The State of the Economy ...

... means that even princesses have to work the railroads these days!

I Think She Ran Out Of Paper

Halloween Sneak Peek

Just a couple of quick photos of the two gals.  More once I've looked at the rest of the shots.

Walk to the Playground

Our walks to the playground usually happen like this:  Vivian is happily playing with her toys in the basement playroom.  Annelee is way overtired and fussing, but nothing I do will make her go to sleep for more than 52 seconds max.  I finally convince Vivian that we need to go for a walk so that Annelee will sleep.  Vivian and I have a long discussion as to why it is no longer warm enough for her to wear flip-flops.  Annelee is finally in the car seat in the stroller, screaming.  Vivian has grudgingly given in and is wearing seasonally appropriate footwear.  As soon as we walk out of the door, Annelee falls asleep and Vivian cheers up.  Usually, Vivian takes Dolly (who often is now called "Emilem" and is her brother) in the stroller with her.  Vivian has picked her own additional attire that day (all I have enforced is that it's warm enough), but poor Dolly is generally still always naked. Today, Vivian chose the princess dress and the rain boots.

So, here are a few photos from today's trip to the playground.  For a couple of months now, Vivian has worked on catching up with her climbing/running peers, and has almost achieved that goal.  In the meantime, I have gained a few more white hairs.

All dressed up and on the way to the playground

Approximately 23 seconds after leaving the house ...

Climbing up ...

Climbing down ...

Sliding down ...

Not to be left out, Annelee wanted to have her photo taken where it looks as if she had gone down the slide.  Then she changed her mind.

Siblings

This weekend, Will took my his camera with him to Virginia to the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear". So I had to dig out my Nikon again.  At one point, the girls and I were hanging out in the bedroom, and Vivian asked to hold Annelee.  Which prompted a quick photo-shoot (even if none of the photos of her holding Annelee made this post).  If I'd been thinking, I would've removed (or at least flipped over so the less colorful side shows) the blanket over the chair earlier.  Oh, well.  We still had fun and you still get to see pictures of both girls.  Win-win.

 "Do we know each other?  No, never met her before.  I was just sitting here, taking it easy.  Next thing  I knew, she sat down and someone started taking photos of us."

Blowing bubbles

  
























The one where Vivian finally smiles and Annelee tries to eat her hands!

Big Sister

Annelee's report card from daycare usually describes her as "happy, fussy, sleepy".  Today, when I picked her up they said it looked like she wanted to sleep all day.  In fact, she had slept so much that they hadn't even fed her all her bottles yet.  They did have one warmed up and ready to go, so we gathered up our things and headed home where Vivian got to feed Annelee for the first time.  She did really well, sitting just as we told her, holding Annelee and the bottle just the way we showed her.  Annelee certainly liked it, because she sucked down the entire bottle of milk in no time.  She is lucky to have such a wonderful big sister!  Oh, and where did Annelee get permission to look so big on Vivian's lap?

 

Imagination

Look who was playing in our basement today - two beautiful princesses.  I did have to laugh at the addition of the rubber gloves though ... Vivian had gotten a pair from the nurse at the dentist today and apparently, they make great additions to princess dresses.

Rowan, Vivian's friend, has tons of dress up clothes, and oftentimes (as happened today) the two girls will swap some items until their next play date.  All this makes me hope that the dress up chest that Vivian will get for her birthday will be a big hit.

I enjoy how much pretend play is going on in our house these days ... Vivian re-enacts scenes from our lives with the dolls, the dolls are often changing names, we are eating all sorts of food that she makes, have to hand her this invisible item or that invisible item ... very cool.

As an example, just after Rowan had left, Vivian said "Mommy, let's fly to Emma's house".  So I stretched my arms out as wings and made a plane noise and started flying and she said "No. We are butterflies.  Move your arms like this <showing me how to move my arms properly>".  So, we flew to Emma's house as butterflies, and then Vivian started playing with some toys and I went about my business.  Cracks me up though.