The Princess Costume

Molly was a Princess for Halloween this year. This came about after a year's worth of ideas for her costume. Last year, with the excitement of the Fire Truck costume, Molly started spouting idea after idea of what she would be next. We decided to write down her ideas, rather than settle on one just then. And, occassionally over the course of the year she would add to the list. It went like this:

Tanker Truck
Cowboy
Chicken
Rooster
Food
Icecream
Superman
Jetplane
Scooter
Car
Scooterbike
Ballerina
Chocolate Crunch*
Traffic Light
Princess
Pony
Horse
Goat
Ladybug
Necklace
Sheep

In the last few months, Princess kept floating to the top as her favorite idea. And so, when October rolled around, we were not surprised when she picked Princess, with almost no hesitation. And I'm not sure how it came about, but she also settled on the idea that I would make her Princess costume. Yes, I would sew it.

Lucky for me, Nona and Nana came through town just as I was realizing how completely unprepared I was to actually make a princess costume. The Firetruck had been easy and fun (lots of opportunities for Molly to be involved). I just couldn't get my head around how this Princess costume would work.

But we figured it out. Molly drew up her plans for what she wanted, picked out the fabric and ribbons, and made her crown almost entirely by herself (all I did was cut the parts out per her plans and staple on some elastic).

I think it came out pretty good, if I may say so myself!

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* The "Chocolate Crunch" idea is straight out of the Thomas video: "Thomas and the Chocolate Crunch". To me, that sounded like a sugary cereal. I think it makes more sense in British, though.

Princess-making

Here I am working on the home made pattern... the princess had to take time out of her busy painting schedule to be fitted.

Halloween Parade

Zach had fun with the girls on the preschool Halloween Parade this year.

Jack-O-Lanterns

We carved jack-O-Lanterns tonight. Molly designed her own, Clara requested several things: "C" "Eyes" "Nose" "Mouth". Molly asked me to include ears, too. And then decided to actually spell Clara's name with the face parts. We had fun with the Full Belly Farm pumpkins!

nana's bananas

clara and nana have breakfast in LA (sorry about the lo-res, taken with my cellphone)

Fancy Family

From LA-October 2009

We're back from LA - it was a remarkable trip. We *did* dress up really fancy and celebrate Henry's 90th birthday! And the girls were absolutely incredible. Not only did they look lovely, but they were lovely and I think even had a good time.
Photos and stories to follow...

transitions

It's been a really big week for our family. Most notably, we turned 2. Well, technically Clara turned 2, but really we all did. This is the second anniversary of Molly being a big sister, and of us being a family of 4. In other transitions, we said goodbye to Clara's amazing daycare, and hello to having two kids at Via Nova. That transition has been harder than expected, in part because the daycare was really that amazing, and in part because Clara's just a bit young for this transition. It's clearly the best thing for our family, but in a perfect world it would have been nice to wait a few more months.

Clara's first day was fine. Apparently she didn't want to come home when Zach picked the girls up at the end of the day. You never would have guessed that in the morning when she threw herself on the ground screaming "No!" and "I want Kika!" when we told her we were going to Via Nova.

Lucky for all of us, Nona has also been visiting and supporting us through this transition.