Halloween

Thursday was Julie's birthday, and it was a good day.  She enjoyed her presents and cake, and the girls had fun too.  We all wore our party hats for cake at lunch time, and then we went out for supper.  Jorja told Julie that she got to pick the restaurant because it was her birthday.  In reality it wasn't entirely Julie's decision because we have to go somewhere that serves either chicken fingers or pizza (that is all the girls will ever eat at a restaurant).  We went to Boston Pizza.


The girls in their party hats.



Just to prove I had a hat too.

Jorja was asking Julie something about her birthday, and Julie said that she wasn't going to have any more birthdays.  Jorja replied, "You have to keep having birthdays so that you can die.  Don't you want to go see that golden place?"  At least the thought doesn't frighten her I guess.

After church today we went to Jerry's for lunch (as we do most Sundays) and after we were done eating the girls were playing in the play area.  Jorja had to go to the bathroom and Ginny continued to play.  She introduced herself to another little girl and found out this girl's name was Isabel.  She knows another little girl who also has that name.  As I was buckling her into her carseat to go home, I asked her about her new friend.  She told me that 'she is one of the Isabels.'  Maybe there's a whole gang of them, I don't know.

Tonight we took the girls out trick or treating.  They had a blast and ended up with way too much candy.  Ginny was dressed as a kangaroo, and her costume had a little joey sewn into the pouch on the front.  She spent the entire evening with one hand on her baby and said at one point, "When Joey gets scared, I just cover his eyes."  The later she said to Julie, "Joey is doing awesome, isn't he?" 

It is obvious which one of them takes after their father with respect to eating Halloween candy.  Ginny.  We let them have a couple of things when they got in, and Jorja was taking her time, and Ginny was 'can I have one more? ...chomp chomp... I'm just gonna have one more... chomp chomp ... can I have another?'

The kangaroo.

The skunk.

The princess.

The haul.

This marks my last Sunday evening without having to wake up for work in the morning.  It's not like the girls ever sleep in anyway, but I'm not looking forward to that 5:20 am alarm clock.  I guess I better make the most of this week.  Later.

The making of a masterpiece

Well, as promised, here it is:  the making of Julie's birthday cake:

My contribution:  the 'crumb coat':

The future cake boss?

The concentration...

Just a little more magenta over here:

Almost done: 

The masterpiece:

 And CeCe, the trooper, forced to watch all the fun from the playpen:

Later.

Birthday Eve

Tomorrow is Julie's birthday, so today was spent in eager preparation.  I think Jorja may some day be an event planner.  I baked the cake yesterday, so today we decorated it (Jorja, Ginny and me).  There are several words I could use to describe decorating a cake with a two year old and a five year old, but I think I'll just go with interesting.  I would post pictures, but I'll have to wait until after the big day as to not ruin the surprise.  Like anything with Jorja is ever a surprise.  Anyway, the cake turned out pretty good, so then it was time to make party hats.  After all, what is a party without party hats?  I fashioned five little cones out of paper and Jorja busily decorated them.  Oh yes, it is going to be quite the party.  For the girls' last couple of birthdays, Julie has made big poster-sized banners saying happy birthday along with pictures of the theme of that year.  Jorja also had to make a banner which I have been told I am to hang up tonight while Julie is sleeping to it's a surprise when she wakes up.  Who does she think I am, Santa?  I think I'll just do it in the morning.  She also thinks there should be balloons, but I don't think we have any, so I hope there aren't too many tears over that.  Don't laugh, there may very well be - she takes these things very seriously.  You also have to imagine her talking 90 miles an hour throughout this whole process as to what I am supposed to be doing and why we're doing this and how that will turn out.  It's very exhausting.  On that note, I've got some gifts to wrap.  Later.

CeCe

It is now exactly two weeks until I go back to work.  Technically, I'm back to work already, but I took two weeks of holidays first.  I figure I earned them.

CeCe seems really close to crawling these days.  She gets up on all fours, rocks back and forth, and can kind of push herself backwards.  Look out.  As it is, she rolls everywhere now.  She is less and less content in the exersaucer, which is too bad, because it was a good place to contain her for a few minutes if you needed to.  Now she just wants to be free.  I can't blame  her I guess.  We had to shut doors though, and I guess it won't be long until we are back in the 'baby gate' stage.  Today she was rolling around on the carpet here and got up against the wall.  The next thing I knew she had the plastic plug-in cover pulled out.  I thought those things were supposed to be child proof.  The whole point of them is to keep kids out of the plug-ins.  Even Ginny never pulled those out and she was crazy.  CeCe also opened the DVD player today.  Oh yes, the fun is beginning.  Last night I went into her room to when she woke up at midnight to eat and she was sitting up.  Holy cow, how did that happen?  Julie is going to have her hands full - unless of course this happens more often:

Later.

