Christmas tree

Morning

Christmas 3

This has all been very exhausting for the dog.

Christmas 2

Christmas

Lunch time

Christmas lights...

Humiliations never cease

Before.



After.

Early Christmas gift

My new totally awesome toy.

Genevieve

Genevieve doesn't believe in being overly cooperative.


See the part of her hair in front that's poking up? The overly short part? Back in October she cut that off of her hair. Since it's been two months, you can imagine how short it used to be. And I asked her, "Why? Why front and center? Why so short?" And she said, "I dunno."

Imogen

Melly.



Imogen has strange ideas of hair decor.

Blackmail material

Some day Imogen will regret her unwillingness to look like a normal human being any time I point a camera at her. That day will be when she brings a boy home.

*cue evil laughter*

Genevieve not feeling well

We've had a stomach bug making a sporadic appearance around here. Someone gets sick (say, at Target) but then they get well fairly quickly. Genevieve was threw up last night (perhaps because we had a Christmas celebration yesterday with some of Jeremy's family and it is quite possible she had nothing but candy and cookies to eat all day). This morning she woke up feeling bad and now, as of 2 this afternoon, she is running around playing.

Expect more...

I hate tummy aches. It's such a vague symptom. I don't really know what to do with it.

Yesterday, or perhaps the day before, I got a call from Genevieve's school. "Genevieve is here in the office with a tummy ache." Fine. I went and got her and brought her home where she perked up immediately, ate lunch, and watched movies. I couldn't help feeling like I'd been had.

So today, Imogen does the same thing. The office calls and says Imogen has a stomach ache, please come get her. Today, I was even more irritated because I had planned to attend Genevieve's class Christmas party and would now be unable. I took Imogen home with the idea that this was more of the same. I needed to go to Target so I asked her if she felt up to it.

"Are you sure?" I asked three times. "Yes," she said three times. She should have said no. I was in the toy aisle when I turned around and found her sitting on the floor, a vacant look in her eyes. I put her in the cart. I only needed one or two more things so I went to grab them quickly.

"I think I'm going to throw up," she said. Oh no, I thought. I rushed for the bathroom. Five steps later, she vomited all over. All over herself, all over the cart, all over the things I was planning to buy, all over my purse. I gaped at her, not even sure what to do in this situation. I mean, on one hand, it seems rude to not buy these things. On the other hand, am I supposed to tell the check out person to not mind the sticky orange colored vomit as she rings it all up? One of these toys is for a friend of the girls'. Do I wash it up and hope it doesn't smell wonky when she opens it? Speaking of smell, it's ironic that Jeremy's new deodorant was now dripping in puke. Yes, these were the thoughts running through my horrified mind as I stood there listening to the contents of my child's stomach drip onto the floor.

A Target employee walked by.

"Excuse me?" I said. "We had a... accident?" She ran to get the appropriate people, who were wonderfully understanding. They cleaned up the floor and the cart and bagged up newly worthless merchandise, directed us to an employee restroom where we could clean up and very tactfully suggested that Imogen go home.

"Just so you know," I said to Imogen on the way out, "When I said, 'Do you feel well enough to go to Target?' the correct answer was 'No.'"

Suspense

I just got done locking myself in my room to wrap some gifts. This raises my children's anticipation levels astronomically. Which is hilarious. They spent time at the door asking what each other's gifts were which I pretended to be willing to tell them if they sent the other person away, then I gave some variation of burnt tortilla/fresh tortilla/smelly tortilla/colorful tortilla (??) as an answer, which I found much more humorous than they did. Ah well.

Finally Imogen tired of the farse, turned to her sister and said, "C'mon, Genevieve, I have a new plan for attack!" I listened carefully as her voice dropped. I heard "Ok, *murmer murmer murmer* 'Chaaaaarge!' *murmer murmer* Got it?"

Genevieve apparently assented and preparations continued for half a minute in silence, then Genevieve yelled, "CHAAAAR-"

"No, Genevieve!" Imogen interupted. Then I started hearing this odd tapping. It got quieter as they moved across the house, then they bellowed, "CHAAAAARGE!!!" and I heard the thump of their footsteps and the tapping became louder and more frantic. They arrived at my locked bedroom door and then there was silence.

I waited for their next move for a moment then, unable to withstand the suspense, said, "Hello?" There was a pause and then they thumped and tapped away again. Apparently Imogen is one of those generals who works on a dramatic enterence but doesn't know what to do once that is accomplished. They eventually came back and I unlocked the door to see what was up. Imogen had Genevieve's old tap shoes and Genevieve had Imogen's old heals and they were banging them together in the grand tradition of Monty Python- which they have never seen- as they moved through their house.

I laughed when I saw them through the crack in the door, then Imogen gave me a cheesey grin, before she realized that this was the perfect opportunity. She tried to peek around me and I slammed the door shut. I heard her say, "We need a new plan."

I spent the next several minutes hiding gifts and cleaning up because it's time to make dinner. When I left my room again, they were still in the hallway. Genevieve was holding her trick or treating pumpkin bucket and Imogen was wearing a bike helmet and holding a rake. Without waiting to hear the new plan, I threatened to return all their gifts if they so much as touched my bedroom door.

