Pachyderm Parade.

Every year, the circus comes to town and puts on a Pachyderm Parade through downtown DC.  I thought it would be fun to take the kids to because I love a parade and I'm way too cheap to dole out the big money it takes to take a whole family to a circus these days.  (Seriously, tickets START at $23 plus at least $5 for processing fees.)

 Alas, none of my kids were game for taking the train downtown to sit around and wait for a parade.  Luckily, Leah and Olivia were game.  And it's actually a lot of fun to be with only 1 kid and two adults, even if you get to the parade site an hour early. 

 Finally, the circus came!

 The pictures are all a little blurry because it was really dark.  Also, those elephants were booking it.  I didn't think an elephant could walk that fast.  I swear they were practically running.

 Next up, horses.

 And the ringmaster.

 And finally, the clowns.  All told, the whole parade lasted about 5 minutes.

But we did score some great trinkets!  

Dance recital.

June has been taking a dance class at the community center this winter.  It culminated with a recital of sorts. 

No costumes or other ridiculous things.  Just a chance to come watch the 4 girls from the class show what they've learned.  

As usual, June picked out her clothes by herself.  She felt very strongly about the long sleeve/short sleeve dance costume combo.  And I love the extra flower pins she added for flair.  

Miss Kathryn put together a very cute little pre-ballet class, even though she had 4 very easily distracted little girls.

At lunch bunch, one of the other mom's braided june's hair into a loose braid.  It was very cute, but held it's style about as long as a Seibert's hair can hold a style- which is to say, about 5 minutes.  Still, June refused to let me try to redo it.  So we tried to reinforce all of the drooping hair with hair bows and bobby pins.  (Maybe I did go all in on this dance recital after all.)  When we got to the class, June gave her hair one good shake and everything fell out immediately.

June did a good job of trying to stay serious.

But it's easy to get distracted when everyone is in their fancy best.  

June took her turn around the room.

And checked herself out in the mirrors.

At last, the final bow.  

Poor Jo.  All she wanted to do was join the big girls for dance class.  She did pretty well, if you consider what a wreck she's been historically.  At two and a half, she might finally be mellowing down a little bit.  (Comparatively speaking, of course.  We only had to leave the room once.  Normally, the whole thing would have erupted into an hour long tantrum.)

It didn't help that one completely rude person kept making rude comments regarding my "little boys" behavior.  Come on, I know she has short hair, but don't the pink pants and purple skirt give anything away?  Then again, they may have been mad at how much I was emasculating my little boy.  

Back to the show.  Here's June and her teacher, Miss Kathryn, who deserves a special award for teaching these four spirited little girls.  

Best, best, best, best, best, best mom ever.

Papa's spring break was spent in North Carolina.  NC State brought him down for what they called a mini-visiting professor position for the week.  

While he was gone, we spent a lot of time with our favorite temporarily dad-less friends.  Amna's dad was back in Pakistan visiting his family for over a month.  We decided not to complain about the week papa was gone.

This is June's unicorn pegasus, Morgan.  She made it in school and it's been floating around our house for some time.  June was not happy when she found out I finally committed Morgan to the big recycling bin in the sky.

These two are really becoming close friends.  Especially after I convinced June that having a sister means you get to borrow each other's clothes and that's like having two sets of clothes!  (Good cover for the fact that jo is constantly wearing June's dresses.

June got some birthday money and I found this My Little Pony wedding castle she's been pining for on clearance.  That got me billing as the best, best, best, best, best best, best, best, best, best best, best, best, best, best mom ever.  Sorry to those who actually gave her birthday money.   Sorry to those who actually gave her birthday money.  But I had to take the praise while I could.  About 5 minutes later, I got an earful of "You're the worst" after denying a candy request.


Without Brandon around, time moves pretty slowly.  And a thought has been going around in my head for quite some time.  Jo's hair has been inconsistent at best.  It took a good year for baby fuzz to grow in.  and now it finally seems like some real hair is growing in under the fuzz.  But none of the many lengths of her hair are the same.  She looks like Tom Petty with her stringy few long hairs.

At the girls' preschool there are a fair number of families from across India and the Middle East who have been giving me the advice that the only way to get hair growing is to shave your baby's head.  (Good advice from people with heads of full, beautiful black hair.  I'm constantly jealous.)  Yet, their argument has merit.  Why not give Jo's hair a fresh start?

I didn't shave it like suggested, but I did chop it all pretty short.  Personally, I love pixie haired JoJo.

When I tried to show her a picture of her hair in the camera, she was much more interested in seeing a picture of her funny face.

Don't you want to eat this kid up?

Even when I went in to check on the kids after the fell asleep, Jo say up and immediately started giggling.  She's such a pleasant little girl.  Except when she's not. At that point, watch out.

