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.

Last month the whole family went camping in Winfield, KS at the annual Walnut Valley Festival. I've attended several times, but this was the first time for Melanie and the girls.

Ella and Claire loved it. A month later and Ella still asks when we are going camping again.

One funny little memory. On the last day I had taken all the support bars out of the tent and it lay collapsed on the ground as we put it away. Ella looked at it, very concerned, and said "Daddy, you popped the tent!"

Indeed.

Not sure why but for the past weeek Claire has been saying "Don't get mad at Daddy. I love my daddy and you can't get mad at him".. Now she likes to say it often and has a smile on her face. Well just now at dinner Claire said it again and then Ella says "Yeah mom don't get mad at daddy - don't get mad at him....don't step on him and hurt him.....because if you do you will have to sit in the chair (black chair I put her in when she does something really bad). Then she says we don't hit, we don't hit anyone, we don't hit Claire, we don't hit Ella, we don't hit anyone." Very funny.

Claire started preschool last month at Highlawn Montessori, a school not too far from home (much closer than the 45 minute ride we were seriously considering for the closest Waldorf School).

The Montessori classroom is full of materials for project work. Ella calls it a museum. Every few days she talks about going to Claire's Museum with excitement - taking Claire to and from School is exciting for Ella.

This morning Ella was woken up by me in order to get Claire to pre-school. She was very tired and her eyes were too. I put her on the changing table and she says "My eyes are not working mom - they are broken!". I told her that happens sometimes when you first wake up. I said give it some time and you will be able to see. About 30 seconds later she screams "I CAN SEEE NOW!!!! I CAN SEE THEY ARE WORKING NOW!!". Oh that was sooooo funny. Nice start to the day.

For the 4th of July we spent the evening with the Mulkey family and watched a pretty impressive fireworks display in their neighborhood.

Claire spent much of it with her hands over her ears.

Ella was terrified of booms that she didn't know were about to happen, and fascinated by any explosion that she was watching.

Every time a firework was done, she would say to us "I want more cracker fire. Where'd the cracker fire go?"

Yesterday on an airplane we hooked up two sets of earphones to my laptop, put in a movie for the girls, and set them off to watch it rather than staring up at the movie the airline was playing.

Today, back at another airport, Ella declared that she wanted me to "Put my phone ears on Daddy! I want phone ears!!!!".

We had a lot of rain over the past few weeks. Ella likes the rain. If you ask her why, she recites a list of all the things that get wet. Trees. Squirrels. Tables. Baby grass (we planted grass seed). Slides. Swings. Cars.

This makes her happy. She even likes being out in the rain, yelling "Daddy I feel sprinkles! Sprinkles Daddy! I feel them!"

Thankfully, at least to me, the sun has been out consistently for several days. The rain has stopped. It's nice out.

That's not making Ella happy. Melanie said that today Ella was upset because it was sunny out.

What she misses most are the understorms.

If you are about to sit down for a meal, continue. You can come back to this post later.

Ella was a little more messy than usual after tonight's dinner. I breaded chicken and pan fried it, and little bits of pepper, paprika and flour were all over Ella's hands. Rather than attempt to wipe all that up, I simply brought her to the sink and washed her hands.

Then I did the dishes.

As I was finishing up, Ella came up holding out her hand. "Messy daddy. Wash my hands." Sure enough, it looked like I had missed one hand. I washed it (again, as it turns out), then asked her how it got dirty.

Today we converted Ella's crib into a toddler bed. I would have held off longer (since I like to sleep in the morning) but at the end of May we are taking a 2 week trip and she will be sleeping in a bed not a crib. We wanted to give her the 2 months to get used to it so that we don't have to worry about her falling out when we are in hotels or on a boat.

We took the crib apart and both Grandma and Grammie watched over the web cam. The girls were so excited. They were jumping in the bed and singing and giggling. They were jumping off bed onto floor - mattress real close to floor. Well this was the first night sleeping in her big girl bed. We will see how she does. I put pillows on the floor just in case she falls out. I also put a gate at her door and locked the bathroom door to Claire's room. The hope is that she will wake up and just play in her room until we get there. Hoping she will not open door and cry because gate is there. We will see.