Glittergirl had an exceptionally good teacher this year. Maybe the best teacher, ever.

I got a Thank You card, just a generic one with flowers and a Thank You on the front, and blank on the inside. I’m going to write a little note inside to thank her for making the school year so wonderful for GG this year, and for making learning fun. I’ve also got a Target Gift card for $50 to put inside of it. I know she has to dip into her own money for some of the things she does for the class, there is no way the school gives her the budget for all of the decorations and visual aids she has.

The owner of APC is a teacher and she usually says that writing a letter about the good job she does to her principal would be great, so I think I’m going to do that as well.

This morning my mother called me on my cellphone while I was on my way to work to tell me about the earthquake in China.

I posted the initial post from home this morning, which means I knew all about the quake when she called. Way more than she saw on the morning news, which was where she got her information. And I told her what I knew, told her I’d seen the news story on TV plus I’d read about thirty more news articles online. But she completely ignored me and spent ten minutes telling me everything she had heard. Even though I knew everything she was telling me. I corrected her on a few points she had wrong, but even that didn’t get it through to her that I already knew what she was telling me. I gave up at some point and just listened. I realized that she was worried and that she just needed to talk, so I let her.

When she was done telling me what she knew she gave me a lecture about how I shouldn’t talk on the phone and drive.

She called ME!!!!! Knowing I would be on my way to work when she did!!!!!

Mothers.

GlitterGirl has shiny hair. I mean, not just shiny, but glossy. When the sun shines on it, it’s like shining on oil or water, it almost glows. When she is under florescent lights it looks  a little blue the way it reflects the light. When it swings around her shoulders it almost glitters it’s so shiny.

When we brought TwinkleToes home her hair was dull and lifeless and I assumed that was a product of her malnutrition. But now, over a year later, it’s grown about two inches and the new growth looks pretty much the same as the old growth. It’s not lifeless anymore, but that is probably more about the products we use on it than anything else. But the fact remains that she has matte blackish-brownish hair that is obviously not as shiny and healthy looking as her sister’s hair.

I wonder if this is just a product of them having different hair textures, or if TwinkleToes’ hair is still not recovered from her years of malnutrition. Her nails grow like wildfire and have to be clipped every second or third day, but her hair doesn’t grow very fast and what has grown in is not healthy and shiny looking.

They both get plenty of protein and good fats in their diet, and they both eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Nutrition-wise I know they are fine, but when we are outside on a sunny day the difference in their hair textures is very noticeable. Even by strangers.

Most nights that the girls take a bath I let them take one together. I only put a few inches of water in, and I go in the room across the hall and get some work done while I listen to them play. If they are quiet I talk to them to make sure they are okay, but they make a good bit of noise so I usually just listen. If they drop something or make a loud noise they will both say “we’re okay” before I have a chance to ask them.

Last night about 25 minutes into the bath I heard GlitterGirl scream “Mooommmmeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!”.

And I knew what had happened from the tone of her voice. It’s never happened before, and I don’t know how I knew, but I just did. I was in the bathroom almost immediately and saw Glittergirl standing with a foot on either side of the tub, up on the rim, and her hands on the wall one side of it, balancing. I reached for her and helped her out of the tub and knew what I’d see when I looked into the water.

How many have guessed it?

Yep, TwinkleToes went number two. Luckily they were hard pieces and not diarrhea.

GlitterGirl insisted on taking a shower and soaping up. I guess I can’t blame her. I did the same for TwinkleToes just to be on the safe side. She didn’t like it and I pointed out to her that it is very bad to go potty in the bathtub and we had to make sure she was clean. She burst into tears and said she was saw-wee. Broke my heart.

When RK came upstairs later that night (and TT should have been asleep in her crib), we saw her little head pop up and she said, “Potty, bafff” and burst into tears again. I told her it had been an accident, that it was very bad to go potty in the bathtub, but that she wasn’t going to do it again and everyone was clean now. She hugged me and said “yeah”, then asked for a hug from daddy and let us settle her back into her crib.

