Music

These two videos are very, very different.  But they're both music, so here goes.

We've sung many beautiful pieces in the months that I've been singing in our church's choir.  I particularly like the one we did on Sunday, so I had Bryan stealthily record it on my iPhone.  Since we meet in a hotel conference room, the acoustics leave much to be desired.  This is Miserere mei, Deus, written in the 16th century by William Byrd.


Now this, I almost can't share.  But it is just so brilliant and hilarious, that I couldn't keep such a gem to myself.  So here it is.

Christmas, part 2

We got back from our quick trip to Bonners on the evening of Christmas Eve, and then we re-loaded the car with presents and pillows and food, and went out to the Blakey's for our annual sleepover.  We stayed up late putting the final touches on gifts, baking cookies, and playing video games.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, everyone was lounging in the living room playing video games.  I think that's it.

Poor Elaina had come down with a fever, so she never had the chance to wear her new Christmas jammies that matched her sister's.

After Chloë went to bed, Bryan and I got to work putting together the rocking moose that we got for her.  The last picture before I headed to bed:

Christmas morning.  Chloë was really excited.

She loved the rocking moose.

We had our traditional huge breakfast, with lots of grease and chocolate.
Chloë was happy to keep on rocking her moose, and Elaina enjoyed some of the food.

Finally ready to dig into that pile of presents!

Elaina wasn't feeling very well.

But she thought tearing the wrapping paper was pretty great.

Chloë got lots of cowgirl stuff, including a great pair of little leather boots.  As is her custom with all footwear, the ultimate test is to see how they do with dancing.


Cute little Christmas cowgirl.

Elaina enjoyed playing with her doggy toy.

We actually doubled up on the present-opening this year.  Instead of doing just one at a time, we did two at a time!  We were all done opening presents in a couple of short hours, instead of the usual four or five hours.  Then we loaded everything up and headed home to continue the Christmas festivities.

20 Months

It's amazing how big and grown up 20 months looks when compared to a newborn. Chloë suddenly seems very big in so many ways. It has been such a joy seeing her developing in her role as Big Sister. The first couple of days she was a little unsure of the whole situation, but even in this short amount of time she has adjusted really well. Every morning she asks where baby is, and gently strokes Elaina's hair, and gives her head or cheek dozens of gentle little kisses. She continues these affectionate gestures throughout the day. She has gotten used to the idea that babies just cry sometimes, although at first it greatly troubled her, often resulting in a few tears of her own.



She loves to watch us change Elaina's diaper, or get her dressed. "See?" she asks, and we pull a chair next to the changing table so she can watch. She was awfully upset about Elaina's umbilical cord, asking "aht's dat? aht's dat?" while shaking her head and crying. We tried to explain it, telling her it will be gone soon, and then Sister will have a belly button. Chloë didn't seem convinced, and for several days would sadly say "cord", and cry and shake her head every time she witnessed a diaper change. When it finally fell off, we showed Chloë that Sister had a belly button, and that the umbilical cord was all gone. "All gone!" she rejoiced, obviously relieved.

We had to explain to her that not everything of similar likeness should be toasted. She loves to say "cheers!" and crash her sippy cup into my glass. Or her silverware into my silverware. Or carrot sticks, or books, or iPods, or recently, babies. There were a couple of instances where she tried bashing her baby doll's head into Elaina's head and say "cheers!" but we managed to stop her just in time. We have explained that babies are not for cheers-ing.

She really is such a wonderful big sister.


She is becoming quite creative and in-tune with things her freinds are doing. She loves to run around with a squirt gun, pointing it at random objects (we're trying to teach her not to point at people), making gun sounds "psew, psew" while she pretends to shoot things. We've never taught her this, so she must have picked it up from some friends or something.
After seeing how much fun she had with friend's little tea set, we got her a little set of plastic dishes. She loves them. They are strewn about our living room every day, either on our coffee table, or in our entry way, which seems to be her kitchen. We also pulled out a little pot and a little frying pan for her to play with, and let her have a rubber spatula. She was thrilled. She loves to stir and "mix" and make "din-ah" (dinner) and makes "soup" and "cah-yee" (coffee). Sometimes there are duplos or pieces of crackers involved in this creative process. She always brings a bowl or cup to someone, offering to share her imaginary creation. It amazes me how creative she is, and how natural it is for her to copy what she sees her parents doing.

(My favorite part is when she goes to pour water from her sippy cup(which she isn't supposed to do, and says "No. Mess.")

