Peek-A-Boo!

Bagels, Birthdays, & Spiders

Here are some random pictures from the last two weeks:
- The lovely flowers that Molly picked out for me;
- The amazing bagels the Molly & I made! ;
- My 33rd birthday cake;
- And a spider that we examined at length on our front porch (Molly wants to know what kind it is, any guesses?).

Family Music Class

Zach and the girls have been having "Family Music Class" and "Family Dance Class" at every opportunity. The girls particularly enjoy practicing the trumpet. Believe it or not, both girls can actually make a lot of noise! (although, Clara sometimes cracks herself up too much to make much sound).

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Zoo Night

Two weekends ago Nana took us on a fun trip to the zoo - at night! (well, in the evening, at least). We had a great time seeing the animals coming out for the evening, listening to music, and eating a special dinner with the flamingos. Here's Clara watching the elephants, and Molly watching a Monitor being fed.

Lion Cub to Dinosaur

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Move On Up!

Yesterday, Molly had her “moving up” ceremony at preschool. It marks the time when the Lion Cubs become Dinosaurs. Since the Dinosaur’s classroom is upstairs, they literally get to “move up” to the second floor. And the ceremony helps reinforce this change. Each child was called one by one to receive a dinosaur necklace from one of the outgoing Dinosaurs. Then, while the rest of the parents and kids clap and chant “move on up!” one by one they each marched upstairs to the second story deck where their new teacher was waiting.

I remember last year, the whole concept of changing classes was very fuzzy for Molly. She was a Beluga becoming a Lion Cub. She was thrilled about the ceremony (which she called a “Sarah-mony”), and the change, and the process. But, she had a lot of questions about the change. Like, “Will I still be Molly?”

This year she was still thrilled about the whole event, but she clearly understood more about what it meant. The day before she talked a bunch about the chanting (“I’ll walk up stairs and everyone will say “move up Molly, move up Molly”!), about being a Dinosaur (“I like the blocks they have”), and about wearing a fancy dress (she wore a chiffon-ey bridesmaid-style dress given to us by my boss for our dress-up collection). When she got to the top, she yelled down: “Look at me Mama! Look at me Daddy!”

She also seems to be trying to understand more about change. When we were sitting together having snack after the ceremony, she said to me:

“Ceremonies are exciting, but also sad”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m excited about being a Dinosaur, but I’m also sad about not being a Lion Cub any more.”

Me too, my dear. Me too.

Princesses

Molly recently discovered princesses. I guess 'discovered' isn't the right word. She's technically known about princesses for a while. But for a long time she seemed to know about them in name only (and she'd often mix up "prince" and "princess" - is it terrible that I never correct her?). Or maybe she only had a vague understanding of what the whole princess thing was all about. Or maybe fire trucks were really just that much more interesting.

But recently, she's shown a whole new level of interest in princesses. A few months ago my boss gave me a pile of princess dresses to add to our dress-up collection. I hung them in the back of the closet for Molly to discover when the time was right. Well, when Molly discovered them she had about the same reaction as when that same boss sent me home with a 2' long fire truck: awestruck disbelief.

So, now we've added to our list of haloween cosutme ideas: Princess. The kind with the fluffy dress. Preferably pink. With shiny parts. And "poufy" parts. And a crown.

She did later add "goat" to her list of costume ideas. And when she asked for princess books I did try to look up stories where the princesses actually do interesting things. And her friend Ruby announced today that she's just not into princesses anymore. So we'll see how this pans out.

Maybe she'll be a well-dressed goatherd.