now that christmas is over

It seems time finally to post some gratuitous baby/children pictures from the last few weeks.

 Here is Marigold badly in need of a haircut and an attitude adjustment. She picked out the shoes herself--shunning the pretty black patent leather for her favorite red clunker shoes.

 Here is Matt after the Christmas Pageant on Christmas Eve administering libations to people like me who were filled with relief and joy that the pageant went off So Beautifully! I await with eagerness seeing the video (I know someone taped it, surely) and pictures by Andrea Kovac.

 We came home from the service that night and ate three very nice cheeses, a pate de compagne, a gorgeous loaf of bread, olives, those little tiny hot dog things wrapped in pastry, and mussels in white wine with a little bit of onion and garlic. I ate far to much and didn't sleep well, but it was worth it.

Here is Elphine and Marigold. Lately, Marigold has required that Elphine carry her everywhere on her back--everywhere! And Elphine is very nice about it especially as Marigold is a fat chunk of a toddler now, eating everything in sight.

Romulus with his new flashlight, doing what he does best, which is to lie on the floor and moan gently about there being too much work. This from the child who has only one job--gather the clothes off the stairs and put them in the laundry hampers. That's it. Just gather the clothes and, no, don't interrupt or lie down, gather the clothes and carry them into the laundry room and put them, no not on the floor, In the Hampers.

Gladys got a little notebook and a fancy pen which she carries with her everywhere, making little marks that look sort of like letters and explaining them to anyone who will listen. Every time we sat down to watch a movie she began talking and kept on until the movie was over. Strangely, we managed to see five different versions of The Christmas Carol over the course of ten days.

The boys received boys and arrows from the bosom of Santa who ought to be stopped. Elphine has a pretty good steady hand and in this fine clement weather has been working at it a little every day.

This is the Sunday of Advent 4. There are 20 or 30 of these pictures and only two of them turned out.

Here is Gladys in her Christmas dress on Christmas Eve. Everything was wrong. The seam of her tights was not fitting over her toes correctly, her little pantaloons wouldn't stay on the right way, her hair kept needing to be combed. In short, she was a miserable wreck. Nearly didn't participate in the pageant as a result of everything in life being so difficult. Changed her mind at the last moment and turned out to be a perfect angel (bwahaaaaaaa, get it, she was an angel in the pageant, get it?).

These aren't in proper order. Here Elphine, Romulus and Alouicious are all watching Matt showing them how its done.

So everything is finally put away and we've had a miserable first week of school back. I did make some New Year's resolutions, for the first time in a long time. I'm going to seriously read books, hopefully every day, and I'm going to try to recover my love of cooking. My husband has become such a good cook that I'd sort of given up. So last week I made meatballs.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a meat pie and Wednesday I have determined, God willing, to make a cheese souffle. Matt, apparently, has never seen or tasted a souffle (that spelling doesn't look right) so he won't know if its not as it should be. And now it is time to stop this and find out why every single child is crying or shouting.