Tales from the bedtime

While I've been at church the past two nights, Cate has taken more of a hands-off approach with bedtime, leaving Robert and Colleen to their own devices after a short time.

This involves a lot of giggling and shoving. And eventually, sleeping.

Thursday night, Colleen sang songs to Robert to try to get him to go to sleep. Her memory is rather limited, but she sang Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Jingle Bells. But Robert had enough pretty soon, and stopped listening.

"I think Robert loves Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, you go try that."

So Colleen goes back to the bedroom and asks, in her customary outdoor voice: "Robert, do you still love Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? Robert? ROBERT? RO-BERT??"

Colleen came back and reported: "Mom, Robert stopped talking. I can't see his face, there's a pillow over his face."

Yes, Colleen, that's the international sign that he's sleeping.

"He stopped talking!"

Cate replied: "You stop talking! Go to sleep!"

Robert related later that he wasn't really asleep. Robert playing asleep and lying still for any amount of time is a tremendous effort.

Last night I got home before they fell asleep. Robert had been singing for Colleen but was already out of songs, so I finished them off. "I don't sing Up on the Roof or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Robert told me.

Future diva, that one.

Kids and their technology

I recently discovered that Colleen can shut down the desktop computer by herself. In fact, she's so good at it that it takes her about two seconds to do. Click the Start button, hit Turn Off Computer, select Shut Down, bam.

Also, when her turn is done with the computer and Cate or someone else takes over the browser, she says, "Open a new tab -- I'm not done with my game!"

Elizabeth keeps her email account more organized than anyone else I know -- she has all sorts of tags filtering her email by -- I don't know, sender, subject, color, Harry Potter book referenced, etc. And Robert is the expert in terms of switching the television from the DVD player to the Wii. (Not enough inputs for both, so only one of them can be plugged in at any given time.)

We three kids

The kids went to pet farm animals at the garden store, you know, just another typical Sunday. But the real purpose of this post is to introduce the newest photo of the three kids. Now if only we could have gotten them all to both smile and look at the camera at the same time.

Not so much. But at least nobody was poking anyone's eye out.

We also had brunch at Dixie's on Grand, thanks to a gift certificate from Neil and Alicia for Christmas. Thanks!

Happy Birthday, Amelia!

We had about 30 people here today for Amelia's first birthday party. While I'm sure this will be covered in more depth on Baby 365 at some point soon, I'll just say we all had a great time. (In fact, new photo at Baby 365 now.)

She didn't go face-first into the cake, or throw food all over the place, or anything like that. She didn't pitch a fit or get overly tired at the gigantic pile of presents.

I've seen football games with fewer cameras than this birthday party. Neil counted nine cameras at one point during the present opening, not counting cell phones. I posted two photo galleries on Facebook with many more photos, including shots of ... the shots.

Cate and Elizabeth's present was a big hit with the adults. Amelia, of course, didn't seem nearly as interested in the doll (which Cate crocheted, with accessories crocheted by Elizabeth) as she was in the box that it came in. But while I could try to describe all the steps and all the work that was involved, I couldn't possibly do it justice. Hopefully Cate will elaborate.

Colleen, Amelia's Aunt McKenzie and her second cousin, Nina, were among the hits of the party. Colleen is about to turn 4, Nina is 5 and McKenzie is 6.

Oh, and after everyone left, Amelia took her first steps. Great day for all.

One more step to full Minnesotahood

We got a little closer to being fully Minnesotan today as we (read: Cate) registered the Honda and got Minnesota plates on it. So now both cars have Minnesota plates.

Cate likes the irony that I'm the only one still carrying a Virginia driver's license. I also still have a 703- number on my cellphone. But I did have a Minnesota driver's license once, and, there's still that whole thing of having a house in Virginia. We're getting close to being rid of that, too.

Robert helped me put the plates on the car, and yes, I blurred out the license number.