Pretty, Funny, Happy, Real

Apparently, when we don't have house guests and no one is actively throwing up or variations thereof and we aren't gallivanting about the countryside, I have no idea what to do with myself other than write blogposts... Enjoy!  ;-)

Pretty

There is this wonderful thing at the grocery store where you can get a bunch of daffodils (or daffodiddles, ala Charlie) for about 1.25 Euros.  You buy them at that stage where they look like nothing quite so much as rather odd asparagus and then the magic happens.  The children have the most fun coming down every morning to see how they have changed.  We have all sorts of discussions about how some are different colors, the stamens, how they turned the paper yellow, how they have to drink the water and some speculation about what they might get up to while we're asleep.  I sort of want to try an experiment where we add some food coloring to the water to see what happens but I'm hesitant to mess with my "pretty."  Oh, woe, for my children lack a sacrificial mother!

Happy

Earlier this week we had spring.  I'm unclear if it will return or if we'll be back to late winter until we hit summer for 3 days sometime between June and August (finger's crossed that it will fall on a weekend!) In a clear indicator of my assimilation, as soon as I read the weather report calling for highs of 15-16 (around 60' F) and brisk-fresh breezes, I thought "I must get the sheets into the washer!"  And, of course, once we hit a balmy 13 (55' F), I chased the children outside to frolic and threw open the windows.  I'm thinking the transition to 90' F with 80% humidity which is the joy of a southern american summer will be a touch rocky...

Happily, there is perhaps no better place for a little boy than Ireland in (the proverbial) spring...  SO MANY PUDDLES!!!!

And, of course, we all had to examine the HUGE snail!  Luckily, it's hanging out in one of Mommy's flower pots so it should be around for a while.  And, to think I claimed I wasn't sacrificial!

Real

So, this little girl, who was once regularly mistaken for a boy because she wanted nothing more than to exclusively wear her brother's hand-me-downs has finally arrived at the princess stage.  We had sidestepped it, mostly by completely ignoring the existence of princesses.  This is slightly easier in the US.  Once you come to Europe, even if you leapfrog all of the Disney business you still have actual princesses wandering about at every historic landmark (as well as actual knights, kings, princes, queens, and castles which I now firmly understand are NOT the same as palaces).  While I don't see anything inherently wrong with wanting to pretend to be a princess (I certainly have my moments of wishing to be whisked away...) I did hope we could sidestep some of the more insipid elements.  So, I told her she had to be the princess of something and offered up the choice of literature or engineering.  She initially went with engineering for obvious reasons.  At bathtime that evening, Allen came upon her carefully counting.  When he asked her what she was doing she said "I'm figuring out how many rolls of toilet paper we would have if we cut them all in half."  You know, as you do...

But, I've been fairly certain that Megan will be our flashlight reader.  Her first word was "apple" but her  second was "book."  And, she is currently working her way through Little Bear with great determination even though it is a smidge too hard for her to the extent that I have to hound her about brushing her teeth, etc.  So, I asked her if she really wanted to be Princess of Engineering or if she perhaps would rather be Princess of Literature.  Once she found out that Literature is another word for books, she quickly changed her mind and has been periodically skipping about announcing "Princess of Books, Princess of Books, I'm the Princess of Books."  I think this is a princess phase I can get behind.