Mommy's Xmas List

Dear Santa,

I have been a very nice mommy this year. I only swore under my breath, and only when the occasion really really warranted it, like when the brand new Snow White underwear got pooped in five minutes after an epic and unproductive potty session. And I hardly ever pretended to be asleep when the kids woke up and started crying or pulled the covers over my head and waited for Atomic to deal with it. Really, I swear.

So here is what this very very nice mommy would like for Christmas this year:

1. Two hours during the day to get a mani/pedi
2. A nice dinner out with my girlfriends
3. A lock for the bathroom door

That's it. I don't need a Wii or an iPad or whatever fancy gizmo is in fashion this year. Just a little bit of time, and a little bit of privacy.

Sincerely,
Binky

Gabby's Bedtime Story

Last night at dinner, Gabby said "Mommy, Daddy, I want to tell you a story." I happened to have my laptop on the kitchen table, so I took dictation as she spoke and asked a couple of questions along the way. Here's the story:

"Once upon a time, there was a princess named Daddy, and his name was Michael. And the Mommy-King was named Gina."

"And what did the King and the Princess do?"

"They hang out together."

"What else? Did they have an adventure?"

"They had some pancakes at the beach. The prince and the princess went on the beach and they got to fly away and a wolf came, and they put on the wings and they fly away from the wolf!

That's how it goes."

Verbiage

We have quite a history with words in our family. Family lore has it that when I was three, I used to strut around informing anyone who would listen that I had "an extensive vocabulary." I also received a dictionary -- not a child's dictionary, mind you, a Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary -- and once I had learned to read I used to sit and read it as if it were Little Red Riding Hood.

What is it they say about apples and trees and such?

Anyway, Gabby informed me the other day that "When I was little, my favorite color was pink, but now that I'm a big girl my favorite color is fuchsia."

She has also started imitating our habit of spelling out words we don't want to say in front of her. Right now, her strings of letters don't actually spell anything, but I imagine we're going to have to learn Latvian pretty soon if we want to stay a step ahead of her.

And Dylan, being no slouch in the word department himself, grabbed Gabby's bottle of milk from her hands this morning[1], held it up in the air, and proudly said, "Bobble!"

Poor Mike will be lucky to get a word in edgewise around here.

[1] Yes, yes, she's using multisyllabic words correctly in sentences but she still likes her bottle of milk in the a.m. What can I say? She's not potty trained, either. Too focused on learning new words, obviously.