Dentist

The girls had a dentist appointment in December.  This time, we graduated from a chair in a room (maybe they are afraid of screamers?  runners?) to an open area with 3 or 4 chairs in the back.  The change threw the girls for a little bit of a loop.  The hygienist wanted them to lay in the chair by themselves, and the girls weren't quite ready for that.  So, they sat in our laps for the cleaning part again.

While we were waiting for the dentist, we got the girls to "practice" sitting in the chairs by telling them the chairs were airplanes.  The arms on the chairs fold out, and they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Look at how long her legs look!

Sitting on the airplane chair.  They would count down from 10 to 1, and blast off.

When the dentist came, only Becca and Emma were brave enough to "ride" on the airplane chair.  Julie still had to sit on dad's lap.

Excitement?

I have never met children who were more excited to go to the dentist.  Seriously.  We'd been trying to tell them about it so it wasn't a surprise, but they kept hounding us: "Are we going to the dentist on this day?"  (Of course, after we left, I'll bet the office was saying, "I've never seen someone take so many pictures at the dentist office before.")

Finally, the big day arrived.

We played with all the toys (and checked out the bathroom... sigh...).

Waiting with dad.

I don't think they enjoyed this part quite as much.

Actually, they were all business.  When the hygienist was done with their cleaning, they asked for the stickers and balls.

Here, Bec and Emma are conspiring about ice cream flavors, since we were in the ice cream shop room this time, and trying to find the sprinkles.

Putting in dibs on new toothbrushes and toothpaste.

That's Spongebob toothpaste.  My kids now recognize Spongebob.  Another big sigh.

December Daily: Dec 4, 5

Dec 4 was Christmas tree today.  We went out to lunch, and then decided to get a tree from a local tree lot.  Fraser Fir don't grow down here, so we don't get to cut down our own.  We're limited to pre-cut trees.  We've tried Lowe's and Costco in the past, and so we tried something different this time.  The girls were initially most excited by the inflatable Santa in a hot air balloon.  They were only mildly interested in the trees.  After they saw Santa, they were mostly interested in running around between the trees and picking up the scraps of rope on the ground.

collecting string scraps 

oh Christmas tree

String?  Definitely more interesting than trees.

Dec 5 was busy, busy, busy.  We started out with an 8am dentist appointment for the girls.  Note to self: don't schedule anything for 8am on Monday morning.  We've been totally spoiled by the nanny, and have completely lost sight of how long it takes to get 3 toddlers out the door in the morning.  As we were getting out of the car, Emma offered up, "Julie go first."  Once we were inside, Becca started offering up Julie to go first, too.  But Julie pulled out her "oh yeah?  Then I'll poop in my pants." card.  While I took her to get changed, apparently Emma volunteered to go first.  They all did great, and got good reports.  Quite brave.

Watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in the waiting room.  Really, though, I wanted a picture of the outfit: coat, sunhat, and those rain boots.

Emma after her cleaning.  She kept saying, "I did great!"  And then, when her sisters were getting their cleanings, she would say, "Becca do great!"  "Julie do great!"

A little skeptical...

This is to remind the girls how much their daddy loves them, wearing their hats while they were getting their  teeth looked at.  This is the way they do the cleaning and the way the dentist checks their teeth, too - they sit in one of our laps, and lay backwards to put their head in the dentist/hygienists' lap.  This is Julie getting her teeth cleaned.  Check out those boots.

A crazy day at work after the dentist (more on that some other time), and then Greg and I went to see Garrison Keillor.  He had no idea we were going until lunch time on Sunday.  I wanted it to be a surprise, and partly a Christmas gift, too.  :)  I think he liked it.  We got to go downtown for dinner at perhaps my favorite Thai restaurant ever, and ate too much food.  Then we went to see Garrison, and laughed for almost 1.5 hrs straight.  Good times.  We went to see him a few years ago (well, a lot of years ago, because it was pre-ladies), about the same time of year, and I've been wanting to see him (or PHC) again ever since.  No pictures, but I saved the ticket stubs for my album.

Random Notes from the Week

The girls are starting to recognize some letters, particularly E, J, and R.  I think they've got O down, too.  The nanny is talking about starting a preschool curriculum at the start of next year, so I need to do some research.  Let me know if you have any recommendations.

