A great evening

Our poor girls are cursed with having a hermit as a mom.  Now, when I'm actually doing things I'm usually enjoying it - whatever it is is...but it so hard to get myself to actually go and do something.  After a long week at work, surrounded by people, and hubbub, and busy-ness, and stress, it's so much easier to just camp out at home for the weekend (and every weeknight) than to do...anything else.

But...I'm starting to regroup and make myself do more.  For instance: on Tuesday nights the girls have dance class..,.and I even take them once in a while (although, I will admit that since the school year started I'm probably averaging less than once a month).  And on Thursday nights I started going to yoga again  - I went over the summer, and then started up again after the New Year.  (And I've got to say that I LOVE it.  I'd always wanted to give it a try, and am so very glad that I did.  I love all of it - the exercise, the meditation, everything.  For about an hour and a half a week I totally become a Buddhist.)

Well, I'll finally get to the point. Last week a friend asked if we wanted some tickets to the Iowa Women's Basketball game last Sunday night.  Sunday.  Night.  The game didn't start until 5 - and we're usually shutting things down for the weekend around 5 (simple supper, bath, bed...then some Downton Abbey for me).  This wasn't part of the normal routine.  I wasn't sure that I could handle it.  But, I thought about those poor girls. For them, a trip to Target is an event worthy of celebration (but then, it is  Target, right?). I thought we'd better go, I was sure it would be great fun once we were there.

And it was.  We had such a great time.  The first half we were about 19 rows up, and then for the second half we actually got floor seats right across from the players.  The girls were just tickled to be there, despite having to walk about 6 blocks in the cold to get to the stadium.

I need to remember this the next time my hermit-tendencies start kicking in and begin dragging me (and my girls) down.

Cahoots

We’ve known from the very beginning that Cora and Evaline were a team. 

We knew this when they were one and half and we had one girl playing in the kitchen, one in the living room; a gibberish yell from the kitchen was followed by a gibberish reply from the living room followed by grabbing a particular toy and running into the kitchen to join the other.

We knew this the week before their second birthday when we moved them out of their cribs (Evaline was a bit of a climber) and they got into a dirty diaper and smeared poo all over each other – then horrified at the nastiness (they knew what they’d done) they tried to wipe it off…on the bed…and the carpet….and the wall…and the door.

We knew this when they were three and every night was a slumber party and we had to institute the “sleep rules” (no singing, no dancing, no playing), and subsequent reward (four skittles – or “Daddy Treats” as we call them in our house) as a reward in the morning for a job well done.

And...we knew this when they got themselves into the Glitter-Putty Incident.  Apparently I need to provide them with more lectures in presidential history: what really gets you into trouble isn’t the crime…it’s the cover-up.

Here’s the story:

Back in, like, October they received some slightly sticky, slightly gloopy, glitter-putty stuff as a party-favor at a friend’s birthday.  It promptly, like most small items in my house, disappeared - only to resurface several months later. In the course of play (which happened in the basement where the girls were and Ian and I were not and the details of which are still a bit hazy), the putty ended up all over Cora’s shirt and Evaline’s hair. 

I’m not sure how much deliberation went on, and how this particular disaster-recovery plan was decided on (I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall), they had Cora sneak upstairs and change her shirt (and throw the other one away in the bathroom trash).  Evaline later told Ian that the shirt had a hole in it so they had to throw it away.  I hadn’t heard this story, so when I found it in the trash later I pulled it out and the story came out.  I was able to salvage most of the shirt after a good 15 minutes of scraping and washing.

The hair wasn’t so easy, they couldn’t figure out how to get it out without cutting it.  So they did they only thing they could think of…and now Evaline has a chunk of hair – about a half-inch square – in the middle of her forehead that is about an inch long.  I found this when I was drying her hair after the shower.  Fortunately (in this, and only this, circumstance) Evaline has a horrendous cowlick that is right where this lock of hair is, so it doesn’t show much…for now anyway.  Give it a few weeks and the cowlick will make it stand straight up, I’m sure.

What were they thinking? 

On the bright side, they get along well?

Oh girls.

 I’m assuming that by getting all of these shenanigans out of their system now they will then be perfect angels in high school, right?  RIGHT?

My little dancin' queens

I'm slow to post, but better late than never...

Last weekend the girls had "Progression Night" for their dance class.  They are in the intro-level ballet class at a studio nearby, and the full-blown recital is in June (as it happens, the same day that I already bought the girls and I tickets for the Color-Run 5k...so it will be a whirl-wind day, I'm guessing...but I digress).   But they donned their leotards and a snazzy headband and performed in the Auditorium at the new Downtown library.  

Each student was allotted three tickets...which ends up being a perk of having twins, since we were therefore able to take all the grandparents with us.

I think all three girls had a fabulous time - Willa included.  She loved calling out to her sisters (whether or not they were actually the ones on the stage) and was completely captivated by the little-girl-dancers on stage.  

Without further ado...for your viewing pleasure:

(ok, a little further ado...Evaline almost never takes her eyes off her feet, Ian asked her about it later and she said that she has to watch her feet the whole time because that's the only way she can be sure they are doing the right thing)