More salad

Dash loves to make and drink smoothies.  His favorite part? "Put more salad in it!"  Does he eat "salad" (i.e. spinach) willingly on its own?  No.  Does he love to pack it into the blender in the morning?  Yes.  Does he drink it up happily?  Double yes.

Costumes, settled

Remember back when I was debating whether to buy Ella and Dash the expensive Halloween costumes they wanted from Pottery Barn Kids?  I gave myself a lot of time to work on coming up with other options but as I should have known, I didn't exactly find a lot of time to execute any creative alternatives.  I didn't want to pay expensive shipping charges on top of the already ridiculously-priced costumes but I was so worried that Dash's beloved Max costume would sell out that last week I finally sat down to order the darn costumes.  No problems with Max, but the Butterfly Fairy costume Ella had her heart set on?  Completely sold out online.  Fortunately a few days later I remembered something called "brick and mortar stores" and made a lunchtime run to my local PBK store where, lo and behold, they had a Butterfly Fairy in Ella's size.  Whew.  So both costumes in hand, I gave them to the kids last night.  Their excitement level was off the charts.  I still don't feel great about spending so much on costumes, but the hour they ran around the house in them last night gleefully pretending to turn the house into a 'kin-dom' (Wild Thing Kingdom) and a fairyland was pretty darn fun to watch.

Dressing themselves

Just to be clear, they pick out their own clothes these days.

Book request

I came home from a preschool board meeting about 9:00 tonight and Ella ran downstairs to give me a note.  It had the name of a book on it that she said she "really really wanted to read."   I immediately bought it on Amazon (and the next one in the series after that, for good measure).  I asked Josh later if he thought I was being too indulgent by buying her a book just because she asked.   His response of "well, couldn't we just get it at the library?" told me what he thought.  But I'm sticking to my book buying ways.  If that's the way I spoil her, well, I'm OK with that.

Her request:  Ivy and Bean and the Ghost that had to go

Out of the mouth of Dash

Dash has been full of adorable sayings today...

First, today is Josh's and my 10th anniversary (hooray for us!) and on the way home from school, Dash told me "Today is The Anniversary Day.  It is special.  It is special because it's about love."  Which is totally true and a very sweet understanding of something very abstract for a two-year old.

Josh got me lovely jewelry for our anniversary but the true gem of a gift was the story he had Dash recount for me after he got up this morning. 

Josh: "Dash, tell mommy what you told me about last night."

Dash: "Last night in the middle of the night, it was very very dark and I did not like that.  So I wiggled my peecee [his word for his penis] with both my hands and I felt better!"

Seriously, such cuteness

 

Clean-up fail

As I did my usual walk-through after Ella and Dash went to bed, the house seemed awfully lacking in the usual kid messes and I didn't remember any big picking-up events that would've rendered it so unusually neat. 

Then I went into my closet to get ready for bed and I saw where all the day's fun had clearly taken place:

Kindergarten homework

Fortunately Ella's school isn't super big on homework for kindergartners, but now that reading groups have started ("I'm in a reading group of only one people!" Ella reported rather incredulously the first day....), we have books for her to read out loud every night.  Here she is doing her reading practice with a real pro.