Children

Today, the two neighbor girls Isabelle (not quite 2) and Elizabeth (not quite 3) came to visit. Partly, it was a way for my mother to repay their parents for helping her with various tasks, but mostly, I think my mom just really wanted to play with the kids. The way she planned out things for them to do gave me the impression that she would be very excited to be a grandmother soon. For awhile, I would have told her to count on my sister for that. But more and more, I feel like I would really like to have children of my own. (Certainly not in the near future, though. No no no.) Perhaps the maternal instincts are kicking in? I used to feel like children were so much work--trying to raise them well, always scared that you'd do something that would make them hate you. Now, though, it's hard to describe why, but that burden doesn't seem so daunting. I blame the lack of logic on hormones.

Anyways, I spent much of the day messing with my parents' new digital camera, taking pictures of these two adorable kids. Here are some of the results.

We started things off with a tea party, using a lot of my old toys. Some of which didn't survive the afternoon.

Isabelle really enjoyed the cookies, sometimes double-fisting the things:

Elizabeth seemed slightly more suspicious of the cookies.

Once Isabelle realized I was taking pictures, her inner diva came out, and she enjoyed making faces at the camera:

Quite the face, indeed! Most of the time, she just giggles at me, though.

Once we were done with the tea (read once the mess couldn't be made much bigger), we moved on to some old Barbies.

There were Barbies....Everywhere.
Elizabeth really enjoyed them:

But both Isabelle and Maggie (my dog) were slightly bewildered:


Soon, Isabelle got bored, which lead to her getting into almost everything in sight. But, you can't deny that when she slows down for a second, she's damn cute:

Soon, it was clear to me that Isabelle was a budding alcoholic:

Her sister, however, seems to prefer plastic fruit:

Isabelle quickly moved on to playing with the plastic plates my mom gave her to eat a snack on:

Elizabeth entertained herself with, well, sculpted rocks. It amazes me how easily kids can be entertained!

Isabelle often makes random exclamations (most of which you can't yet decipher). They're quite adorable indeed, especially this one:


Lunch time proved very interesting. I learned that you don't actually need utensils of any sort to eat macaroni and cheese. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of Isabelle in action with the macaroni--I was too busy trying to stomach the spinach nuggets (chicken nugget alternatives) that my mom had purchased (spinach should never be eaten in nugget form). Anyways, here's the two of them trying to eat together in one chair:

Isabelle decided to do a bit more posing for the camera after lunch:

And Elizabeth ran right back to the Barbies:


Eventually, things settled down as we watched the Little Mermaid (one of my favorite Disney movies) and Isabelle fell fast asleep. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was glued to the TV.

I just hope that if I ever do have kids, they are half this cute.