Random Bits

First, some assorted photos that I have been meaning to post... then there is text way down below. :)

Cecilia sleeping - she inherited this position from my father, apparently.

My niece - my brother's daughter, Julianne

She had recently learned to crawl and was fascinated by the latch thing for the double doors on the threshold to my parents' sunroom

My brother Stephen had just come back from a year in Kuwait/Afganistan. Here he is with all three of his nieces, and the first time meeting Julianne!

Cecilia with the toy sheep Uncle Stephen brought her

Cecilia strangling Tyke

The photos don't show it, but she was shaking his head back and forth

You wouldn't know it from how she's getting right in his face here, but he had just nipped at her as a warning before this... obviously, Cecilia didn't take his threat seriously. We finally made her stop and leave the poor thing alone...

CC and Daddy

Julianne with her Uncle Chris

Happy baby with her Grampa!

So, here are the random babblings:

Caroline, from the back seat of the car: "Mommy, are you more Irisher than me?" followed by, "Mommy, are you more Scotlandish than me?"

So, I figured out why my car's stereo is acting possessed... I told Chris, and he figured out that it was because of his new portable ham radio that he just put in the car. It is plugged into the cigarette lighter (ahem, accessories outlet, isn't that the PC term? ;) and when the car is turned off, there is extra power there somehow that keeps the music playing for another several seconds. Now that I know this, I can just lock the doors and walk away from the blaring speakers, not having to worry that I will come back out an hour later with a group of people staring at my car wondering what is going on!

When Chris reads books to the girls, he sometimes gives each character a different voice. I do this some too (just ask my youngest brother what each of the Berenstein Bears sounds like!)... but if anyone hears my kids sounding like Billy Bob Thornton in Slingblade as they quote Mr. Chumley from the book Aunt Eater's Halloween, that wasn't my doing!

Speaking of voices, Cecilia has an interesting way of pronouncing some words... and yesterday, I put my finger on who it is that she sometimes sounds like: the girl in the TV show Daria (showing my age and my bizarre taste in television as a high schooler here!), Quinn's friend, the one who is the president of the fashion club. Cecilia doesn't have her voice (thank goodness), but the way she pronounces some words is oddly similar! I think it is in the over-enunciation on vowel sounds or something... If you start the video clip below at about 1:35, she is the first person to speak.

Caroline said, "I won zero prize!" in a rather excited way. She went on to explain that the "zero prize" is better than first prize because zero comes before one, "so zero is the real first prize."

Cecilia understands that people and animals have bones inside their bodies, so the song "Doggy, Doggy, Who Took your Bone?" causes her some confusion. Today, after singing it through, she asked me, "Took a bone out of the dog's body?" I told her that dogs liked to chew on bones, and she asked, "Chew on their own bones in theirselves???"

So I received an email (for some unknown reason) from Ace Hardware, specifically, the one in my town. It has images in it, and at the bottom it says, "The perfect gift for anyone on your list!" Under that, it pictures an example of gifts and says underneath each, "Him," "Her," "Kids," "Pets," and "Yard." Huh, I didn't realize that people bought gifts to give to their yards at Christmas. I hope my yard doesn't feel like we've been giving it the shaft all these years!

Cecilia says: "for a few whiles" and "I have too many stuffs in my hands."

Caroline: "That car is for sale... or, maybe the brand is called For Sale."

"The McDonald's M is made of French fries, Mommy... isn't that disturbing?"

She also told a friend while we were trick-or-treating, "Listen to this dream I had - it was horrifying."

Today I took the kids to the McDonald's indoor play area near our house. I hate that I do that, but on rainy days, I like them to be able to climb and get out their energy, and the place is about three minutes away. I buy a drink and let them play. But man, the playground at a fast food place was like a huge, special, nearly once-in-a-lifetime deal for me as a kid. I remembered dreaming of the McDonald's playground (literally). It was special. But anyway... today when we went into the section with the play area, Cecilia looked at the steps to climb up and excitedly proclaimed, "It's BROWN today!!!" Uh, was it a different, more boring color last time? Marge Simpson immediately came to mind... "You hear that, kids? Brown!!!"