Twins & a Singleton

This weekend was peppered with a bit of sad news. Rich's Aunt W suffered a stroke late last week and without getting into details, is not in good shape. She never had any children of her and from my point of view as a newcomer to their family, she is close to her nieces and nephews. She adores our girls and keeps pictures of them close by.

Rich needed to visit Aunt W on Saturday so we traveled to her place of care as a family. The girls and I ended up staying in the lobby with Grandma (Rich's mom). I do feel bad that we hadn't brought the girls to visit with her in quite awhile and now this has happened.

It is always amazing to me to see joy on a stranger's face just from chatting with the girls. Or I should say chatting with us about the girls as the girls usually freeze up in front of strangers. We had quite a few people stop by to say hello. And of course two of them (including a nun) asked us if the girls were our first children. I had to lie and say yes. That question is so very difficult to answer and I always wish I could just reach into my purse and pull out a business card with the words My first baby was born still on it. And before you start thinking that I made that up, I didn't. Elizabeth McCracken did. {I highly recommend her book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. It is excellent.}

And another sad part to the weekend. I finally figured out why the girls sometimes blurt out, "I see big sister Abbey," when we are driving in the van. It is when we pass by a cemetery.

Later Saturday afternoon, Rich and I both had separate errands that we needed to take care of so we decided to split up the girls. Rich took Allie to Home Depot, the buy in bulk place and the grocery store. I took Anna and Em to Old Navy and a fabric/craft store. How did we decide who would be the singleton and who would be the twins? Well, Em has been attached to me like velcro for the past two and a half years so that decision was easy and Anna is fairly neutral/mostly well behaved in stores so I decided that it would be easiest to handle those two together. Allie did not have her nap (because Anna kept telling her that it would be okay) and was a bit grumpy so I thought she would like the one on one time with Daddy.

The trip to Old Navy was for me seeing as I have to try on everything now. Do you know that I used to never try on clothes when shopping? I knew exactly what would fit. That doesn't work now. Will my ribs ever go back to normal? Please someone tell me YES. I was so upset that nothing fit and sick of buying conservative work clothes that I threw down the two sweaters that did fit and walked out of the store without buying anything.

The second store stop was to purchase supplies for tutus. The girls have been dressing up more and more and acting like ballerinas so I thought having some tutus would be fun. Don't ask me when I'm actually going to make them though. Em was twirling around in her crib the other night saying, "I'm a ballerina." How cute is that?

While I was waiting in line to have the tulle cut, I was asked if the girls were twins, if I was making their Halloween costumes, etc. As soon as I arrived home, I asked Rich, "Did anyone make any comments regarding Allie?" That is our test. Do we just hear all these comments because there are three of them or are they as cute as we think they are on their own? What happens when they turn into singletons for a few hours? So Rich received a ton a comments. He said he wasn't even two feet into the store and some employee ran over to give Allie a sticker. Rich said that Allie talked the entire time they were out shopping and he thinks that she really needed (and enjoyed) that one on one time.

I did take some funny/delightful/adorable pictures of the girls (my little fashionistas) over the weekend. Once those are edited, I'll post them.