Me. In a big hoop prom dress. In 1987. This shows my sweet and dainty side. My inner southern belle.
A recent halloween party reminded me of this dress, and my sister was kind enough to tell me that she had a picture and could scan it in and send it my way.
I figure, before my political career gets off the ground, *I* should be the one releasing this photograph..you know, before the press gets a hold of it. This should mitigate any potential damage.
Apparently when Webkinz decide to have babies, its called “stuffing” and when Sims decide to have babies, its called “Woo Hoo”
The other day Lydia and I were alone in the kitchen. She sighs heavily (she does this often) and said, “you MAY be the best mom EVER” – emphasis on the “may” and “ever” hers. I love that kid.
The other night, Allison stayed up late working on a project. A project for school you ask? Nope, not at all. An art project. No, not an art project. This project was something she thought up in her head – she wrote out a list of 28 things that children can sometimes do wrong. After each item, she listed if she and/or any of her sisters were guilty of these wrongdoings and at the bottom of the list, she had a tally going – turns out Lydia is guilty of 13 of these items, while Meredith and Allison are only guilty of 9 each. We are, as a family, pretty well oriented towards gentle, nonpunitive parenting, so this is her own list – not inspired by parental judgments or external consequences. Items on this list include such infractions as – being bossy (Meredith and Allison are guilty of this), being careless (no one is guilty of this one), being destructive (all Lydia here), being mean (no one guilty of this one..aww!), being rude (all Lydia again), being selfish (all Allison here), breaking promises (Meredith and Allison), overdoing it (all three of them apparently do this one!), showing off (Meredith here..surprise surprise), being wasteful (Lydia), being greedy (Allison), being forgetful (Allison), snooping (Allison – good to know!), teasing (none of them – they are sweet kids) and so on and so on.
I wonder what spawned the creation of such a list? Sure is cute though..and I like how Allison didn’t just slam her sisters, she really put thought into it and listed her own issues as well.
And that same night, little pre-reader Meredith took our Kid’s First Dictionary, and methodically wrote the following poem:
A funny frog had a friend Fox
Giraffe had glasses
Goose had grapes
Ok ok, not the best poem, and I am sure she was just flipping through the dictionary looking for words to use (apparently she enjoyed the F section and the G section a lot!), but her sentence structure was spot on, everything was spelled correctly and I love it!
Here’s a picture of Meredith on her 7th birthday (2 weeks ago) – isn’t she stunning? And she’s a natural model 
She had the greatest birthday – an afternoon at Chuck E Cheese, dinner, presents, cake, and two days later a huge birthday party at a skating rink with all of her friends. Ah yes, 7 was a good birthday…..
Yesterday we went to see Lion King – it was incredible. All of the kids had a blast, even though our seats were horrible, and we spent the entire show bobbing and swaying depending upon the positioning of the people sitting in front of us just so we could see. Afterward, I was worried that the kids would complain about not being able to see and that it was boring or something, but the general consensus once we got to the car was that the show was AMAZING. I agree. We also learned that Annie is coming at the end of the year – the girls are all about Annie these days – they watch the movie repeatedly and play the soundtrack constantly. I always hear them singing some Annie song under their breath and orphanages seem to be a constant theme in their playing – so guess I will try to get us some tickets for that show as well. I am not sure if Eric will join us 
– he was a reluctant Lion King participant. And the kids theater is putting on Seussical, so we’d like to see that as well.
eee! I love that the kids are old enough to enjoy these things with me. And I love love love that after 9 years, we are coming out of the toddler/early preschool age into an age where all of the kids are actually kids…old enough to do things that I like to do! Rather than just be disruptive or bored. I may get a little twinge of baby lust every now and then, but really, I am delighted to be moving on to the next stage of things in my family.
Speaking of stages, today Little Lydia was talking to Eric and I noticed that she just looked bigger to me..we measured her and she’s grown nearly 2 inches since her June check-up! Of course the other girls want to be measured as well, and they’ve each grown an inch! In four months!
