Birthday Girl

The Children's Museum has a three-and-under room with a huge wooden car.  Chandler loves that wooden car, so I wanted her to visit it one more time before she aged out.  However, when we arrived at the museum we learned that the room was closed for renovations.  Boo.

Nevermind.  This kid bounces back.  She was very happy to hang out in the climbing structure.

Her sister at first chose to stay on the ground with her dad (that's her down below in the turquoise pants).

Frances did talk herself into joining Chandler eventually.  Frances doesn't love the climbing structure as much as her sister (I've mentioned before that I feel claustrophobic just looking at it), but she gave it a go yet again.

What Frances really loves is the museum's production of the Three Little Pigs.  We watched that after our turn in the climbing structure for maybe the third time.  Both girls have parts of the play memorized by now, but I'm sure they'll want to see it again.

Such funny girls.

More Happy Chinese New Year's

Our local library is really trying this year, or perhaps I'm just paying better attention.  A few weeks ago, the library held a Chinese New Year's celebration.  We managed to bring two sets of friends this time around.  From the right, there's Frances, Darby, Chandler, Isaac and Hannah.  My kids chose to wear their pajamas because it was so late (6 p.m.).

The kids heard stories about Chinese New Year's.

And learned dances.

Chandler really liked the lion head.

And they wrapped up by making their own lion masks.  Or was it dragon masks?

I'm really not sure.  To be honest, neither girls' mask looked much like the library's model, but they both got hung on the girls' bedroom doors to scare away evil spirits.  They were very pleased with that.

More Birthday

Several months before Chandler's birthday, she asked for doughnuts.  I promised she could get fancy doughnuts (meaning not Dunkin Donuts).  Mark remembered my promise and went to get a small mountain of doughnuts the Saturday before Chandler's birthday.  He dolled it up with some candles.

Someone was excited.

We have not been able to convince Chandler that she wants to blow all the candles out at once, but she is now successful with one at a time.  For awhile, she was having trouble with even blowing out one candle.  She kind of blew everywhere but at the candler.  I don't know.

After blowing out her candlers, she ate a couple bites of doughnuts and licked a bunch of frosting.

What an excellent four year-old!

Happy Chinese New Year/Birthday!

Keeping with our theme of lumping together special occasions (remember Christmas/Hanukkah/Birthday?), I decided it was completely kosher to lump together Chinese New Year, Mark's birthday and Chandler's birthday.  The birthday boy couldn't have cared less.  The birthday girl mostly agreed.

Here's dinner:

I can't really say what anything was.  I know there was a chicken and date soup and a shrimp ball soup.  There was a pork, perhaps with ginger.  There was fish.  There were greens.  It was all so good.  So good that it's a little hard to imagine asking the chefs, Andy and Cindy, to eat our meager offerings ever again.  The flavors were so bold.  Delicious.

Here are the kids, clearly thinking hard about food:

And then it was cake time.  Chandler had thought long and hard about what kind of cake she wanted.  Around mid-January, she was asking for an almond pistachio cake - she loves nuts.  She eventually settled on a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting that I had made for New Year's.  I guess it made a good impression.  The recipe could easily serve twenty people, so I was easy to convince.

Chandler seemed pleased.

We didn't get the girls home until long past their bedtime.  But they weren't interested in sleep.  No, they just wanted to count their New Year's money and play with the plastic Cindy got for Chandler.

Play on, girls.  I'll be snug in a corner eating leftovers all week.

Note to self:  This lumping scheme will not work next year.  Chandler asked several times on her actual birthday when her friends were coming to eat cake.

Another note to self:  Help Chandler make friends besides Peanut.

Making Frosting with Chandler

Chandler does not have the world's biggest sweet tooth (that honor belongs to my husband or my eldest).  She often leaves ice cream and cookies unfinished.  But, she does love frosting.  Loves, loves, loves.  So she was very eager to help me with some chocolate frosting for her birthday cake.

If she doesn't turn out completely spoiled, it will be a miracle.

We Marched

After Trump was elected, Mark and I had a conversation that went about like this:

One of us:  We should go to the march in Washington.

The other:  You betcha.

It was one of those moments of synchronization that holds a marriage together.  Luckily, my girls don't know the meaning of "sexual assault," but I didn't want the girls to one day learn that a man who bragged about committing sexual assault was elected to the White House and think we just sat idly by while it happened.  I think Mark believes this is all part of a sick ego-trip for Trump.  Mark wasn't interested in letting that breeze by either.  So we headed south.

I'm so glad we did.  It was a really happy day.  There was a general sense that together, we would survive.  The girls did great, despite the crowds.  They spent the next two weeks yelling "Show me what democracy looks like!  This is what democracy looks like!"  But even that was tolerable.

A month in....well, one can only fight so many fires at once and it's hard to keep up.  Our latest effort will be to bake cookies for a friend's fund-raising concert.  Cookies aren't much, in the face of it all, but if it makes the girls feel powerful, it will do.

Wednesdays with Chandler

I found a new program for Chandler and me to attend on Wednesdays.  It's about 15 minutes away from our house, costs five dollars, gets Chandler around other kids and gets all those kids outside.  Sold!

And they have Sammy the Snake.

Chandler is very fond of Sammy the Snake.

So on a recent Wednesday, we visited with Sammy...

...and then went home to pack for an upcoming trip.  Chandler helped me pack my circling everything on my to-pack list.

Such a darling!

More about the trip soon.