Outside

The other day while Jorja was at school, Ginny and I were watching TV while she had her snack.  We had on the Playhouse Disney channel and 'Johnny and the Sprites' was on.  This show is pretty lame, even by kids' show standards.  The story this day was that Johnny had a new video game and was obsessed with playing it.  The sprites (some sort of little creatures that live in his garden) wanted him to come outside and play cloverball.  He wouldn't go and insisted on playing his game.  He played so long that he fell asleep.  In his dream he played his video game long enough to look like Santa when he woke up.  All his little sprite friends had moved away and he was devastated.  He woke up and was relieved to  find he was still young and then went outside to play.  Was the irony of this totally lost on the writers?  Is there really a difference between TV and video games?  I guess  so.

It is definitely starting to feel like fall here.  The girls went outside to play this morning before lunch (no evil video games or TV - I learned from Johnny) and they had cold hands and ears, so we dug out mitts and toques.  Jorja wanted to wear the toque and mitts to school this afternoon, and it was still cool, so I said sure.  So when I went to pick her up, she had the toque on, and didn't have the bottom rolled over like it should be.  It was sticking straight up way over her head kind of like Bob and Doug.  If that wasn't enough, she had the mitts stuffed into the pockets of her hoodie.  She didn't put the mitts on  for the walk home and about half way home, she looked down and just started to laugh.  Like really laugh.  She said to me, "Look at my mitts.  It looks like I have little tummy boobs."  Then she howled again.  I had nothing.  All I could do was laugh.  I guess they did kind of look that way.  Later.

Broccoli

I like potatoes.  I like cheese.  I like broccoli (really, I do).  I like cheese on broccoli.  So when I saw the baby food jar labeled 'Potato Broccoli and Cheese Casserole,' I thought it sounded like a good idea.  Let me start by saying that each of the girls had at least one flavour of baby food that made them gag.  For the older two, it was peas.  Once they were old enough to eat real peas, they loved them.  But the pureed variety - not so much.  CeCe has had a few flavours that she is not that fond of, but nothing that she absolutely couldn't stand.  Well, I found it.  I gave her a spoonful of the 'casserole' and she proceeded to gag and sputter.  Hmm.  I gave her a few spoonfuls of cereal and then I thought I'd try again.  Maybe she was just choking.  No.  Again the gagging and heaving.  Enough said.  I brought out some fruit and all was well.  I guess I was an adult before I liked broccoli, so we'll see.  Maybe once she is onto more solid food she will like it.  Maybe she'll be like her sisters and not like it.

Let me tell you about one of the first times I ate broccoli.  The year was 1999.  Julie and I had just started dating and she lived in LaRonge at the time.  I went up to see her for a weekend and she cooked for me.  Now my idea of vegetables at that time were peas and corn.  Well, she made a stir-fry with all sorts of things that scared me half to death - broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, carrots, zucchini.  What was I going to do?  Here was this girl that I really liked and wanted to impress, yet every fibre of my being told me I wasn't going to like this.  One rule my Dad had always impressed on me as a child was that when you are at someone else's house, you eat what's on the table.  So, sweaty palms and all, I bit the bullet.  And it was actually good.  I was shocked and impressed all at once.  Who knew?  To this day, that is one of my favourite things.  Later.

The meatball says no

This afternoon we had one of Jorja's friends from school over for a play date.  It's the first one we've ever had, and it went pretty good.  The excitement leading up to it was palpable.  It's been a long time since I've heard Jorja talk that fast for that long.  It's a good thing she didn't know first thing in the morning - she definitely would have peaked too soon.  Ginny had a lot of fun too, so that was good.  We discovered though that 2 hours should be the maximum time - 2.5 is just a bit too much for all parties involved.  They were playing with the toy food and kitchen at one point.  A long time ago, the girls had got 'talking meatballs' as the toys in their McDonald's happy meals.  I forget the movie it was for (maybe Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) but it is a variation of the magic eight ball.  It has three sayings:  'The answer is yes', 'Ask again later', and 'The meatball says no.'  As with most McDonald's toys, the novelty had long worn off, but with a fresh pair of eyes in the house, it came out.  Julie and I were upstairs when we heard Jorja's friend say, "Meatball, am I pretty?"  I guess when you don't have a magic mirror, you take what you can get.  She got lucky,  and the she got 'The answer is yes.'  When Jorja tried and got 'The meatball says no' she decided that she would keep pressing the button until it said yes.  I guess even the meatball will break down if you hound it long enough.  Later.