Weebies and Hulups

Shannon's imagination has gone wild.

She loves pretend games. We play tea party, restaurant, dentist, doctor, office and vet quite regularly. (Sidenote: Kelly has a pet lion that looks an awful lot like my pillow.)

She loves hearing stories. When it comes to classics, Goldilocks and Cinderella are the favorites. She also likes originals such as "Shannon being born" and hearing explanations about how things work over and over. The "story about how roots give water to flowers" is a mild obsession right now.

And she's become a little kid with her own language. Here's a glossary to Shannon-speak:

Chatcha: definitely an adjective, but I have no idea what it means.

Hee-hees: soft, furry imaginary animals that are blue and brown that live in Philadelphia.

Hulup: another imaginary friend

Ooka, mooka, booka: Mommy, Winston and Sadie respectively. Used only to refer to the group (usually going up or down stairs) never individually.

Weebie: an imaginary animal that has green and yellow feathers and lives in New York. I once pretended to be allergic so now I must sneeze and cough dramatically every time she hands me one.

Girl Trip to Cleveland

One of the mental posts I made to the blog a few weeks back (but never got around to actually posting) was a poll:

I'm packing up the girls and driving by myself from Philly to Cleveland to visit my parents for a week. It's a 7 hour drive without a potty-training 2.5 year old or sorta-but-not-quite able to entertain myself 1 year old. Am I:
a. Brave
b. Crazy

We had been planning our "girl trip" for a long time and despite voting that I was b) crazy, I was excited. Thankfully, the girls were great travelers (both ways!) and we had a blast.
The girls loved hanging out with Grammy and Papa.

Fun outings like feeding the ducks in Chagrin and a rainy-trip to the zoo (thank God for the huge indoor rainforest building).

Getting to see lots of family we love.

(My) Papa


Aunt Jo


Aunt Mary


Joan


Aunt Jo, Grandma Marge and Grammy Rose


Uncle Pat

Abby-dog. Kelly was a big fan.

(Sorry Aunt Teri, Uncle John, Uncle Lou, Mike & Hanna... don't have any good shots of you!)

And celebrating Kelly's first birthday.

With improvised party hats since I forgot them and someone insisted on hats...

And little lambies this time!

The time flew by and we can't wait to see everyone again

Go Phillies!

We took the plunge and became season ticket holders this year. (Chris promised me that we'd sell the popular games at a profit, a bunch of other games to break even, and that I wouldn't have to coordinate anything. I was sold.)

We've been to a few games so far. Hard to say what part Shannon likes best... wearing her Phillies gear, hanging out at the seats, playing at all the fun spots through the park, looking for the Phanatic or ball park food.

Kelly has been to one game and is clear about her favorite part:

Go Phils!

UPDATE: Shannon's big into pretending these days. Here is she is being the beer man. Yep. It took awhile to figure out what she was talking about because she first told me "I put wine on my head" but after several very curious minutes we figured out what was going through that crazy brain of hers!

Happy Easter

My backlog of posts begins with Easter. Here we go...

Master decorators

The Bunny Trail

Both girls hunted for their baskets and eggs. They were quite pleased with their Easter loot.

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They looked pretty cute all dressed up in their Easter finest.

This one cracks me up. (For the record, Shannon was 8 months in that picture when she fit into this dress.)

We finished off the day with dinner at the McGee's and lots of cousin time. It was a happy Easter indeed.