Photo Highlights of Christmas

Here are a few pictures from Christmas.

Checking out the stuff in their stockings when they first get downstairs - after Reagan takes an emergency bathroom break so she's not so grumpy.



Reagan highlighting Jo-Jo's hair with her Hannah Montana highlighter. Jo-Jo didn't realize quite how much it would show up when she agreed to it. It did wash out though!

Everyone enjoyed the Hannah Montana wigs!

Jenny's also enjoying her Hannah Montana guitar and microphone, even though she doesn't have the best fit for the wig and microphone.

This is how Reagan initially used the High School Musical microphone Charlotte and Zero gave her.

This was when Reagan came in and asked me if I wanted her to put some "lipstips" on me. I said no.

Reagan had something very important to tell Nicole - I'm not sure what it was.

I'm also not sure what was happening here. Lee's enjoying Wilson and the knives Justin gave him, and I think Zero's just enjoying his gift, but Nicole and Charlotte are laughing at something amazing.


Lee debuting his gift from Charlotte and Zero - it's a great fit!

I was excited to get a picture here of Reagan forcing someone to look at her by grabbing and moving his head. She does this quite often if she has something important to share.


I don't think this one requires any explanation.

I didn't get good pictures of everyone who passed through our house (before you post your comment complaining, Mario), but these give a good idea of what a great time we had!

Songs

I haven't posted since Christmas, so I thought I should get started. The girls are gone to Hilton Head for a couple days, so I thought I could post some of the funny things from this week while they are gone.

First of all, we had a great Christmas with everyone here! We had fun, and so did the girls, and I hope we have a lot more Christmases like this one. Of course the girls got way too many presents, but that's to be expected. I haven't put my pictures on the computer yet, but I will post some as soon as I do.

I thought I would use this post to transcribe the song lyrics that Jenny and Charlotte wrote over Christmas. Jenny has expressed a desire to be one of those people who writes songs - the lyrics, not the melody - so she and Charlotte worked on it.

Song #1 - Haveing Soopr Fun:

Me and my frinds like to do lonts of things
Here are sum we like to do
Yo mite like thim to.

We like to dantse.
We like to sing too.
We wontta take a chants to shar it with you.

We live to love and we
love to be free.
Do you call your dad he?
Try calling him another name.
He might like it.
You gotta believe
You gotta do what you love
but if it doesn't work
you just gotta try again!
And remember - you just gotta believe in yourself.

Song #2 (No Title):

Here is are frinds.
Mreeayu
and Nucol
and Acadia
and Zero
and Catherine
and Brianna
and Justin
These are our friends.
who are your friends?
Maybe our friends are the same.
I just think you don't need to tell on anybody.
You just gotta say this is what I think is cool.
And then you gotta play!

You may be able to tell that some parts were written by Jenny and some were by Charlotte - either way, Jenny's obviously a budding artist. She and Charlotte make a great writing team!

Happy Christmas Eve!

The girls have already had a great start to Christmas - so have I! We went to Rock Hill on Saturday to meet my parents, my brother's family, two of my aunts and an uncle, and my cousin. So the presents started early. I had also given the girls two of their presents on Thursday.

I got them each Barbie Girls mp3 players, and I wanted them to be able to listen to them in the car on the way to Rock Hill, so that I could listen to my own music. It worked for a while, but Reagan dropped hers where none of us could reach it part of the way through the trip, so she didn't have it the whole time. She did have it while we were out in Best Buy, and she sings her songs very loudly. She was walking through listening to Hannah Montana, and pretty much screaming, "Who said? Who said I can't be Superman? I said, I said that I know I can!" Better than most other things she could be singing.

I forgot to bring the camera with me on Saturday, so I don't have any pictures from then yet. I'm hoping my cousin Tara will be able to provide some. The girls each got an American Girl doll from my parents. They got Julie and Ivy, best friend hippie dolls from the 70s, and they love them. Reagan's very happy to have her own finally. Once my camera's charged, I will take some pictures. Julie and Ivy talked the entire car ride home, mostly about how Ivy (Reagan's) kept calling Julie her sister (I mean "shister"), and Julie would yell back that she's not her sister, just her best friend. And then they would fight. But sometimes they were friends. They also got tons of wonderful presents from everyone else, include lots of new Barbies, Hannah Montana and High School Musical stuff, and cute clothes. Basically, enough stuff for normal children for an entire Christmas, and it was just the beginning.

Jo-Jo arrived shortly after we did on Saturday evening. After we unloaded her car, our family room looked like this:


So there are plenty of presents to go around! The girls opened a couple that night, and we all went ahead and opened all of our presents from Jo-Jo yesterday. We're trying to do this Christmas in phases, and we still have a couple more rounds of presents coming, including Santa Claus presents! The girls got many more great presents from Jo-Jo - lots of Hannah Montana things and other Barbie things. Two of everything, so there's no jealousy allowed.

