Playing along with Supah Mommy this week, be sure to visit her if you want to join in on the fun!

one year ago I was here:
Hawaii.
With 26 of my family members.
And I was drinking these:
We celebrated my Grandmother’s 90th birthday.
We had fun.
And I don’t miss it at all!
Not one little bit!
Sniff.

It’s no secret.
My daughter likes to pretend.
It is so frequent that I know within minutes of waking up she will be asking “who should I be today?”.
And I have to play the game. The one where I rattle off all possible names of who she might want to be.
“No.”
“Nope.”
“No, I said someone I’ve NEVER been before, mom.”
On and on it goes until I get it right.
Her decision made long before the game started.
But, we had a first.
An alter, alter ego.
That’s right. My daughter was pretending to be someone pretending to be someone else.
You follow?
It usually starts with a knock on the wall….
“Who is it?” I say
“Hi.” she says. “I’m a rock star. With the Beatles”.
I act appropriately impressed, and then she lets me in on the secret.
“Mom” she whispers urgently, “I’m ACTUALLY 5 1/2 year old Savannah, you know, Sophia’s sister?”
(Hannah had one day of camp with Savannah over the holidays. Sophia is her sister who is in Hannah’s preschool class. Hannah likes to add ages to her characters as she is often pretending to be “2-year old Hannah” or “1 year old Hannah”.)
“But I’m a rock star”
“It’s my business”
“I’m with the Beatles. Want to see Beatles Disney on Ice?”.
And then the rock star, I mean Savannah, I mean Hannah proceeded to display her rocking talents and ice dancing skills.
Sorry you missed it. It was a sold-out show.
And if you are wondering why she knows about the Beatles….

My daughter had ballet/tap class on St. Patrick’s day.
This was her outfit.
She also wore something special in her hair, but I didn’t get a very good shot – but you get the idea.
For some reason it was SO much easier getting her to cooperate with getting ready having some extra “accessories” to wear.

Assembled with love, hours of labor, and only a few expletives from daddy (and Grampy).
Spring and summer just got a little more exciting around here.

“Mom! Guess what?”
“What?”
“All the toys came to life and they are having a Birthday Party!!!!”
“Okay, just make sure to put everything away when you’re done.”
“BUT THAT’S TOO HARD! I CAN’T PUT THEM ALL AWAY ALL BY MYSELF, I JUST GET THEM OUT!!”.

Some of you may recall that last April our dog Baxter had a mast cell tumor removed.
If you don’t, here is a picture:
As you can tell, he was thrilled with the lampshade look.
Anyways, last week he had to have yet another mast cell removed, located pretty much in the same spot as before.
He did well with the surgery and after we brought him home he was too groggy to do much but rest.
Hannah decided he needed a beach hat.
He must have had that had on a good 45 minutes.
Poor thing.
This is what a beach hat looks like on a happy, willing model:
Baxter is doing much better. Hopefully the tumor is, like last time, nothing to worry about.

Take for instance this picture, which I took during a tantrum about something or another.
Of course, I told her (fresh out of the bath) that she should probably put some clothes on before I took any more pictures of her being “sad”.
This got her to stop crying and put her bathrobe on. But, being the Hannah she is, insisted on “reenacting” the unhappiness for a picture, fully covered.
I think you can tell she was “pretending” to be upset. But as always she gets a gold star for creativity.
Also – this isn’t the best quality picture, but a week or so back my son woke up from a nap with the worst bed-head and I tried to capture it on camera:
The back was sticking up just as much as the top.
