Snow on Thanksgiving!
It was fairly thick for a while, but it did not last long enough to really chill the ground and stick. It was still very pretty, though, and I while I hope it isn’t the only snow we see this year, there’s not a lot of chance to get it in South Carolina…
Before going to the plant to see my friends, we stopped by Lillian’s old preschool/daycare to see all her friends. This was one of the best stops of the whole trip; Lilly really loved this place, and she loved Miss Marta (the morning teacher/caretaker) so much that she hasn’t been able to talk to her on the phone without crying. Amazingly, she decided to be a little shy when we first came in, despite everybody making a huge fuss over her; the natural craziness of toddlers in an enclosed area soon kicked in, though, and they were all running around like there hadn’t been a four month absence.
Daddy helped out when it came time to dance to some Disney music (aka, Mousercise!)…
After that, Lillian got to eat lunch with everybody before we went to the plant. I seriously miss this school, it’s tons better than her new one… one of those finds that you’ll never be able to duplicate.
When we visited the Bedford plant, Lillian and Reuven came in to meet the engineers. (At first Lillian was surprisingly reluctant. I asked if she wanted to meet some engineers, and she thought, then said, “Mmmm… no.” By the time we had met five people, she was begging to meet more people; she was quite disappointed when she’d met everybody.)
One of the ways they won her over was by giving her all sorts of stuff — earplugs, a Visteon lunchbox, 12″ of vacuum tubing, safety goggles (two pairs!), and plastic caps (industrial, not milk). She amused herself by putting everything into the lunchbox, and later by creating something fairly advanced for a preschooler: a pressure chamber.
She stuck the vacuum tube and earplus into a cabinet in our hotel room, then placed a cap on the tubing. Once that was constructed, she came over to ask for ingredients to make pressure, and I quote directly, in order…
Running a little late this year, we carved our jack-o-lantern on October 30. Lillian requested a combination of happy and scary (so it got two pointy fangs), and she also chose the mismatched eye shapes. Very cute overall!
For trick-or-treating, Lillian reused her witch costume from last year, and we added a new accessory: Black Cat familiar!
Total sewing time for the cat costume was maybe 8-12 hours. I think he outgrew it while wearing it, it was definitely not something to grow into! But I designed it from scratch (using existing clothes as a basis), so I’m pretty proud of it overall. There were little black mittens (paws) that went along with it, but he lost one while we were out so he’s not wearing them in the pictures.
Lillian got freaked out twice last night.
First, her ceiling fan exploded. Well, not literally, but it blew a bunch of sparks (while running with the fan on and light off), which then blew the circuit breaker and turned off half the upstairs lights. It took us a while to troubleshoot and find out what the problem was, but it was definitely something wrong with the fan. Obviously it’s now turned off, but she didn’t want to sleep in her room any more. So we set her up with blankies and pillows in Reuven’s room (which is mostly unused).
After a bit, she moved her pillows and blankets down to the stairs to camp out there instead. Then she was traumatized by a cockroach wandering by on the step above her. Currently she’s bunked in OUR room, with lots of assurances that there will be no more exploding fans, no more scary bugs… at this rate, though, I expect our alarm clock to catch fire or something.
Lillian was only very mildly disappointed when Reuven was revealed to be a brother instead of a sister. In the last month, though, she’s been talking a lot about “her sister”, which is very much the same as the typical Imaginary Friend that a pre-schooler might create.
However, this morning Lillian decided to personify her sister. Therefore, our CD rack is now an Altschul offspring. (It kicked a golf ball down the stairs this morning, too.)
Lillian helped bake the challah for tonight. Due to the wonderous thing of beauty that is a bread machine, this is really just a process of (1) measuring ingredients (2) dumping them in and (3) braiding the dough after it is mixed, kneaded, and risen.
We still need to work on egg breaking. In addition to a few shell shards that needed to be fished out, there was this:
Oh well, to make bread you need to break some eggs. If it’s an egg bread, that is.
I’ve been salting the tops of some of my loaves recently, instead of using poppy or sesame seeds; it tastes like a big fat eggy pretzel. Mmmmm..
I found this cute little nugget from when Lillian was around 18 months old (November 2005).
My favorite part is the upside-down physics book.
You know how sometimes your young child draws a picture and proudly shows it to you and you have no idea what it is? And of course that is when they ask you if you like it, and if you know what it is.
This is what Lillian brought home from preschool today:
And of course, she asked if I knew what it is. Uh-oh, thought I. Well, it’s kinda round and seems to have two big eyes.
I said, “Is it an owl?”
She gave me one of Those Looks. “Nooooooo.”
“Oh,” I replied. “Is it a cow?” Really grasping at straws at this point.
That got a full Eye Roll, Tortured Sigh, and Look treatment. “Mom, it’s a scribble.”
Righto.
