Monday memory: dancing with babies

Dancing with babies was our evening entertainment for the babies second winter. They were about 1 at the time. We would put on some silly kids music like Philadelphia Chickens and each take a baby and dance. Meg and Drew particularly like to be dipped and spun. We danced after dinner most nights in the kitchen spinning on the linoleum

As they grew older it evolved to me and sometimes my husband dancing around the kitchen with Meg and Drew. We would take turns leading the dance line around the kitchen table. They really liked the Hoppity Song and Man in a Hat. Daddy would help them do "super big jumps" during the Hoppity song.

Now Meg still likes to dance. Currently her favorite song is Damn Good Times by They Might Be Giants, which is about a girl who is a natural dancer (and fortunately the word damn is only heard in the background) Her dancing is frenetic and bouncy until the songs gets to the slower section which she calls the stomping part.

Meg wants dance lessons. In the rural area in which we live this mean ballet lessons where she will be told exactly what to do. I can't decide if she will like that or if it will make her crabby. If we do decide to do them, I hope they won't stifle her informal fun movements she does now.

Monday memory: Drew in a dress

This is an apt memory for today, since Meg mentioned this morning that she dreamed of Drew wearing a purple dress and a bow tie last night. We are uncertain whether she actually dreams about Drew or if she mentions these on mornings when we seem crabby. She certainly emphasizes whatever details make up smile. By the end of the story about the dream daddy in the dream was wearing a bow tie on his dress and several on his toes.

Drew was a girly boy. He really liked wearing dresses for dress up. In fact the only reason he didn't wear Meg's dresses to school was that I claimed they were too big for him. He was always the smaller twin and was often wearing a size smaller than Meg.

I looked at Drew's dress habit as cute. Girls get the more interesting dress up clothes at that age anyway. I also hoped it meant that I wasn't raising either Meg or Drew with gender stereotypes, even though Meg is a girly girl as well. As mentioned above I didn't let him wear Meg's dresses to school, I'm not sure why I couldn't get over that. We had heard that he would be socialized out of it by kindergarten, so we were enjoying the dress wearing while it lasted

We have a slide show of pictures of Drew and most of the ones from preschool have him dressed up in a purple dress and if Meg is in the picture she is dressed up too, often in a ballerina costume.

Names Meg has called herself

Meg likes to give herself names. It all started one evening in the bath. After she had her hair shampooed she declared to her daddy that her name was "Princess Flavored Gum because that is what my hair smells like" By the next day the name had become Princess Flavored Gum Gum. This name lasted about a week and eventually it was declared that Princess Flavored Gum Gum was not only her name, but my name, my husband's name and one of her preschool teacher's name as well.

By several weeks later she was coming up with a new name every morning. She insisted that we call her by that name. We think they were partially based on what she was wearing those days, but were not really sure. I wrote quite a few of them down so here is a partial list.

Princess Flavored Gum Gum
Princess Mint Candy
Princess Sparkle Pink
Princess Sparkle Pink Frosting
Sparkle Pink Ariel (this too was the name of the whole family)
Alice (from Angelina Ballerina, her daddy was declared to be Angelina)
Princess Mermaid Candy Mint
Princess Bow
Princess Monkey Marshmallow
Flowerlight Princess Fairy
Princess Cake Princess
Princess Flowerpetal
Mommy (yes she decided to call herself Mommy)
Princess Apricot Flowerlight
Princess Zebra Candy Cane Stripe
Princess Strawberry Flower Cowgirl Snowflake
Princess Cotton Candy
Princess Polkadot Flower Cheek.

She now does this rarely. We miss it, but it is easier to call her Meg, than to have to remember the name of the day.

Now who would like some cake?

We want cake! Where's our cake? -TMBG Seven

In celebration of the 300 (or 200) blog round up
I present cake. This is my husbands birthday cake from the beginning of the month. Usually he asks for an receives sour cherry pie, but this year he wanted chocolate cake, so I made Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte or Black Forest Cherry Cake. The decoration on top is his age, which I always label the cake or pie with. You can tell Meg helped with the chocolate decorating on the outside.


I'm relatively new to the ALI community since I found it after the loss of Drew to SUDC about a year and half ago. I have appricated all the Mel does from the Blog round up to the LCFA. Especially I appreciate that she made room for me to be the first person on the blog list with loss of a toddler rather than loss of an infant. There seem to be few groups for me since most losses I read about are earlier in the child's life or later. The ALI community has continued to support me as the grief continues, which most people in my everyday life don't like to think about.

Thank you Mel.

Monday memory: the bye-bye game

When Meg and Drew were 18 months they like to play the bye-bye game. What is the bye-bye game you ask? You walk into the room where mommy is say bye-bye and walk back out. Repeat until you are tired of it.

This would keep Meg and Drew occupied for what seemed like nearly an hour. They would never say bye-bye to each other, just to me or my husband. Then leave and come back in, sometimes together sometimes separate. After awhile the two of them would start giggling at each other when they entered the room to say bye-bye yet again.

It is always amazing what keeps a toddlers attention.

And yes it is Tuesday again, perhaps it's time to change the name from Monday memory.

Monday memory: three princess pull-ups

At age 3, Drew was nowhere near potty trained. Meg had already started down that road and had alternated periods of wanting to wear big girl underpants and wanting her pull-ups back. Drew didn't care. He was happy with pull-ups. We bought both girl and boy gendered pull-ups for the twins, but it turned out they both preferred the girl ones. In particular the princess ones. In particular the princess on with three princesses on it.

The packs came with one princess and three princess designs. They would rifle in the pack to find the three princess ones. In fact Meg was so enamored of them she hid them once. I would be changing their pull-ups and announcing to Drew and Meg that we had run out of three princess pull-ups. Meg ran off so I changed Drew, who would classically say "Not right now please" when I asked to change his pull-up. After I was done Meg came running back in saying I found one, holding up the three princess pull-up proudly. After she had done this a few times, we found her stash of three princess pull-ups in the bottom of the china cabinet.

When Drew died. Meg was in underpants again, almost trained she was fully trained by summer. Drew was still wearing his three princess pull-up.

Monday memory: switching coats

The church next to my college has once a month dinners in the church basement sponsored by several of the various religious groups on campus. Faculty are welcome to come although the majority of the attendees are students. It's free and usually kid friendly food, usually pasta, so we typically go.

The last one we attended before Drew died was mexican night instead of pasta. Meg and Drew wouldn't eat the tacos themselves, but enjoyed the beans and shredded cheese greatly eating them each separately. One of the substitute preschool teachers was there and commented on how Meg and Drew were two of her favorite students, even though she isn't supposed to have favorites.

We stayed late, since my husband doesn't arrive back from his commute until near the end of the dinner anyway. Meg and Drew didn't want to leave. They had spent their after dinner time jumping while holding our hands off the stage at the front of fellowship hall. Eventually we gave them the five, two and one minute warnings and it was time to leave.

They didn't want to put on their coats. There is a phase of winter where kids are tired of coats and being zipped into them and Meg and Drew were in it. Eventually my husband and I asked if they wanted to trade coats. They did. So we bundled Drew and Meg up in our coats which were dragging on the floor and looking ridiculously cute. We stuck the hoods of their coats on our heads. When we got to the door we managed to convince them that we were going to get cold wearing their coats since they were way too small for us.

The pastors remembered this exchange so well that it was one the stories told at the funeral.