Hmm..

"Mommy, what's bigger: an alligator or a crocodile?"

"A dragon."

"Oh..."

My tree

This year, I put up my tree when the girls were at school. Usually I let them help, but they made the near fatal error of breaking one of my ornaments last year, and I'm still not over it. Every since I got married, I've collected ornaments.


I have special ornaments I buy for special occasions.



I have hand painted ornaments given to me as gifts.



I have pretty ornaments I buy for no other reason than that they are pretty.

My front yard

A couple weeks ago.

Chess

After many months of very sporadic playing, the girls asked me to play chess with them. Being is a masochistic mood, I agreed.

Imogen sets up the board while I finish something up in the kitchen and decides that she gets to play white. Genevieve informs me that she will play white when it's her turn as well. Usually I enforce rules of good sportsmanship and make us randomly choose colors, but today I don't care. I sit down to play Imogen and she loses quickly resigning before it gets too bloody. I inform her that I am not a good chess player.

"Wow!" she said. "I'm really bad then!"

Yes. Yes, you are.

Then I played Genevieve. Playing Genevieve is different than playing Imogen, and perhaps different than playing anyone in the world. Early in the game she dramatically declares to me "You're not going to get to take my queen like you did Imogen's!" and then she moves the queen right next to my pawn so that I can capture it. I let her have it back and tell her to reconsider the move.

She opens with a couple pawn moves and moves her knights out, then her game quickly devolves into moving the remaining pieces back and forth on the back file. She moves out the king bishop, sacrificing it with abandon so that she can castle. She takes one of my knights and laughs maniacally ignoring the fact that she traded a rook and two pawns for it. One of my pawns single handedly clears the center of the board which leaves it unguarded and she moves a rook in front of it so that she can block it from queening, neglecting the mundane tactic of simply capturing it with one of her rapidly dwindling supply of pieces.

As I study the board trying to see how to end the carnage quickly, she plays with the captured pieces. A queen feeds a knight some oats. I move and she said, "I don't know what to move."

"You could resign," I suggest hopefully.

"No," she scoffs and sacrifices her remaining rook.

"Check," I say. She gasps. It's over in two more moves.

Happy Halloween!

Genevieve was a cat.


Imogen was a robber. She thought of this costume herself. She had the shirt on hand, and I got her handcuffs and broke them in half and painted a mask on her face which deteriorated throughout the evening.


We went to a Halloween party at a friend's house. This is one of the games we played.


Bobbing for apples. This is Imogen's third one.

An evening...

"Hey Genevieve, look grouchy!"




Imogen leaving school on Open House night.




Sunset.

Digital dog tragedy

For Genevieve's birthday she got Nintendogs. It's a cute game. The first dog we bought, a chihuahua named Lulu, ended up being my dog because I'm the one who trained her and the voice recognition software is a little picky. You earn money by taking your dogs to different doggie competitions. You can feed them, bathe them, train them, take them for walks (be sure to pick up the pixilated doggie droppings), give them treats and even dress them up. (Lulu had a pirate hat on yesterday.)

Soon we had enough money for a second dog, which got to be Genevieve's of course, since it was her game. She chose a German Shepherd and named her Maggie. I soon got very bored with the game because Lulu is stupid. She would do all her tricks at home and as soon as I entered her into an obediance competition, she would just sit there and blink at me. Digital dogs are SO annoying (you can't mistreat your dog- even if you starve them, they just run away). Imogen bought a cocker spaniel named Gavin and all was well in the world. The girls would sit together hunched over the game training their dogs so happily that I would forget they were playing and let them go on for ages.

Then tragedy struck. This morning Genevieve rushed to my room in gasping sobs. "I-I-I... accidentally... I... aaaaccidentally..." etc. She accidentally bought a husky. She spend all our money, which we need in order to feed all the dogs, and somehow, Maggie was gone. She spent the appropriate amount of time grieving (about ten minutes) and then moved on, training the new puppy, Toby. Part of me wondered, while I was comforting a hysterical Genevieve, if it's actually healthy for a child to get that attached to something that's not alive, not real. But then again, Genevieve believes the proper response to most situations is crying, so I can't get too worked up about seeing tears, yet again.

Genevieve's birthday

Who are these children, and can I keep them?

My children have been almost angelic today. They have the week off of school so they were here with me all day, which is normally a disaster when I'm busy with homework and can not get them out of the house. But they've played quietly while I was occupied. They barely fought. And I actually witnessed a real live negotiation about a disagreement that did not include screaming, crying, foot stomping, hitting, kicking, biting, hair pulling, threats, frantic gasps for breath or the words "YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" (Yes, at the age of six, Genevieve has literally said those words to me.)

We did nothing special today, but it felt special anyway. It was pleasant to simply be at home, having fun (them), and accomplishing something in peace (me). I'm sure tomorrow it'll be business as usual, but oh well.

School days

First signs of fall. If the girls have time to kill in the mornings, they often ask if they can go outside and look for leaves.



Genevieve's backpack. She brings this stuff to school with her. You can't see it but the Easter egg halves have faces drawn on them. They are a family of two parents and two children.