Green with envy

Oh how our girls like green. E had a green cast on her arm for four weeks ("Mommy, why do most girls prefer a pink or purple cast?"). The worst thing about green, though, is that they fight over the green Ikea dishes that we have. In theory, we have enough plates, bowls, and cups in green for each child. In reality, at any given time at least one of each is lost in the backyard or under a bed or somewhere.

So imagine our collective horror one night when the girls were fighting over who would get the green plate for dinner, and Marmot Dad came rushing into the kitchen with a pair of scissors (green handled-how ironic) and CUT the plate in pieces and threw it away. Oh the weeping! Oh the wailing! From E: "Was that our only green plate? I think it was our only one! And now we don't have one at all!" (we have two more) From M: "DADDY! You WASTED! A grownup NEVER wastes!" From both: [tears] From M: "I never thought a grownup would WASTE a plate!"

The result: less fighting over who gets what color.

Apparently Marmot Dad was planning on being like Solomon of old and cutting the beloved plate in half to see who loved it more, or some such silliness. Fortunately, it just shattered. He admits that once he had scissors and plate in hand he began to worry that the scissors wouldn't work and he'd be helplessly hacking at the plate and end up looking more than a little silly. I kind of giggle now when I imagine how THAT would have gone over.

Stand up, everybody

So I never update this blog. Never. But today I have to report a startling happening. Little Marmot Babe (who, mind you, cannot yet sit up alone and is a mere seven months old), crawled his way over to the little antique loveseat-couch thing we have and put his hands on the edge. He pulled himself up onto his knees. Then, as I watched in both horror and delight, he pulled himself up to his feet. THE CHILD PULLED HIMSELF UP! He's so little to be doing such a thing. And he can't even sit up yet! But he's been trying for days to stand up. He wants to be like all the rest of us, I guess. Must be hard being the littlest.

In other news, we had a lovely Christmas. Here's what's the funniest about Christmas this year. Marmot Dad likes to get stocking stuffers for everyone ("elf-like behavior" he calls it), and he's usually quite creative about it all. This year he struck gold. He got a jar of furikake (seaweed and stuff that's all mixed together for pouring on rice) for Tooie--his own jar. Tooie has not let it out of his sight. He was quite taken with the whole idea of a stocking to begin with. He has a little basket into which he puts his "things," in other words, the stuff that was in his stocking (that were not chocolate, of course, because he ate all of that before breakfast on Christmas morning): his toothbrush, his toothpaste, and his furikake. "Mommy, where are my things?" he asks several times a day. He takes his furikake to bed with him. He tried to take it in the bath with him, but I stopped him in the nick of time. He had it taken away for a brief while when he hit his sister over the head with it. He put it in a bag and took it to grandma's house when we went visiting. Oh how that boy loves his furikake. Try it. You'll like it, too.