Things That Make Me Smile

Here are a couple things that have happened today to make me smile:

The girls have been singing "holy, holy, holy.....holy, holy, holy" around the house the past few weeks. We're not sure where they picked this up because we haven't sang "Holy, holy holy" at church recently. One day Kevin decided to ask them who is holy. That led to a short, toddler discussion on God being holy. So today I was shopping with the girls in Target, and halfway through the store Chloe starts singing "Jesus is holy.... Jesus is holy..." (and not quietly, I might add). Of course, if Chloe is singing, Julia has to start too. "Je-us ho-we." Couldn't help smiling as we finished our shopping listening to their duet.

The other thing I am loving today is how much Chloe is playing with her dolls. She has played with her dolls for a long time, but today it's different. She's reading stories to her babies and answering all of their questions (No, this book doesn't have words, but we can look at the pictures. Maybe I'll make you pancakes for supper tonight, but not now.). It's as if they are her own real, live babies. It's adorable! What a good mommy she is!

School

Well, it's official. Chloe will start preschool next year. She will be going to the Lutheran school in the next town (only 5 miles away). We registered her today. She got to see her classroom and meet her teacher. She is very excited! And I am very excited that I didn't cry while we were there!

Another cute story for you: Chloe was playing house again today. She was the mommy again, but this time she told Julia to be the daddy because she didn't want to be the daddy. Kevin asked why she didn't want to be the daddy. Her response? "Because daddies don't shop."

Overheard

Chloe has started having more imaginative play lately. It's fun to watch her playing things she sees in real life. The other day she decided to play house for the first time. She declared herself to be the mommy. And what did Julia get to be? "Julia, you pretend to be the sister."

Julia had started to show quite the compassionate side. Yesterday Chloe got upset about something and was standing in the corner of the living room crying. Julia dropped her toys and ran over to Chloe. She gave her a hug and a kiss and said, "All better, Chloe?" When that didn't stop Chloe's crying, Julia started the process all over. Hug, kiss, all better? And yes, after three times through the cycle, Chloe was all better. Such a good sister.

Back to Normal

Today has been our first "normal" weekday since at least a week before Christmas, and the girls and I are having a hard time adjusting. The week after Christmas we were at my parents' house. Two days later one of Kevin's brothers was here for almost a week. The girls absolutely loved having Uncle Eric here, but it definitely did not make for a very normal week. They had somebody visiting, which meant some extra excitement every day.

Now here we are, slowly trying to get back into a calm (and sometimes boring) swing of life. The girls spent much of the morning fighting over toys. The 45 minutes of Sesame Street they watched was the only thing that stopped the yelling.

I did a lot of cleaning on Saturday, but now I'm bored with that and feeling just plain lazy. We did get our shopping done at Walmart and Save-a-lot. I guess that's worth something. The Christmas decorations are all down. The house seems so big. And there's plenty of cleaning still to do! I guess our feelings over here can be summed up with Choe's declaration: "Mommy, I miss Christmas!" Here's hoping day two of "normal" is better than day one.

Snow Blues

Yes, I gave up on my 12 days of Christmas. The only one I can really still report is the 10th day. The girls were incredibly good during church. Chloe usually participates throughout the service, and I let her color her children's bulletin during the sermon. That Sunday neither girl needed crayons during the sermon, and Julia didn't even need any books to get us through the service!

And now why do we have snow blues? It snowed a fair amount on Wednesday night -- enough that the vehicles we followed home from the circuit Epiphany service thought it was necessary to go 35 in a 55 speed zone. It's hard to say how much we got. By the time we woke up, the wind had blowed in around making it hard to estimate. We finally got enough snow to go outside and play in it... but it's too cold to go outside. The wind chill was -10 yesterday. Nobody was eager to bundle up the girls to go out there. So here we sit, looking at the pretty snow, hoping we will have a warmer day so we can go out and enjoy it.