bunny stuff

we had a really low-key easter here. jeremy picked up some moonlighting shifts at the hospital for some easy cash, so it was just the kids and me. Q was SO excited when he woke up and saw eggs in the backyard.  it was very hard to contain him to let caroline get a few extra minutes of sleep.

btw... caroline's outfit was completely her own choosing.  she already knows that easter is supposed to mean frilly girly dresses.  and a cardigan.

the bunny was good to them.  they both remarked about how well the EB knows which toys they like  ;)

then we did the outdoor hunt for the not-at-all-hidden-because-our-kids-are-kinda-dumb eggs.

so happy that a couple of candy beans or pennies is still sufficient egg-stuffing.

eggs!

kung fu bunny

the easter bunny came to Q's karate class today and brought him an angry birds egg. not so much with the karate today.

funny bunny

Q is so stoked for easter. he has been counting down since happy patrick day. all day today he kept checking out the window to see if the bunny hid the eggs yet. and coloring eggs was totally the highlight of his day. i think he's more excited about easter than christmas.

old school caroline

today pickle went to a former classmate's birthday party. it was adorable to see the little gaggle of girls reunited (the birthday girl and one other moved over to a different school a few months ago.) apparently, the birthday girl has another caroline in her new class, so whenever she is talking about my pickle, she refers to her as "old school caroline".

bon appetit

neither of the kids had school today.  jeremy had to work so i was on my own.  thinking myself wise, i decided to take both kids to do BJs grocery shopping during the day today, rather than waiting for the regular saturday + day before easter insanity that is to be expected tomorrow.

the kids really like BJs, especially when the food sample stations are set up.  Q berated one lady today because she only had one sample piece of toast on display and we clearly require two, one for him and one for his sister.  he was also dismayed that he had to wait ten minutes for the shrimp scampi lady to finish cooking the shrimp.  i had to promise him we'd come back for shrimp.  he kept asking if ten minutes was done.  we finally made it back to shrimp lady, and Q met his new favorite dinner: skrimp (aka strimp.)

he insisted that we must have strimp for dinner.  and he really, really likes to help cook.  so we cooked up some spaghetti and started on the skrimp.  i was allowed to put in the olive oil.  Q insisted on doing everything else.  i monitored the addition of garlic, spices, and cooking wine, but he kept adding salt and pepper when i wasn't looking.  i'm really not sure how much he put in altogether.

the strimp was actually very tasty.  it didn't taste too salty, but now, 5 hours after dinner, i am working on my 3rd glass of diet coke in an hour.

and Q wants skrimp for dinner tomorrow night too.  this time with olives.

maybe the smartest sounding thing he'll ever say

Q, after taking in a morning of nature at the virginia living museum:

"there are a lot of species of turtles."

it's not old; it's vintage

visiting mimi today, Q was floored by the revelation that she really had a TV after all:

"whoa! i didn't know that was a TV!!"

digger's dungeon day

today we took a quick day trip to the outer banks, mainly to see grave digger's house. and his diner. and most importantly, his store.

we got up early do we could eat at the diner before the rest of the place opened. it proved fortuitous since dennis anderson himself was eating there. jeremy saw him inside before we even got the kids out of the car. caroline recognized him when we walked past him to our table... "i saw grave digger's driver!" but Q was blinded by general digger excitement and it didn't register. we told Q after we sat down so he finally recognized him when he and daddy headed for the potty. dennis gave Q a high five. very exciting. the waitress said we were very lucky, that people come in there all the time and never see dennis.

modeling her bailey dress

the other night caroline would not go to sleep without a dress over her jammies. not wanting her to be cuddled up next to me in her itchy scratchy tulle/glitter snow white dress, i convinced her this t-shirt was a dress. she bought it.

carowhine

caroline is the whiniest whiner. and as we are discovering on this road trip, she also whines in her sleep.

fully croaked

interesting logic

Q: i want tooni (the dog) to bite off my arms

me: no! that would hurt. why would you want that?

Q: then i would have no arms so i couldn't pick up toys anymore

i love quentin

i just noticed that just about every post on the front page of the blog is about caroline or a picture of her.

i love my Q, but the only recent pic i have of him on my phone was from one night where he found lipstick (??  i do not wear lipstick) in the bathroom upstairs and put it on.  i think i will save him the embarrassment of having a future bully or employer find that in the underbelly of the internet.

but, note to self, take some pics of Q.

told you so

caroline cracks me up.  she is a big-time know-it-all, but in the cutest way possible.

she will preface just about any observation with, "see mommy.  i told you..."

like:

"see mommy.  i told you it was raining."  or

"see mommy. i told you i left puppy in the car."  or

"see mommy. i told you we parked in the garage."

