The Kids Have Their Differences . . .

. . . but so do the cats. Cutie-Head, when she meows, sounds like a cat. Peanut, when he meows, sounds like a cat who's trying to speak in English.

Barbie the Patient

I have to begin this post with a note about Barbie. I'm not a fan of giving Barbies to little girls, if for no other reason than little girls don't need to play with toys that have gigantic breasts. There are plenty of other reasons, to be sure, like her disproportionate measurements that give girls warped ideas about the female body, and the fixation on clothing and being pretty and hair-dos. There are just so many other things in the world that I want my children to be interested in, and Barbie ranks pretty darn low on the list. Having said that...

Ruby has a Barbie. We managed to avoid any and all interest in such things with Cecilia, but Ruby is ... well, Ruby. She changes her clothes multiple times a day, she notices clothes and outfits on others, and she thinks pink is the greatest color on the planet. This year, Santa brought her a new scooter for Christmas, and he might have had a coupon for the Barbie version of the scooter - the kind that comes with a spot for a Barbie doll. I suspect that Santa thought in order for the present to be complete, it should probably have a Barbie in the Barbie spot. And while I won't presume to always understand Santa's motivation, I think it's a fair assessment. Anyway...

One of the cats has done some chewing on Barbie's feet. Ruby discovered this yesterday and was very upset. There were tears and dirty looks shot at both cats, but I managed to calm Rubes down by telling her she should just bandage her up and pretend that Barbie had suffered some injury. Once we had a solution in mind, the whole thing was quickly forgotten and we moved on with our day.

I came home last night from a meeting after the girls were sleeping, but I did find their handiwork and HAD to share it:

Clearly Ruby recruited her older sister for this procedure because the work is just too good. Too bad the cats didn't start by giving Barbie a breast reduction, but this is still super awesome.

Mickey Mouse Club

Earlier this week there was an incident. With a mouse. Long story short, Cutie-head caught a mouse and I witnessed the whole, awful incident. She seemed to have a great time playing with it -- letting it go and then catching it again, over and over again until the mouse finally expired. It was at this point that both of the cats ... uh ... opened 'er up. It was decidedly unpleasant and, with steely resolve, I forced myself to get the dead mouse into a bag and out of my house. Problem solved.

Later that day I fetched Ruby from school and told her the story of Cutie-head and the mouse. She was very interested, especially in the remains of the mouse (you'll remember that this is the child who loves to watch the movie Jaws), so I showed her the dead mouse in the bag which I had put out on the porch just as any good mother would do (right?). The end.

Fast forward to about an hour later: I'm doing dishes and she's coloring at the table, or so I thought. I hear a tiny little knock on the front door and so I go to open the door knowing full well Ruby is up to something. I open the door and there is Ruby, holding the mouse bag, and she looks at me sweetly, shoves the bag toward me and shouts, "TRICK OR TREAT!"

I wish had some way to capture the maniacal laughter that followed, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Don't trust that sweet face for a second.

a Cat On A Cold Shingle Roof.

Some of you have heard by now about our big adventure yesterday. I'll let Cici tell the story.

Morning Meeting.

So, yesterday morning when I was driving Cici to school we were turning onto the frontage road in front of the school and Cici is all sad face and she says, "We're already here and we didn't even have time to talk to each other." And she's almost crying, so I say -- What did you want to talk about? And she says, "I don't know. I just wanted to talk." And I said, "Did you want to tell me how I'm the awesomest mom in the whole world?" And she starts to smile and says, "Maybe."

Have you ever heard of a better conversation in your life?

Whew!

The last week has been pretty crazy around here, and we apologize for our lack of blog entries. A quick recap:

• Christmas Eve day the girls and I were baking cookies when we heard a strange sound coming from upstairs. Turns out that Santa had made a quick stop to our house to deliver a gift for Cici -- a kitty named Peanut. We could only surmise that he needed to drop Peanut off a little early so Peanut wouldn't get too cold riding around in Santa's sleigh all night. Cici was thrilled to say the very, very least.
  
• Christmas Eve was spent here at our house with the S--- family, and we opened presents, played games, and enjoyed pork posole for dinner (go me!). It was a wonderful evening spent with people we love and the girls were over the moon with their new toys and kitty.
• Christmas morning the girlies were up around 6:30 to check out their loot from Santa and the grown-ups were right on their heels. We spent the morning lounging around and playing with the stuff from Santa, and then we were off to the airport.
• Some good friends who live in Arizona were en route to Chicago and had a lengthy layover in Minneapolis, so we spent some time with them in the warm and cozy Starbucks near baggage claim #4. Oh well, sometimes you just take what you can get.
• After that we scooted off to Grandma 2's house for the rest of the day and had a blast with the M---- family. Ruby caught some sort of bug and spent most of the day in Grandma's bed sleeping through Christmas, but Cici played games with her cousins and probably ate a lot more sugar than we realized. We also made our usual Christmas trip to my grandpa's grave where we said some prayers and sang a couple songs (in single digit weather no less). It's a special part of the day and a way to honor a man who was very important to me -- I think Cecilia has really come to enjoy this tradition, too (especially the part where she rides in the back of Uncle Ramon's truck on the way to the cemetery with all her big-kid cousins -- nevermind that this year Ramon was pulled over by the police...). Anyway, we gathered our gang and left around 9:30 with all four of us totally exhausted.
  
• We spent the next couple days recovering and putting the house back together -- a giant feat in and of itself. We still managed to have some friends over and the girls had a playdate and a nice time was had by all.
• On Sunday we took the girls to a giant water park to celebrate Auntie Sarah's birthday -- SO MUCH FUN! Cecilia was her usual brave self, and there were a couple of water slides that scared the grown-ups more than the 6-year old (I'm talking to you, JUDY!). She even attempted the surfing thing, and even though it didn't exactly work out, we were all very impressed that she tried. Here she is:

• The last couple of days have been dedicated to cleaning, purging, and organizing. Not much to report there, but it sure does feel good!
  
• Today we're preparing for our New Year's Eve celebration and our big lobster-fest! I'm sure we'll have pictures to share in the next few days.

Finally, thanks for reading the blog over the past year -- we've had so much fun writing and sharing the goings-on of our girls and we've already had fun going back and reading entries that we wrote months earlier. It's amazing how fast it all goes, and so easy to forget all the little moments that make parenting so stinkin' fun. Thanks for playing along with us. Happy New Year!

SERIOUSLY, DO NOT TELL CICI ABOUT THE CAT!

Momlissa yelled at me when she saw that I had posted about this. Apparently she does not have faith that everyone who reads this blog can keep their mouths shut about the surprise. LET'S ALL PROVE HER WRONG, SHALL WE?

Cici's Christmas Present.

Shh - don't tell her.