Lovely leaping lunch

Good clean fun

We've started putting our little sisters in the bathtub at the same time. They love it. We love it. So cute. So fun. It's a time of the day when almost always, all four McCalls are laughing, splashing, and having a great time together.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ikea!

On Friday, we took a roadtrip with our good friends (Mamas and kids only) to Ikea. It was a really fun day, even though the mamas were a little apprehensive about taking along 4, aged 4 and under. We picked up a couple of rugs, some baskets, some toys, some hangers, your typical Ikea fare. It was nice to not have as big an agenda as I've had on my last few trips over there, which were fairly stressful. In what was possibly the grand finale to the day, Ella got to eat and hold her first ice cream cone. It was so cute. She was very agreeable to me helping lick her drips, but wanted to keep working on it herself to the very end. She looooved it. : )

Welcome friends

My mom says that when we moved to Florida and were staying in our house before the movers brought our things, it felt really strange and foreign. But then when the furniture arrived it was like seeing all her old friends. Last weekend, we make a couple of new friends in that sense that I hope will grow to be old and dear ones.

First of all, let me introduce you to our new teal velvet chair. He came to us very clean and stylish, just with  a few old tattoos in discreet places, from the Habitat ReStore. Fruit of that same day of thrifting was that "Rembrandt" hanging on the wall above the chair. (Somebody painted something that looks impressionist. The signature appears to say "Blech." It was framed in Raleigh. It has some paint chipping off in the middle. It was only $10. I sort of liked it, ok? The wiseguy/crazy man at the counter at Goodwill went on and on about how "It could be a Rembrandt. Guffaw, guffaw. You never know. Guffaw guffaw." Thanks, crazy man. You never know.)

Next please meet a total gift from God by way of a very thoughtful and generous neighbor. You may remember the "industrial chic" garage shelves we were using to hold our food. Happily they have found their way into our activity room and are now holding sports equipment. Instead, we have a beautiful new solid wood cupboard. Our nice neighbor e-mailed our neighborhood listserve to give it away, for FREE! And we were the lucky ones to claim it. I will tell you, as I was walking down the street to look at it, I was praying specifically that this would be what we needed for the kitchen. You never know what a "free hutch" is going to turn out to be. It was even better than expected. Why would God answer my random, thrown up prayer for a pretty place to store our food? Friends, I do not know. But I am thankful.

Two

Here is a picture of Ella with two hairbows. It is what she asked for.

She has been learning about numbers lately and frequently asks for two of something if its good. "Cookie. two." is a frequent request. It has been so entertaining to hear what she says as she's figuring it all out. At first she would just repeat "fwee . . . fwee . . . fwee" in a counting voice. Then she added other nonsense syllables mixed in with "four, five, nine . . . five!!!" She started getting that "two" actually means there are more than one of something some time after that, and started in with the "cookie. two." "cracker. two." or "bows. two." requests. Paul told her the other day what "many" means and she likes to use that one now, as well. But my favorite little addition yet is when she asks for "cookie. two. five."

Mug shots

Anybody else recognize that "look" in Ella's eyes? Oh yeah. Yesterday evening was a doozy. But boy do I love these little troublemakers.

Spaghetti aftermath

Sister Winter

Yikes time has flown since Christmas! We have been home a week already and hosted Paul's parents for a lot of that time. The new toys are starting to feel at home already, even if a couple of suitcases have yet to be unpacked. It finally feels like winter now too after a LOVELY fall, but for the first time in a years, I am into it a little bit. I'm enjoying the coziness and playing inside. (Talk to me again after we've had more than two days of freezing weather in a row.) And I am heartened by the fact that it is only a couple of months til the cold weather will also be fading away again. And then, holy moly!, Ella will be 2! Maybe that's another reason I am enjoying these couple of cold cozy days. My little girls are getting big so fast! Nora is sitting up like a champ. And she has to be a champ, because Ella tries knock her over sometimes. Ella is chattering away, telling me stories like, "Monkey. Rainies. Eat. Big BIG." Translation: "Remember when we went to Monkey Jungle and fed the monkeys who were way up high some raisins?" I get it.

Here are some snapshots of the last week or so since we've been home.

 One of our other Christmas monkeys getting some love. (Nicola these have been a huge hit! Also, Meg and Joe, the elephant--also referred to as "big BIG," and the doggie are no longer scary and are now much  loved members of our toy community.)

Clue: the Office Version, a new Christmas addition to our game collection, making for a night of entertainment and intrigue for the McCalls, junior and senior. 

Snuggling under a fuzzy blankie with your baby sister? Pure delight! Don't ask me where the Japanese tourist pose came from on the last photo, but I thought it was pretty cute.

P.S. You may be wondering where my Christmas update is. The sad truth, my friends, is that my camera spent Christmas lonely in North Carolina on the kitchen table, while all the fun and sun was had down south. I will be getting a hold of some great shots from my family members for my own memories, but they will likely be up on other blogs and I just don't need to pirate their photos like that. Check out ohsugarhoneyhoney.wordpress.com for a great recap. Maybe I will put up some other ones too with my own specific commentary, but Meg's are super! Sighhhhh, we had so much fun. 

P.P.S. If you don't get my title, please go listen to the song so named by Sufjan Stevens. It is so lovely. And since we have sisters in our house and it is winter, it makes a great wordplay for what is going on now around here, which I enjoy and hopefully doesn't confound anyone else excessively.

Rice cereal!

I love this video.

So happy together

Relaxing in the armchair

Riding in the cart at Target (just for a sec. Yes Mom I know this is not safe! ; ) )

Goofing off with Mama

Watching Sean the Sheep with Daddy (Angela, Ella is totally addicted to "baa baa" now!)

Sunglasses II

Cooler than cool this time.

The look of ennui perfected.

