Monday Morning Free-Association

Last week's snowstorm gave the teen two days of delayed school opening. Today school is closed completely. Needless to say, he is ecstatic. Personally, I'm thinking tomorrow would have been more convenient for me. The teen has a dentist appointment and if school is still out I won't have to drag the girls into the school to sign him out. I keep having visions of chasing the preschooler down quiet halls as she squeals with delight.

Speaking of the preschooler, she climbed into bed with me this morning when she woke up. After snuggling for a few minutes she exclaimed, "Mommy! The pillows are rectangles!" Then she started pointing out all the rectangles in the room - the windows, the door, the bed. It's so fun to watch her suddenly catch on to something new like that.

The baby is growing up dramatically lately. Everytime I look at her, her face is thinner. The husband's children all tend to look like his baby pictures when they're born, which is bald and roly-poly with fat. The preschooler lost all her baby fat around this age, too. My baby is turning into a little girl.

The snow around here is too dry to make snowmen, much to the preschooler's disappointment. She adores snowmen. Luckily she hasn't pitched a serious fit about it, being fairly content to do things like make snow angels and fling handfuls of snow at Mommy. It's way too cold to let the baby play outside (which has led to frantic sobbing every time she got left with Daddy. I'd look up and see a tragic little face pressed against the window, sure that Mommy was never coming back.)

I wish everyone that owes us a tax form would hurry up and send them. I really want to get our taxes done. What with everything that's gone on this last year we're due for a fairly substantial refund. We could use it. Of course, we won't get them until the last day of January. When I was a secretary, years ago, every employer I had would have me do the W-2s at the very last minute. I have never understood why. It's not like we didn't have the information we needed earlier. It would have been just as easy to get the forms done the first week of January as the last. Has anyone reading this ever gotten a W-2 early in the month?

Clifford the Big Red Dog is on. I loved that book when I was a kid. While the tv show is nothing like the book I read, I like it very much. It's kind of sad hearing John Ritter's voice, though. I hope they find someone to replace him as Clifford's voice. I'd really hate to see this show go away.