This morning we met my cousin and her two older kids at the Children’s Museum! I had not been there in years, since before Annalie was born. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, because I worked there the summer after high school. I had always wanted to work at the Children’s Museum and when I finally did get to work there…I hated it. The staff was very clique-ish. Even though many of them were nice, because I was the new girl I constantly got the boring jobs and scut work. I could understand to some extent, paying my dues and all that. But the thing that really bugged me was that we weren’t supposed to interact with the kids! All we were supposed to do was clean up after them and answer questions. That’s not what I thought working at the Children’s Museum would be like. Needless to say I didn’t last there past that one summer.

Of course, this isn’t the same museum it was when I worked there 15 years ago. When I was there, it had just moved into this building and they were still sorta filling the place up with exhibits. It was rather empty back then, actually. And now, it’s full of so many cool things to look at and play with. We didn’t even get to see one-tenth of the museum.

I forgot to ask their mom for permission to put her kids’ photos on the internet. This is my solution.

That is partly because Annalie’s second cousins are a bit younger than her. They won’t be 3 years old till January (they’re twins), and 3-year-olds lose interest much quicker than a 4-year-old does. It’s amazing how fast I forget what a certain age is like once Annalie is past it. Watching the twins today helped me realize how much Annalie has changed in the last year. Life has gotten easier in so many ways. True, 4-year-olds can be challenging at times, but mostly 4 is much easier and smoother than 3.

Because my cousin’s family has a museum membership, she was able to get us in for free, and we got to see the DinO!saur exhibit upstairs for free too. It was pretty cool, with life-size models of various dinos that moved! The kids especially had fun with one model that was only bare metal and joints and gears, set up without the rubber skin. It had a panel of buttons labeled according to what body part they’d move, and you could push the buttons and see how it worked. I thought that was brilliant, showing the man behind the curtain, so to speak. I bet it really helps a lot of kids lose their fear of the moving dinos when they see how it’s done. I know it would have helped me, when I was a kid. You better believe I would have been scared of those suckers when I was Annalie’s age. She wasn’t though! She ran right up to them and oohed and aahed.

The face-painting station was always my favorite when was a kid. I made sure we did that today before we left. Because the best part of going to the Children’s Museum is getting to walk around the rest of the day with a flower and a heart painted on your face.

Photo taken by my mom

Annalie is frowning because we asked her to smile. Right after this picture was taken, she cracked up because she’d done the opposite of what we asked. I think the joke’s on her because it’s an adorable photo anyway.

When we were at my Aunt Janet & Uncle Larry’s house, Annalie kept calling Janet “Grandma” and Larry “Grandpa.” Larry said, “Eh, she just sees an old guy with gray hair and thinks, That must be a grandpa!” Then he told us how one of my cousin’s kids used to call him Grandpa too, and it bugged my cousin so he would tell his daughter, “That’s not your grandpa, that’s Uncle Larry!” So she started calling him “Uncle Grandpa.” Then we blew Annalie’s mind by telling her that Janet and Larry ARE a grandma and grandpa, and that their twelve grandkids are her second cousins, most of whom she knows well and plays with every time we’re in Omaha.

I asked Annalie if she wanted crunchy or smooth peanut butter on her sandwich. She put her hand out, palm down, and moved it back and forth in a continuous motion as though she were running her hand along the surface of a table and said, “Smoooooooth, please!” I found that hilarious because I talk with lots of gestures. That’s the first time I’ve seen her use such a classic one, though.

This morning while we were lounging in our pajamas and watching Zoboomafoo, I mentioned to my mom that we should try to hit Target to get Annalie some more pants. When I packed to come here, I could only pack two pairs of long pants for Annalie because she outgrew all her other pairs over the summer. I told Annalie the only solution was for her to stop growing. Without taking her eyes from TV she said, “Mama, don’t you want me to grow up and have even better manners?”

When we left the house this afternoon to head to my cousin’s house, it was snowing. Not the fun kind that comes down in big fat flakes good for snowballs and snowmen, but the kind that comes down in tiny hard pellets and barely accumulates at all. Annalie was still very excited that it was snowing. As we drove down the expressway she watched the snow and exclaimed, “I just love winter!”

As we drove along we talked about how November is technically still fall, even though in Nebraska it feels like winter sometimes; and how you can look for other clues to see what time of year it is, like Halloween pumpkins or Christmas decorations. We talked about how the weather in Nebraska can be unpredictable. I explained that if something is unpredictable you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Annalie replied, “So, if I don’t know what’s going to happen it’s unpredictable, and then when I know it’s predictable!” I’m not sure but that might have been the first time I’ve heard her reason out a new word and its definition.

At dinner this evening Rachel mentioned that while cleaning her basement recently she came across her set of Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. That led to me mentioning that HalfPintIngalls has a twitter account.

Annalie seems to still be on Pacific time. Our first night here she was up till nearly 1am. Last night she was obviously tired and in bed at 8:30, but didn’t give in to sleep till 11:30pm. (But then she slept till 9am which she NEVER does. Silver lining!) For those keeping score at home, tonight she was out at 10:50. If the trend continues, tomorrow she’ll fall asleep right around 10. By the time we go home she’ll be on Central time and then our problem will be keeping her up past 6pm.

