Pictures?

You may have noticed a lack of pictures on the blog lately. There are two reasons for this. One, putting pictures on blogger is a pain in the you know what. You can upload them in order you want and theoretically move them around the post to where you want them. But that is a big hit and miss thing. Lately I will have spend a bunch of time putting pictures on, writing the post and trying to move the pictures into the right order with no luck. Then I get mad and just delete the whole thing. It's a big pain.

Second, Nora is now two and always on the go. She talks all day long and if she can't think of anything to say she will hum. She runs around the house all day playing mommy to her babies and playing store with the books on the bookcase and her play money. She needs books read to her and things taken off shelves and toys played with. By the time she taking her nap the last thing I have energy for is fighting blogger to put pictures on the blog.

Who?

Eleanor and I went last night to pick Matt up from the airport. After circling the terminal three times I finally heard from Matt that they had landed late. This worked for me, since I needed to change Eleanor's diaper. I told her about the change of plans to which she announced:

"Jessica can't find daddy!"

A Vote of Confidence

I'm making Eleanor's Halloween costume again this year. Since I got a new sewing machine for my birthday it's a lot more involved than last year's no sew lady bug. Eleanor is going to be Little Red Riding Hood. I'm making it using this pattern. It has some cheats in it because it's just a Halloween costume, so you don't want to look to closely at it. And I'm pretty much done. I just need to hem the dress and fix the ties on the cape.

For the last two weeks Eleanor would tell me I need to finish "Riding Hood" every time she say a Halloween related anything on TV. But ever since I tried the whole thing on her, including the messed up cape and un-hemmed dress, she doesn't shout that any more. Now she tells us all just how much confidence she has in my sewing skills by shouting:

"Mommy can't fix Riding Hood!"

And the really embarrassing part is that I never told her it needed fixing. She could tell just by looking at it. Yikes! A two year old thinks my sewing is bad!

Last Night

I overheard this from the hall last night just a few minutes after we put Nora down for the night:
Nora: DADDYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Matt: What? What's wrong?
Nora: I took off my pants.
Matt: What? Why did you do that?
Nora: I want new ones.

A Nora-ism

Last weekend Eleanor had a visit from her Nanny, my cousin and my cousin's two boys. One night we decided to take the kids to the park to run off some steam and feed the ducks. My cousin was driving us all in her new, huge, Suburban. As Nora was lifted into the back seat, she pointed at the DVD player and uttered excitedly " Look, it's a TVD!

The New Cook

Eleanor has quite the busy schedule these days. She goes to tumbling on Tuesdays and has cooking classes on Fridays. Today was her second class. Her Nanny was visiting for the first class and went with us. The teacher (who looked like she was twelve!) wanted to do something nice and easy for the first class, so they were going to make Kid Salad. Here Eleanor waits, not too happily, to go get her supplies.
The idea was to take a marshmallow, some raisins, part of a cherry, celery, half a canned peach and a piece of lettuce and arrange it on the plate to look like a girl wearing a skirt. Here Eleanor's Nanny starts putting it together.

And that was pretty much as far as it got. Eleanor started eating the "body parts" and we had to stop.

This week, I decided to feed her before class so she could actually finish her dish before it met an untimely end. Today she made "Easy Veggie Squares".

Basically, this is a piece of flattened crescent roll dough baked and topped with Ragu and veggies. It was actually pretty good. Eleanor, carb conscious as always, ate the Ragu off the bread and all of the broccoli and cauliflower.

While she likes the class okay, she really enjoys running around the run with the other kids during down time. The teacher obviously hasn't worked with little kids a whole lot. She expected a bunch of 2-4 year olds to patiently wait for 15 minutes while the dough baked. With nothing to do. And a lot of open, empty space. Yikes!

Tumbling

Yesterday was Eleanor's very first tumbling class. She loved the trampoline and the foam blocks, but she was a little timid. She wouldn't grab, much less swing from, the bars. She crawled off of all the equipment instead of climbing or jumping. All in all, I think it went pretty well for her first visit.