Barbie talk

"I didn't know Merida was up here all night!"
"She was supposed to get a salon, like the other Barbies, because of all the weddings."
"Elsa and Cinderella got married. Because their names both end in -a. And they're both in blue."
"Merida wants to marry Anna."
"But Anna is already married."
"Then I'll marry Merida."
"But Anna is married to you."
* * *
"Yes, her feet are high-heeled. But they can be flat."
* * *
"Let's compare skins!"
* * *
"Psst! Elsa!"
"Go back to sleep."
"The sky's awake, so I'm awake. So I have to play."
"Go play by yourself."
Thump.
"Do you want to build a snowman?"
"Now let's do it with ourselves!"

A girl on fire

It is so amazing watching Chloe learn to read. She's acquired sounds and blends and several rules, and the world is blooming around her. We drove home from the mall the other day and she called out "'Stop'!" and "'Market'!" and "Is that 'Dillards'?" She spelled "splendid" for me in bed when she kept telling me she had a "splendid" idea for my Christmas present (though not what it is). Spelling words to keep her from knowing what we're talking about isn't safe anymore. It's wonderful.

The big day

Today is Chloe's first day of kindergarten. She's been so excited about it. We went school shopping last week, and school-clothes-shopping a couple of weeks before that, and she was eager to help pack her lunch and make sure everything was in order in her backpack. She had three nosebleeds yesterday, so last night we discussed writing a note to her teacher to keep her informed, and the first thing she asked me this morning was "Did you do that note?"

She was all smiles when we left her at her classroom door this morning. All three of us walked her in, since I'm working from home on Tuesdays and it wasn't terribly busy. Her teacher met her at the door and told her to put away her backpack and play with the Play-Doh at her seat; and she gave us quick good-bye hugs and was off. There was a "Boo-Hoo Breakfast" for kindergarten parents in the school library afterward. We didn't go, but I did feel slightly boo-hoo-ey as Eric, Maia, and I walked back to the car.

So did Maia; she wanted to be picked up and buried her face in my shoulder. But she's also anxious about going to meet her preschool teachers today, and she recovered quickly--though the house is very, very quiet without her favorite playmate to assist in making the usual ruckus, or demand the usual shows. Change, it is here.

Naptime

I suppose I might as well make this official: I am on hiatus. Life is sort of difficult to live once at the moment, let alone over again for the blog (though the girls are mostly not the difficult parts. And certainly not the dull ones). Therefore, instead of our last post (Maia's doing much better), I leave you with this:

"Pirate sisters Chloë and Maia, best friends for ever!"

On the poop deck

(Warning: discussion of gastrointestinal function ahead.)

"I don't need 'positories any more!" Maia said brightly yesterday. Then she took a wipe and tried to stuff it up her ducky's butt.

We went to Seattle last week. While we had a good time overall, travel didn't agree with Maia's digestive system. There were no poops for the first two days, and when she was straining but getting nothing out, we decided to use suppositories, which we've used for her once before. They were highly effective then, but she was ambivalent about them--she knew they worked, but she didn't like how they went in, which I really can't blame her for--and refused these. Of course, being two, her refusal didn't mean as much as she might have wished. We administered several of them, as well as tons of fruit and juice and gummy fiber pills (Chloë also had a couple since they tasted yummy, she said, but since she didn't need any of that sort of help and we're the ones who wipe her butt, she went off them), and eventually a vegetable laxative pill.

She didn't do terribly well the remainder of the trip, but it wasn't so bad we wanted to take her to a doctor. She did start crossing her legs when she was straining, presumably because it hurt--she mentioned this a couple of times when I was changing her, so I took extra care cleaning her, and when I forgot once told me, "Wipe gentwy!" We discouraged the leg-crossing, and by a couple days after we got back, she had gotten back to normal consistency and frequency. She got milk today for the first time in a week.

We're not sure how much each remedy helped, but I'm fairly confident that getting back to her normal schedule was a part of it. Funny how travel can affect something like digestion and excretion. She didn't have this problem our last trip out, admittedly. But it certainly wasn't the change in diet, since Mom and Dad pushed fruit and vegetables even more than we do.

Unassailable logic

"I want that," Maia said, pointing up to Chloë's solar system mobile this morning.

"Which one?" Chloë asked her. "Jupiter?"

"Yeah."

"She wants Jupiter," Chloë told me. "But not the real Jupiter."

"Why not?" I inquired.

"Because one, she couldn't carry it. And two, it wouldn't be in orbit any more. And three, it would be bigger than a room."

Rip-off

"Where's your ow?" Chloë inquired of Maia in the bath the other day.

"On my chest," Maia decided, and together they applied a wet washcloth onto her chest.

"Now, it's time to take off your Band-Aid, Maia," Chloë said kindly. "It's not going to hurt. Ready? One--" She yanked off the washcloth. "That didn't hurt, did it?"

The removal of Band-Aids is Chloë's hangup, not Maia's, of course. I thought it was interesting she chose to channel her experiences in that way. (The "I'll count to three...one [rip]" technique is Eric's; I just reach over and pull it off quickly when she's not prepared.)