Ellie Sees Nature

On many of our outdoor excursions this summer, Ellie rode in the backpack.  I felt sort of bad about that, but Margaret is a two-hand job, and my mother was down a hand, and it was the way to manage the children without doing damage to my mother's poor, fragile tendons.

Anyway, Ellie liked the backpack.

She particularly liked that she could reach forward and grab my hair and pull backwards.  I don't think that she was signifying that she wanted to stop.  I think that she was signifying that she wanted to hear me squawk "Ellie, that's not nice," and watch me ineffectually try to bat her little hands away while still supporting her weight on my shoulders.

Little twerp.

But a cute little twerp, nonetheless.

But Darling . . .

Margaret spent much of the summer looking cool.  I don't know what it was -- well, I do.  It was the sunglasses that I bought her -- but there was something more than that.  I have had innumerable pairs of sunglasses, and I never looked as cool as Margaret.

One night, we went up to Hurricane Ridge for a picnic.  I quite like picnics at Hurricane Ridge, provided the wildlife can be persuaded to be other places.  Margaret got quite stern with a particularly persistent deer, and then all was well.

Ellie enjoyed her dinner from the sling of a hiking backpack.

Notice how she still, with food in her hands and her mouth stuffed to overflowing, manages to say "more."

Margaret ate her dinner, and then posed against the backdrop.

Alexander and the Magic(al) Mouse

First, I would like to point out that whatever Margaret says, the title page and the cover say the Magic Mouse, and it is NOT MY FAULT that the author refers to it as the Magical Mouse throughout the text.  I just read the words as they are written.

Anyway, this summer, Margaret discovered one of the books that children that have been in my mother's care adore, if they know what is good for them.  None of them have ever dared not to adore it, so I don't know what would happen to them, but chances are it would be swift and terrible.

Margaret, luckily, did like the book.

And she liked it so much that she went to sleep with the copy that we all loved to bits as children.

Ellie, not being of an age to be sent to bed with books, hooked her feet through the bars in a gesture of protest.

Margaret, Trampoline, Injury

I now have a moment to breathe.  Not much of a moment, you understand, because I'm in class and the students are hot and sweaty and complaining, but they're doing things that don't require my attention, and so I am planning on taking a few minutes to catch up on the blog.

This morning, on my way out of the house, I remembered to grab the cord that transfers pictures to my computer, so we are now full of pictures and ready to go.  The events of the next few posts occurred in June and July, but the pictures were good (or striking, anyway) and so I wanted to share them with you, my reading public.

Anyway, the story of Margaret and the trampoline.

I have long thought that the way to parent Margaret in certain moods would be to find a padded room and fling her in it.  My brother and sister-in-law, perhaps because they have seven children, have the next best thing to a padded room -- a trampoline with a net around it.

Now I know there are all kinds of safety concerns with trampolines, but there are also a lot of safety concerns with an energetic and undirected Margaret, so I chose the trampoline as the lesser of two evils.

She liked it very, very much, which leads me to believe that I was right to throw her in there.  Every time we went back to her aunt and uncle's house, she asked to jump.  So we let her.

Unfortunately, she has a cousin who also likes to jump.  And, gravity and what-have-you being what it is, she and he collided.  The top of his head was fine, but Margaret got a little bit mauled.

This did not stop her from wanting to get back on that trampoline, though.

And she has suffered no lasting ill-effects because of her injuries.

Duets

The girls are getting to where they can play together.  It is a good thing, mostly, though it was a little easier when neither of them was particularly interested in what the other one was doing.  But they are now interested in the same things, and always wanting to do them at exactly the same time.

Our house echoes with the screams of anguished children.

On the other hand, it's also very cute.

Margaret has grand dreams, of course, of a two-person cabaret team, singing her own compositions.

Ellie's not as certain about this, which means that occasionally, Margaret has to look at me and roll her eyes, because I understand that Ellie is thwarting her vision.

I feel her pain, really I do.

Poolside

On Saturday, Leo and his family took Margaret and Ellie swimming in a neighbor's pool.

I went grocery shopping, which isn't glamorous at all, but I'm working full time now, and a massive weekend grocery shopping binge means that I know what we're having for dinner every night and I know that we have the wherewithal to have it.  It also means that this is on our fridge.

Sunday's menu seems needlessly grim, but what are you going to do?

Anyway, Margaret and Ellie had a grand old time, and Ellie spent some quality time with chairs.

I would share pictures of Margaret frolicking in the pool, but Leo didn't take any.

We can tell that she had fun, though, because she fell asleep at 6:30, which is completely unheard of.  Except now.  Now you've heard of it.

This isn't a picture of Saturday night; this is last night, where she fell asleep on the floor because she was insisting that she wasn't sleepy, not at all, and she couldn't stay in her room.  Saturday night, she just curled up next to Leo on the couch and quietly drifted off in the middle of The Cat in the Hat.

I Scream, You Scream

There's a way that you can tell you're the second child.  Or the seventh, I suppose, but we only have two, so if either of them is figuring out ways to tell that they are the seventh child, they have some explaining to do.

Anyway, Saturday night, we gave Margaret and Ellie premade ice-cream cone treats.  (Honestly, I'm not sure that they were actually ice cream.  They may have been "dairy dessert," which is a phrase to strike a chill in the hearts of everyone.)

And Elle thoroughly enjoyed hers.

And then, 20 minutes after we'd given it to her, I thought to myself "Huh, that was coated in peanuts.  Guess she's not allergic."