There are very few things that can completely mesmerize the girls to the point where they are quiet and entertained for an extended period of time.  Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is one of those things.  (On Thanksgiving, I ran out to get a newspaper while the girls were watching Mickey, and when I got back and still had my coat on, they asked where I was going.  They had no idea I was gone.)  The other thing they've recently discovered?  Toy catalogs.  The nanny asked me to keep a few from the mail for a project, and the girls found them.  They love the Fisher Price one, and they've been going through the Land of Nod catalog, too.  They love the page of all the dolls in the Land of Nod.  They also saw an instrument set that Uncle Steve and Aunt Stephanie got them last year in the catalog, and Becca got up and ran over to get out her "drum" (tambourine) that was in the picture.

We broke down and ordered them personalized bean bag chairs for their birthday, since we got them on sale and with free shipping.  We're about ready to re-claim the love seat out of their room, and put the bean bags and some book racks in that corner.  Anyhow, because I was in class, and the coupon expired on Monday, I had Greg show them the website and get them to pick out colors.  Emma wanted pink.  Julie wanted orange, but they didn't have it in stock, so we ordered her back up color, purple.  Becca wanted brown.  I was like, "Really?  She wanted brown?"  Greg said she insisted on brown because it was "brown like monkey's tail."  Ah, that makes more sense.

Speaking of making sense, they've started saying that to me.  "That make sense."  Totally getting my words thrown back at me.  :)

They also started telling me "Way to go, Mommy!"

Julie ran up to me last week on my way out the door to work in the morning and handed me "my bracelets" - two pink plastic bracelets that actually fit me.  I wore them proudly all day.  This week, she gave me "a special butterfly," a little finger puppet that is currently in my jacket pocket.  I love finding it there during the day.

Apparently, I broke a tooth over Thanksgiving.  It felt funny when I brushed my teeth on Saturday morning, and then sometime later, I could feel what felt like a big whole in my tooth.  It felt like I had lost a filling, but apparently it was a broken tooth.  I went to the dentist, and they're going to fix me up, but not for another few weeks.  Luckily, I'm not in any pain.  It's a little sensitive, but that's about it.

Catching up

In the brief respite between illnesses, we managed to get the girls to their first dentist appointment last week. They did great - such little rock stars. They sat on our laps for their cleanings, and then again for the dentist to look in their mouths. Emma volunteered to go first both times; the other two were a little more hesitant, but not too bad. Becca whimpered a little during the cleaning, but other than that, total rock stars. (Of course, we had a near bad-rock-star moment when they started wanting to, um, rearrange the chairs in the room). We'll see if we're quite so lucky next time.

So, Becca was home and on the nebulizer on Monday and Tuesday of last week. Julie started running a fever after we got home from the gym on Tuesday night. So, I stayed home from work on Wednesday and kept all of them at home. Julie and Becca were both on the nebulizer, and there's not much sense to taking just Emma into daycare. Everybody was back at work and daycare on Thursday and Friday.

We didn't really have big plans for Memorial Day weekend, which was good since I spent most of Sunday trying to recover from hives. We did go to IKEA on Saturday, and the girls did pretty well. They were definitely tired by the end of it, but we survived. We took our usual break in the children's' area and let the girls play. I only had my cell phone camera with me.

They loved those big egg chairs that have the little cover on them and spin around. We spent a lot of time monopolizing those.


They we monopolized the kitchen set.


I love this one. If it had a title, it would be "cooking is hard work!" They all just pulled up chairs and sat in front of the kitchen.


I ran in to the Pottery Barn outlet on the way home, and got a bunch of stuff ... I'm in the process of planning the girls' toddler room. Lots of color, but in a 'controlled chaos' sort of way. I don't want to say too much until I can get it all together. But I got some pillow cases, some blackout shades (put those up today, because their room gets so hot in the summer. And now I think we need them for our bedroom, too.), and some storage stuff for my scrapbook mess.

We stopped at Chick-fil-A for dinner, and by dinner time, the girls were just done. Done, done, done. They were a loud, obnoxious mess. Awful. We went home and just crashed.

I took the girls to the grocery store this morning (Greg's been doing some work in the attic in the mornings all weekend), and our list was pretty short, so it went fine. Some more cell phone pics while we were waiting at the deli counter.

Emma doesn't mind sitting in the back, and loves organizing the groceries for me, and then handing them back to me at the checkout.


This one melts my heart. Julie was trying to make sure that Becca got her seat belt fastened ok, but it looks like they're sharing some secret.




Love how this one of Emma came out, too.


Just some cleaning up around here for the rest of the day. We did got out for frozen yogurt after dinner, and as we were driving home, we saw a bunch of hot air balloons from the festival down the road. (We would have considered it for this weekend, but with my skin just crawling in the heat, it was a no-go.) We just happened to catch it at the perfect time, and drove around for a while trying to follow them. The girls LOVED it. They thought it was so cool. Hopefully next year!