911, What's Your Emergency?

It seemed just another phone call. She was using the phone as a toy and I assumed she was talking to nobody. After a couple minutes, I realized she was speaking with someone. She must have hit redial. I took the phone from her and gave it to Emily (we were at her house, so I assumed it was her friend we called). She talked for a few seconds, said, "She's two," and after a brief conversation hung up the phone.

Emily said, "Rose called 911. The dispatcher said to keep the phone away from her from now on."

Then she told me about several phone calls Rose has made to Emily, about 10 minutes after I have spoken to her. I had no idea that these phone calls had ever even occured. Hilarious! I guess I'd better be more careful of where I set the phone in the future.

I hit the redial button to see exactly what numbers Rose had hit: "9111PPPPP#PPPPP"

Oops!

Nature's Bounty

I went outside today to check on the bounty of nature in my own backyard. I found plenty of it!

Swiss chard... more than we'll ever eat!

Beans creeping up... yeah, I planted them too late. I'm just hoping for a harvest of some sort before the first frost!
Huge cabbage. I picked this one soon after this picture was taken. It weighs about two pounds.

Apples that look good enough to eat. In the background is our huge potato mound, both red and blue varieties.Apples that were too good to resist taking a bite out of

Gorgeous patty pan squashes-- our dinner tonight!
Heirloom tomatoes finally ripening
A darling little girl playing in the dirt
A sassy girl flying high!

And there you have it-- our new (to us) swingset! Thanks, Freecycle! And thanks, Les, for donating your unused swings! The girls are having so much fun playing on the swingset now. Except for the time Rose decided to spin around in the swing and she conked her head pretty good on one of the posts. She didn't have fun then.

New Calling!

I'm so glad to be able to announce this... I've known about this calling for more than a week now, but since we had Stake Conference last Sunday, I wasn't sustained until today!

I'm the new Young Women's secretary! I'm so excited! We have our first presidency meeting tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to working with this awesome group of women, and the youth, who are amazing! I guess it's training for my life in 10 years!

Dave and Rose both stayed home from church sick today. Lacy probably should have stayed home-- she's been so grouchy lately! I'm not a fan of age 4 so far, I must say! Hopefully it's just residual from being sick and her injury (which is healing up very nicely I must say). It's not lack of sleep, since she got a long nap yesterday and was still cranky.

We also got a swing set this weekend!

Tagged: Unspectacular Quirks

Here are the rules
• Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
• Tag 6 fellow bloggers

1. My sheets have to be perfectly smooth when I go to bed at night. Otherwise I am kicking and fussing after I get to bed and end up practically making the bed right before bedtime. I learned about a year ago that making your bed daily solves that problem so now I have to make my bed every day. Dave knows it when I don't.

2. I turn off all the surge protector power strips to conserve energy at night, so all the little blinking lights will go to bed. I can't sleep if I haven't flipped the switch on them.

3. I hate making phone calls and will do almost anything to get out of making them.

4. If I am, for example, going on vacation and need a pack of pull-ups for the trip, I hide them in the bottom of my shopping cart so nobody will see that I am buying disposable diapers. I would be mortified if somebody saw those 'sposies!

5. If I mess up or get nervous I play with my hair.

6. I never had stage fright until I went to college!

I tag: Anyone who happens upon this blog. I'm using the honor system! ;)

Sweet Little Mother

Rose and Lacy are such good mamas! Lacy was teaching Rose how to nurse her baby. But Rose knows from experience that mamas are supposed to kiss their babies on the head.

And on the hand. I am always kissing her on her head and hand while she's nursing! What a sweet girl!

And I must make some child-sized mei tais. Rose wanted to wear her baby in mine that I made when Lacy was a baby. I had to wrap the straps around her about 5 times for it to fit! But doesn't she look so sweet wearing that little baby doll?

More developments with Lacy's injury

So, Lacy is now on antibiotics because her face is infected. Lovely. We're keeping a close eye on it and will have a recheck on Friday if needed, and stitches come out Tuesday. We're worried that there is going to be scarring and that the lips might not be even when they're all healed up. If that is the case, we may decide to consult with a plastic surgeon to fix it, if it is covered by our insurance. Hopefully it doesn't come down to that. But a glimmer of hope-- my girlfriend's son had a major mouth injury when he was very young, and his lips look great with a very faint scar. I'm hoping Lacy's mouth looks that great when it's all healed up.

