Entries from November 2012 ↓

This year Jason and Lori helped take the kids on the Polar Express (AKA a metra train out to Aurora).

Here they are getting ready to board.

Peek-a-boo with Santa on the train.

Ezri sitting with Santa. This year she asked for a Minnie Mouse. She asked for Donald Duck last year and she claims next year she will ask for Daisy Duck.

Later in the evening Lori did balloon art for the kids. Here is Ezri in her “Foofa” hat.

Here is Jason fishing for the kids with a balloon fishing pole.

Lori even taught Ezri how to blow up balloons using the pump.

It was good times.

I just bought the jump drive package, so all I have is digital. I might print one out for my nana, but the rest of the family can enjoy them blog-style.

It was great that Tam and Mark could stay for a week around Thanksgiving.
Both kids enjoyed all the stories and attention.

Ezri helped bake cupcakes for Grandpa Mark and applied the sprinkles herself. She gifted him with a small remote control robot named Torrant. She even let him play with the robot some too.

Oh, she gave him the special butterfly sticker on his forehead as well.

With friends in descending order from age 4 down to age 1
These pals of ours are headed to live in New Zealand to which Ezri asks perplexed, “What about playdates?”
Have you heard of skype?
Skype play dates it is.

We had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma Liz and Grandpa Harvey’s house.
With Grandma Tam and Grandpa Mark there too, all four grandparents were present, along with Aunt Amy and Uncle Tim. Biggest Blau family Thanksgiving ever.

Amy gifted us all with Michigan T-shirts, auf Deutsch, for what should be obvious reasons.

This came towards me chanting the Imperial March from Star Wars. She’s a stormtrooper.

This is a conversation we had in the car passing a pool hall in the same franchise that wouldn’t let Ezri in because she wasn’t 21 when she was being carried in a baby bassinet at a few months old. It was the first, and so far only time, Ezri has been carded.
Eric: It’s a pool hall, so you can go there to play pool. Well, you can’t because they serve alcoholic drinks.
Ezri: Alcoholic drinks?
Eric: Drinks for adults only. You have to be 21 to drink them.
Ezri: Oh, well, maybe when I’m a teenager.

Ezri has decided our family is a family of jokers. Or maybe it’s “Jokers” since she means specifically the villain from Batman. She is named Jokelina – part Joker and part Angelina the Ballerina. Eric is Joker. Amanda is Jokara. Ivan is our little baby Joke-ha. I referred to our house as “Blau House” in conversation and she told me that now it is Joker House.

Amanda: Brrrr. The car is cold this morning.
Ezri: Maybe you can knit the car a sweater. Yes, knit the car a sweater!

“What is the fancy word for boogers?”
We had just been talking about other “fancy” words for bodily fluids – saliva (fancy for spit), mucus (fancy for snot) and urine (fancy for pee). Guess I still need to teach her feces. If anyone knows a fancy word for boogers let me know. We’ve decided on “dried mucus” for now.

“Trick or CHEESE!” This is Ezri’s new way of asking for cheese after Halloween.

Recently a friend was talking about her daughter’s drawings inspired by Ed Emberley’s drawing books.
So, we busted out an Emberley drawing book on making drawings with fingerprints and some washable markers.

We had a lot of fun. These are turtles climbing a mountain and assorted other doodles from The Complete Funprint Drawing Book.

In my basement book collection I still have the 1979 Big Green Drawing Book my mother got signed for me at an ALA conference. We’ll have to pull it out for more ideas.

Ezri helped reorganize the linen closet.
“I found a bunk bed. Ivan can sleep underneath my little shelf.”

Ezri likes to make up stories and ask “what if”:
“What if someone was driving away in our black car? And what if he was dressed like Darth Vader? And what if I was wearing my C3PO suit? What if Eric was Luke Skywalker and had a light saber? Then what would happen?”

Coming to my bed to wake me up in the morning, Ezri, with her hand on her neck, says, “I am checking to see if my heart is beating. I check every morning. Just to make sure.”

“Glib” means “no” in friendly alien language. I don’t know how friendly aliens say “yes.” Tells you a lot about the afternoon, doesn’t it? Ezri babbled in a made up language she called “alien” – but the language of friendly aliens not bad aliens. Sometimes she would translate for me and sometimes she wouldn’t.

In her c3po outfit Ezri would walk up to everyone she met and say, “Human cyborg relations.” Very few people could figure out what she was saying. Her preschool teacher asked me about it at her parent-teacher conference. Usually, she understands Ezri very well, but she couldn’t figure out what she was saying in her Halloween costume. She admitted a lack of Star Wars knowledge.

me: What do you think Grandpa Mark would like for his birthday?
Ezri: A My Little Pony! Cheerilee maybe?

After the re-election of president Obama while listening to NPR:
“Meghan helped OUR president again.”
I am not sure why the special emphasis on OUR but she repeated it several times. She is sure that Obama is all Americans’ president and that he belongs to her.
Meghan is a friend who volunteered for Obama’s campaigns.