Speaking of which, she just randomly started saying "sah-yee" (for sorry) when she bumps into something. A few days ago, she bumped into the wall, and without skipping a beat said "sah-yee!" She also started say "b'ess you!" when one of us sneezes. She even says it if Elaina coughs a little while she's eating. She picked up the word "yeah" recently as well. She used to just echo us in affirmation of what she wanted ("Do you want some juice?" "Doose," she'd say, nodding.) But now, she just answers "yeah," and it's really pretty adorable.

The other day, she found a little mischief to get into. I feel like I have the house decently toddler-proofed, but sometimes I leave interesting things in reach of little fingers. For example, my mascara.

It was all over her face, hands, shirt, and when I found her, she was painting the floor with it. That kid.

The other day, a spider ran across the floor (gotta love old houses), and she was running around and almost stepped on it. "Bug!" she exclaimed, and I jumped up and told her to stay back, and not to touch. Then I grabbed a rubber spatula and smashed the big ugly spider. Chloë burst into tears, sobbing into her hand, distraught at the demise of the bug. We tried to console her by explaining that spiders were bad, and they can be ouch, and so we squish them, but we don't squish good bugs like butterflies and ladybugs. That seemed to help a little. Her sympathy for the dead spider was very sweet.

She still loves all things musical. She's realized that iPhones all have the magical ability to play "Hallelujah" on YouTube, and she usually watches it several times a day.
She's taken to singing quite often, sometimes something recognisable. Her favorite song to sing is "Holy." She's actually getting good at the verses, but here she is, just wandering, singing Holy.

"Holy, Ho-ly is the Lord. Holy Holy is the Lord. Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord. Holy Holy..."

It has only been recently that Chloë has shown much interest in movies. She'll actually sit for a while and watch what's on the screen. She seems to like Finding Nemo more than any other movie. We all had a nasty flu/stomach bug a couple of days ago, and I was very thankful that we had the luxury of turning on a movie to entertain her for a bit. We were all really sick. I'll spare you the details, but it was a long night and a very long day, and we're so thankful Elaina never got it.

Until next month!

Musical Child

We've always assumed Chloë would be a musical child. Sure enough.

In the last couple of months, she's taken a special interest in "conducting" music during church. Our choir director uses one hand to conduct the choir, and apparently Chloë has been paying attention. She'll either hold her index fingers out and wave them rhythmically, or she'll hold her hands out, palms down, sort of limp-fingered and limp-wristed, and bob her hands up and down to the music. She has great rhythm for a 1 1/2-year-old.

She also likes to sing. She's been making up melodies for quite a while now, but only recently has she started singing songs that are familiar to us. A couple of weeks ago, she was in the basement with her daddy. She saw the piano, and walked up to it, started gently playing a few notes, and started singing "looo-yaaaah, loo-yaaah." We realized she's seen me play and sing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" a few times in the last couple of months, and it must have made an impression. What a smart girl we have.


Then last week, she started singing "ole-eeee, ole-eee, ole-eee," undoubtedly mimicking a song she's heard in church.


And of course she's very fascinated with anything that makes noise or music: electronics, making a beat with her fingers on a tin can, or last week, her Uncle Daniel's harmonica.


It's kinda fun thinking about piano or violin lessons in a few more years. I'm guessing she'll be a natural.

P.S. My sister just happened to write a blog post about Chloë, and the correlation between being a firstborn and being smart. I think she's on to something.

16 Months

My little girl is growing up. She'll be 16 months old tomorrow. Last month, I said that she had officially started walking, but that she was still hesitant to do so on our hard wood floors. The day after I wrote that post, we were out doing some shopping, and Chloë decided she was tired of the stroller. So she walked up and down the aisles, quite pleased with herself. Since that day, she has been very confident in her walking abilities. She has an adorable stubby-legged walk, and gets around really well.

Speaking of stubby legs, the sizes she wears in clothes in kind of hilarious. Just recently does she fit into her jeans that are size 6-12 months. Because she has a long torso, she usually needs 18-24 month size shirts to cover her belly. But, she's skinny enough that she can still wear dresses size 3-6 months as tunics. So basically, she wears all sizes of clothing these days.

Her new words this month include Chloë: "coe-ee," coffee: "cah-yee" hot: "aht," eat: "eat," cake: "cake," tickle: "tey-ah," chin: "nin," forehead: "ah-yahd," Bella: "Beh-bah," Eva: "Ah-yah," Betsy: "Bets." It's getting to the point where she says so much I can't keep track of what's new. Since she is our little parrot and repeats everything, I only "count" words that she uses without prompting.

She loves playing with Bella and Eva. They really get along so well. Chloë and Eva invented a game a couple of weeks ago, where they sit side by side on the step two steps from the bottom of the stairs, and bounce up and down laughing hysterically at one another. I'm amazed that such simple things can be so much fun. And shaking the bars of the crib is apparently a great game too.

