Live, from the dungeon, Lady Epiphany's new 'do

Seriously, I had to post this. Why did I think this would be a good picture? I look like I may be a well-fed refugee in some sort of laundry prison camp. My basement is just scary. But the haircut is cute, at least.

More fabulous presents

The cool thing about the Christmas/Hanukkah overlap Chez Stoll has been opening a present a night. I have to say it is much better than the Christmas tradition of a frenzy of unwrapping a stack of presents because well, for the kids anyway, it means you get to play and enjoy each gift separately. Last night, Lauren opened a Lucky brand hoodie and tee from Mark, and declared it the "coolest hoodie ever". She wore it to school today with her sparkle jeans. Lindsay got a magnetic dress up doll (think paper doll but with magnets) from Tutu. She named her Rebecca.

The first night of Hanukkah brought us ornaments all the way from Florida from cousins Allie and Chris, which we so needed since our tree has taken a couple of dives since we put it up. Lindsay really likes the red box that they came in.

Lindsay's favorite gift

Not to say she won't like other presents she receives, but Lindsay has big love for this charming little knit cat - an early present from Sybil aka Auntie Who Can Fix Nearly Anything. As you can see, she is well-loved - already a little knit fuzzy. Lindsay has named her Pickle Catty because she is green. Her favorite part is her tail, because Catty didn't have one.

In our winter wonderland

We got some snow yesterday in Jersey. This was a picture of our house before the snow turned to sleet and then froze, which, incidentally, is my least favorite application of precipitation. Our just-serviced Mazda, parked at the edge of the driveway so that we only have to shovel around it and the apron. Thanks to my across-the-street neighbor Ed for the tip.

Lauren and Lindsay check out Elmo Live! at the local Toys backwards-R Us. We found it very amusing to make an entire end cap of them sing at once. This must be an expected hot-ticket-item this year because there were about 10 end caps of them around the store. I believe we made each of them sing.

Her boyfriend

As a kid, I had a huge capacity for memorizing. So the note home about re-reading books to "increase understanding", I don't push Lauren very hard because if she reads something twice, she's memorized it.

She's also memorized most of the songs on the radio. I listen to a Top 40 station, so really there are not all that many songs, and they get played over and again. Today she was singing:

When you're gone
The pieces of my heart are missing you
When you're gone
The face I came to know is missing too
When you're gone
The words I need to hear to always get me through the day and make it ok
I miss you

Avril Lavigne

"That song makes me think of Stephen."

"Stephen?"

"From my class?"

"Oh ok."

"He is my boyfriend now."

"Huh."

Fire breather

I was telling Lauren today that a friend of hers will have a little brother next year. She looked at me a little doubtfully.

"How could you know it's a boy?"

"Well, they have this tool called an ultrasound which is able to send sound out of the range of hearing through a transducer into the mommy's womb so they can make sure the baby is OK. Do you remember...we went a few times when Lindsay was in Mommy's tummy?'

"No."

"Yeah. There was one time that my doctor did it and you told him you were not having a sister, you were having a dragon...and he'd better watch out because even little dragons breathe fire. He looked a little afraid when you said that..."

Lauren laughed. "No..."

"Yeah, you said that."

"I don't remember that."

Lauren's eye view of our Christmas tree

Unabashedly crazy

"There's a virus going around school..."

"Yep. I know. It's a bad one with lots of throwing up....so what are they doing about it?"

"Well, there are trash cans everywhere."

"Trash cans?"

"Yeah, in case you have to throw up and you can't make it to the bathroom..."

I blinked, my daughter is living in a Monty Python sketch. "Huh."

***

"Why do you have a pitcher and an ice tray?"

"I am pwaying wemonade stand."

"Oh."

"You want some for a quarter?"

"You used my pitcher and ice tray for your lemonade stand and I have to pay a quarter?"

"A yes. I going to go make some eggs now." She takes the ice tray over to the play kitchen, which for some reason is speaking in Spanish today.

My inner martyr is out to get me

I took the title from Rose's comment because it made me laugh out loud. It is a bit painfully true.

The tree toppled in the middle of the night on its own, so we were awakened at 3:30 AM to a huge crash and then had to deal with fallen ornaments and broken glass. Parenting sort of prepares you for dealing with stuff while mostly asleep. I think I basically hung all the ornaments I picked up in the same part of the tree because even distribution was too hard to contemplate. Alec is much better at dealing with stuff at random times - it is probably among the reasons he can cross 6 time zones twice in a 48 hour period and seem fine - and swept up all the pieces of cookie and shards of glass. Since he was going to have to get up at 4 AM anyway to make his flight this morning, he didn't come back to bed. I struggled to fall back asleep and then to wake up at 7 AM.

On top of it, Lindsay is a shrieking little tantruming shrew today. I had thought about going to Target and the grocery store this morning, but only made it about halfway through the Target list when I had to head home with little miss "I want a cookie". I think both of us need a nap if we're going to make it through today.