I'm wondering if she actually fractured her cheek bone. She is swollen all the way up her face, and has a very slight black eye. That is a very difficult bone to break, but it is possible. There's not much that they would even be able to do for it, though. Poor kid is eating like a bird and can't pronounce any consanents that involve the lips-- B, P, F, M are the big ones. It's very hard to understand her. I'm sure it's frustrating for her more than it is for us, though.

Rose may be acting out because Lacy's been getting so much more attention than she has been lately. She had 4 accidents today. And she's been potty trained for 10 months! That's the worst day we've had since she was potty trained. Two of them were when she was in a leotard, which is hard to get off, and to her credit, she was hanging out by the bathroom at the gym before one of those accidents. I just didn't know she knew it was a bathroom (it was the men's room so she's never been in it). The other two times we were at Emily's house, where she had one while wearing a t-shirt over her pants (she's wild and crazy like that) and another while wearing a night time diaper-- she actually peed out the side of it onto her jammie bottoms. I think she was just tired that last time, though, and considering she was actually wearing a diaper makes me annoyed.

/whine

I'm having a rough time, but not as rough as my kids!

Big boo boo on my Bugsy Boo

Poor Lacy! This week, she has fallen on her head (thanks to her klutzy mother), had a fever and a tummy ache, and now she has a split lip and stitches. Finally her fever broke this afternoon, so we decided she could go outside and play with the neighbors for a while, but she needed to put on shoes and socks.

"Mom, come help me pick out the perfect shoes and the perfect socks!" I showed her some socks, of which she did not approve, so she decided to come closer to pick them out herself. Unfortunately, she tripped over a dress up chest between her and the dresser, and landed on the open drawer. The deep gash in her lip was shaped exactly like the right angle of the drawer's corner. We were concerned about how deep it was, so we called our paramedic friend who met us in town and took a look at her lip. He felt that with the location of the cut she really should be seen by a doctor, so we took her to the urgent care clinic for stitches. She was very brave, but still screamed a bit with the shots in her face. We also discovered that her gums are pretty torn up as well, but there's nothing you can do about that. We go in next week to remove the stitches. I think I'll find that scar minimizing cream to put on it while it heals, since it is in a very visible area. Poor little sweet thing!

Cool Website

Have you ever lost a camera? Well, now there's a website to help! I Found Your Camera helps to reunite people with their missing cameras, flash cards, and photographs. Czech it out!

Making yummy treats more healthy

I have an absolute favorite zucchini bread recipe. Zucchini bread is full of sugar and oil already, but this one has the added benefit of chocolate chips and chocolate baking squares. Yummy and oh so sinfully good. But not very good for you, especially when prepared as the recipe is written. I've done a little tweaking though to make it slightly less unhealthy, cutting in half the amount of oil and using whole grains. Next time I make it, I'm going to experiment with reducing the sugar content as well. Tonight I'm sticking with what I know because I'm giving a loaf to a family with a new baby (born today! Congrats Sarah!).

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

Preheat oven to 350F

Put 2- 1 oz squares unsweetened baking chocolate in a large microwavable safe bowl. Melt by microwaving for 30 second intervals and stirring afterward until chocolate is completely melted and smooth.

Stir in 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup applesauce, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil until well blended.
Stir in 3 eggs.
Stir in 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 tsp. cinnamon.
Stir in 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I grind mine from soft white wheat berries)
Fold in 2 cups grated zucchini and 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Grease two bread loaf pans generously with vegetable shortening. Cut out parchment paper to fit the bottom of loaf pans and place in the bottom of pans. Grease the tops of those, too.

Fill both pans evenly with batter.

Place in oven for 60-70 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

You will need to loosen the sides with a knife to release from the pans once bread is out of the oven. This bread has a tendency to really stick to the sides!

Allow to cool and enjoy!

A good time was had by most

We decided to do an impromptu salmon cookout tonight at my house, inviting all my local siblings for dinner. We didn't call to invite Mark because he's a bit farther away and I figured he'd be busily cooking dinner for a pretty girl up in Seattle tonight anyway. Other than him, we were all there.

For a while, we sat around watching Olympics on my OnDemand. Leslie had no idea of the outcome of many of Michael Phelp's races, so she watched them intently. She used to be somewhat of a competitive swimmer herself (she actually went to state for one event in high school), so she is really into this sport. Then to see him win by 8/100ths of a second was very exciting for her.

Eventually, we ate some grilled salmon, salad, and rice pilaf. After dinner was over, we decided it would be fun to play a few games in my very large backyard. I have the largest yard of anyone in my family, so we can do quite a bit in it. Unfortunately the grass hasn't come in too well, so it wasn't as soft as it could be, but we're planning on aerating it as soon as possible. Perhaps we'll have a soft lawn next year.