They also like to stir up mischief together. I was watching Eva for a couple of hours yesterday, and they were playing so well together, and then I realized things were very quiet. So I went into Chloë's room, and discovered the two of the playing with and emptying bottles baby shampoo, baby lotion, and diaper rash ointment. The baby shampoo was everywhere. At least it was just shampoo. But the thing that gets me the most is that my child was sitting there, running her finger through the puddles of shampoo, licking it off her finger, and going back for more. But she won't drink milk. I just don't understand. Needless to say, I think it is time to reevaluate the location of some of the things in our home. Our trash can, for example. She found the coffee ground puck from my espresso, sitting nicely on a pile of trash, and must have thought it looked tasty. She came around the corner with a look of displeasure on her face. As well as coffee grounds.


Last week we decided to introduce her to the fact that there's a baby sister in Mama's tummy. I know she doesn't really understand, but it is so sweet when she kisses or pats my tummy. We'll tell her to kiss Mama, then Daddy, then Baby Sister. And she does. And it's so cute.

This girl loves to laugh. She loves to be tickled. And she looooves being chased by her Daddy.


She also reeeeally loves her pacifier. But since we've established that it's only for "night night," she sometimes decides that she's "seepy seepy" and asks to go "nie-nie" just so she can cuddle with Mama and suck on her binkie for a few minutes. Then she pulls the binkie out of her mouth, hands it to me, and is off to play some more.

When she does sleep, she still prefers to be next to (or on top of) Mama or Daddy.

She has been doing this thing lately where she randomly uses both her index fingers to plug her ears. She'll do it for a minute or two, sometimes releasing for a few seconds. It must be funny muting everything.

We've seen some very defiant behavior this month. Not that we're surprised, but it still catches us a little off-guard when we give her a basic command ("come here," "put it down," etc.), and we can tell that she's making a decision to do the opposite and disobey. Sometimes it's hard not to laugh at how silly her tiny rebellion seems. For the most part, we're constantly impressed with how much she understands, and how eager she is to obey and please us.

She gets around really well on her Radio Flyer these days.


She has started doing this thing where she has a finger in her mouth when she's chewing her food. I don't understand how it can be comfortable, but I guess there's sort of a gap where her canine teeth haven't come in yet. So we're working on manners. She's a pretty good eater, but isn't a huge fan of vegetables (we're working on that, too). And she still doesn't like milk. She'll have it with her cereal, but that's it. So, every morning, she has cheerios with some half-and-half mixed with whole milk. This month she had her first doughnut, and (surprise!) loved it. I bought some of those mini doughnuts covered in powdered sugar, and she sure had a great time eating a couple and getting powdered sugar everywhere.

Last but not least, this kid has some serious dance moves. I love it.

Runaway Symphony

We got to see my brother Daniel last weekend for the first time since June. He's been touring the country with his band, Runaway Symphony. I know I'm biased because I'm his big sister, but I really do think he's talented. And the guys he plays with aren't bad, either.

His tour is actually what brought him back to town. His band was one of several to perform at the annual NuArt Block Party.



Daniel is the lead singer, plays guitar and occasionally the piano. Yeah, he's good.


Watching the fun.


They cover Josh Ritter's song "Idaho."





One of their original songs, Broken Bones.


Some of their merchandise. The t-shirts were designed and screen printed by Daniel himself. The CDs contain a few songs that they recorded last Spring before they started tour. They didn't have time to put together a finished product, so they ripped some songs on to some all purpose CDs, and Daniel got out the sharpie and drew on each one.

Check out the page they have set up with a few of their recorded tracks. I like Broken Bones.

Shawn McDonald

Bryan, Chloë and I went to hear Shawn McDonald yesterday. His tour brought him to our small town, and I loved seeing him play live having been a fan for years now. I just wish my brother Samuel and friend Chelsea could have been there with us.

My favorite, and the title track from his new album.


One of my favorites from his first album.


(Cool note: My brother Daniel, who has also played on that stage, got to hang out with Shawn earlier that afternoon, and showed him around town, and even jammed for a while.)

Sound Effects

Maybe it's because I'm a girl and have very little talent in making sound effects, but I really like this video that I recently discovered. (And I can't help but remember all the years of listening to sounds my brothers would make when they played; crashes, explosions, and impalements, mostly. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of the same sounds here.)

I also appreciate that this guy is a little bit nerdy, doesn't take himself too seriously, and reminds me of Andy Samberg.


If you aren't into mainstream music and haven't heard the original song, check it out here for comparison.