Grant's being really silly right now.  He's coming at me like a robot, saying, "Ro-bot is com-ing," in a robot voice, and then when he gets to me he sneezes with a big "Achoo!" and then falls over backwards onto the floor.  Over and over and over again.  Who knows where he got that from. 

Since I'm here (which probably won't be for long, but I have a brief moment), here is a list of Grant's favorite sayings:

"That's so silly!"

"That's so funny!"

"That makes me laugh!"  (Usually this can be anything, such as blinking Christmas lights.)

"That's my favorite!"  (Said about most anything we give him.)

I think there was one more along these lines, but I forget at the moment.  But it sure makes me think of him as a good-natured kid, since he finds most everything silly, funny, and agreeable.  He also loves to call me Mommy Dolphin... he says, "Hello, Mommy Dolphin!" with the cutest intonations.  For Madeleine I'm Mommy Hello Kitty Ladybug, since she's Hello Kitty Ladybug.  She used to be several things.... it started when they were hiding, and they'd make animal noises to let me know where they were, and I'd call them baby pigs and horses and zebras and things like that.  But somehow they each settled on a certain name that they like.

The kids got a cool cabinet from my mom for Christmas.  It used to be hers when she was little, and then ours, and then went to my cousins' house.  Now it's with us.  It has a lower cabinet with shelves, and an upper cabinet with shelves, and in the middle is a counter-like spot.  My mom gave the kids lots of toy kitchen equipment and lots of wooden food -- a fruit set, a pizza set, and a sandwich set.  The food velcros and you can mix and match and cut and serve, and they both love it.  Then we got out the play-dough and use that to make more food.  We got Grant a play-dough Cars set, which has a Mater that spits out strands of dough.... one makes thin strands like spaghetti, which is perfect for serving with the kitchen stuff. 

Also, Grant got an indoor basketball hoop that we put on the pantry door, and he just loves to shoot baskets all the time. 

Also.... they both got big kid bikes to ride, and so we've been going out (thank goodness it has warmed up!) riding -- Madeleine loves hers, though Grant isn't really into using his yet.  But he's still just 2.  I'm sure he'll like it better a bit later.

It snowed a little last night, and by the time we got dressed and went outside, it was almost gone.  But Madeleine got a shovel, and then we got buckets, and they shoveled itty bits of snow into the buckets, and eventually we had enough for a snow ball.  Then I managed to get three little snow balls out of Madeleine's snow, and made an itty bitty snow man.  Grant just liked to put leaves in his little bucket of snow.  They had lots of fun putting in snow and leaves and mixing it up.  I guessed it was a snowy leaf stew.  Madeleine says, "How can you know?"  (She asks "How can you know?" about a zillion times a day, about just about everything I say.)  Well... it's snow and leaves mixed up.  It could be stew, right?  Or maybe a snowy leaf cake.

Grant has started repeating words, and then if it's a hard word he'll say it, and then add, "What does that mean?"  Then he listens to our explanations.  He probably learned it from Madeleine, because she's always asking that.  She wants to know about everything.

Grant has a little fever tonight, which might explain why he's been so fussy and clingy lately.  He wants to be attached to me all the time, it seems.  I was getting frustrated, but it's more understandable if he's sick.

I played a lot of Skyrim, but now I'm not so into it.  The kids still like to go and watch me play sometimes.  They like killing dragons and catching fish and walking around in rivers and under the water. 

Also, I started posting to the MosaicBricks blog:  http://mosaicbricks.blogspot.com/  Casey M. started it, and now I contribute.

While we're on the internet link topics, here are some for my mom:

http://modelbuildingsecrets.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/clickits-kaleidoscope/

http://speakingjargon.tumblr.com/post/14169659474/lego-rainbow-dash-rainbow-dash-at-brickcon-by  (I didn't make it, but I was interested to see it posted)

http://maxi-malist.tumblr.com/post/14097587217/w1592760-by-eilonwy77-on-flickr  (One of my geometric drawings got blogged!  How's that for exciting?    )

The kids are all excited about time and numbers and odd and even numbers, about how many minutes it is till a certain time, whether the clock has three or four numbers in a row that are the same...  I feel like a bad parent quite often, but at least we do talk about a lot of learning things, even when we're doing other stuff.  We play Plants vs. Zombies, and Madeleine is learning about adding by 25s, and figuring out how much more sun we need to plant a plant.  I'm glad she has some motivation to learn these things. 

I know I've been a terrible blogger lately.  I hope my kids don't grow up and wonder terribly what happened in the last month.  Not much, really.  Too many video games, but then it's cold and cloudy and not fun for going outside.  Grandma Ellen did take Madeleine and me to the Nutcracker, and my mom came too.  Madeleine liked it, but got tired in the second half.  She expressed the most interest in the fog that was on the stage for the Snowflakes.  In the second act she really wanted to go home, but when people asked her after the fact if she liked it, she said she did.  We also ran into trouble in the first act, when there were loud cannon explosion sounds -- she's terrified of loud noises.  And we had trouble at intermission, because there was a long line for the bathroom.  I don't know if she really had to go potty that badly, but I think the length of the line scared her (especially since I said we'd gotten into a shorter line, but it wasn't that short-- just short compared to the people at the very end of the line) -- and by the time we got to the bathroom, she was crying and having a little breakdown.  But I think it was just a combination of being overwhelmed with everything... the people, the dancing, the noise, the experience, the line... and she was just a bit emotional.  After that we bought cookies and ate them together out in the lobby, and that made her happier.  She still wanted to go home, but we managed to get her through the second act.

I had a birthday... I'm 34 now.  I got my presents really early, and I'm having my party really late (10 days after the actual birthday), so it was pretty anticlimactic, but I got to go out for both lunch and dinner, and that was nice...

Well, I'm not thinking of much to write about.... so I'll be off to do other things.