For the past 2 weeks Ella has been waking up dry. She has been wearing normal diapers to sleep since when she would have an accident she would pee right out the front of the diaper and soak her bed. I guess she was holding it till the early morning and then it would just rip. She also sleeps on her belly so it made it all worse. Anyway she has been dry so upgraded to a pull-up. If she continues we will move to undies next week. Very excited. Was not sure how long this last part of the process would take. She turned 3 1/2 in June.

Last week the girls attended a week long Musical Theater Camp. They worked on pieces from Shrek The Musical. They really enjoyed themselves. They are always singing and doing shows at home and have so much fun together. Claire's voice has grown so much in the last year. She sings so beautifully and she usually makes me cry. She has developed a nice vibrato and it is pretty impressive fro 5 1/2. Ella also has a very cute voice and sing full songs with correct notes and words.

So in the show Ella was in the opening number. She played Shrek's mom and a little boy played the dad. In the song they were singing to little 7 year old Shrek about leaving home. About it is time for him to go. Lyrics like "It's a Big Bright Beautiful World. With possibilities everywhere. It's peaches and cream and every dream come true........But not for you. Very funny. Anyway Ella did a great job. She really surprised us with her performance. She sang almost all the words and did all her blocking.

The second and closing number Claire and and Ella were apart of an ensemble piece. Claire played one of the little pigs and Ella the ugly duckling. very cute.

Then Claire sang her solo. She played little Fiona. She is stuck in a castle and it is day 23 and she she dreams of the day a prince will come save her. After Claire another girls plays teenage Fiona and comes out a girl playing Adult Fiona. At this point it is has been 4523 days locked in the castle. At the end of number all three girls sing together. Claire did so well. She sang great and seemed very comfortable on stage. She was expressive and believable. We are soooooooooo proud of her. This is what she wants to do and I will do everything I can to support her. In 2 weeks she starts a musical theater class. We both will be trying out for Annie in Sept and I hope this is something we can do together.

We spent the last ten days in Southern California, first in San Diego the wedding of a cousin, second in Orange County with Melanie's cousin. It was a great trip, and our girls were introduced to about 20 of their cousins.

For the second half of the trip we rented a car. Several days into the trip Claire must have been thinking about how we ended up with a vehicle.

While we were driving, she asked "Daddy did you get this car from a store or did you find it and take it?"

I explained to her that we rented it, and chuckling told her that I did not steal it.

Yesterday Ella was waiting for us to gather up all the stuff we brought for a day at the pool. She and Claire were entertaining themselves on a concrete area by the exit. I stood by them long enough to see Ella stomping on bugs, both real and imagined, while singing a little song she made up. It had one simple verse paired with one short dance move.

"Smashed by the biggest little people in the world" Stomp, Move to next bug
"Smashed by the biggest little people in the world" Stomp, Move to next bug
"Smashed by the biggest little people in the world" Stomp, Move to next bug

We spent the day today playing on Mission Beach in San Diego, the place where my parents grew up. The girls have spent most of the day getting covered in sand.

During a session of "run in towards the ocean, then run out when the waves come in" Ella pointed up and said "Look! A newspaper in the sky!"

Sure enough, there was a small aircraft pulling an advertisement for beer behind it for all the little children on the beach to see.

Today we had a "goodbye pull-up party" for Ella. She has been in undies for a week now with only 2 accidents at the beginning. Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The party consisted of pull-up hats, cupcakes and ice-cream. Then we had the ceremonial throw the pull-up in the garbage and say good-riddens ceremony. This is a good day :) Attendees were Ella, Claire, Chloe (neighbor friend) and me. We sang to the tune of "Happy Birthday" "Good-bye Pull-ups to you......" followed by "Hello undies to you....."

Ella she is 3 1/2 this month. It was time. I am very happy and I think she is too.

Some weeks ago things panned out such that I had Ella, Claire and our neighbor Megan all in a car at the same time. Ella and Megan got into a conversation that exposes one of many little linguistic differences between the Midwest and New England.

Even after a decade, those rubber soled casual shoes that sometimes get used for working out are sneakers. That's how our kids know them too. But if you grew up in Kansas City, they are Tennis Shoes.

Over dinner tonight Ella was chatting and chatting away, telling us everything that seemingly came into her mind. For a while the subject was Monkies, and during this part of the banter Ella began to tell us about the Barrel of Monkies(tm), discussing the classic toy where the Monkies form a chain with their arms.

Yesterday our community had it's annual Easter Egg hunt on the Saturday after Easter. It's a great event for kids up to six years old and is well organized.

Each year an Easter Bunny is hired. It's always the same costume, and likely the same person each year (but we never really know who is behind those perma-kind eyes silently waving at and hugging our children).

Last night as I was putting Ella to bed she asked me a simple question.

"Daddy, can you leave my door open? I want Mesquaki [our cat who likes the kids] to sleep with me."

I said no. We want her door closed or she will come wandering out or get woken up. I gently explained that sometimes we leave Claire's door open for the cats because she is older.

She tried again.

"Daddy, can you leave my door open? I am scared and want Mesquaki to help me."

Still no, but that rarely stops a persistent child.

"Daddy, I need my door open. I went to the doctor."

At a family gathering we celebrated Ella's birthday this evening. Because parties must have themes, the theme for this 3rd birthday party was ponies. And among the themed items that showed up was a pink pony pinata and a nicely decorated tiny baseball bat for whacking the pinata.

Ella took right to the bat. She wanted to play ball in the house. Barring that, she just carried it around.

In a recent round of lessons-on-bugs, the girls and I were outside talking about spiders. We had several examples of neat spider to look at with a good contingent of daddy long legs spiders. Ella thought this was a funny name.

We've probably not explored spiders in the back yard since August or early September.

It's always fun how kids combine things that were not really expected to be blended.

Melanie really enjoys yoga, and it's something she shares with the girls. Claire loves going to the kids yoga classes when Melanie goes for a session. Ella follows along, and can do a few of the poses really well.

Her favorite is either the tree pose or downward dog. It's unclear, but she does them both randomly.

In the last five months or so Claire's progress in learning the violin has been wonderful, almost stunning. She passed from the "Pre-twinkle" phase into "Suzuki book I" and is picking up on songs at a good clip. She has a great ear and can pick up simple tunes in the key of A pretty easily. She only knows the fingerings for tunes in the key of A. She also likes to sit at the piano, on which she has no formal training, and plink out the tunes she knows on the violin. It's fun.

In mid October we decided to finally move Ella from a day bed to a full size bed. The crib we originally bought for Claire converted from crib to day bed to full size. So she has this huge bed now, sorta takes up the whole room.

Within minutes of getting it set up, Ella and Claire set off testing the bed's most critical characteristics. Like how high you can bounce on it.