Keira's Fun House

This past Saturday, we had everyone over for Poppy's 79th birthday party! Anyone who knows Keira knows that she's obsessed with balloons (which she pronounced "bbbbm-bbbbms" until a few short days ago--I'm in mourning over the fact that she now says it correctly), so you can imagine the look on her face when I started blowing up balloons to hang in our family room. I don't think she's ever seen the process before, so when I put the first breath in and it started to inflate, her eyes got HUGE and her jaw literally dropped...and then when I finished it and tossed it out for her to play with, she ran over and kissed me on the leg first, as if to say, "Bless you, kind woman!" She did this every...single...time I blew up a balloon, for a total of about 20 in 2 hours (yes, I took breaks to keep from passing out!). And did I think to videotape the preciousness? Of course not--I was too busy soaking it up.

Before I hung them up, I decided to put ALL of the balloons in her tent and let her really have at it. She did what I call her "Rock-Out Face," with her eyes squinted shut and her mouth wide open, flapping her arms like a crazy person, so most of the pics came out blurry, but here are some from when she'd calmed down a bit:

Man, when was the last time any of us had this much fun...without the help of alcohol?? Anyway, hopefully Poppy had a good time seeing everyone, and now we have a year to dream up something really impressive for the Big 8-0!

We've scheduled a landscaper to come out and do our front and back yards so we can get Operation Swing Set underway ASAP. Keira likes to turn her little wooden chairs upside down and sit inside, yelling, "Fwing-fwing!" as if to remind us how pitiful it is that our daughter doesn't have a real swing in her own back yard yet, so we figure we'd better get on that before she reports us to CPS. For now, we hang out on the back patio a lot. Here's Keira having a picnic snack, during which she discovered that anything dipped in water tastes absolutely delicious:

"Mmmmm, water-soaked cracker! My favorite!"

Yesterday was Keira's last gymnastics class until the new session starts in July, so here she is staring blankly at Coach Tiffany, who wanted her to choose between a Winnie the Pooh sticker and a Mickey Mouse one. Keira does not yet understand the concept of "or" and is mesmerized by teachers (storytime girl, gymnastics coach, etc.), so she does the Blank Stare quite a bit at times like this.

And, just because I think it's funny, here's Binks kicking back at her Big Girl Table, having a snack...note her purse on the table, which no doubt contained the tip she planned to leave me IF the goldfish crackers were prepared just right and I kept her sippy cup of milk refilled promptly!

As for Greg and me, we've pretty much decided that homeownership rules. I took my first bath in our oval tub the other night after a looooong hard day, and it was HEAVENLY. I subscribe to the same theory of bathwater temperature as Jerry Seinfeld does to pain medication: "Give me the maximum allowable human dosage...figure out what will kill me, and then back it off a little bit." Hence, I pretty much boiled myself alive while reading up on the new "Sex and the City" movie, and my darling husband even brought me a glass of wine before scurrying off again. Was there ever a more girly ritual than this?? Now if we can just get rid of the man-eating crickets in the garage, we'll be in paradise!