goodbye, dolly

i love musicals. i grew up watching them over and over. memorizing lyrics and singing along. dancing along to the choreography in our family room downstairs as i pretended that i was dorcas from seven brides from seven brothers (she didn't have to dance too much). my siblings and i have some really fond memories surrounding the culture of watching musicals that we grew up in. you can sing the first couple words of a song and we will all join in together and maybe even start dancing for you. we can't help ourselves. kind of like the people in musicals.

i still love musicals, but rarely watch them any more. i don't have a whole lots of spare time and when randy and i do get a moment to settle down and watch something, the sound of music is not on the top of randy's list (but it is on the top of mine!).

i can't remember what triggered it, but for the last couple weeks i've been thinking a lot about musicals and wondering if my girls are ready for/would enjoy some of the musicals that i loved so much as a kid. maybe maria von trapp could somehow kill that inane, constant desire to watch dora that i am constantly trying to stamp out, yet burns brightly in madeleine's bosom.

yesterday, on a rare, quiet sunday afternoon, and with all of this musical nostalgia brewing inside of me, i decided to sit down and watch hello, dolly. definitely one of my favorites. madeleine came out of her nap about fifteen minutes into the movie, so decided to see if she was ready to enjoy a good musical and i let her join me.

no more than ten seconds had passed when she said, "why are they all singing and dancing?" i explained that it was a musical and the actors do that a lot during the movie. it's a fun way to showcase their talents while still progressing the plot (i think that part was over her head). apparently this was not a satisfactory answer because she asked me this question repeatedly throughout the rest of the movie. not just at the beginning of each song, but several times throughout each song. each time i tried a different response, but she was not appeased.

and so, what i thought would be a bonding, enjoyable experience for my daughter and me, turned into a disappointing deconstruction of one of my favorite musicals. it really takes the magic out of the movie when you constantly have to explain dolly levi's motives in a three year old's vernacular. try as i might, she just couldn't understand how the parade was a metaphor for life and its experiences.

maybe i'll have to watch them on my own for a while.  

and let me just say that she has never asked why the little mermaid bursts into song randomly or why she is so infatuated with eric and being a human.

it's a good thing these two are so cute

is it seriously only 7:15 in the morning? it's going to be a long day.

adjusting to the end of daylight savings time is rough.

soaking up the sun

the cold weather looks like it's finally here to stay for the winter, but last thursday was gorgeous and we enjoyed what may be one of our last trips to the park for a long time. lots of pictures of it for the grandmas.

i love this look. i'm pretty sure she wanted me to be pushing the swing instead of taking a picture.

the girls were sporting some pretty sweet static hair at this point.

halloween 2011

for halloween this year, my sisters and i decided to have our girls be candy corns. i mass produced four little dresses for all of them and even finished a few days before halloween. they are very simple dresses. no pattern, just flying by the seat of my pants. that may be why my girls' dresses will fit them until they're eight years old ("who wants to be a candy corn again this year?").

diane's favorite part of the costume is the silky ribbon by her face that she gets to snuggle with. when i tried it on her for fitting purposes, she wouldn't let me take it off. thus, the thumb in the mouth for all of the pictures.

unfortunately, i didn't finish them early enough to get a picture with all four of the girls together in them, but here are my nieces in theirs, pictures courtesy of my siblings:

elizabeth

rachel

despite my halloween grinchedness, i have bought pumpkins for my children every year. i think we've carved them once before, but this year madeleine was really excited about her pumpkin. when we first got them, she insisted that we paint it. i'm not sure where she got this idea because we never talked about painting pumpkins and i don't remember seeing a painted pumpkin with her. it probably stems from her general obsession with painting right now.

i actually wasn't there for the painting portion. randy says it was fairly chaotic. you see, diane also loves painting right now, but hers is more of a love of putting paint brushes in her mouth. so randy was trying to help madeleine, while simultaneously keeping diane from eating an entire tube of paint. is it bad to say that i'm glad i wasn't there?

anyway, after painting the pumpkin, madeleine decided that she also wanted to carve the pumpkin. so, she designed the face all by herself and randy helped her execute it. 

as i predicted, madeleine did not enjoy pulling the seeds out of the pumpkin. she is our neat and tidy child and the gooey innards of a pumpkin did not appeal to her. so randy pretty much ended up doing everything with the pumpkin.

diane got bored with the process pretty early on and decided to set up a bed on the floor of the kitchen and fake sleep.

throughout the carving process, madeleine kept asking why we were doing what we were doing (never mind that she was the one that had begged to carve it). we tried to explain, but she was not satisfied. it was not until we put the candle in at the end and turned the lights off that she got it. she loved it.

homemade costumes and two pumpkin activities. not bad for a grinch's halloween.

new nephew

my sister, beth, had a beautiful baby boy this week. we got to go visit him at the hospital. the girls didn't really know what to do with him, so after this picture, madeleine and diane entertained themselves with bruce's ipad.

i got to hold him for a long time, soaking up his infant-ness and sending favorite aunt vibes. welcome to the family!

cornbelly's

on saturday morning, we headed up to cornbelly's at thanksgiving point with the girls for some fall festivities. randy has been itching to go to a corn maze for the last few years and we decided to finally bite the bullet and do it this year.

the girls were fairly reticent when we first arrived and diane wouldn't even let me put her down. we decided to start out easy by sitting on a big rocking chair. they weren't that amused.

once they saw the big wooden play structures with slides though, they were sold.

after randy showed the girls his lasso skills, they decided to give it a try.

we headed over to the corn maze, although it took some serious convincing to get the girls to leave the slides. it wasn't exactly what randy had hoped for and not the most fun activity for small children. after about ten minutes of wandering around, we took a few shortcuts through the corn and made our way back to the entrance. so much for that.

even though she was having fun, diane had her thumb in her mouth pretty much the entire time we were there. it was her morning nap time (which she has given up taking, but is still tired through), so if she wasn't on the move, she was in sleepy mode.

next, we hit the cow train ride. madeleine did not want to go, so she sat out with randy and i took diane. i am not sure how i crammed myself into the cow barrel and i am not sure that my tailbone will ever be the same.

we took a quick break and spent a small fortune for a mediocre lunch. diane spent the whole time dipping things in mustard, making this face, and then immediately going back for more.

the girls loved these jump pillows. so much better than a trampoline. plus, they had one for little kids and one for big kids, so the girls weren't terrorized by older aggressive children.

diane fell down a couple times and had a hard time getting back up. she would sit there with her head bouncing against the pillow over and over until she could finally regain her balance. i would have intervened, but she was laughing wildly the whole time.

she also had a long period of time where she just sat on her bottom, thumb in mouth, while she was gently bumped up and down. i wish i had a picture of it, but i didn't take one.

at this point we cooled it on the pictures, but we went on a lot more slides, did a bouncy house, and finished up with a hayride. on our way up, i had told madeleine about the hayride and explained that we would sit on a wagon with hay and horses would pull the wagon. she said that she did not want to ride behind horses (apparently she has a great fear of horses). i didn't push it, but wanted to she if she would change her mind when we got there. fortunately, the wagon was pulled by a tractor and we didn't have to deal with the horse issue. she said that the hayride was her favorite part of the day, but that may have been because it was the last thing that we did. diane tried to fall asleep on my lap during the hayride, so we decided to call it a day and head home.

all in all, it was a success and i'm glad we went. it was a fun way to spend a fall morning.