Sunday Best

After church yesterday I let Ellie run around in the back yard in her pretty pink dress. She toted around a pink flower and pink ball pretty much the whole time and had a blast. I thought I could maybe get some cute pictures of her with the flower, but she really didn't have time for that and let me know by running away from me and yelling, "Cheese!" with her face turned away from the camera every time I asked her to look at me and smile. I'm waiting for the first time she tells me, "No more pictures!" But that hasn't come yet, so I keep snapping away, hoping for that "perfect" shot. And while none of these are what I had in mind when we headed out, they are pretty perfect representations of the afternoon.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt...

This was one of my favorite books to read with the kids when I worked at Emerson in Iowa. I just love all the motions and sounds you can do to go with it. So, of course, when I bought books while I was pregnant with Ellie, this was one of them.

She has been doing more and more motions to songs, and has been interested in longer books lately, so I thought I'd try reading Bear Hunt to Ellie. As you can see from the pictures, she got into it and had a lot of fun with the motions!

We're going on a bear hunt.
We're gonna catch a big one!
What a beautiful day!
We're not scared.

Uh oh! Grass!
Long, wavy grass.
We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.

Oh, no!
We've got to go through it!

She Love to Run

Big Girl PJ's

Despite the fact that we are still waking up to fresh snow each morning, it has come to our attention that all of the stores have stopped selling footie pajamas. None. Not at Costco, not at Walmart, not anywhere. So we broke down last night and bought Ellie two piece pj's. Cute little shirts with cute little pants, and no zippers. Size 3T.

Last night she wore a pair. While Leif was getting her ready for bed he told her that these were "big girl jammies" and she decided to be proud of that fact. She stood a little taller and said with a nod, "Big girl pj's." This morning when she woke up she told me again that she was wearing "big girl pj's" and again when it was time to get dressed. She looked so sad when I took off her jammies and put her into real clothes for the day. She pointed at them, nodded, and told me sincerely, "Big girl pj's." It was cute, sweet, and sort of sad. I'm afraid, though, that we may never be able to go back to footie jammies again...

More pictures of Ellie at the park

Sometimes we go for family walks in the evenings. Sometimes Daddy just takes Ellie so Mommy can get some things done around the house. Either way Ellie usually ends up at the park by the school and she loves it. These pictures are from the other night...

We're Famous!

Okay, so we're not really famous. But it sort of feels like it lately. A couple weeks ago when we met Leif for lunch one day I very excitedly told Leif that I got interviewed as an active Freecycle member for the newspaper. He promptly trumped my story by telling me that he, too, had been interviewed that morning, only he got interviewed in a sound booth for the radio. Okay. He wins.

The Freecycle story ran in the newspaper this Sunday. Unfortunately, you can't read it online, but I did scan it in, so you might be able to read it here. (Click the picture to enlarge it.)


Leif's interview aired this morning and, fortunately, you CAN listen to it online (or read the transcript if you prefer). So there you have it. Our little smidgen of fame.

The greatest show on earth!

On Thursday, Elizabeth took Ellie to Billings to see the circus for the first time. As Elizabeth had never been to a circus either, she didn't really know what to expect. But they drove out with Erika and Zoe and met up with some Billings friends to attend the circus. The show was about two hours long and didn't start until 4:00 in the afternoon, which was a potential nightmare for the mothers of the toddlers who hadn't taken naps that day. But aside from a couple minor meltdowns, all went smoothly and the girls enjoyed the show. Though the circus, put on by the Shriners, was small, it still had all the makings of a good circus, from clowns (of whom Ellie was not terribly fond)...

... to trapeze artists and ribbon dancers (the ribbon dancers were Ellie's favorite. She just oohed and aaahed.)...

... to tightrope walkers...

... and dancing poodles...

... and camels and elephants, too!

It was a lot of fun and I'm sure we'll do it again another year. To remember the event by, we even splurged on neato lightup spinny toys that the girls could watch while the lights were low between acts. This is my favorite picture from the night:

All in all, we had a good time. We got to spend time with Erika and Zoe on the way out there and back, and that was nice.

And we got to see Karen and Haniya (born the same month as Ellie) again, for the first time in a while.

It was after 11 when we finally got home, so Ellie was pretty tuckered out and slept until 9:30 the next morning! Whew! So while the circus made for a full day, and I can't say it was really the GREATEST show on earth, it was a pretty good show and I'm glad we went.

There's no end to the fun...

... you can have with a little food coloring, some water, and a squirt bottle. This is what Ellie and Mommy did yesterday morning for about an hour...



