Marbled monkeys

Busy week… or not really, but it is nice to pretend sometimes.

We have watched Moonwalker… pretty much every day. I think we watched it twice on Thursday. Ashley is ADORABLE when she watches that. She loves the kid-version of Bad, she loves MJ dancing with the claymation bunny. When they do the ‘flashback’ bit with MJ playing ball in a nice field, she always says "Jackson caught the ball!" and then when he is running and hiding from the bad guys she acts as though the two of them are playing peekaboo "Jackson, (where) are you? AH! There he is!" She tends to get sick of it after Smooth Criminal but that is more than an hour that she sits there happily watching and ‘interacting’ with the tv.

Speaking of MJ, I’ve been reading "the magic, the madness, the whole story". I’m about 200 pages in, so a quarter done. I’m up to the release of Thriller. An interesting book, but the author bugs me and I do roll my eyes at him a lot. When Ashley watched Elmo before nap time, I grab the book and go sit on the kitchen floor and read. At least twice this week I haven’t been able to get free at bedtime so it is nice to feel I have had some me time by reading it during the day like that.

Ashley really wanted to go for a walk the other day, to the "poss o-fiss" aka the post office. It was about freezing but I figured why not. So we got bundled up in coats and gloves and… after all that effort, we did go for a little walk, but not to the post office, and I ended up carrying her most of the way because I guess she was too cold to walk? Silly baby. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out downstairs because there were no customers so we weren’t in the way. Barb even let Ashley (and therefore me!) colour on the whiteboard. I would have taken a picture but Beth was too quick and wiped it clean.

Yesterday morning Ashley helped me do lots of cleaning. Mostly she just kept out of my way, but when I was sweeping the bedroom she got on the bed and played ‘drums’ on the diaper boxes that were there temporarily, which kept her off the floor, plus it meant I had music to entertain me. In the afternoon we went for a walk and it was so nice and almost warm so we decided to go to the playground. "Paygound time!" Ashley loved the swings, even if she did tell me often that she was really high up. Just as she was starting to get bored of it being just us, 2 boys and a lady showed up so Ash had company. The lady turned out to be Kerry’s mum, so that was pretty cool, someone to talk to who I slightly know and who knows a lot about us. She had been sitting a bit away from us and then "is that Ashley?" lol

Today. Oh, today. I am exhausted. This morning, first thing, not even boo boo before we headed out the door, we went to Walt’s so Jake could get a very overdue haircut/shave. Ashley seemed to have a great time, chatting away, she even said that Walt was a nice guy at one point which was cute. Then we headed to Kmart where Ashley walked so we spent our time trying to lead her to where we wanted to go. Jake got what he wanted so it worked out, but it was tiring! I was hoping to find more pot holder things (we got zombie ones a few weeks ago) but their Halloween selection was tiny… duh. Then we went to Stop & Shop and then home, just in time for lunch and then nap.

After nap, we went shopping for wheat-its, as that was how we convinced Ashley to go. We were going to do that anyway (go to Costco to stock up on stuff, including mini wheats) but it is nice tricking her into thinking she suggests stuff. After stupid Costco where they lacked the cereal we desired to purchase much of, we went to the mall. Jake got shoes that he doesn’t know about because they are a Christmas present. Ashley got some nice warm new clothes and a dress that will be her birthday present. I got nothing because I just wanted to go home by that point so I gave up on my searches. Eh, that’s always the way. We went to The Children’s Place and discovered that they had toddler fedoras. In many many styles! Grandma Lisa has already gotten Ashley a black fedora for Christmas, but it was still oh so tempting to buy one. I didn’t… but… oh, it suited her so well.

No plans for tomorrow. Should be nice.