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.

Spooky

Around here, all games have names. And the game the girls love to play with Jeremy is "spooky". You turn off all the lights in the house, Jeremy hides, and then the girls look for him in the dark. Right as they are about to find him, he jumps out yelling at the top of his lungs and they scream bloody murder. It's great fun. They beg him to play it. The funny thing is, I remember playing this same game with my father, but I don't remember introducing it to my own children. Is this one of those universal games all (or at least many) children like to play with their fathers? What's so fun about being terrified over and over anyway? It's like watching a horror movie, I suppose.

Either way, it's one of the few (only?) times that it's fun to hear your children scream.

Shopping

In the car after school on Friday, Imogen and I were discussing the need to buy a gift for her classmate's birthday party. I could tell we were going to run into problems.

"I'll just go and buy it later," I said.

"Why," she asked.

"Because, I can tell you and I are going to have disagreements and I'd rather not deal with it," I said.

"Don't worry, mommy," she said. "I have it under control." As I started to laugh at this, she added, "It won't turn into a hullabaloo."


hul·la·ba·loo –noun. a clamorous noise or disturbance; uproar.

Labor day weekend

Karen and Martin and family came down and we had a cookout. The girls went swimming and were fairly wiped out at the end of the day. Just before we left, they were playing catch with Rachel, Laura, Sarah and Jeremy. While I watched absentmindedly, Genevieve managed to get hit the head with the ball no less than three times. The last time, she managed to catch it after it bounced off her forehead.