Hello, statue?

My cousin Paul and his wife Margi visited us this weekend, providing a great excuse to check out the memorials downtown. 

 World War II Memorial

 Walking from the WWII Memorial to the Vietnam War Memorial, we passed a pond.

 Recognizing her fellow wildlife, Amalia was quite taken with the ducks. 

 Margi and the girls. 

They're renovating the reflecting pool between in front of the Lincoln Memorial, making the backdrop a bit less majestic for the time-being. 

 Speaking of majestic, the new MLK Jr. Memorial is rather.

 Paul and Lily 

Tired soldiers

Fountain of youth

Andy built a waterfall with his very own hands in our front yard this week.  

It's a good thing he made it stable enough for small creatures to crawl on. 

  Contemplation corner. 

 This is the rest of the yard, now outfitted with bayscaping. 

We're going all sorts of green. Andy also recently signed us up to get our power from clean energy sources. 

Fallfestapalooza

Today was the annual fall festival at Lily's school. They had all kinds of fun activities. 

 Go Stoddert Wolves! This impressive cut-out was painted by the father of one of Lily's classmates. 

 Bean bag toss. 

 Pumpkin painting. 

 Another bean bag toss. 

 Limbo. 

 Spinny rides! See how quickly three-year-olds recuperate?

 More pumpkin painting. 

Three-legged races. 

As Andy pointed out, Lily and Sophie have an unfair advantage because they're pretty much already attached at the hip.

T&A

Because this is a family blog, the subject line stands for tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy of course. Not sure how many visitors I may get through Google searches this week...

Anyway, here is Amalia in the waiting room yesterday at 6:00 a.m. before getting her tonsils out at Children's.

 Obviously this is another "before" shot. 

Post-op. Finally falling asleep in my arms after about 45 minutes of disoriented crying and moaning in recovery. Still feeling the combined effects of anesthesia, morphine, and having body parts removed. 

Trying the much-ballyhooed popsicle. She actually wasn't much of a fan, opting instead for apple sauce and apple juice most of the day. 

We ended up having to spend the night because she hadn't had enough to drink and they were concerned about dehydration. It was a bit of a rough night, as one might expect. She couldn't even muster up a smile this morning when we were told we could go home.

Couch potato. Though as I write this it's now evening and she seems to be doing much better. So much so in fact that when the hospital nurse just called to check on her, I had to excuse myself for a moment while I yelled at Amalia to quit running up and down the hallway. Can't keep this girl down for long.

Household items

The girls were having great fun jumping around the house in the wrappings from a couple of pieces of art Andy had shipped over from Cambodia. That is, until Lily's feet went through the bottom of her bag.

Then a great dark cloud descended over one-half of the jumping pair. 

Did I tell you that we bought Amalia a Dustbuster for her third birthday (at the brilliant suggestion of Andy's sister Stacey)? Well, we did. And the plan has worked out perfectly; she loves exerting her independence by picking up clumps of dog hair and pieces of bird food off the floor. This morning, she also discovered that it feels funny when she lets it suck in her hair.

Noteworthy

Lily's first-grade teacher had all the kids write a note to leave for their parents at Back to School Night. Here is the one Lily wrote for us. 

I like that Lily thought I would be particularly interested in the bathrooms.

Squirmy treasure

 Amalia is helping Andy in the yard today. 

It mostly involves her looking for worms while Andy rips out our front yard. We're being visited tomorrow by the D.C. bayscape program (free landscaping if you let them plant native species). 

It's funny what Amalia chooses to share. 

Also "funny" the occasions Lily decides to wear her good dress coat. 

The wheels are coming off

At Lily's urging, we took the training wheels off her bike today. 

She quickly became frustrated that she couldn't stay upright due to sheer will. The concept of not succeeding at first attempt is not an easy one for her. I've no idea where she gets it from.

The cheering section/roadblock.