La La La

A few weeks ago I posted this entry about how much we all love to sing at our house, and included a video of Miss singing "Whistle While You Work."  I still watch that video from time to time because it makes me chuckle.  

I mentioned in that post that Lass also loves to sing, though of course she can't quite do all the words to the songs like Miss can yet.  Tonight my husband captured Lass singing on video.  One of Miss's favorite songs to sing, besides "Whistle While You Work" is the theme from the new Care Bears movies.  She sings it loud and proud, "We are Care Bears, La La La-la-la!"  She sings this so often that Lass's original word for "Care Bears" was "La-la."  Now Lass can sing the La-la song herself.  Check it out.

Have a great weekend.  La La La.

Song Bird

Last night I had some special girl time with my eldest before bed.  We painted her fingernails.  She chose blue, of course.  While waiting for them to dry we made some funny faces and sang some songs.

My girl loves to sing.  Both of my older girls do, in fact, though Lass is still working on the words a bit...  Miss goes all out in singing her favorites.  She lifts her chin up and belts them out at full volume.  In the car, in the playroom, at the store, on the swingset, wherever.  We were even informed by her teachers that she sings like this at school.  I absolutely love that she does this.  I think it might be a little bit hereditary, because I think I used to sing like that when I was a kid too (okay, I still do).  I remember singing with my mom and my Grandma a lot.  My Mom and I used to rock out to "Barbara Susanne Stripe" (a.k.a. Barbara Streisand), Neil Diamond, and Barry Manilow on 8-track. Or we'd sing all sorts of kid's songs: You are My Sunshine, Eensy Weensy Spider, Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, and so on.  My Grandma is a very talented musician, and she used to play the piano and teach me lots of old-timey songs.  I think singing is an expression of happiness.  It's good for the soul.

We sing a lot in our family.  My husband plays the guitar and we sing along with him in the evenings.  The girls and I sing lots of little songs during the day.  We sing while we play, while we are in the car, while we do just about anything.  I've had strangers chuckle at me for singing with my girls in the grocery store.  I think it's usually a nice, friendly chuckle.  I hope.  I'm no vocal sensation, but I can carry a tune.  And who doesn't love a moving rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in their grocery's produce section?

Anyway.  Back to last night.  After Miss and I finished with her nails, while they were drying, she was singing her latest favorite song, "Whistle While You Work."  I especially love when she sings the songs from Snow White, because she doesn't just sings the words, she does the vocal trilling "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..." like Snow White does.  I don't know if that's the right term to describe it, but it's so cute.  And since I can't really describe it well, I captured it on video.  Though my girl sings loudly and unselfconsciously almost all day long, like most kids her age she was a little less willing to do it on command.  When I first asked her to sing for the camera, she said that she had "run out" of singing.  But then when I told her that I wanted to take a video of her and she could watch it afterwards, well, I could just see the wheels turning as she thought about that.  The video below is not characteristic of how she usually sings.  She's more timid and much quieter than usual.  But I couldn't help but smile when I watched and listened to her sing her song.  I hope you will too.  

Membership Has its Privileges

For months now, I have been saying that I want to rejoin the YMCA.  My husband and I were members when we first moved here, because we lived in a rental house and didn't have a good place to exercise at home.  When we bought our current house, we set up a nice garage gym area and let our Y membership lapse.  Miss was too tiny to do any activities there and we could exercise at home, so we let it go. BUT, now Miss is bigger.  She's old enough to start getting into some of the little classes they have at the Y and I really need to keep up with swimming lessons for both of the girls. There are so many good activities for families at the Y.  Plus, there isn't a whole lot else to do indoors in our town during the winter.  So, this week I finally got myself in gear and went to the Y to renew our family membership.  We started taking advantage of it yesterday by going to "Wiggles and Giggles."  Our Y has an indoor soccer field, and they open it up twice a week in the mornings for little ones to come and play.  They pull out ride-on toys, balls, big mats, and various other things for the kids to enjoy.  Not to mention there's lots of room to run.  The girls had a blast.

 (Quick snack break)

I'm so glad we joined.  The girls ran and danced and got to blow off some steam.  And we met some other moms and kids there, so I got to visit with some grown ups.  

And speaking of visiting with grown ups, my husband and I had a great date night last night.  We went to a new sushi place, and it was pretty good.  Of course the best part was just being able to hang out and chat with my hubby.  Before dinner we went to Miss's school and met with her teachers for our little parent-teacher conference.

It was great to hear all about what she has been doing in school and to see how thorough they are in their assessments of her.  And it was pretty cool to hear someone else describe her spot-on and know how much time and attention she must get there for them to be able to really "get" her so well.  I loved when they told me how much she likes to sing at the top of her lungs and to shake it when they dance.

No one needs to tell me how much my girls love to dance and that they've got some moves.

Miss got new ballet shoes yesterday.  The ones I got her for her Halloween costume had cut into her little heels and one shoe had totally split on the side from being worn so much, so I told her she couldn't wear those anymore.  She was so upset and asked repeatedly for them for several days.  When I pulled out the new shoes yesterday, I was relieved to find that she loves these just as much even though they're a different style.  She immediately asked, "Momma, can you play some music so I can ballet dance?"

So I did.  What better for ballet than The Cure??  

I got a question in a comment about organizing photos, related to my last post about taking at least one photo a day.  Unfortunately, I'm not really great about organizing my photos.  Mostly I just dump them into iPhoto.  I do "flag" my favorites when I'm going through and editing them, which is how I select the pics I'm going to upload to a blog post or use for something else.  Just in the past few days with the start of this new project I have begun putting photos into folders by month, so I will have a little bit better organization of them that way.  I also have set a goal to start deleting photos a little bit more so I won't have such an overwhelming mass of pictures.  And few years ago I set a goal to make photo books for each of my girls for each year of their lives.  Unfortunately, I've only completed Miss's first year book.  So making the rest of the books needs to become a priority, and I'm hoping to get my photos more organized that way too.  I will make folders for each girl, each year in my iPhoto in addition to making the books.  That's it.  I don't have a great system yet.  Anyone else have a good way of organizing digital photos?

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y'all.

Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents.  I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn't post while we were gone.  Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip.  I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven't had the time to post.  However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for.  So.  Sorry, I haven't made time for this.  But if it makes up for it, I'm posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower...

Anyway.  Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day.  Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass's very brief encounter with it?  I typed too soon.  Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for "new jammies," meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing.  So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn't make it to Kentucky until Sunday.  But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock.  They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together.  I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week.  And they eat it up.  Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up.  Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents.  I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.

Here's a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:

We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children's librarian.  I was so proud of my girls.  Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

 Then Santa showed up...

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn't even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great.  We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents' house.

The day of the story time was also my husband's birthday.  This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him.  A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday.  She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level.  It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home.  In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts?  A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite?  Floral foam.  

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it.  It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy's presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon.  We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.


And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit.  Every year my mom and I watch the movie "Heidi" with Shirley Temple.  Some people watch, "Miracle on 34th Street," maybe even "A Christmas Story" or some other traditional holiday movie.  Our movie is "Heidi."  We know the dialog by heart.  This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading.  They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes.  But I didn't expect much more for the first viewing.  This movie takes time to appreciate.  My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don't quite appreciate it yet.  The girls will get there.  Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of "Snow White."  I hadn't seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don't quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I'm glad to be home, though I miss my family.  I can't believe Christmas is already almost here.  Tomorrow is Miss's school party.  I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do.  This weekend we'll go to the Farm to "do Christmas" with my husband's family.   It's the most wonderful time of the year.