A Whole Mess of Turtle Doves...In a Tree

     Today I glanced out the window and saw this. Can you see them? It was a whole tree full of light grey doves. I like to call them doves instead of pigeons because I've been told there's almost no difference, and dove sounds much more romantic than pigeon, doesn't it? Nevertheless, it was a sweetly surprising sight, and reminded me to stop and take notice as much as I can. This is something I try to practice with the girls. Sometimes it's about noticing, but often it's just about stopping and enjoying the moment. I know I've talked about this ad nauseum, but that's because it's an ongoing theme in my life. In all of our lives, right? Sometimes when naked Rosy runs away from clothes-bearing me and hides in their circus tent again, on my best days I see that I have a choice. I can fly off the handle and bark about how I don't have the energy for this or why do you have to do this every single time? Or I can stop. Stop and let her enjoy the thrill of the chase. Enjoy her excited laughter and see it for what it is, a precious, fleeting joy-of-a-thing that will not happen that often in a year. In six months, maybe.  

     The next day they were birds on a wire...

I love this picture because she looks like a certain cousin of mine at this age here. 

     Christmas craftiness has officially begun at our house. I have always loved making things, but my propensity for procrastination usually has me throwing up something last-minute. (Not so much actually vomiting as, you know, putting up quickly). But this year, somehow, I'm a little bit more on top of the Christmas game, albeit at the expense of the housekeeping game. But who wants to play the houskeeping game anyhow? Ok, so maybe a couple of projects doesn't really qualify for ''on top of the game,'' but I do have a couple more in the hopper. Let's hope they get out of the hopper before next Christmas.

     Lily gave Tomáš this the other morning. She made a present out of Legos. I thought it was really clever and cute. 

     Merry Christmas-prepping to you and yours! Anyone got any Christmas photo ideas? I just gave myself a bad orange hair-don't, so I suspect ours will either just be the girls...or in black and white. Wink.

The Beauty of Today

     I have kept a journal for most of my life and I used to write exhaustively about every little thing that happened. This has become a luxury, but I still want to capture the sweet moments throughout my day. If I don't have time to expand, every night I write at least what I call The Beauty of Today. I used to share them on Facebook sometimes, but since I don't have that outlet anymore, I thought I'd share a few of them here. These are just things to make you smile. Who doesn't need a few more of those in their life?


In town when they played funeral music for death announcements over the loud speaker:
Lily: I like this song.
Me: Do you?
Lily: Yeah, when I don't have a trumpet or a big bass drum I like to listen to it.

Measuring Rosy and finding out she's gained 1.5 or 2 kilos (3-4 pounds) and hasn't gained a millimeter. Stocky, solid little thing.

Brushing Rosy's teeth and her ''spitting'' into the tub, AKA making little kissy noises.

Lily and Rosy playing store together, heart-burstingly precious to watch. Rosy with her purses and Lily with everything costing ''sto dva'' (102). I guess we've had inflation since two months ago everything cost 45.

Lily singing to the tune of The Ants Go Marching One By One ''I'm a little kangaroo, boing boing boing, '' while hopping through the flat.

Lily: Mommy, I made a palacinka (crêpe) (with modeling clay).
Me: What kind? 
Lily: Uhorková with jablčky (pickle with little apples).  

Rosy imitating Lily bending over for bottom wiping.

Lily's cute questions like: What happens when you don't wash your hands? or
Why does the sun go down?

Lily: Stop interesting me! (Instead of interrupting).

Lily made an airplane out of Legos, and was playing with a girl and a horse:
Horse: Can I go on the plane with you?
Girl: You have to ask your daddy.
Horse: Daddy, can I go on the plane?
Daddy horse: Of course you can.
Horse: Ok, let's go
...
Then she'll throw in things like
Can I have a juice?
No you can't. 

A conversation:
Me:...and then your daddy asked me to marry him.
Lily: And then you got your wedding shirt?
Me: Yes. I said yes and then I went and bought a wedding dress.
Lily: And what was Daddy wearing?
Me: A suit.
Lily: Like a magician's costume? (Big smile, chuckles)
Me: Yes, like a magician's costume. 

Silly Rosy unzipping my fly repeatedly.

We kept trying to get Lily to eat her broccoli soup and she was SO persistent about not eating it, meanwhile I made liver pâté.
Tomáš: You're not having any liver if you don't eat your soup.
Lily (scream-crying): I'M GOING TO HAVE LIVER!!!

Rosy (upon discovering her boobs) Čo to? 

Lily: I was hoping for a circle moon.
Rosy: Suh-Cuh mooon.

Lily: Guess how much I love you.
Me: How much?
Lily: Twen-teen!
Me: Wow, that's a lot!

I finished Lily's jack-o-lantern and put a candle inside and turned off the lights. She really liked it and kept looking, then ran and got her myška (mouse) to show her (held her face up so she could look inside), then her monkey. Then Rosy brought a stack of Legos to show it to.

Tomáš to Rosy (when discussing potty training): You see, Rosy, there's more to life than just sleeping and eating, there's piddling and pooping too. 

Happy post-Thanksgiving sleep-it-off day! Many more beauties to come!