We're looking forward to picking up Charlotte, Uncle Zero (as Jenny referred to him last night - she decided he wouldn't mind), and Uncle Mario at the airport this evening. And we're looking forward to the rest of our visitors tomorrow!

I'll leave you with a little gem from Reagan when we were opening presents yesterday afternoon. I got a couple sets of pajamas from Jo-Jo, and when I was opening them, I said, "I love jammies."

Reagan was commenting on every single thing, so she said, "Yeah, you do love jammies. And daddy loves jammies, because his belly is his jammies."

Kiss Update

Forgot to put this in the previous post.

For anyone who was worried, Jenny told me that she actually did smack Caleb in the face when he kissed her. So when I asked her if he had tried to kiss her again, she said he had not because he's scared of her since she smacked him.

Fired Off the Hook

We just went out to dinner, and we had a conversation that we felt should be recorded, to the best of my recollection.

Reagan - Do monsters eat people?

Lee - Yes.

Reagan - Do they eat good people or bad people?

Lee - They are monsters, so they don't care if you are good or bad.

Reagan - But do they eat good people?

Lee - Yes, unfortunately, they do sometimes.

Reagan - Do monsters eat Santa Claus?

Lee - Santa Claus is very powerful, so he could beat monsters.

Jenny - Yeah. Fat people are really strong. And the reindeer could use their horns to stab the monsters.

Reagan (moving on) - Do monsters eat babies?

There was more that I can't remember, but here's a little bit of the car conversation afterwards.

Reagan - Justin is a dude . . . Justin is a doo-doo head. Is Kyler a dude?

Lee - Yes.

Reagan - Is it because he cut his hair?

Lots more from Reagan about people being poo-poo heads and doo-doo heads and poop faces. And also how she doesn't like daddy talking in German. And then:

Reagan - Daddy, you're fired off the hook. You're a boo-boo head.

Whatever that means.

Jenny's First Kiss

Here's my version of the conversation we just had in the car - where we have all our important conversations.

Jenny - Guess who Tucker's dating now?

(Tucker is the boy Jenny liked last year.)

Me - Tucker from last year's class? Who?

Jenny - A new girl in my class, Chasidy. And she's also dating five other boys, so me and Jade are going to tell Tucker that she's cheating on him.

Me - Wow. Are you dating anybody?

Jenny - Not right now.

Me - Are there any boys in your class you want to date?

Jenny - No, but there's one who wants to date me.

Me - Who?

Jenny - Caleb. He was dating Keri, but they broke up. When we were on the bus for our field trip last week, he - no, I don't want to say it.

Me - What?

Jenny - (spelling it out for me) - H E space K I S S E D space M E.

Me - What?! He kissed you?!

Jenny - It was just on the cheek, not a real kiss. I told him that if he did that again, I would smack him in the face.

Me - I can't believe a little boy kissed you at school.

Did you guys know that there's such drama in the first grade?

Haircut

Jenny gave herself a little bit of a haircut yesterday. I noticed some obviously cut hairs on the bathroom floor and a pair of scissors on the counter, so I came down and asked the girls who cut their hair. Of course, they both said they didn't do it. I actually thought it was Reagan, but then Jenny admitted that she had cut a little bit because part of her hair was really dry and she didn't want to get it wet. Not that that makes any sense. So I decided to take her today and get it cut for real. And it looks so good. They cut it shorter with layers, so her hair actually looks somewhat thick. Here are a couple pictures. Not sure why she felt a need to include the bell in the picture.


And just because it's cute, here's a picture of Reagan from a few days ago. She found this hat that I believe was part of Tara's old dance costumes that she wanted to wear for a picture.


We went to see Santa Claus yesterday. The girls told him what they wanted, and they were very cute. Reagan let him know that Jenny is about to lose another tooth, so Jenny mentioned how she's hoping that she loses it on Christmas Eve so that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy have to come the same night. Jenny told me that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy are related - according to The Santa Clause 3 movie. Santa told her that it would be nice to see his good friend the tooth fairy on Christmas Eve, so we'll see!

Reagan and Santa

Santa came to daycare on Monday to do pictures. Jenny was at school, so the pictures are just of Reagan with Santa. I think they're hilarious because Reagan clearly does not trust him. She told me when I picked her up that it was because she knew he wasn't the real Santa - the real Santa has a white beard, not all that black stuff. So we're going to go see another Santa on Friday or Saturday with Jenny, and hopefully he'll have a white beard. Jenny had wanted to go on December 10, because that was the day she declared was not too far away from Christmas, but not too close, but apparently Santa is only at the shopping center near our house on Fridays and Saturdays, so the 10th didn't work out.

Photo Outtakes

I took the girls to the park near here (the one with the giant hollow tree) to try to get some good pictures for this year's Christmas cards. I was successful, and I'll keep those pictures a secret so that the Christmas card will be a surprise, but I thought I could post a few of the pictures that didn't make the cut.

