Had bagels for breakfast and saw the Toccos off on their drive home shortly after the girls woke up to see them. The snow has stopped falling so they will probably have a decent drive back up to Frankfort. Once they had left it was time to take Liesl and Luciana out back to work on making a snowman that I had promised Liesl yesterday that we would make today. She loves playing in the snow, it is one of her favourite things. I remember when I was her age loving the snow. The cold doesn’t affect the young like it does the adults. Snow was fun when I was little. Liesl cannot wait to go sledding at grandpa’s house, that is her next challenge.
We got outside and discovered that the snow had melted just enough, and refrozen as it was barely over twenty degrees this morning, so there was that hard ice crust over the snow making it very hard to work with and so hard and Luciana could not get her hands into it at all without working up a good karate chop to break the ice first. The snow beneath was the dry, super cold stuff that does not stick together at all.
I talked to Liesl about the snow and she understood that we could not make a traditional snow man today because of the ice and the non-sticky snow. Being the smart kid that she is, she asked if she could make a snow angel instead, to which I said yes. Then she said that maybe she could use the plastic carrot and other snowman accoutrements from the snowman kit that Dominica had bought for her, to make a “snow angel man” instead. I was pretty impressed with that idea. Liesl said, “I know, I’m a smart little kid.” The snow angel man idea worked out great, Luciana even helped her a little. It turned out pretty well.
The girls played outside for quite a while, at least half an hour. I was out there with them regretting my lack of coat – having nothing but the fleece that I wear around the house anyway. I was just a bit cold. But the girls were very happy.
As soon as the girls were in from the cold we had to get them dressed so that we could get to the Jefferson Mall to go to Sears where we have an appointment to get new tires put onto the Acadia. Liesl wore a new sweater dress and high boots today. She looks so grown up. A very New York / New England stylish outfit.
We got the mall and dropped off the Acadia. They said that it would take about two hours so we had some time to kill in the mall while they got the tires put on. So we went and got ourselves lunch first at the food court. And then planned to just walk around for a bit. We found a GameStop so went in there. We ended up finding a moderately good deal on Nintendo DS games for Liesl, used of course, so we got her three (on the buy two, get one free sale) including a Dora the Explorer Puppy game, a Disney Princess game and a Team Umi-Zumie game. She was very excited. I found, used as well, the only two Playstation 3 games that I still wanted – Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 – for less than ten dollars each. They were easily forty or fifty the last time that I looked. So I grabbed those. My PS3 collection is now complete, I think. And my XBOX 360 collection as well. I cannot think of a single game that I still want for either system and as both systems have now been replaced, my guess is that that is all that there will be that I will be interested in. It will probably be a year or more before anything comes out for the newer consoles that I am really interested in, so maybe by next Christmas. Until then, I have all I could want for this year.
While we were shopping Luciana had a bit of a breakdown and I had to take her out of the store. She seems to be pretty tired and, as always, that is combined with her constipation which continues to be a major issue. She has improved some but only a little. It has been a few months of severe problems. She goes in spurts from super happy little girl to nearly crying and very unhappy and anti-social, often over the course of just a few minutes. It has been really rough. I can’t wait until we get this figured out and get her happy all of the time again. We have lost so much happy time with her because of months of constipation issues.
The time at the mall ended up being a total of four hours. A long bit of a Sunday afternoon. That wasn’t fun. Dominica and Liesl got a lot of Christmas shopping done, which was nice, while Luciana and I hung out a bit and tried to relax. Taking Ciana into stores really was not an option. On the way home we had to stop at Walmart too for Dominica to run in and get “chocolate milk” for the girls as our supplies have run dangerously low. It is hard to believe that Liesl still drinks one every morning when she wakes up and one every night before she goes to bed. It has been three or four years of this pattern now. She has had that as a major part of her diet for so long that it is easy for forget that that is what she eats. I’m sure she doesn’t think about it much either. It just is how life is to her. She can’t remember a time that she didn’t have that. My guess is that it will always be a comfort food for her, even when she is an adult.
Once we came home we got Liesl playing her new games on the Nintendo 2DS. She was very happy about that. She is really into video games and is so good at them. She is playing games meant for kids much older than she is.
We ordered in dinner from Nona’s which we used to eat at all of the time down in the Beach shopping center. Time to get back into old habits! Once the food arrived we took the girls down to the basement and we watched White Christmas as a family. Mostly Dominica and I watched it, Luciana used her iPad and Liesl played on her 2DS but we all snuggled on the black couch together and had family time. The girls are a bit young for the movie but we wanted to get them used to it as it has been Dominica and my holiday tradition for over a decade now. We knew that this weekend was our last window of time in which to watch it easily before Christmas actually comes with the travel next weekend. White Christmas is on Netflix this year so we just watched it there.
I managed to get Luciana to eat some prunes while we were watching the movies. She is very good, much better than Liesl, about understanding when a food or medicine is supposed to make her feel better and happily eating it. She’ll even ask for medicine or whatever to make her feel better. After she ate three prunes in quick succession she told me that prunes were her favourite food. Here is to hoping that she feels that way tomorrow too and we can keep her eating them.
After White Christmas, Dominica wanted to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Not as classic as White Christmas (but it makes an awesome reference to it late in the film) it is a good film. And after that, off to bed for everyone. An early night for us.
While getting Luciana ready for bed Dominica was able to coax her into relaxing and she was able to poop an epic poop. After that Luciana was so happy and bubbly and ready to run around the house dancing. That is what she needed. Smiles and giggles were all we got until she was falling asleep in bed.
The girls were in bed by nine thirty and I went to bed at ten. Dominica stayed up for a while wrapping presents, this being one of the last chances that she will have until needing to travel. Some of the Christmas presents headed up to Frankfort with her parents this morning.