Super Bowl Sunday!

The Beantown family partied down for the Super Bowl yesterday! Daddy and I kicked things off by sampling our home-brewed beer... and it was good!


Most of our celebration with the girls took place before the game even got started, so instead of watching a lot of pre-game coverage, I got to watch a lot of wrestling:



Around kick-off time, we sat down to our dinner. The girls thought it was so novel to have dinner on the couch, in the basement, while watching tv! I made up big sub sandwiches and sweet potato fries. Abby was a big fan:


Lizzy was much more interested in playing (the downside to eating in the basement - toys everywhere!):

The girls got to watch the first little bit of the game before we packed them off to bed. Daddy and I only made it slightly further into the game - about to halftime - before we packed off for bed. What can I say - we're just not huge football fans in this house!

Ski Bunny!

Daddy had a dream for Saturday: to take Abby to the local hill for a ski lesson. Abby was excited about the idea, so (with some reservations after the disaster that was ski lessons last year), Lizzy and I waved good-bye to Daddy and Abby on Saturday morning. Lizzy and I had a thrilling morning of Trader Joe's and cleaning up the house. Abby got herself all set up with some skis and snow boots!


Daddy got her signed up for a one-on-one lesson, and according to all, it went surprisingly well! Abby's biggest obstacle was mastering the wedge stop, in which she was entirely uninterested; she liked going fast!

They came home for lunch and told me all about their adventures going skiing and having a snack at the slope-side cafe. After we packed Lizzy off for a nap, Abby helped me finish up a big puzzle we've been working on!


The subject matter is a tad dated, as I've had this puzzle since I was 10 years old, but it was a fun and complex puzzle to solve (it's a photo mosaic, composed of tons of teeny scenes). Abby and I had a lot of fun working on this together for the past few weeks - first she helped me sort out and put together all of the edge pieces, then she helped me sort the remaining pieces into the color themes (reds, blues, yellows, oranges, purples, whites). She was a lot of help in constructing Bart, although I took over the work for the background, as it was too difficult. But yesterday, when I only had about 50 pieces left to plug in, Abby helped me figure out where each piece belonged based on its shape. We had a great time working on this in our quiet times together!

Behind the Scenes...

Two words have been crucial to helping me get the blog done in the mornings lately: Word World. Best tv show ever, as both girls adore it. So every morning, when I announce "it's Mommy's coffee time now!" the girls skedaddle to the couch, snuggle up with each other, and wait for me to put on a Word World episode. Yesterday, they requested a blanket, too. So cute!


Yesterday was a pretty basic day - Lizzy and I dropped Abby off at school and then came home to pick up the house. After school, we hung out in the basement while our cleaning lady worked her magic on the rest of the house. Lizzy was a little crabby with some lingering ear pain yesterday, and Mommy was coming down with a yucky cold. So, blah.

We had a nice evening though! With the head cold and the beautifully clean house, I didn't want to cook, so I asked the girls if pizza sounded good. Did it ever! Abby is old enough to get really excited about things - and Lizzy is old enough to mimic Abby in her excitement. They both also really love going to our local pizza place! So we headed out, picked up the pizza, and on the way home, Abby would say "I'm going to eat a lot of pizza! Yum yum yum!" and Lizzy would say "I eat pizza! yum yum!". And Abby would chant "Piz-Za! Piz-Za!" and Lizzy would chant "Pi-ta! Pi-ta!" It was very cute (and much more fun than just waiting around for delivery!).

After pizza, we headed out to the train station to pick up Daddy - Daddy was on a business trip Thursday night, so he came back from the office earlier than usual last night so we could pick him up! The girls were all excited to see Daddy before bedtime and to go see the trains. When we got home, they jumped around like whirling dervishes while Daddy ate his dinner, pausing only long enough to have some ice cream. We finally calmed them down enough for bath and bedtime. It was a really fun end to a boring, cleaning-centric day!

Back to the Pediatrician!

The girls and I started out our day with a trip over to G&G H's - and we hadn't been there long before it became apparent that something was up with Lizzy. We had to interrupt our fun morning for a run to the pediatrician, where she confirmed that Lizzy was brewing up an ear infection! I guess she wanted to take the cool pink amoxicillin like Abby! We got her meds and came back to properly finish up our morning (well, now afternoon!) visit with G&G H. I got a nice picture of the girls with their grandparents, something I rarely think to do and always wish I had!