In an unrelated note, on the same night, I also whipped up a batch of Great Grandma Nellie Aiker's famous fruitcake.  It involved tons of dried fruits, nut, butter and molasses and at least a month of aging in the hall closet.  We ate a portion immediately without aging and sent half back to Cleveland for GG.  I've been snacking on the remainder.   6 weeks into the aging process, it's pretty good.  But next time, I'm going to be better about spraying it with brandy every 3 days.  Then I think it would be perfect.

June's journaling.

Brandon was gone for 10 days in March.  He had a one week invitation to NC State over his Spring Break immediately followed by a guys' weekend in Boston.  We didn't plan it to work out that way, but we buckled down for 10 days on our own.

 June spent an afternoon working hard on dressing her Polly's and insisted I didn't peek.  When it was finally time for the unveil, she revealed that she'd dressed them all up as moms.  I was a little hurt at first, but then realized, who am I kidding?  It's not like I ever put forth an effort to be glamorous like a Polly.  At least she's realized not everyone is a princess.

 In the meantime, Henry was in the shower.  When he came out, I insisted on combing his hair.  He didn't like it, even though I told him this is how papa and all of his uncles probably wore it in high school in the 90s. Time for a haircut, Grandma.

June's been taking her journal to bed and producing some pretty great stuff.  She came out to show me this picture of Aunt Jenni and I at John and Kingkini's wedding.  You may remember this shot:

 After the frumpy Polly incident, this boosted my ego a bit.  Especially when she remembered to draw our long, thin necks.

 June's been really into Manga- or Japanese comics of a certain style- lately.  I can tell it's been sinking in because she's been drawing thought bubbles with her unicorns.  Here's what she told me about this drawing. It's night (hence the crescent moon), and the unicorn is thinking about her two unicorn friends while she shoots magic out of her horn.

Another similar drawing, except this time it's snowing, there's a castle, and the unicorn is wearing a watch and holding a cookie.

 This must be an oldie from the journal, because June (J) is clearly labeled as 4.  But she does have a pretty dress, curled hair, and a bindi.

 I think this is another night shot of June and Henry (the big kids, and June has chosen a more casual fashion for herself).  She also has eyelashes and pigtails now.  I think that's Georgie on the ground and that June is holding a tiny unicorn.  I don't think Henry is supposed to be eating the unicorn.  

 Similar concept in this shot, except no Jo, and I think that must be another unicorn toy.  I really like Henry's long neck.

And that leads to my favorite drawing yet.  Here's the whole family- June, Jo, Papa, me, and Henry.  I really like this one because I'm wearing the dress I made out of a sari.  Plus, we're all brown, because June insists we're all Sri Lankan, like her friend Kiyoma.

While June was creating art, Henry and I worked on the world atlas puzzle, which I have mixed feeling about.  Obviously, i like it because it allows me to brush up on my poor geography skills.  But i also hate this puzzle because each piece is the shape of a country and the whole thing doesn't really fit together until every last piece is in.  Georgie learned quickly she could get some fast attention by running up and giving the puzzle a shake.  This puzzle did have the distinction of being one of the few puzzles with all the pieces.  (We get all of our puzzles from the thrift store.  And when you only pay 69 cents for a puzzle, there's no guarantee all 1000 pieces will be there.)  We did have all the pieces until Sri Lanka mysteriously went missing.  I don't want to point any fingers, but see the picture above about Kiyoma.  I'll let you make your own conclusions.

Patuxent Wildlife Refuge- March 9.

We were finally warming up a little, so we decided to spend the day outside at Patuxent Wildlife Refuge and Research Center.  

First we hit up the nature center.  Georgie was not so sure about this polar bear.

June, however, had a pretty fun time with it.

We ate our lunch outside, where the weather was really starting to warm up.

  It probably hit 60 that afternoon.  Henry, a true midwesterner, wished he could take his shirt off to really enjoy it.

With the binoculars, you could spot the original telegraph line post that carried the news of President Lincoln's death to New York.  They really don't touch anything in this refuge.

Next, we went hiking on a few of the very well kept trails around the preserve.

But all these kids really need is a lake to throw sticks in.  

Of course, Georgie just walked in the water and got her shoes wet.

Henry really upped his helicopter parenting here.  "Junie, honey, don't get to close to the lake!"  "JoJo, stay close to us so we can see you!"

Meanwhile, the parents were just off making silly faces.

We made it almost halfway around the lake before we had to turn back for the tram ride we had tickets for.

JoJo met up with another kid and they spent a few minutes giving the wolf statue kisses.

Finally it was time to climb aboard the tram.

We got lucky our electric tram still had a charge.  It was getting low and we heard on the next trip they made everyone get off and walk up the hills.