And no, there wasn't a massacre. Just a lot of food coloring mixed with a lot of snow. Ellie thought it was great. Until her water bottle ran out of squirt. Then...



"More please. Water empty."

And indeed, it was.



So I'd refill it and she'd go out and empty it on the deck again. We went through this about a dozen times. She thought it was great. So did I.

She did a few other things, too, like filling a bucket with colorful snow, dumping it out, and stomping on the resultant snow castle. She also watered the compost buckets for us. And I heard myself saying, as I watched my daughter head toward the compost bucket with a shovel in her hand, "No no, Honey, we don't play in the compost." Those sure weren't the words I was thinking when I imagined all the the things I'd say to my daughter one day. Oh well.

Ellie's New Sandbox

A week or so ago we put up a sandbox for Ellie. She loves to play outside (mostly on the deck!) and she really enjoys playing at the rice table at the Children's Museum, so it just seemed natural that she needed a sandbox.

Of course, this being Montana, the sand in the sandbags was frozen when we tried to fill the sandbox (otherwise known and the swimming pool she had last summer that she's too big to fit in this year) and really we just had a container full of sand lumps. But she enjoyed it all the same and will hopefully enjoy it more as the weather warms up some.

Given the few inches of snow outside today, though, perhaps we were a little premature in our celebration of Spring and the introduction of the sandbox. Ah, well, you win some and lose some. But Ellie has gotten to play with her sandbox a few times already and has enjoyed it.

Does this look like a beautiful Spring day to you?

Me either. But this is what we woke up to this morning.

Empty Orange

Ellie likes to inform us when things, specifically her juice and milk cups, are empty. She says it more like "e-ty" and leaves out the "mp" from the middle, but we know what she means. For breakfast this morning she wanted an orange, so I peeled it and she ate it. A while later she came to sit in the chair next to me and pointed to the orange peel.

"Empty orange" she said.

Yes, I guess an orange peel sort of does count as an empty orange.

Children and VCRs

What is it about VCRs that makes children want to stick things in them? Toys... hands... when will they learn?

Hello!

Crazy Hair!

This is why you don't see Ellie's hair in pigtails very often anymore. It just goes crazy!!

The Werner Quartet

For the third Friday night in a row, Leif and I got to go on a date without Ellie. It has been amazing, and it has been wonderful. I'm sure if we could find a regular babysitter we would try to go on dates more regularly, but for now we resort to grandparents or kid swapping with friends.

Last night Leif's parents came out to watch Ellie so that we could attend a concert we'd been looking forward to for a few weeks. We went to see The Werner Quartet, a group of four teenage siblings (aged 18, 17, 16, and 14) who all play the cello. We saw them once before, when we went to a live taping of the From the Top radio show in December. So when we heard they were doing a concert here in town we were excited to go.

The stage was beautiful. Because the concert was at the Emerson, whose auditorium wasn't designed for acoustics, the quartet had an acoustic stage built for them. Its clean lines were beautiful and created a nice backdrop of light wood and white panels. I really liked that it was functional, too, in that it had several doors built in for entrances and exits as the show demanded.

The show was remarkable in that from the time the Werners stepped foot on stage until just before the last song, no one said a word. There was no introduction, no announcement of intermission, no explanation of the pieces. There was just beautiful music and changes in lighting. The program contained information on each of the pieces as well as the evening's musical lineup. It was well done and placed the emphasis on the music.

My single complaint from the evening had to be the costumes. When the Werners first appeared, the girls were clad in different colored formal gowns of the same style, while Luc wore a black and white shirt with wide chevron stripes. As I watched the performance, I couldn't help but be distracted by the dizzying stripes on his shirt. The last piece before intermission was a series of tangos and the girls changed into ruffle-sleeved shirts with flowing black pants. Luc tied a red bandana around his neck. Overall, these were the best costumes of the evening, save the encore performance costumes, but we'll get to those later. After the intermission, all four Werners had changed costumes. The girls had traded their tango shirts for ones that appeared to be inspired by Mondrian. Imagine something like this:


In the following color schemes: for Helene, black, white, and hot pink. For Mariel and Andree, one wore it in black, florescent yellow, and bright blue. The other wore black, florescent yellow, and hot pink. Helene's is the only one that didn't clash with itself. They all clashed with each other. And Luc traded out of his black and white shirt with upside down V stripes for one with right side up V stripes that gave his shirt the appearance of a poncho. I have to admit that while Luc's shirt had been a distraction during the first half of the performance, the combination of patterns and colors in the costumes for the second half left me literally nauseated. It was practically impossible to listen to the melodious sounds coming from the instruments when they were presented in such visual cacophony. As Leif can attest, it actually gave me a headache when I looked at the stage and I spent most of the rest of the concert with my head down so that I could enjoy the music and avoid the headache. When we arrived at the concert, I was disappointed to be seated behind a taller man with a large head. After the intermission I was thankful to be thus separated from the sight on stage.

