Here follows a post by Andrew:
This morning, while working in the yard with Cora and Olivia I was given a series of little gifts by Cora. For about thirty minutes Cora and Olivia were playing in the “Forest of Spookiness” as was I when I could be pulled away from my chores. During one of my visits to the forest, and while feeding the koala bears, I was given a single green leaf and told, “This key opens the House of Happiness.” I thanked her and asked her where I could find the House of Happiness. She looked away with a “hmmm”.
A few moments later, Cora found another leaf, handed it to me with the words, “This shall lead you to the house of happiness.” All of this was happening as a side-plot to the main play-story of feeding the koala bears who lived with her in the Forest of Spookiness.
A few moments later Cora handed me another green leaf with this explanation: “When you are going to the house of happiness there are monsters along the way. This will protect you from the monsters.” And last, a few minutes later, but perhaps most importantly, Cora informed me that, “The “House of Happiness is actually in the Forest of Spookiness.” So I had been there all along, just not realizing it.
I have no idea where all of this came from, but at moments I felt like I was be given the answer to the meaning of life by a 200-year-old philosopher.
Cora is great at singing and making up songs as she goes along. Just this evening she composed a song for us to sing together. She started off by assigning Andrew and me parts to sing, singing them for us to repeat, then we put it all together under her direction. It went something like this (this also demonstrates her love of the revolutionary war as a topic):
Andrew: "Blue coats, red coats; blue coats, red coats; blue coats, red coats."
Cora: "Guns, guns, guns."
Lesli: "The British are coming, the British are coming, the British are coming."
Cora: "The Blue coats are coming to save your town and that is the end of our song."
Both of the girls have been having fun spending time in the new garage. Cora can ride her bike around in it when the cars are out (since it has been raining a lot lately) and she likes to go up into the attic with Daddy. Andrew has set up a little play area for them in the exercise room attachment including their little play kitchen and a store. He converted a shelving unit he had made into a store counter that's just their size. They like to put on their aprons and play store, Cora always gets her customers to buy lots of things!
So much has happened in the last month, I've fallen far behind and I don't know where to begin. I'll start with very recent events and work backward.
Christmas morning was very fun! Olivia was up at a fairly usual time, Cora slept in after awakening twice during the night. Both of the girls were very excited, Cora more so, but Olivia really started getting into it as well. They opened their presents and played all morning. Cora was probably most excited about her new bike from Santa Claus, she was so surprised and jumped for joy. It's harder to say what Olivia liked most, but it seemed to be the Little People horse and stable set that she got from Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Tim a few days earlier. It was fun to see how delighted they were.
Cora tried out her bike only to discover that it seemed not to work very well, maybe a bit too big. Today Cora and I went in to Campus Bicycles to try out some bikes in hopes of finding something that worked better. She tried out some smaller bikes and was really able to get around well, she chose a pink one with a basket, bell, and streamers on the handles. It has training wheels of course, as did the one from Santa. She rode it all around the driveway when we got home, having just a little trouble with getting started sometimes and the gravel area in front of the new garage. She even rode around inside the garage, especially after it started raining. I video taped her speeding around and even managed to have the camera going when she had her first fall. She can't wait to go riding at Bidwell park with Daddy!
Unfortunately I am unable to remember all the many little observances that I made over the last month, thinking I should write them down, but not getting around to it. I'll have to try to remember some and blog more often, so I don't forget as much. Like Cora's African boy story from last week...
Cora told me she and Olivia were 2 little boys from Africa, and that they were pretending to be girls. Upon further questioning from me I discovered that they were pretending to be girls so that they could be my daughters, Cora & Olivia. Unfortunately, their house in Africa had fallen down and they had nowhere to live since both their parents had died. So they thought if they pretended to be Cora & Olivia they could live with us and have a new home. She talked about their pet giraffes and other animals back in Africa as well. Later when I was telling someone else about her story she continued talking about Africa and her old home there, it was very cute. Cora has a good imagination and seems to have a knack for storytelling. Her vocabulary can be surprising at times, last night she was creating an "avalanche" of books off her bed onto the floor. When Andrew asked her where she heard the word avalanche, she said she learned about it from "Buster." "Postcards from Buster" is a cartoon on PBS that she somtimes watches, it's a spinoff from "Arthur" by Marc Brown.
Olivia likes to give goodnight kisses to everyone except me. She puckers up real big and gives at least one kiss to everyone, sometimes more. But for some reason, she doesn't want to give me a goodnight kiss. She will give me kisses at other times, but not for goodnight. It must have something to do with being the one to put her to sleep. She is very sweet about kisses and hugs in general, she can be quite the little love bug. When she has done something to hurt Cora, she gives Cora a kiss as her way to say sorry.
I'll try to write more soon.
Things have been very busy and a little crazy lately. With two sweet rambunctious girls around how can it not be crazy?! The holidays have come upon us much too quickly as they always seem to do and I have much updating to do. I'm totally redoing the computer with a new operating system and I've switched to a new internet provider so I'm still working out all the quirks. My new email is @digitalpath.net with the same beginning as before. I will now attempt to include a current picture of the girls.