Glittergirl told me this morning that she wants to take her bath alone tonight. I can’t really blame her, but I’m hoping to get her to reconsider.

GlitterGirl has been studying the various animal forms out there. One of those animal forms is the spider, which has eight legs, as opposed to the insect, which has six.

GlitterGirl decided she and TwinkleToes could make a spider. I have a mirror in my bedroom that goes all the way down to the floor in one section and the girls love to get in front of it and dance and play.

But last night GlitterGirl laid down in front of the mirror and put TwinkleToes on top of her, and they declared that they were a spider.

Sure enough, add up the arms and legs for the two of them and you get eight.

I must say that in their coordinating pajamas they made the cutest spider I’ve ever seen.

Yesterday was…. interesting.

GlitterGirl was sick and pretty much just wanted me to lay on the sofa with her all day long. Which I mostly obliged.

TwinkleToes was feeling great, and wanted to run and jump and laugh and play all day. I could get down in the floor and play with her while GlitterGirl slept, but while GlitterGirl was awake I just kind of had to point and direct TT’s play. Luckily, she’s in this huge coloring kick right now, so she spent probably two hours just coloring (in ten and fifteen minute increments, not all at once, of course).

And, of course, TwinkleToes slept while GlitterGirl was awake, and GlitterGirl slept while TwinkleToes was awake. Which helped in a way because it gave me time to give each individual attention, but was kind of a pain because I was home from work and didn’t get any housework done at all. Silly me, I had thought I could have at least a partially productive day. But, of course, it was a very productive day because I was there for GlitterGirl, there to hold her while she felt bad. Just depends on your definition of “productive”, I guess.

RK stayed home today and I’m working. RK is going to take TwinkleToes in for her Valentines Party so she won’t miss it, so he’ll have GlitterGirl alone for most of the day. GlitterGirl is majorly bummed that she is going to miss her party at school. Majorly.

TwinkleToes’ daytime care provider puts in a lot of teaching time. Every week they concentrate on a letter of the alphabet, and every Tuesday she has to take something with her that starts with that letter. They don’t do the letters in order, so it’s not really something we can plan on, we just know that Monday night we have to go through her toys and find something she wants to take that starts with some letter.

This week is the letter V.  I got home a little late and RK was working on it in his head. He’s usually got several ideas by the time I get home, and then we talk about it and let TT decide.

I get home and look through the paperwork and say “hmmm, the letter V”. And he says “well, there’s something she always has with her, but they probably don’t want to talk about that”.

To which I reply “she could take GlitterGirl and say she’s a virgin”.

Yeah, we’re a bit slap happy this evening.

I came up with vest, velvet, van, veterinarian, volcano, vegetable. The play van is huge and impractical, TT didn’t want to take a vest, I decided against her velvet dress, we can’t find Veterinarian Barbie (well, we can find the Barbie, just not the outfit, and a naked Barbie that used to be the Veterinarian probably won’t cut it), and we don’t seem to have any volcanoes laying around.

She’s taking a piece of play lettuce and a play potato and we’re sending a note that they are vegetables.

Halloween was a huge success.

Twinkletoes got her first taste of a candy bar last night. She liked it. Of course.

Both girls looked adorable in their costumes, and both girls got lots of candy. And just walking around and talking to neighbors was fun for me, too. Though I wish I’d felt better.

Oh, and I have a glitter bathroom now. After getting GlitterGirl all glittered up, my bathroom needs a serious scrubdown. That spray stuff may have been easier to use than the gel stuff, but since it requires a bathroom cleanup afterwards maybe next time we’ll go back to the gel. Or spray her down outside instead of inside.

The odd thing was, they switched personalities last night. GlitterGirl decided to be shy and TwinkleToes decided to be really outgoing. I have no idea what was up with that, but to have GlitterGirl literally hiding behind me while TwinkleToes charmed the pants off people just seemed a bit like the Twilight Zone. Maybe it was the costumes?