Our first game was a tug of war. We had Lacy and Regan be team captains, and didn't try to influence who they would choose to be on their teams. Here's both teams, ready to go:

Team Regan
Team Lacy
We played two rounds, and each team won once. The deciding factor was the slightly slanted piece of lawn, giving the advantage to the downhill team.

Next we played Red Rover, with Turner and Landon as captains. Dave wisely bowed out of this competition, as he was afraid he was going to hurt someone.

Team Landon:
Team Turner:
And how smart Dave was to bow out. Both the mothers in this game hurt a child of theirs. I accidentally dragged Lacy on the ground for a second (she tripped when we were running and then landed on her head). She didn't land very hard, but she seemed to really hurt herself. She may have been being overly dramatic because she was starting to get sick and currently has a temperature over 101. Actually Dave is trying to get her to take Tylenol as we speak to help her sleep better, but she is being stubborn about it (of course).

We next had foot races, with several different types of races, eventually morphing into fun and interesting races. We had a wheelbarrow/crab relay at the end. I'm not sure who won, but it was hilarious to be sure.

Then we just started getting weird. We did some leg wrestling, arm wrestling, standing arm wrestling with both arms (does it have a name?), and that thing that Joseph Smith liked playing with a stick. I have way too many pictures to post right now, but here's my favorite: Leslie and me leg wrestling. She beat me, but I had the final victory.

Olympic Cities

I'm currently obsessed with watching the Olympics. I was thinking about all the cities in the world where the Olympics have been held, and I realized that I have been lucky enough to live in two Olympic cities. Both are in Germany-- Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where the 1936 Olympics were held in both cities, summer and winter respectively. I used to take swimming lessons in the Olympic pool in Berlin. I remember visiting the ski jumps in Garmisch, and since it is such a small town I'm sure I've visited other Olympic sites and probably "raced" on a mountain where Olympic events took place. I say that in quotes, because I didn't really get it and I wasn't very good-- during one race I was told to ski between the flags, so I literally skied between the two poles instead of around them. I was a bit of a slow child, especially where sports were concerned. Both cities I lived in for three years, G-P from 1982-1985 and Berlin from 1989-1992 (yes, the year the wall fell). I have also been to several other Olympic cities, including Salt Lake City, Vancouver BC (hosting next winter Olympics), Atlanta, GA (well, sort of-- do layovers count?), London, Rome, Munich (many times-- we actually attended church there every Sunday for a while), Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and possibly several others. I'm very lucky to be so well traveled! Maybe Dave and I will have a little extra cash lying around in a year and a half so we can take a little trip to watch a couple of events in Vancouver-- it's only a 3 hour drive, after all!

This is me, going for the gold in Olympic city Garmisch-Partenkirchen in early 1983.

What Olympic cities have you lived in? What Olympic cities have you visited? What Olympic cities are on your wish list of places to visit?

Interesting development

A month or two ago, a guy was riding his motorcycle in the neighborhood, sans helmet (which is required by law in our state), going way too fast. Our neighbor across the street was heading toward home. He saw that the motorcycle was a little out of control so he stopped his truck and waited for the motorcyclist to pass. Unfortunately, instead of passing, he skidded to his truck and crashed into it. Dave witnessed the whole thing, along with another neighbor of ours. Everyone was okay, so they loaded the motorcycle up into our neighbor's truck and took him and his bike home.

I was glad it happened. We found out this guy does not have a motorcyclist endorsement or insurance (only the endorsement is required in our state, but still) and we were hoping that what looked like the totaling of his motorcycle would make him more cautious in the future.

Unfortunately, that did not come to pass. Soon after, Dave saw this same guy, again, riding around without a helmet. Later our neighbor saw the same thing, but he was also speeding. So Dave and our neighbor decided that any time they saw this guy riding illegally after that point, they would call the sheriff. Last night, our neighbor witnessed it again. He was going about 60 on our street (where kids live! What a jerk). While talking to the cops, they were informed that recently they were involved in a high speed pursuit with someone matching this guy's description. I would not be surprised at all if this is the guy they're looking for. I hope it is, and I hope they haul the guy off to jail. Its idiots like him that prevent me from allowing my kids to play in the front yard much at all. Fortunately we live on a cul-de-sac, but we're way too close to the main road (which used to be not all that busy) for my comfort.

