hakuna matada
in our case, that means 'the circle of snot' instead of 'the circle of life'. after 4 or 5 blissfully snot free days from alix, she was once again blowing green bubbles from her nose at breakfast this morning. we just keep reminding ourselves that it was this way for rory during her first year at daycare, and the second year was practically illness free.

sound bite
big THUD from from upstairs. thankfully, no wail follows, but i'd like to know that she's not knocked out cold.
me (from downstairs) "rory? what was that? rory? please answer me...what was that?"
rory "it was just me and my hockey stick."

fine arts
the other night, rory decided to put on her fairy dress and do a dance performance for us. we were in the dining room and she would go offstage (or as she like to say 'the dancers are in their dorm') and tell us "the dancers will come out in a few minutes and you have to clap when they come out", then wait a little bit and say "a few minutes are up!"
so we would clap and she would giggle and act embarassed and we would commence providing the music (old macdonald, wheels on the bus or twinkle twinkle little star, as dictated by the lead dancer) and she would dance. dancing is a term used loosely here, as it really was turning around in circles and bouncing up and down. but the part that made me laugh so hard i could not do my job in providing musical accompaniment was when she would stop spinning for just a moment and dizziness would take over. she would start leaning and then kind of wander off in the direction of the lean, sometimes falling to the floor. damn those semi circular canals! but she would laugh, pick herself up, dust herself off and resume le danse.
we can't WAIT until we get duet dance performances with rory and alix.

keeping score
rory is now pretty much wearing underwear to school all the time (ha! it's only been 3 school days!). monday night, she expressed an interest in wearing underwear to bed, so we told her after 5 completely dry nights with successful potty usage in the morning, she can go to bed with underwear on. for those keeping score at home, we've successfully completed the 2nd night, on target for an underwear night on sunday evening. stay tuned for further developments.