I had a good time with the girls tonight when I got home from work.

First, we flipped through some old photo books that I put together a few years ago. Most of the pictures are from when the girls were pretty young, like from 6 to 14 months. They are little flip books that we used to keep in the car so they could look at pictures when we were driving. Today, we went through and I told them stories about each photo – where it was taken, what they were wearing. M wanted to take out each photo and look at the back to see the date when it was taken and exactly how old they were.

Then the girls danced to the whole Nutcracker ballet, minus a few pieces toward the end, between Mother Hubbard and the endless final pas-de-deux. At one point, they were "running" from the mice. A was quite serious, so M got very serious, and they were scurrying around, and then they ran right into each other. It was very funny. Then M decided that they needed to get Sparkle Man (aka the Nutcracker Prince), so they got Big Hella out and danced with it. Of course, Big Hella is bigger than the girls, so that was a funny visual.

Tonight, M told me that she didn’t want to be cut open, like Madeline was when she got her appendix out. I told her that I understood, but that it isn’t that bad. I explained that M & A were taken out of my belly that way. They asked if it hurt, and I said no, taht I was given a lot of medicine. They then asked how my stomach got closed up again. I said that the doctors sewed me up and that my belly is closed again. Then we talked about when they were born, and M said, "Then you gave us names?" I said yes, we did. I asked if they like their names and thankfully, at least for now, they both do. A said, "You know what name I don’t like? Dust!" I agreed that Dust isn’t a good name.

They are the cutest, sweetest, smartest and most adorable girls in the world.