Disposable Mania

I keep getting annoyed at these paper towel commercials on the TV. "Soft! Just like a cloth! You can wring out and keep going until the job is done!" OK, then why not just use a dishrag? I didn't even know people would use paper towels like dishcloths until the idea came to me from these commercials. That absolutely makes me sick with how much waste that is! I hardly ever use paper towels, though I admit with having a husband who is a hunter and fisherman, there are those times when only a paper towel will do. However, we go through maybe one roll every two months or so.

There are far too many disposable products in this world. I'm shocked every time I see an ad for a new type of disposable product. When is enough enough? Will we soon be wearing disposable clothing? Babies wear disposable diapers, you can wash them up with disposable wipes, and if that's not enough, there are disposable washcloths for bath time. My mom actually got a disposable soap a couple of years ago-- the soap is in a disposable mesh thing. Not a lot of waste, I admit, but there is still some. At least it smelled really yummy, like raspberries. Almost anything in this world that gets yucky in any way shape or form, there is a disposable alternative for that item. Yes, I've used my fair share of disposable products (I went thorough a short-lived swisher stage in college, or maybe it was the early years of marriage, I can't remember-- those who have been to my home know it had to have been short lived!), but I can honestly say that I've used far fewer disposable products than the average American mother and housewife.

I'm still holding on to a couple disposable items, however. I'm not going to give up toilet paper very easily. We have plenty of band-aids on hand for life's little boo boos, which happen frequently when you have a 2 and 4 year old. During allergy season, Puffs Plus with lotion makes my life much easier than any hankie could. We do use some paper products when we have large gatherings at our home, mostly because we don't own enough plates for everyone to eat off of. I need to figure out an affordable solution for that one. And we don't have camping dishes yet. Bad!

Overall, though, I've been making a conscious effort to reduce my waste and the amount of disposable products we use in my family. We have switched to cloth napkins, handkerchiefs and grocery bags most recently. I'm trying to see what other areas I can switch to a non-disposable alternative. I next want to work on making non-disposable produce bags, and figure out an alternative to plastic zip top bags. I use a lot of them, though I reuse them if they're still good, but about half of them end up with holes in them so I've got to figure out something else. Maybe a bag made from PUL with a clear vinyl slot to stick a piece of paper in for a contents label? But that wouldn't work for everything, and it would only work if I could get it air tight. Rubbermaid doesn't work for much of the wild game stuff that Dave brings home, either, so that's out. It lets in air which allows freezer burn and doesn't fit well in our freezer, which has limited space due to the amount of meat we end up with every year. Anyone have any ideas? I'm starting to think there is no good alternative in these situations.

PS-- in the last post, Dave wanted you all to know that he was the videographer, not me as the post implied!

My singin' girls

Here are a couple videos of my kids singing. Lacy is singing a children's song from church, "When Jesus Christ was Baptized," which is one of her favorites. She does a really good job of it, though she needs to work on staying on key! I guess I'll forgive her since she's only four. ;) I'm sure she'll learn, especially since she has a musical mother! Rose isn't really singing anything in her video. She is always singing like this though, and I'm glad I finally got it on "film," even if for just a small moment. She's so cute when she sings.

The Many Sides of Rose

My kids were just so darned cute today that I had to take lots and lots of pictures. Rose looks especially tan in these pictures, and her hair has a lot of golden highlights from playing outside so much. Suddenly Rose looks so grown to me. Maybe it's the pig tails that I've been putting in her hair lately. Whatever it is, she doesn't look like a baby anymore.

Age two is my favorite age. I forgot how much I loved it until Rose turned two! It's the best age. Some people dread age two and call them the terrible twos, but I can't wait until my kids are two! I think two is terrific! They're sweet and "helpful" and adorable. Plus they're learning how to communicate better with everyone and they're eager to please! Four, on the other hand, is quickly proving to not be my favorite age! Lacy has her wonderful moments, but her awful moments are so much worse than they were at, say, age two.

Rose loves pulling faces. I captured most of her trademark faces here for you today. There's a few that I haven't really captured yet, most notably her alarmed face, which is my absolute favorite. I think I have an almost okay sample of that that I'll post for you today.





This is almost the alarmed face. She was a bit upset because Lacy had just conked her on the head with her foot. Lacy was done sharing the chair and decided to lounge around in it again.


And another favorite of mine. A super silly face after eating some ice cream on a hot day. I've posted this one before, but it just is extra hilarious to me so I'm posting it again.

Rose has really been a ham lately. She's so adorably cute!