Babies are stinkin' cute.

Ok folks, prepare for some rapid fire posting here tonight. If I squeeze a bunch in this evening I will have still kept my december quota up, and that seems like a good way to go out for 2011.

This first one is short but sweet. It will also test my new computer's oft-touted high speed. Or maybe just our wireless speed. Anyway, let's see how fast I can upload a video now. . .

Here are some darling baby antics. Enjoy.

Hmp. Pretty fast I guess. : )

Christmas present

Hey hey hey! Guess what Santa Paul brought me for Christmas this year? A shiny new computadora! Woo! I am just playing around with it tonight but really really soon I will be able to post some of the jillions of pictures I have been saving up over the last few weeks. We had a lovely Christmas at my family's house in Florida, and now we are enjoying Paul's family here in Durham. Among the many new words Ella has picked up lately is an important one, "people." I'll tell ya more about it soon, but before I get down to the nitty gritty of getting my photos on here I have to tend to the important task of selecting a desktop theme, etc. : ) Let's talk soon!

Technical difficulties

Hi guys! Sorry I am MIA lately. Computer is down and out. I am doing this post from Paul's computer and I can't figure out how to get my photos from my camera to his funky mac. Don't judge. But that is what's going on. Get excited for some photos of Nora's first taste of rice cereal (yuck!), sisters snuggling, Ella in sunglasses, and probably more fun things I can't remember I took pictures of. We'll be back soon!

Tea time

Would you like to have tea with us?

Our tea was technically soup or "food" according to Ella. Can you hear her saying it in the video?

Thanksgiving

I am very thankful to the calendar this year for giving me a few days even in the week after Thanksgiving where it is still November and I am not late for Christmas yet. Not saying I won't be late soon enough. But at least the pressure is sort of off for this minute. It is so hard to get anything at all done around here these days, down to even meals and baths for everyone! Tonight I read a beautiful magazine with all these lovely Christmas decorations and ideas for hosting parties and instituting meaningful family traditions. But most of the families featured had kids in college, I noticed. I bet those kids do their own baths. I am going to try this year to enjoy the season, but I think like last year, and even more so now that we are blessed with these two tiny daughters, I am going to ride on everybody else's coattails for all the logistics of the celebration. If you're planning something fun and festive that you are going to invite the McCalls to, we really appreciate it!

All that said, we had a wonderful wonderful time with Paul's family at Thanksgiving. (And rode on their coattails too, believe me! Thanks guys!) It was so fun to see Ella being able to really enjoy her cousins. And since Nora has a little cousin who was  born just 2 days before she was, I think she really enjoyed at least that little cousin too. We adults also enjoyed each other's company and taking in the steady buzz of commotion that 6 kids aged 5 and under produce. My sister-in-law made a beautiful Thanksgiving tree for us all to count our blessings on, and it was so nice to be prompted to do that again! My Ann Voskamp inspired gratitude journal has been languishing in all of our family craziness lately, but I love that discipline. There is so much to be thankful for! (By the way, my sister-in-law is responsible for 4 of the 6 kids, one of whom is as little as Nora, as I previously mentioned, and she put together the Thanksgiving tree. I guess I have to own that I am a slacker. : ))

Here are some photos from our time in Houston.

Grandmothers

This is another post that falls under the "best of the last month" category.

Both Paul's mom and my mom have recently come to spend some time with us and help us settle in. Can I  just tell you how wonderful it was? I am SO blessed to take care of my little daughters. But they absolutely require two (or more) hands to keep them safe and happy. That normally leaves me with zero (or less) hands to work on unpacking and cleaning and cooking, etc. But thanks to the help of my mother and my Belle Mere, I have had some spurts of productivity over a few days where the work accomplished otherwise would have taken weeks to do. Also, Ella and Nora got some sweet grandmotherly love that we just don't get to experience in person enough around here. Thanks so much ladies! We love you!

Nora's latest trick

Fart noises:


Untitled from Emily McCall on Vimeo.

She has seriously been doing this all afternoon. Daddy will be so impressed when he gets home. ; )

Livin' in the city

Well the dust is settling (and then being obsessively wiped up by me) a little at our house. And the more that happens, the more I remember why we were so excited to get in here. It is really fun to live in the city! We have a fantastic park just a few houses down the street, and I am starting to make some forays out with the stroller into our walkable part of town. So far I have made it to the shopping center with Whole Foods and Mad Hatters (our Saturday morning breakfast spot for years), the place where Ella has her parent's morning out, a new favorite Mexican restaurant, and Brightleaf Square (where I found even more cute little boutiques than I was previously aware of). Cool! Here we are headed out to said Mexican Restaurant.

Also, an ice cream truck makes the rounds daily! We haven't actually bought anything yet for reasons mentioned in the previous post. ; ) But I love hearing the music (and feeling the remembrance of absolute panic that I wouldn't find mom and get money in time, from when I was little). It really takes me back.

Shakeshake

Here is one of those best of the last month posts I was telling you to expect.

One day in the midst of all the craziness, we were just falling apart in the afternoon. And it was raining, of course. So I did the only thing I could think of: take the girls out for a milkshake. This was frequently all I could think of to do in the afternoons for a while after Nora was born. After Ella's birth the weight just fell off of me from nursing, so I thought, hey, now is the time to drink milkshakes. Lots of milkshakes. I mean, they even have calcium, right? Turns out enough milkshakes (like 3-4 a week ; ) ) can sabotage even the breasfeeding weight loss effect. I think of other things besides milkshakes in the afternoons now. But those milkshakes we all enjoyed were just delicious, even beyond the way they tasted. Come along with us as we sip in our car, serenaded by classic rock.  

Our frowns were all turned upside down after our treat and Ella learned a new word, "Shakeshake," which I contend is a very important word to know.