Pony Up and Speak Up

Everyone in our house is healthy! (knock on wood) Lucas is now back to breathing and sleeping well so for the past 3 or 4 days there is no one in the Molloy household that is excessively coughing, sneezing, dripping or wheezing. We are enjoying this temporary respite. We are also enjoying the sudden boost in temperature (a correlation with the health?). This roller coast winter continues. After freezing temps and lots of snow, it was actually a lovely Spring-like day on Sunday and the weather has been awesome this week. If nothing else, it's reminding me how nice it's going to be to get out of the house consistently again. We are playground junkies in this family.

Although he was still in a pretty good mood when he was sick, Lucas has been in an even better mood now that he's feeling better. He has recently discovered a way to show his happiness/excitement: screeching! Yes, our little guy has finally found his vocal chords and he's not afraid to use them! He and Ellie have fairly lengthy screeching conversations (which Marty and I can't understand but we're pretty sure they're plotting which one of them will wake up in the middle of the night - they tend to suspiciously take turns). We've had several conversations with Ellie about being a good role model and teaching Lucas how to use his "indoor voice" but frankly she finds the loud screaming as fun as he does, so she'll remind him to use an indoor voice but a second later, he screams and then she screams in delight as loud, if not louder, than he just did. So basically it's always very loud and chaotic sounding in our house right now. I am sure the next door neighbors dog is loving it.

In other big developments...drum roll please...our little girl FINALLY has enough hair for pig tails!! She still doesn't have much hair on top, so there's not much we can do with that, but there is defintely enough in the back to make pig tails (still not really long enough to put in one pony tail). She is incredibly exicited about this - she thinks they are "beautiful" (although that is her latest thing now - calling everything from a cat toy to a piece of fruit "beautiful" - but still). She was really excited to wear her hair up in pig tails to school and show them off to everyone (she said, "All of my friends are going to really like my pony tails. They are going to say that it looks really, really beautiful"). As you know, I have inferiority complex about my hair-styling abilities, so be kind! Marty went with "that looks ridiculous" when I first tried it, but Ellie likes it and I think it's cute - even if it's not straight or even! Maybe it makes it even cuter that way! Right? Right?