Why we'll never be moving away from the Pacific Northwest

Salmon! The fish are in the river, and Dave left this morning at 4 so he could take advantage of the day and catch us some king (chinook) salmon. This is a good sized one and we will enjoy eating it for dinner tonight!



Dave actually caught three salmon this morning. The limit is one, and he already had one salmon on his punch card, and another on his buddy's punch card (Dave kept the first one,which he caught almost immediately after arriving). He hooked the third salmon, and offered it to the other guy that came along with them. He wanted to catch his own fish, so Dave wasn't sure what he should do about the situation since he legally couldn't land the fish. At that moment, a man came down with a couple kids, and Dave offered the pole to one of them to reel in the fish. The kid reeled it in, and then Dave said he could keep it. The dad said, "Are you sure?" Dave said he already had his limit and couldn't keep it. This made the kid's day! As soon as Dave offered them the fish, he was on the phone calling his grandparents, aunts, uncles... anyone who would listen! The kid's excitement really made Dave's day.

Pictures with no stories

Just a couple quick pictures tonight and then I'm off to bed. Starting tomorrow my goal is to be in bed by 11 PM and lights out by midnight. We'll see how that goes!

Picking berries
Washing the Truck

Estimate

I got an estimate done for the truck. Almost two grand worth of damage.

Dang. That's a lot of damage for one little trailer hitch!

Well, there's good news and there's bad news...

Which would you like first? The bad news? That's what I always want to hear first.

Dave was providing service to some ward members today. The first act of service he was hauling a broke-down car on a U-Haul trailer to his new home. The U-Haul guy put the trailer on the truck, as company policy dictates.

Unfortunately, in his haste, the U-Haul guy didn't clamp down the trailer correctly, and it ended up causing quite a bit of damage to our truck. I will probably schedule an estimate tomorrow. U-Haul will cover all repair costs for us.

Here is the bulk of the damage. This is our truck's tailgate. There is other damage as well but I haven't edited out my license plate number from the picture yet so this is what I'm willing to post :)

The good news... DAVE IS WORKING TOMORROW!!! It's been way too long between jobs, the longest he's ever gone in the union. Thanks to a slow economy and lots of red tape, there are fewer projects going on this summer and it's taking a long time to get state approval for projects that actually are already awarded. It's a flagging job, which Dave hates, but it's a job, and we'll take it. We're so grateful our prayers were answered. Hopefully he'll be getting the more permanent Olympia job soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Cheap Date

Happy anniversary to me! Eight years ago today, Dave and I were sealed in the Seattle Temple. It's been an interesting road to say the least, and also a lot of fun! We don't have much money to spend on things right now, but we were able to go on a date today that cost us less than $10.

First, the kids. My sister Leslie agreed to watch the kids for me (thanks again, Les!). We dropped them off and headed back over to the West Side to Olive Garden. We each got a nice meal from the menu and enjoyed each other's company sans kiddos. When the bill came, we used a gift card to pay, and we shelled out about $8.50 for the rest of the meal plus tip.

We were going to go to Barnes & Noble to spend another gift card, but we were running short on time so we went to the theatre to pick up our tickets to "Hancock." Once purchased, we had 20 minutes to kill, so we relaxed at Reclinerland next door to the theatre. We then enjoyed our movie, without any refreshments. Woah, what a change! No popcorn!

At about 4:30, we went to Leslie's again because the movie was over. We hung out for a while, and then Dave and Dixon took Porter and a friend fishing, and the Leslie, the kids and I all went to see a family performance at Huntimer Park in Lacey. It was really fun, except for the last half hour. Finally, we made child stew (put them in the bathtub), got them ready for bed, and waited for Dave to return. We headed back home around 9 or 9:30, with Rose incredibly tired from a busy day without a nap.

I recently went through about a half hour or so of trying to calm down Rose, who woke up in hysterics. She really wanted to nurse and kept saying, "boobie" and pointing to her cheek (her sign language for nurse), but since it was after 11 I couldn't allow her to (it's a rule established with nightweaning several months ago). Finally Dave suggested a sippy cup of water, which she initially rejected, but eventually downed several ounces of water and kept asking for more. I think the hot weather today must have dehydrated her. You wouldn't have guessed it from the amount of water she kept getting for herself at the concert earlier tonight. Finally, she went back to sleep. I'm hoping for an uninterrupted night from here on out.