Lizzy was in a much better mood post-doctor. After coming home from G&G H's and having naps, it was 4 p.m. already! Nothing like an emergency run to the doctor to leave you saying "where did the day go?"

Groundhog Day!

On Tuesday morning, the girls and I set out to Abby's preschool to celebrate Groundhog Day! The farm on which Abby's school is located was having a little groundhog celebration, and we wanted to see if "Ms. G" would agree with Punxsutawney Phil's predictions (and she did, sigh. Six more weeks of winter for us!). It was a sunny but chilly morning, so the girls were all bundled up - and I swear they were not as miserable as they look here:


Abby joined the crowd of kids around the groundhog. Of the three girls with pink coats on, she's the one with the white hat - she's standing with her buddy Lea in the striped hat:

We hit up Costco after the celebration, and then came home to have naps and wile away the day. Lizzy is really into wearing hats right now... this backwards hat looks reminds me of Daddy when I first met him!

Lizzy has also become obsessed with using the potty - not just the little potty on the floor, but the big "Abby potty". I don't really want to discourage this interest, so every time she asks to go "pah-pah," off goes the diaper and up goes the baby. And she thinks it is tremendously fun!

Nothing ever happens, of course - but she feels like a great big girl!

On Tuesday afternoon, Lizzy and I made polar bear cupcakes to celebrate the return of the tv show Lost. Abby wouldn't help because she said "cupcakes are too yucky" - hmph!

While Abby was in school meeting oppossums yesterday, Lizzy and I went to the mall to do a little shopping:

We didn't do much of anything in the afternoon - I was making a dinner that required a little more prep than usual, and we cleaned up the bedrooms. Blah. We are hitting the cabin fever portion of winter, when we are getting very impatient with being stuck inside all the time! We miss going to playgrounds in the afternoon!

Monday!

On Sunday night, just as we were celebrating victory over the mice (the problem appears to be gone - woohoo!), we discovered that a pipe was leaking water into the basement. Oh the joys of breaking in a new house!

So yesterday morning, Lizzy and I dropped Abby off at school and came back home to wait for the plumber to come by. When we went to the basement to check on the leak, Lizzy spotted the easel that we had taken downstairs, and we brought it up to keep her amused for our morning at home:


The plumber got us all patched up (a nail had poked a hole in a pipe way back when they installed the chair rail molding in the dining room - apparently this sort of thing happens "all the time" and only presents as a problem months later. Fun!), and we were back in plenty of time to pick up Abby from school.

In the afternoon, we scooted off to ballet. I got a picture of Abby the ballerina, since I hadn't taken a picture of her dancing in class for a while!

Both girls were thoroughly, absolutely, and completely worn out by the end of our busy Monday. When I set out dinner (which was a cheese quesadilla), Abby took one look at her plate and burst into tears. That irrational reaction was the only confirmation I needed that early bedtimes were in order! Luckily, both girls are well-rested and in much better moods today!

Maia and Cecily!

Our Friday was... well, not so great. One girl had an ear infection and needed to take medicine that made her very cranky. The other had a horrid cold and those weird hives (which got worse on Friday) and spent the day being drowsy on Benadryl. She looked a lot like this most of the day:


So I had two cranky kids on my hands, which made for a long day!

Yesterday, however, was a much nicer day. Both girls were feeling better (though Lizzy was still hive-ridden - they are finally on the wane this morning!) and went off to play with G&G H while Daddy and I researched fireplace inserts for the basement. We picked them up, had naps and rest, and then headed up to have dinner with Maia and Cecily! The girls were beyond excited to see their friends!

The babies were hungry!


The big girl were hungry, too!

Maia and Cecily just got a piano, which meant that I got this cute shot:

Lizzy took a turn at the piano, too!

On the way up to Maia's house, Abby fell asleep. And snored. And oh my word, how this child snores!

Daddy and I have been doing dinner parties with Maia and Cecily's parents for about seven years now. Things have changed, of course - we used to start dinner parties at 7:00 or 7:30 p.m., now they start around 4:00 p.m. We used to throw back martinis before our wine, and now we stick to a glass or two of wine at most. We used to have lots of nice adult chit-chat, and now we have....

My, how times have changed!