January - February 2009 with the Girlies
January and February were relatively uneventful, except for some visits from family and some good snow. I can't really remember that far back, but from what I can recall it mostly involved me trying unsuccessfully to convince people to give me a cushy job with a bloated salary, and then me trying to figure out what to do with the girlies at 4 PM, once they woke up from their nap. It is pitch black in NY in January by about 4:00, so my options were mostly limited to either teaching the girlies to become burglars or getting them part-time employment as night-watchmen. Neither seemed like a good option, so we would pretty much wander the neighborhood to find the moon and stars, and then sing 'Mr. Moon' a few times (see below).
My Mom visited in January while Kim was away at a 'business meeting'. The girlies love having my Mom here, but the best part is that she scrubs things that I didn't even know you were supposed to clean, like the girlies high chairs and couch cushions.
We also had my (Texas) Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew visit us for a weekend in February. Uncle Drew, as followers of this blog may recall, used to tell us stories about Sam and George and Sally and Sue when we were young kids and now one of my girlies (Sally) is named 'Sally'. I also have a cousin named 'Sam', a friend from high school named 'Sue', and I once met 'George' H.W. Bush (the older one) at an IBM conference, so in may ways Uncle Drew correctly predicted my life. He could have given me a heads-up about the dirty Swiss, though.
My Aint Debbie loves to get organized and stuff, and as mentioned in a previous posting she doesn't mind giving a few knuckle sandwiches if the situation warrants, so we are always on guard when she is around. Uncle Drew, who is a hugely powerful executive with a multi-national conglomerate, had a meeting in Jersey City (LUCKY!) and decided to visit us and make a weekend out of it. Aint Debbie was afraid she would miss an opportunity to do karaoke, so she decided to come as well.
Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew have a relatively new baby British grandson named 'Caleb', who seems to spend most of his days listening to his mother say 'Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses....' Fortunately he can't speak yet, or else he would probably say something like "Hey, Mom - holy schnikey, can you please zip it? You are driving me nuts with this 'Kisses Kisses' stuff. Now I'm hungry - pass the Bubble and Squeak" (because, you know, he's British).
On to the photos and video recordings:
My Mom visited in January while Kim was away at a 'business meeting'. The girlies love having my Mom here, but the best part is that she scrubs things that I didn't even know you were supposed to clean, like the girlies high chairs and couch cushions.
We also had my (Texas) Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew visit us for a weekend in February. Uncle Drew, as followers of this blog may recall, used to tell us stories about Sam and George and Sally and Sue when we were young kids and now one of my girlies (Sally) is named 'Sally'. I also have a cousin named 'Sam', a friend from high school named 'Sue', and I once met 'George' H.W. Bush (the older one) at an IBM conference, so in may ways Uncle Drew correctly predicted my life. He could have given me a heads-up about the dirty Swiss, though.
My Aint Debbie loves to get organized and stuff, and as mentioned in a previous posting she doesn't mind giving a few knuckle sandwiches if the situation warrants, so we are always on guard when she is around. Uncle Drew, who is a hugely powerful executive with a multi-national conglomerate, had a meeting in Jersey City (LUCKY!) and decided to visit us and make a weekend out of it. Aint Debbie was afraid she would miss an opportunity to do karaoke, so she decided to come as well.
Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew have a relatively new baby British grandson named 'Caleb', who seems to spend most of his days listening to his mother say 'Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses....' Fortunately he can't speak yet, or else he would probably say something like "Hey, Mom - holy schnikey, can you please zip it? You are driving me nuts with this 'Kisses Kisses' stuff. Now I'm hungry - pass the Bubble and Squeak" (because, you know, he's British).
On to the photos and video recordings:
My 'Mom' and Sally
Judy reading a book to Sally and Amelia. Amelia is doing her best 'Judy' imitation, covering her face and saying 'Put that thing away! Ugh Ugh! Stop taking pictures!' She later taught Amelia how to deploy the very effective crossed-fingers approach to avoid being photographed. The book she is reading to the girlies is called 'Umbrella' (Amelia LOVES umbrellas), about a 3-year girl who gets an umbrella for her birthday. When they got to the part in the book when it starts raining, the girls were laughing harder than they had ever laughed before. It was very cute, and I tried to get it on video but missed my chance. Trust me, though, it was very charming. 
Judy with the girlies in the jackets she bought them at the Pearl River Mart, on the stools she bought them for ChristmasThe girlies watching Mandy, Abbey and Trey (Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew's childrens) sing 'Mr. Moon.' Uncle Drew used to sing 'You Are My Sunshine' and 'Mr. Moon' with his kids when they were young, and so they made some videos of them singing the songs for our girlies. This story may not translate, but I will tell it anyway - when recording this song, the Walker childrens started to sing 'Your Are My Sunshine' but then realized that they were supposed to sing 'Mr. Moon', so they start over mid-video. The girlies think that is the funniest thing ever, so now every time they watch it (which is often) they laugh and scream 'They messed up!!' - Sally points it out in this video above. See, I told you that it wouldn't really translate, but once I started typing I realized I was so far into the story that I had nowhere to go. Sort of like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew in front of our building 
As you can see by these two pictures, Amelia hardly left Uncle Drew's shoulders the whole weekend.
Amelia and Uncle Drew spent 45 minutes laughing about granola. To this day, when I say 'granola' to Amelia she has a huge laugh.
Aint Debbie reading to Sally - she also taught her how to make crescent rolls from scratch
At some point during this weekend, Sally decided that the sunglasses, hat and plastic apron would be permanent
Aint Debbie with the girlies at the Natural History Museum - Sally is still sporting the plastic apronSally and Amelia running down the slippery floor at the Natural History Museum - the plastic apron remains
Playing with home-made 'Play-Doh'. Aint Debbie is now working on a home-made version of 'Kerplunk'
We begged and begged, and they FINALLY agreed to have a glass of wine. This was after the dancing started, so this was most likely not the first glass of the evening
Sally and Amelia at their first movie - it was a 3-D movie about the ocean. The movie was pretty good, and the girlies were interested for most of it, but I doubt they are ready to sit through the ridiculously long 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy any time soon
Kim and Sally walking to the park to go sledding.
Kim and the girlies after a treacherous ride down the mountain (small hill) in Central Park
