Trip to the aquarium

Well I finished my first year of dental school, and all I keep hearing is how hard next year is going to be. Which makes me want to redouble my efforts at making this summer a great one for my family. Since Wednesday Jerusha and I have been relaxing and taking things slow. Yesterday Jerusha needed to go shopping with her friend Megan Mower, so she took Isabelle with her to the outlets and I took Millie with me to the Aquarium. Isabelle definitely got the short end of that stick, but I'll make it up to her later.

Since Jerusha and Isabelle took the stroller and the car Millie and I ended up walking the short distance to the T station. This wouldn't have been so bad if Amelia hadn't been wearing her pink jelly sandals that she kept catching "rocks" in. Millie defines "a rock" in her shoe as any particle larger than 2 microns in diameter. About every ten steps she would complain of another rock in her shoe, so I would take her sandal off and brush it out. Finally I got tired of undoing the little buckles, and I put her on my shoulders.

Once at the T station we took the orange line to state street and then the blue line to the aquarium. While on the train Amelia felt the need to touch everything. This included a discarded newspaper, some gum on the floor, and a few of our fellow passengers. After hearing me tell her that so many things were dirty she began to point to things and ask if they were dirty too.
While pointing at the slash marks in her seat, "Dad, is this seat dirty?"
"Yes Millie."
While touching the grease smudged window, "Dad, is the window dirty?"
"Yes Millie."
While holding onto the hand rail, "What about this poll is it dirty too?"
"Yes Millie, that's why we need to wash our hands before we eat."
While pointing at the lady across from us, "Is she dirty too dad?"
"No Millie, do you want a drink or a snack? Let's look out the dirty window. Oh, look boats!"

Once at the aquarium we saw many things, but by far Millie's favorite were the penguins. Although she did get excited by the giant sea turtle and the brightly colored anemones too. After about an hour and a half it was time to go home and I took her to the bathroom so we wouldn't have any accidents on the T. Unfortunately, I needed to go as well and Millie spent her free time scrambling under the stalls surprising unsuspecting bathroom goers. She also nearly succeeded in washing her hands in one of the urinals.

As we stepped out of the aquarium into the bright summer sun the wind caught hold of Amelia's hair and threatened to whip her butterfly clip out, so I took it out before it was lost. Millie then said, "Now my hair is loose like an anemone so you can swim through it."
That comment made the whole trip worth all the trouble.

Books and Blocks

I know, another post about the kids, but hey when your life revolves around something it's hard not to talk about it. Any way, Isabelle is really into reading books right now. In the picture you can see that we have a bookshelf on her left that is just for the girls books. We also have enough children's books to fill that bookshelf due to the generous contributions of grandparents and aunts and uncles. The reason why you only see a few books in the bookshelf is because Isabelle has relocated the majority of them to the living room, which apparently has a better reading atmosphere than the hallway.

Amelia on the other hand likes books, but she is really into blocks right now. She will sit and build the tallest tower she can; or make little clumps of 3-4 blocks and arrange them into a trail calling them cars (see picture); or she will build her favorite thing, a birthday cake. A "birthday cake" in blocks is really just a very tall wall of all the same shaped blocks with a single row of different shaped blocks on the top that represent candles. At any given time there is always at least one birthday cake present in our home, at least until Isabelle gets to it. Each cake she makes is also specifically for one person. One day's cake will be for Grandma Puzy, the next day's will be for Uncle Addison, however most days they are for her friend Tyler.

Haircut, train-ride, ice-cream.

Today I had the day off from school and we had planned to do something special as a family. The girls needed haircuts so that was the first order of business. We take them to a place called Snip-its that specializes in cutting little kids hair. The girls love it cause they have all kinds of things there to keep them from realizing that a stranger is grooming them. Amelia sat quietly in the chair and you could tell that she enjoyed having her hair combed through. Isabelle was pretty good too, but she needed the extra distraction of me blowing bubbles at her to sit still.

After the haircuts we were going to go down town and walk around for a bit, but it was obvious that the girls needed food and naps, so we headed home. While the girls were asleep it Jerusha drove to the grocery store and ended up locking her keys in the car there. So she took the subway home to get our spare keys. We then all made a trip to go get the car. This was the girls first time on the train, and they were mesmerized by it. When we got off the train and passed by the area in the station where all the bums tend to relieve themselves Millie said that it smelled like flowers, which made me curious as to which flowers she has been smelling at the park. Once we were in the car again we found that the weather had gotten to cold to take the girls out again so we came back to the house to watch The Sound of Music. The girls played on the floor with their toys until a song would come on and then they would watch the tv for a little while.

At 5:30pm we started getting them ready for bed and because Amelia and Isabelle ate four pieces of chicken each they earned the right to have some strawberry ice cream, but they just call it pink ice cream. Later after they were washed up and in bed I asked Millie what she had done today and her reply was, "Haircut, train-ride, ice-cream." I think I'm going to try to sum up all my days into three words from now on too.