Lunch, courtesy of Lacy

Lacy decided today that she would make lunch for us. She wanted to make salad. She asked what we could put on our salad besides lettuce. I told her what we had available, and off she went. About 10 minutes later, she comes in with two of her pans from her toy kitchen gear, filled with lettuce and carrots. She went to the garden to pick the lettuce herself. The carrots on the salad are baby carrots, crudely cut into pieces.

"Lacy, did you cut those carrots?"

"Yes!"

"What did you use?" (expecting answer to be a butter knife)

"My mouth!"

She put every one of those carrots into her mouth and bit them into bite sized pieces and put them on our salads! Good thing I'm not a germophobe. I enjoyed eating my salad.

And, new phrases and words from Rose:

Watch this
More cheese/meat/beans (she used to only sign "more," so this is an improvement!)
Get up
Popsicle
Cooper (Booper)
NO!
MINE! (she expressed those two before, but she didn't really start saying them until recently)

And lately she's ending a lot of words with "-yuh." Like, "A BABY-yuh!" Rose's speech is really blossoming and I'm starting to understand more and more of what she says. She still will have full conversations in gibberish, though. Like, sticking her tongue in and out making noises that sound like "bli-la-bli-la-bli-la" really fast, so obviously not even trying to speak English. I figure it's her way of pretending she's speaking our language. Like how kids impersonate people who speak other languages making sounds mimicking what they think the other language sounds like? I think that's what she's doing.

My newest obsession

I picked up my knitting needles again yesterday. I haven't knit in a while because I get carpel tunnel while pregnant, and I just hadn't started back up again since Rose was born. Well, it's about time I do it again! I still have pain in my hands, but I'm hoping to figure something out to keep them from hurting so much. I really enjoy knitting-- it's therapeutic. I'm actually pretty good at it, too. I am self taught but I lack a lot of the knowledge, so hopefully I'll be able to learn everything I need to know thanks to the wonder of the internet. One resource I've been using a lot is knittinghelp.com-- it has video tutorials, links to free patterns, and loads more information.

One other motivation to knit again is the many skeins of yarn I have lying around the house (it might even be in the hundreds of skeins!). I need to get those knit up into a usable object! I can't buy any yarn until I have most of the yarn I already have finished up into projects. As I continue to improve my skills, I will share my finished projects on this blog.

My shrimpy little girl

Lacy has always been thin. She started out a normal weight at 8 lb 5 oz, gained weight to be about 18/19 pounds around her first birthday, but then it tapered off. She weighed 22 pounds when she turned two years old, and after her third birthday for several months she weighed only 25/26 pounds. Finally she started gaining weight and was 31 pounds by spring this year when she went to have her tonsils removed. I weighed her last month and she was 37 pounds, and now she's closer to 38. This is within the normal weight ranges for 4 year old girls, but 31 pounds with her height (40 inches at the time, currently 42 inches) put her well within the underweight category.

I thought it was the tonsil surgery that bulked her up. But now I have learned that I was mistaken. It was not the tonsil surgery at all. It was Regan and Marilyn who did it.

Preparing for my interview

I was on a friend's blog this morning and Bette Midler's song "Hero" started playing. Rose started singing along as soon as she heard the music. She was not singing words, but she was moving her voice in time and in tune to the song playing. She is always singing, and she responds very well to music. She always has, as long as I can remember. She's only 2, but is always making music or singing along with music (she doesn't just listen to music-- she has to sing along!). I think she's a budding musical prodigy, and I plan on exposing her to all things musical. I'm seriously considering enrolling her in Suzuki violin lessons when she's 3, since I'm already planning on having Lacy take them at age 5. I'm preparing now for the inevitable interview I will have someday for VH1 Behind the Music: "She started singing before she could even talk!" I really must record her singing so I can share it with all of you here.

Now Lacy, on the other hand, is the star of this video. When she says "I'm Dori" at the end, she means Laurie. She's performing her version of Laurie Berkner's "I'm Gonna Catch You."



Rose is a huge fan of Laurie Berkner as well, and is constantly singing "Moon, Moon, Moon." It's either that or "Rock-a-bye, Sweetie Pie" when she wants cuddles. Lacy begged to finish watching "Princess Diaries 2," and since I'm a sucker for Anne Hathaway I let her. When she first turned on the TV, MTV was on and the song playing was by the Pussycat Dolls, "When I Grow Up," a very obnoxious song that has a lot of "La la la la"s in it. I have never enjoyed the music of the Pussycat Dolls, so I changed it quickly to put on the movie. Rose was already singing the "la la la la" part, in tune and everything, before I could even switch it.