Phew...

Now you're caught up.  Very vaguely.  Although I have many more beach pictures that will be trickling in as time allows.  I should give you a little update on the girlies.

Eleanor is sassy.  As usual.  But she's starting preschool this year.  And I have to admit I'm a little worried that she will be a sasspants to her teachers.  My hope is that it will be much better when I'm not around.  Right...?  She is asking a google questions per day, which you surely know if you've seen her lately.  She wants to know why some watermelon does not have seeds.  She wants to know how the water gets into the toilet.  She wants to know why people choose one necklace over another.  She wants to know why mommy and daddy have different rules (*yikes*).  She calls things glorious often--that's her new word, replacing fancy.  She loves to run--and she gets faster by the day.  She is a total girly-girl.  You know, when she's not cradling worms.  The very annoying flavor of the week is baby talk.  But the saddest thing is that her baby phrases are slowly disappearing.  Momma, became Mommy, became Mo-om.  Ok, became yes, became yeah.  I can't know have officially transitioned to don't.  Mossies are now monsters.  I love watching her grow up, but three going on thirteen makes me yearn for her snuggly baby self.

Jo is busy.  She runs, jumps, and talks really really loud.  And a lot.  I knew her vocabulary was good when she was nine months old.  But now, at 19...oh my.  Nouns are under control--she knows everything.  But the adjectives now are the really doozy.  Heavy, hard, steep, wet, clean, dry, fun, silly, crazy, scary, fast, good, bad, sick, naked, big, small.  She's an amazing, chubby little genius.  With a big mouth, literally and figuratively.  And, also big is her giant head of flaxen curls.  Her reserve is slipping away, and she's becoming a confident rapscallion.  As opposed to Eleanor, she is not even remotely interested in fancy.  In fact, it's been determined that she looks and feels awkward in fancy.  (Strangely anomalous is her love for Belle.  Any time she does don some fance, she cries out "Belle!  Fancy dress! Dancing!" with a sheerly ecstatic expression.  When she does it, she does it big.  What can I say.