Both girls got in bed past their bedtimes. GlitterGirl went to sleep fairly quickly, but TwinkleToes was up for hours. And then TwinkleToes woke up easily this morning and GlitterGirl was impossible to get up (I had to enlist the help of RK, which only happens maybe once every other month).

One year I rationed out the candy and it lasted for months. I made the decision after that, that it is better to have a four or five day sugar overload and get it over with than it is to try to ration it out. I’m not looking forward to the next four or five days. But, it’s part of the whole experience I suppose, not really anything that I can do about it.

Am I the only out there addicted to this show?

I am not really a TV sort of person. I like Grey’s Anatomy and Numb3rs, but it’s okay if I miss them and catch them later.

But Moonlight? My knees go week like a schoolgirl just looking at promo shots of the show. This is sooo not like me. (And yes, I have admitted all of this to RK, it didn’t feel honest to keep it from him. He is greatly amused.)

I don’t believe I’ve lusted after a movie star since the 80’s when I drooled over Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing (and then later that surfer movie he did with Keanu Reeves, who happened to be my second favorite actor back then).

Anyway, the whole nice Vampire who considers himself a monster but who is such a gentleman and who is so in control of himself and who fights his own nature to do the right thing is just… too much for me. And I really think that’s it - the gentle monster part of it. Not to say that the actor isn’t also sufficiently hot, but I really think it is the character that has captured my imagination.

I’ve even gone out looking for news about the show and potential spoilers about upcoming shows (this Friday night’s show looks especially hot, there is a promo shot of Beth in his shirt in his apartment drinking coffee on the sofa).

Also, I loved the Matrix trilogy, and I’ve found out that several people involved in The Matrix are involved in Moonlight. Which may just mean that I am attracted to the art of these particular people.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked it out yet, you can watch the pilot on youtube, and then the next episodes are available at the CBS website.

Here is the pilot episode (broken up into several youtube videos)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WhExWs-on1s
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jqx-NWetcHk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ebrpdmtGpvU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UUj5pz2xNE8
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oQjKYdzLAZE

The rest of the shows are on the CBS website, just go to http://www.cbs.com/ and click on Full Episodes and then Moonlight. The most recent one will start playing, but you’ll want to start with the second episode, so go to the bottom of that list and click “watch now” to see the second episode. It will be a small window, or if you want it full screen there is a button (right side, below the video) to push for full screen, push it, then click the “full screen” that will pop up in the video, and you’ll get full screen.

I love good literature. The kind that, every time you read the book, you pick up different symbolism and symbology and nuances that you missed the time before. You can read the book 20 times and pick something new up every time. And then you can join in on a discussion about the book and learn another 100 things that you didn’t pick up on. Very few movies have done this, and fewer TV shows. But this show does this for me. Every time I watch an episode again, I see something different. The symbolism runs very deep. It’s not so much a show about vampires as it is about good vs evil, and about chemistry between people, and about the use (and abuse) of power.

Ya’ll will probably see me comment on this show occasionally. It has really captured my imagination.

GlitterGirl and I carved the pumpkin this afternoon while TwinkleToes napped.

GlitterGirl still deals with sensory stuff, but I insisted that if she wanted to help carve the pumpkin, she had to help gut the pumpkin. And she did. And was completely grossed out about it, but by the end she was laughing about how gross it was, so I think we did okay.

We use the pumpkin carving kit saws, but we don’t use their patterns. We are creative with it, and have a pretty ghoulish face that is all our creation. By using the little saws I can feel comfortable letting her help carve.

And now the pumpkin seeds are in the oven, oiled and salted and a touch of season-all on them.

I just wish that RK had told me about the surprise brownies he cooked last night (and hid in the oven) after I slept. I’m afraid they got cooked again when I preheated the oven. Oops.

And now I need to get RK to cut some onions up, since it takes about four hours to cook homemade french onion soup, and that is what is for dinner. We even have deli sourdough bread to stick in it and fresh cheeses to melt on top. Mmmmmm.

Yes, it is fall.