lower. 

My Little Pumpkin

I went a different direction with my pumpkin carving this year. I saw the idea on pinterest, and Lily is a good size to try it out. I don't think she enjoyed it nearly as much as I did, but the results sure are cute!

School Days

In January, we'll be moving again (such is the Navy life). Zack has taken orders that will send him to Afghanistan. We girls are going to move to Cary, NC to be close to family. When we move, we've planned to put Ela into preschool at the church where my mom works. There are lots of advantages to sending her there as opposed to any other preschool.  Mostly, it's good because we know the staff and we know they'll be good with her.  Also, it's right where Grandma works, so they can "carpool" so to speak once in awhile. 
This week, we were visiting Cary, and the preschool gave us the go ahead to send Ela to her class just to try it out, even though she's technically not signed up to be there until January.  (This would be another of those advantages I was mentioning.)  So Monday morning, we got her up and dressed, showed her the lunchbox that will hold her snack, and off we went to preschool.

Ela embraced this new experience relatively quickly.   She carried her lunchbox proudly, and marched right into the room full of other kids to play.  She came back out once to find me, but was easily redirected back into the room.  They tell me that she came back to look for me once again after I left, but wasn't too upset that I was gone. 
After her first day, she hung out with Grandma in the office until her work was done, and came home with her.  She had paint in her hair and wouldn't tell me anything about her day (she is two, after all), but from her babble, I gathered that she'd had a good time and learned a little about the class.
On Wednesday, Ela went back for another round of preschool, and was very excited about going.  She brought home the pumpkin she'd painted on Monday, and I think she enjoyed it all greatly.  I'm hoping this trial run will make things easier in January when we move.  She'll have so much change at that point, I want her to at least be familiar with something.  We'll see if it works.  I just can't believe she's big enough to send to school!

Reunion Time

Every year, my family tries to set up a weekend where we can get together and hang out somewhere. Last year, we had a super time in Pittsburgh, so we were really looking forward to this year. My mom and aunt set up a trip for us all to the mountains of West Virginia, which was a central location for all of us.   They rented some cabins, arranaged meals, and even researched some activities for us to do. 
On the first day there, Ela got to catch up with some of her second cousins. Sammy gave her a "make-over" with some help from Maddy.  I was strongly reminded of the times when my cousins would give my sister and I make overs when we were young. 

The next day, we all went out to see a bridge.  If I wasn't so busy chatting with family, I might be able to tell you all why. I know it's very high off the ground, and I can tell you that next weekend it's Bridge Weekend there, and people will be parasailing and bungee jumping off of it.  I was pretty happy to just look at it. 

We took a group picture at the bridge, but my camera seems to have gotten passed over in the hubub.  Then we split up and half of us went white water rafting (and had a blast from what I hear), while the rest of us took it easy and got a tour of a coal mine and town.  Ela loved it.

I'd have a better picture of that, but my camera battery died.  The weather was perfect all weekend long, and we spent a lot of time just catching up with family.  It was very relaxing, and a lot of fun.

But Wait, There's More!

After a really cool day trip, we also got to go to North Carolina last weekend. We dropped Ela off with her grandparents, and then we took the little one went here:

To see these people:

 

It was a lot of fun.  Ela got to go to the fair and to the pool with her grandparents.  From what I gather, she had a really great time.  We got to see a lot of old high school and college friends and visit our alma mater complete with typical Boone weather: snow, sun and sleet all in one day.  It was nice to get caught up with everyone one.  It was kind of a whirlwind trip, and there's lots more travel planned for this month, but it was well worth the effort. 

A Day Trip

We've been planning to go to Gettysburg since we lived in DC. Last week, we finally managed it.   We left in the morning, and got there just in time to have a wonderful lunch down town.  Then we headed to the museum, which is new so none of us had seen it before. It was excellent. We took in their movie and cyclorama (a painting made of the battle with a narration done over it, but it's way cooler than it sounds).  Then we rushed through the museum itself to keep the kiddos happy.  Ela made a new friend.

Having gotten our history refreshed, we headed out to the fields. We drove a good bit of the auto tour while the girls slept in the back seat.  We were pressed for time, so we didn't get a chance to take nearly as many cool pictures as we could have, given the beauty of the day.

 

It was a lot of car time, but well worth it to see such a historically imporant site.