the thing is, we never have had any prior conversations about whether it was raining, or if puppy was in the car, or where we parked, let alone heated debates on such matters.

happy patrick day

(from last year, and 3 days late this year)

go deacs!

further proof

that disney totally owns us... aristocat jammies, rapunzel dress, reading snow white, and sitting on a pile of other princess books

ooooh

they're croaking...

dance recital costumes came in today

this is gonna be all kinds of cute

princess monster truck

bleep

so the kids know some bad words. not *really* bad words thank goodness, just things they know they aren't supposed to say. like "stupid", "shut up", and "i'm gonna knock your block off."

they are both quite adept at pointing it out when they hear a "bad word" on the radio or in a movie. even disney movies use a lot of "stupid".

of course, they find such instances to be super duper funny. and awesome. but they know they are not supposed to say bad words.

so pickle has gotten creative...

she often "reads" books, making up a story to match the pictures. quite often, the characters in the story use "bad words" in speaking with the other characters. she will always pause the storytelling to assure me that *she* didn't say the bad word; it was the guy in the story.

sagacity

Q: (in a whiny yet concerned voice) "how will i ever learn to be a grown up?"

don't know buddy. if you figure it out, let me know.

he followed that up with:

"can i have a spiderman party for my one-thousand birthday?"

sure buddy. if you have one of those, i'm pretty sure you can do whatever the heck you want.

here comes peter cottontail?

we can add "why is there a carrot in my shoe?" to the list of sentences i never expected to utter

sprotzels

pickle doesn't like the "sprotzels". that's ok. more for me.

rocker girl

rocking out with daddy at chucky cheese

they're alive!

last fall, Q conned me into buying and planting bulbs. we planted them on the side of the garage and around the pond. after repeatedly asking about them every day for a few weeks after they were planted, he (and we) completely forgot about them. the glorious weekend weather finally allowed some outside time, and amazingly, they're growing! he is very excited.

falling star

caroline took a header off the bunk bed today. Q was the only witness so details are sketchy at best. it seems she was reaching down to get books Q was handing her and may have reached too far. lots of tears and a major goose egg but otherwise ok. as the day progressed, the goose egg developed a distinct star shape. we were perplexed. we went all CSI and eventually identified the culprit as the star-shaped necklace caroline had been wearing.

pointing the finger

my phone battery died so i set my phone down next to me on the couch. seeing it unattended, caroline pounced. she tried to turn it on but obviously it wouldn't. i acted shocked and somewhat sternly said, "what did you do? did you break my phone?!?"

for a brief moment, her eyes got wide and guilty. then she said, "no! quentin did it!"

horton, here's a hallelujah

it has been dr. seuss week at pickle's school this week. in her class they have a stuffed horton. each day the kids earn stickers for doing good things. if they get five stickers, they get to bring horton home for the night.

when i picked caroline up on monday, she looked like she was on the verge of tears. not tantrum tears, like actual heartbroken tears. her best friend annie got five stickers first. annie forgot to bring him back so no one got to bring it home on tuesday. her friend cole got to bring it home yesterday. she seemed ok with it until we got home. then she broke down. i know she needs to be able to deal with disappointment but it just breaks my heart.

i was so happy to see horton waiting on top of her cubby tonight. yay. no more heartbreak.

very happy

horton has a fun car ride home

she read him his book

she showed him how to use the ipad

and brought him to story time

erasernose

two days before we were to leave for disney, we got a call from Q's daycare that he jammed an eraser in his nose and they couldn't get it out. that's my boy.

i picked him up from school and I couldn't even see it. it definitely bothered him but he wasn't in too much pain so we figured that daddy could try to get it when he got home.

daddy tried but we only have regular tweezers and those hurt. not successful.

we are lucky that our pediatrician has late hours at one of their offices each night. we snagged a 7:30 pm appointment. but unfortunately they couldn't get it either so they sent him to the ER.

jeremy and Q were at the hospital forever. they finally got put in a room around midnight. the words "minor procedure" and "anesthesia" were thrown around. but then it was time for midnight rounds at the hospital so they were abandoned in the room. Q zonked out because it was late.

they didn't get seen until almost 1:30 a.m. thankfully the ER had a pair of alligator tweezers and they were able to pop it right out. 8 hours later.  beautiful, eh?

hope it's a long time before he sticks something else up there.

surprise! party

mimi came to visit us. and it was her birthday. she shares her birthday with some chap named dr. seuss. wonder what type of medicine he practices? 

 the kids were super excited and decided that mimi needed a dr. seuss party.  so while mimi was with Q at his karate class, caroline and i set up the party.

mimi was so excited.  but not as much as the kids.

we had to have two cakes because caroline insisted that mimi wanted chocolate and Q was adamant that mimi likes vanilla.  we're gonna be eating cake for a while.