Thanksgiving

      We accidentally had Thanksgiving early. My friend told me she had three Thanksgiving parties to go to last week so I naturally assumed Thanksgiving was last Thursday. I didn't look it up, nor did I think very long or hard about it, obviously. We always celebrate on the following Saturday since, of course, Tomáš doesn't get the day off. So this year it was the previous Saturday, which suited me just fine. I never would have known to put it into words until I journaled about it the other night, but Thanksgiving is the loneliest day of the year for me. I suppose this is due to two things: I am the only person I know here who celebrates this day, in other words there's not a collective feeling of thanksgiving like there is in the US, of course, so I'm just left feeling alone. Tomáš is happy to eat a nice meal, but other than that he has no real interest in celebrating the day. Secondly, Thanksgiving was always my family's favorite holiday. At least some members'. And I miss that warm, cozy, homey feeling. I guess this is why having it early suited me fine, because I won't feel quite so much like I'm missing out the day of. That, and The Garfield Thanksgiving Special might have helped a little too. Next year's mission: to create new family traditions with our girls so they can help me celebrate.
     And speaking of not celebrating, I had been faithfully following a gluten-free diet for about 3 1/2 months (wah wah wah) but on Rosy's birthday I broke down. A couple more days on the wagon and then Saturday I broke down again. Can you guess what broke me? Pie, of course. I paid the price with headaches, stomach aches, joint pain and eye weirdness. Whether or not it was worth it remains to be seen. Depends on how long the pains last, but wow were those pies good.
     In unrelated news, I think I am finally going to have to break down and buy myself a new phone. A new-to-me phone. I would say (with pride) I think I have the oldest phone in Bánovce, but that honor belongs to Dedko who still sports a brick phone. My phone is held together by a rubber band, the screen recently cracked when Rosy dropped it (which is pretty incredible in itself that it took it this long to do so), you cannot hear the incoming caller without putting it on loudspeaker and two weeks ago it got stuck permanently on T-9, which is only in English, meaning that in order to write SMSs in Slovak I have to keep going into another window to type each word. But it wasn't until I found out from two people that they had sent me messages that did not go through that I finally decided to fork out the 14,99 for a new one.  

Balloon dancin' 

 Family portrait take one:

Knife up the nose

 Take two:

Lily's mean face

 Take three:

Knife down the throat

 Take four:

Something of a keeper

She loved my pie too!

Moon and Stars

     Well, another semi-successful birthday celebration is behind us. I say semi-successful because I never seem to have the time to do all that I'd like to do for each party. What else is new? This time I tried not to build it up in my mind and put so much pressure on myself for perfection (which, admittedly, is a very subjective word) and it helped a little, but I still have a long way to go. You know, a person wants their parties to be easy and fun for everyone, relaxed and, well, celebratory, but I just do not seem to have this knack. Or maybe it's just me who's not relaxed or celebratory much. (Insert sad smiley emoticon here). It's gotten better, I can give myself that. Tomáš cooked the meal, which was a HUGE load off. That, and I've mostly resigned myself to the fact that our house is going to look like a four-year-old and a two-year-old live in it because, well, you know. And maybe because the girls are older and I gauge success more on how much they enjoy their parties than other factors, and they, joyfully, are pretty easy to please. The bulk of their gifts from me were second-hand or garage sale purchases from Montana. Books, mostly, or flash cards. And they love them.
     I did a loosely themed Moon and Stars party for Rosy, but the gold luminary, star-shaped kiwi fruit, and Christmas-light-backed-moon all fell through. Never mind, I'll bet she didn't even notice (wink, wink). I tried my hand at a marzipan cake, which I'd wanted to do for a long time. It wasn't a train wreck. It was enjoyable to work with, and I'd like to try more things with it in the future. Lily had been asking for pudding for her birthday every time she saw the pudding packet in the cupboard, so after much deliberation I decided on a simple strawberry pudding pie. I scored this grey wool dress at Humana for her, and Rosy wore a baby-whale corduroy dress my sister-in-law had gotten her. And for those of you who couldn't give two rips about party details, I'll make with the pictures...

The morning of, Lily drawing me a rainbow

''Mama, I wrote UP'' 

Rosy's hugs often lead to injury

First time licking the bowl

Giving of gifts

My favorite moment of the night. Eeyore is all it takes to make her happy. 

Her mama's daughter

Bublinky

Bea and Zorka

Fourth time's the charm

Rosy and her mooon

Our Weekend

     Rule number one: Never say that your sleep situation can't get any worse. Because it can. A good friend told me that I shouldn't blog about being tired. I should go to sleep. I know she's right, but here's the thing, I enjoy writing and blogging and I feel like I've given up everydarnthing else around here and it's all I've got left. Even this morning I decided I'll have to give up the one hour I get with Tomáš from 9 to 10 pm because if I can't have uninterrupted sleep, I better have a lot of interrupted sleep. Grumble, grumble.

     Lily likes to look at the ads. Here she was picking out which chocolate she was going to get for Christmas and then fist pumping about it. 

     

Fresh mozzarella and grapes from Tomáš' uncle's vine.

Personal challenge: make words out of the letters left on the fridge.

Scribble pictures! I used to love it when my mom would make these for us.

     Last week our Babka had a birthday, so we went to celebrate with her on Sunday. She asked that no one buy her flowers, because she had enough, but Lily broke the rule and uprooted a whole marigold plant down the street from our church. Sweet little gesture, though.

     The girls and their Dedko. Our girls love their Dedko. And he adores them. He watches Rosy two days a week while I teach. He practices his English on her : ) I'm so thankful for him.

     Babka had some TP rolls in her arts and crafts drawer, so I dug them out and started drawing on them. Verka joined me and made a really nice zebra with a front and back view, and some other things. I told her to stick them on their Christmas tree. Not so sure my sister-in-law will love the idea : )

 Two years ago this second I was laying on an operating table, holding the latest love of my life in my arms, tired for my life and thankful. Not much has changed. I'm still tired and I'm still thankful. 

Lily, the day Rosy was born.

Happy 2nd birthday, little muffin. 

*Excuse the irregular text patterns here, Blogger was being a piece of cr@#!