I’ve taken tons of photos but have not downloaded them yet. I’m lazy, I’m busy, I don’t have my laptop, the only computer in the house is in the room where Annalie is spending hours each evening going to sleep.

There is leftover Godfather’s Pizza in the fridge, and some yummy dessert pizza too. I know what I’m eating for breakfast!

We had a super fun Halloween! First, my mom and dad are in town. My mom being here isn’t that unusual, but my dad being here is a rare occurrence. He’s not much of a traveler so we usually only get one visit out of him per city. Now that he’s retired we’re going to drag him out to visit us more often, but it was still a fun novelty to have both my parents here for Halloween—the first one they’ve spent with Annalie.

Second, Brenda invited us to come hang out with her crew so we went to the beach.

Trick-or-treating is always more fun with friends, don’t you think? If we’d stayed at home we probably would have gone to the mall and trick-or-treated with Gramaw and Grampaw. I guess that would have been fun in its own way. But when it comes to putting on costumes and begging candy from strangers, I’m a traditionalist. There’s just something about walking down a street at sunset, seeing all the decorations and jack-o-lanterns, ringing doorbells, having people say, “Ooh, aren’t you guys cute! Go ahead and take two, there’s plenty where that came from!” I don’t know if a mall experience could come close.

Hard as it may be to believe considering that Brenda has become one of my closest friends and now holds all the secrets to our house, Troy had not yet met Brenda’s husband Toby, her mom Sue, her sister-in-law Heather, or her nieces Rapunzel and Superchic (not their real names). And Brenda hadn’t met my dad yet, either. We all needed some context.

I’m a big believer in having context. I love to meet my friends’ parents, siblings, co-workers, or anyone from other parts of their lives, just to get another angle on understanding them. Erin is big on the context thing too, and when we visited her and Rocco recently she knew I’d want to see her office at school, meet her mother-in-law Rosie, eat at their favorite pizza joint, and so on. So now when she talks to me about going to Rosie’s house or her office mate Alison, I have mental pictures of what she’s talking about. Context is important.

By now Brenda and I have a decent amount of context on one another’s families. We’re just catching up the rest of our families on each other.

We got there early to beat the crazy California rush-hour traffic…so early that we had time to go to the beach! My mom grew up in California, just a couple of towns over from where Brenda grew up, actually—I originally got hooked on her blog because I recognized the mountains in some of her photos of the Sticks—and she loves the ocean. She will go to the beach at every available opportunity. That’s pretty much how Rapunzel feels about it too, so we all walked down to the beach.

Annalie has a funny relationship with the ocean. Some days she loves it, some days she’s petrified of it, and most days it’s a little of both. Luckily on Halloween with Gramaw and Grampaw there she was mostly okay. She even went climbing on the rocks by some tidepools with Troy and Rapunzel and Grampaw and had a fine old time.

Brenda and I had walked back to the house with Baby Bug and SuperChic by then. We had to make the Halloween-themed dinner. There were mummy hot dogs and zombie brownies. Heather brought fancy homemade caramel apples. There were also sweet-potato oven fries and salad, but those were just regular non-Halloween items.

After that it was finally the time the children had all been waiting for. Time to put on costumes and trick-or-treat, woohoo!

Annalie was so excited about her costume. She kept telling everyone that she was a Japanese girl, even though I kept trying to tell her that her dress was actually Chinese. But our friends who used to live in Japan had sent it to her, so as far as she was concerned it was Japanese. (I guess there’s no reason a Japanese girl couldn’t wear a Chinese dress.) What she was most excited about was that she got to wear some of my make-up. A little eyeliner, a little mascara and lip gloss, and voila! She’s ready to give Daddy a heart attack at suddenly looking like a teenager.

She was also quite happy that she at last owned a parasol. She’s been wanting one of these for ages, and when I told her we could get one for her to carry on Halloween I thought she would faint of happiness.

Of course when it came time to leave for trick-or-treating and I reminded her to not forget her parasol, she looked at me like I was nuts. “I’m not going to carry that with me, Mom. Someone could get hit in the eye!” Ooooh-kay then.

There were lots of dark houses in the neighborhood where we were, but there were plenty of lights on too. The houses where we stopped, the people inside were always glad to see us and often mentioned that they’d hardly had any trick-or-treaters at all. Most people were generous with the candy, and all the girls got plenty of loot. Annalie was ready to go home after about five houses when I told her we couldn’t eat anything till we got back home and Mommy and Daddy checked out her candy, but we convinced her to keep going a while longer. Eventually all the girls were ready to head home.

We ended the evening with candy, caramel apples, and a showing of the new TinkerBell movie, which got a thumbs-up all around. Annalie fell asleep on the drive home after telling us, “This was my most favorite Halloween ever!”

I think she’s told us that about every single Halloween of her life. Which is just as it should be.

These photos and many more are in the photoset Halloween 2008 on Flickr