One of the reasons we ended up not doing a birthday party is two of Isabella's daycare friends beat us to it, having parties on the free weekends. This is Julien's party, at a bouncy castle place. Both Ian and Isabella ran back and forth many, many times in this "inflatable" basketball court (until the big kids showed up). Isabella also went up and down the slides over, and over, and over again. Afterwards we went to Julien's parents and hung out, where Isabella enjoyed swinging on a wooden swing in a tree (well, at least until she got clocked in the head by said swing).
*The* biggest pre-Christmas event was, of course, visiting Molly. Our flight out was a mess - delayed, so they rescheduled us through SFO, but of course they neglected to realize that it takes 45 minutes (and $115!) to get to SFO from SJ, so of course we arrived just in time to see our plane take off. Ended up overnighting in Chicago, with a long wait at the bus terminal at the airport. Isabella had a grand time running at high speed down the slide walks, so at least the (very long) walk to the bus terminal wasn't so bad. She was in pretty good spirits, even with the going to bed at midnight and getting up at 6 to catch our flight to St. Louis. Isabella and Molly had a Heathcliff moment - running toward each other in the airport to give each other hugs. It's like they've never been apart!
Molly's parents not only generously hosted us for the long weekend, the also organized a party with all of the old Honeydewer's - Katie, Kaitlyn, and Molly! Four little blonde kids, eating (decorating?) cookies.
It amazes me that Molly & Isabella just picked up playing right where they left off. Almost no spats. They shared princess clothes, tights, pacis, played with dolls, went to the Magic House (where they were both terrified by a production of the Nutcracker and fled when the Mouse king and Nutcracker had their fight). They went swimming together (although Isabella got into a snit because we didn't bring the noodle in). Molly's basically swimming (!)
(A visitor at our back door. He comes back pretty frequently.) Isabella, of course, managed both flights in and out with aplomb. She slept a lot of the flight back, being a bit tired. I took her in for a few meetings (she drew on the whiteboard and played with Tux Paint). Took her into the lab for the last day. Ross kept her entertained for several hours while we met with the Dean (his wife teaches pre-school, so he came very prepared). Caitlin was, as always a big hit - Isabella spent several hours in her office coloring and making snowflakes while I ran around like a maniac trying to get our car registered again.
Ian is developing Opinions about things like Crackers in the car and Chocolate. Ask him if he wants to go to bed and he'll shake his head "no". Ask him if he wants to go upstairs and run around and he'll head straight for the gate. Shoes mean going outside. He does NOT want you to feed him. Once he's up he wants to go get everyone else up, especially his sister. He's figured out how to slide off the bed and handle the stairs, which is a relief. He's running, with a funny little arm twist back and forth. He can almost jump - he's at least trying. The words are starting to come: Cracker, bubble, cheese, baa baa (animals), quack quack (birds). Bubbles have become a big favorite, although he wants to hold the bubble wand, which causes problems. I think he'd live off of fruit mashups and crackers if he could. He's still not reliably sleeping through the night - sometimes he'll be up thrashing around for an hour (and it takes 45 minutes to get him to go to sleep). We've moved him to a cot, which seems to have helped a bit (at least with the midnight thrashing) but now he wakes up and thumps on the bed in the middle of the night. Goes back to sleep pretty fast, usually.
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