They are wearing outfits that Jo-Jo just sent for Christmas. The funniest thing was that Jenny was directing all the photos and deciding how to pose and how Reagan should pose. Also, we brought some mini-bagels to feed the ducks because that was the only bread we had. Towards the end of our little photo shoot, Reagan realized that they were still good and got distracted by eating, so I couldn't take any pictures without either her mouth full or a bagel in her hand.

Tip from Jenny

On Christmas Eve, be sure you turn off your fire. You don't want Santa to burn coming to your house and get killed in your house.

Dead Teacher

Continuing Reagan's obsession with death, last night she told us that one of her teachers had died. I was very surprised, so I asked her who, and she answered, "Miss Jessica."

Miss Jessica is one of her teachers who was out on maternity leave for a few weeks, but I believed I'd seen her this week, so I told Reagan I didn't think that was true. She insisted it was.

This morning, when we walked past the infant room at daycare, I noticed Miss Jessica in there. I said, "Reagan, Miss Jessica's right there, and you told me she was dead."

Reagan said, "I know. She died when she had her baby, but she came back to life."

Jenny explained to me that Reagan thinks that everyone dies when they have babies because she watches Star Wars: Episode 3 with Lee and Queen Amidala dies after she has her babies. I stopped on my way out and told Miss Jessica that Reagan had told me she had died and come back to life, so she went down the hall to give Reagan a hug and let her know that she's still alive.

Mother Nature

This morning when Jenny was getting ready, she asked me who Mother Nature is. I told her that it's not a real person, just something people say. She said, "It is too a real person. That's who decides if it's going to be cold or hot or rainy or snowy." So now you know.

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We were on the way to dinner a couple nights ago, and we were talking in the car. For some reason, we got on the subject of the little procedure Jenny had to have done last year when she had all those urinary tract infections. She was talking to Reagan, and she said, "I had to have something put up my privates. You don't want to have that done because it hurt a lot."

Reagan said, "Daddy, you had something put in your pirate too, didn't you?"

It was very amusing, but I decided we needed to end the conversation before we got to a restaurant.

Christmas Time Is Here!

We put up our tree last night. It looked so pretty.


We had a lot of fun decorating. Jenny loves working on the ornaments -- particularly adopting some of the old ones as her own. Like Lee's Queen Amidala - Jenny just marked out the L on the bottom of that one and changed it to a J. It's quite amusing.

This morning while I was eating a bowl of cereal, I heard a crash. I went in the other room to look and saw a couple cats running away, along with this.


Jenny's sorting through all the ornaments now. We're going to try to get it back up after dinner and hope that the cats will leave it alone. I actually had it tied to the cord from the blinds, so it fell sideways onto the couch instead of forward onto the floor, which I think may have saved some ornaments. I'm glad I got a picture first.

Here are a couple pictures of the girls from last night. Jenny was very into the decorating, and Reagan lost interest after a couple minutes as usual.



A couple more pictures before I get to a couple stories. We had to get a new TV because the sound quit working on ours, and it's not much fun to watch TV without sound. I was very proud of myself because I was able to put together the heavy table I got for it with very little assistance, and I think it looks quite nice. Note the Steeler on the screen. The second picture is of all the toys that remain in the family room. I did a major clean-out to make room for the tree and all the Christmas presents that will arrive. Now the girls will only have one toy bin and their kitchen and a small container of art stuff. It's so nice.



Now for stories. The first is from Reagan this weekend. We went to see the Nutcracker this weekend, and really enjoyed. I had Reagan in my lap the second half, so I got to enjoy her interesting questions, clearly not related to the Nutcracker as far as I could tell.

She whispered, "Do whales have blood?" I told her they do and that we should wait until after the show to discuss it.

Her response: "Well, on Dora one time they went inside a whale. Do sharks have blood?" I told her they do and convinced her to move on until we got home.

When we got home, I told Lee about that amusing conversation and Reagan came in to continue it. "Do pig's butts have blood? Do all animals and people have blood? Oh, of course they do because when the monster bites them, they bleed. But we're okay because daddy has a sword."

Reagan is crazy.

Now, Jenny. On the way home from work today, she told me about the bad dream she had last night. She's been a little obsessed with wars lately, so this was how it went.

"We were just enjoying our happy lives. Then this boy came and said that I had to be in a war against North Carolina. He said that if I didn't want to be in the war, then I would have to hurt myself, like scrape myself. I told him I would just scrape myself because I don't want to be in a war with North Carolina where I live. And I told him that he's in North Carolina and that most people here would not want to fight against North Carolina since it's where they live. I told him he might want to go to New York to find people."

Then Reagan told me she had a dream to tell me about. And then she tried her best to exactly repeat Jenny's dream.