Bupbilla: January 2010

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Winter Updates

Photoless post today. We have been having a busy January. Not a lot of inspiration for photos because we spend all our time indoors where the lighting is poor and the background is full of toys and mess. And who wants to see toys and mess?

Our days are spent shuttling Emily to and from preschool and doing crafts and cleaning up messes left behind after the latest game. The play of the week is Narnia. Emily and Jenna, clad in dresses and cloaks, gallop through the house on their stick horses, calling out to each other in faux British accents, "Lew-see! Horry up and get heer this minute!" "Coming, Sew-zen! Where's Pee-tah? Is he right behind yew?" And little Kate, who has neither horse nor accent, hurries alongside everyone else, her little dog under her arm, random Tinkertoy pieces clutched in one hand and a Prettyrella figurine in the other.

Ah, to be a child.

Kate is 21 months old (photos to follow at some time in the distant future) and finally, finally beginning to show some signs of being open to cuddling. If there is a storybook in it for her, I mean. Her favorite phrases are "No want to" and "No like _______ (fill in the blank with offensive item) much." She has given up naps, the result of which is that I have aged 10 years. But oh she is so much fun! She sings Away in The Manger with actions (priceless), draws the beginnings of circles, names her colors (some) and shapes, loves Sesame Street, which she calls BertErnie, and wields a marker like a maniac. Hurrah for Kate!

Jenna is in her Favorite Dress phase i.e. she will, if allowed, wear the same brown dress with the pink bow every day. She still plays the Pull The Scrunchie Off So I Can Mess Up Mum's Hair trick. She loves her dolls, her sets of anything matching and her puzzles. Her favorite color(s) are now pink and purple but she will proudly wear brown and call herself Brown-ah because it is Dad's favorite color. She will sit in her room and paint her lips with shimmery lip gloss and her nails with princess-pink nailpolish. And wear her Cinderella dress all day (over her brown dress with the pink bow, of course) till bathtime. She is so excited to start preschool this fall! Our sweet Jenna is all grown up!

Emily is enjoying preschool and her friends. And Narnia. Today we made cardboard ships (photos later) and she wanted hers to be the Dawntreader (Jenna's was a Princess cruise ship) filled with a traveling playmobil circus. Tomorrow we will go on a field trip to Underwater Adventures at the megamall, so she is very excited. She is a great help at home, and every day she is a little bit more grown-up. She starts kindergarten this fall (along with Jenna starting preschool) and I anticipate being a weeping, emotional mess sending both kids off to school on the first day - Jenna in our van and Emily on the big yellow schoolbus she is so looking forward to ride.

And Dave and I are plodding along trying to catch up with the kids as they run with wide-open arms into this next year and all the adventure it promises. We still have a bathroom under renovation that Dave is working on, a temporary-halted kitchen-reorganization and 1001 sewing projects in my head that cannot be made fast enough. We need more time! But not for tasks and chores and errands, though. Those we will have with us always. We want instead to sit for hours at the kitchen table peeling foam stickers, stand on stepstools, barely reaching the counter, stirring cookie dough, huddle in pillow forts pretending to hide from Telmarine soldiers, and roll about on the unvacuumed carpet, tickling bupbillas.

That's the plan for 2010 anyway!