Author: magrilless

Because after July 2nd, this is what the kitchen looked like.

And even the wall between the laundry room and the garage is gone!

Did I mention we’re excited?

Maggie got her hair cut for the first time ever last week. No, no; it was a trim. We were very careful to explain how a cut and a trim are very different and she was not getting her hair cut (since I use that as a threat when she won’t let me brush her hair). So she went to Baka Sue’s beauty salon and got a shampoo and a trim and a blow dry. Although she was quite apprehensive about it beforehand, I made sure to talk up the similarities between getting your hair cut and being treated like a princess. In the end she decided she wanted to be called Belle and bragged about the experience to everyone afterward. Success! Let’s hope her first dentist visit goes as well.

And speaking of princesses, we went to a birthday party this weekend where all Maggie did the entire party was put on a princess dress, do a lap, take off the princess dress, put on another princess dress, do a lap, take it off, try another, lap, off, next, etc. etc. etc. This girl had a lot of princess dresses to try, let me tell you, and not even the inflatable bouncy house in the backyard could really take her attention away from them. Cake did. But only for a little while. It was a much more successful party than the one we went to in the morning, where a little boy absolutely terrorized the kids. He bit, slapped, pulled clothes, scratched, yelled, all unprovoked. Poor little Maggie still has a mark on her back where he didn’t quite break the skin. But when asked, Mags said she liked the party. Ahhh, the power of the trampoline.

Tessa is growing up. She’s getting a personality. Well, we’ve always seen her cheerful, easygoing, ponder-ful self; but now it’s like she’s turning into a person. She’s starting to have an opinion and to voice it. If I take something away from her that she wants (like a piece of paper from the mail, say, or my glasses), she’ll “waa waa” about it until it’s replaced with something else interesting. Or if I walk out of her line of sight, she’ll talk/cry until I’m back in view and then smile. She’s beginning to get jokes, like putting socks on our ears or throwing something (soft) at her. Or when a group of adults laughs, she’ll smile too.

We have retired the pacifiers as sucking soothers. She is not interested in them in the least, and will probably cry harder if we try to give one to her. She has instead begun to rely on her index and middle fingers for soothing. Or big toes if they happen to be handy. She does sometimes like to chew on the rubbery, smooshy pacifiers, though, so we’re keeping them around. But I much prefer her fingers since they can’t be dropped on the floor, lost in a restaurant, or kept out of her control.

Tess is doing well with cereal now. She’s getting a bit every other day or so, and this week we’ll move to every day (hopefully). Then we can graduate to fun stuff like bananas and apple sauce and pumpkin. And we’re trying to figure out how she can join us on the bike. Step one was getting her helmet to mostly fit, and now we’ll see if she likes the seat up front with me. She wasn’t a fan of the bike trailer (too upright of a seat I think), much to her sister’s dismay, but we’re not giving up!

The other day we were having breakfast and we heard a thump from the back of the house. We couldn’t find anything that had fallen down or any doors slammed shut or anything, really, to explain the noise. Okay. Weird, but whatever. That night at dusk I looked out Tessa’s window and saw a distinctly bird-shaped smudge on the window: a circle with two long triangles on either side. See it in the middle there? Just to the right of the backyard tree? And also a big crack in the window at the corner with a sliver of glass missing. I went outside and looked below the window and there were a few white feathers, but no bird body. It must have been a gladiator bird to break a glass pane and fly off to tell the tale!