Aside from the costumage, the concert was amazing. The Werners are all very talented children. Add to that the fact that they play one of the most beautiful instruments on the earth and it's bound to be an enjoyable evening. And enjoy it we did. Three pieces in particular stood out to me, and I can't go on without mentioning them. The first was Pohadka, by Janacek. It is a musical fairy tale based on the epic poem Kashchei by Russian poet Vassily Zhukovsky. It was a mesmerizing piece made all the more interesting by the fact that the cello represented the young Czar while the piano his beloved princess. It was so beautifully written and played that it was easy to get lost in the story of these two as they were brought to life through the music. The second piece that thoroughly drew me in was the feisty Four Seasons of Buenos Aires by Piazzolla. These were tangos, written by the man who brought the tango out of the shadows and into the limelight in the 1950s. There is something about the tango that is just exciting and fun, and Luc Werner's arrangement of this piece was perfect. It was during this piece that the Werner siblings showed off some of their versatility by playing different instruments for each of the movements, from cello to piano to bass. They really are a versatile group. The final piece that took my breath away was the final piece in the concert program. It was the Cello Concerto in C Major by Haydn. I waited the entire concert just to hear this piece, because this was played by all four cellists alone, with no piano accompaniment. I have loved the cello ever since I played a piano/cello duet in church with David Hastie. There is no sound so beautiful as a cello by itself. And when the four Werners play as a soloist and orchestra, it is simply breathtaking. It was the perfect way to end a classical concert.

But the concert didn't end there.

There was a lull after the final performance as we waited for the Werners to take their final bow. The lights were low, and we could hear rustling through the audience. Bags were being passed down the rows as something was being distributed to each audience member. Even after I had the object in my hand, it was difficult to determine what it was. Confused chuckles spread throughout the auditorium as people realized that we had just been given... earplugs.

I have never been to a classical concert where they passed out earplugs before. Nor had I been to one that ended like this would.

Our eyes were drawn to the stage as we heard the music welling up. The clean lines of the sound stage had been altered by psychedelic band posters. The grand piano had been replaced by a keyboard, and the stage floor was obscured by artificial smoke. And then, from four separate doors, the Werners appeared, changed.

Yes, these costumes were perfect. They appeared in head to toe sequin bell-bottom pantsuits. And they sported big-hair 80's wigs. The sleek lines of their acoustic cellos had been traded for... electric guitars and the skeletal appearance of their electric cellos.


It was a spectacular entrance, though, due to a sound glitch the first time, the second entrance was more spectacular. And so, earplugs in hand (though not in our ears), we were treated to three or four songs by the band Queen, including We are the Champions and We Will Rock You. And let me tell you, I have never heard these songs played so beautifully. The electric cello provided a hauntingly melodious complement to the keyboard and electric guitar. And for the third time that evening I wished the Werner Quartet had an album I could buy.

And so I stand corrected. That encore, with its utter contrast to the classical tones of the rest of the performance, was the perfect way to end the concert. And I got earplugs as a souvenir.FDFDFDFDFD

Stacking things...

Ellie's really into stacking things right now. Stacking and counting. She can count all the way to nine, except for seven. For some reason she always skips seven. She can stack wooden blocks six high, too, which is fun. Then she knocks them down.

stacking Mommy's stamps

Oh, and she likes jumping, too. She jumps when she dances and she jumps when she plays and, oh yeah... she jumps OFF of things, too. That's the most fun.

jumping off the bottom step

Monkeying Around

A few days ago, Ellie was tearing around the house like a crazy.

Although she's cute, we needed a respite, so I asked her to play in her room for a while.

A while later I heard banging coming from Ellie's room. It wasn't the usual knocking to let us know that she wanted out. It was different and persistent, so I went to take a look. When I opened the door I saw Ellie on top of her dresser.

Her dresser stands about a head taller than she. I was impressed that she managed to shimmy up there.

As close as I can figure, she must've used her zebra to climb on top of the bin tower and then up to the dresser. However, I can't figure how she got from the zebra up to the bin tower, as the latter is quite lightweight and wobbly and should've tipped over if she tried to climb it.