Dressed Up

Usually when I have visitors I drag them mercilessly around Philadelphia to show them all the of exciting things there are to see in this great city. This week with my Mom in town has been a little different. We did make a trip to the Please Touch Museum, the Aquarium, and Longwood Gardens, but most of the time we spent at home. It may have been the cold outside, which freezes the expression on your face the second you leave the house, that made us hesitant to get out. It may have been that the girls prefer to stay home and play with Grandma than go adventuring. It may have been that I was so tired after this crazy semester that I couldn’t get my tour guide act together. Whatever it was, we spent a lot of time at home, but we were hardly idle!

For several months I have been wanting to make dress-ups for the girls. They are so into pretend play that I could tell this was perfect time for dress-ups to enter the scene. Until a few weeks ago I thought that would be their Christmas present. Then, with the chaos of life and a MIA husband, I gave up on the idea and went to plan B for Christmas. I hadn’t had time to wipe my nose let alone make dress ups.

Enter Mom. How is it that Moms arrive on the scene just in time to rescue their little ones, even when their little ones are 32-years-old? We have had a wonderful week with Grandma Shelly. My mom helped me cook and pick up and dry tears and read stories and brush teeth and wipe bums. She also helped me survive a trip to the fabric store with kids in tow, no small feat. My mom and I spent every evening and every spare moment sewing dress-ups. She was at the sewing machine. I was at the surger. We passed projects back and forth and invented and improvised as we went. We started the week with an empty trunk and ended it with a trunk full of cowgirl outfits, indian outfits, fairy skirts, golden capes, princess dresses, veils, scarfs, and aprons. Kate came down the stairs one evening, saw my Mom sitting on the couch and exclaimed, “Grandma, why aren’t you sewing?,” as if she had abandoned her post.

Since I had gone to plan B for Christmas I decided to give the girls the dress-ups yesterday while Grandma Shelly was here to see their reaction. They were in little girl heaven! There is something very satisfying about seeing the fruits of your labors received with such joy.

Josh is still finishing up all the projects, presentations, papers and exams for the semester. He will be done on Wednesday and we can’t wait! He decided to take difficult classes this year rather than just floating along to graduate. It seemed like a good idea at the time since we are paying for an education, but there have been many moments when that seemed like a really bad decision. He had a moment of glory this week when he came out in the top 10% of his corporate valuation class (hard finance class). He studied his tail off for that (if you will notice, he doesn’t have a tail) so it was nice to see the result of his extremely hard work.

Grandpa Larry came back from Boston this weekend to join us again in Philadelphia. We picked him up from the airport and headed straight to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas display and have mushroom soup. Since then we have worked in several games of hand and foot, a trip to the Art Museum, some tasty meals, and some good discussions. The party won’t stop until we load Grandma and Grandpa on the plane tomorrow afternoon!