Weekend Update (not the SNL skit)

My weekend got off to a rough start with a trip to urgent care Friday night. My throat was sore and it came on fiercely and suddenly and if I was dealing with strep, I wanted to know right away. So I dragged myself to urgent care and paid the steep copay and got swabbed. Negative for strep, I went home and slept 10 hours and felt much better the next morning!

Saturday morning I took the girls to JCP for their annual Christmas dress photos. Zuzu was reasonably cooperative this year (a big improvement from Easter two years ago, which ended with an enormous temper tantrum when we had to leave the photographer's eggs behind and then Zuzu bit David on the arm hard enough to leave a mark). She was a little too eager, so we had a lot of super fake smiles with squinty eyes and her head tilted over to her shoulder. Next to Coco standing stone-faced or (my favorite) looking completely vacant.

I took them by myself, which made me nervous, but sometimes I think they are actually better behaved for just one parent instead of two. Anyone else have that experience? Why do you think that is?

Once that ordeal was over, I allowed them to play on the germ factory of an indoor playground at the mall. Then we walked down to the pretzel place, visiting not one but TWO public restrooms on the way there. (Because Zuzu didn't have to pee, so she just washed her hands, but then she DID have to pee. Because of course.)

We wandered back out through the car via the toy department of JCP, where I took various photos upon request of Zuzu with toys that she really, really wants for Christmas, including some Nickolodeon flying carpet princess dolls related to a show she has never seen (eye roll). It took a long time to get them out of there, but the thrill of the escalator helped. Coco had hit her limit at the end, and went boneless on me near our exit, but we finally made it out to the car. Unfortunately, at some point during the mall visit, we lost one of Coco's dress shoes (they changed clothes and shoes after the photo). Insert gritted teeth emoji. It may have fallen out of the bag in the parking lot. So she wore those shoes exactly one time. Sigh.

David spent the day working on a lit review for class and then he fixed a Blue Apron meal for us while Zuzu (who was exhausted but refused to nap earlier in the day) snuggled on my lap in front of the fireplace while I read a book and pretended to face paint on her face with a dry paint brush. Of course it feels AMAZING and relaxing to have someone softly trace your face with a dry paint brush, so she ended up falling asleep at 6:00pm and she slept until 10:30pm when she woke up and wandered downstairs, then went back to sleep until the next morning. I guess maybe we all were a little overtired this week.

I finished The Girls which was well done and creepy but gave me nightmares that made me kind of wish I hadn't read it. Also when the doctor at urgent care asked what I was reading (and marveled at the fact that it was a library book) he glanced at the title and, chuckling, said, "The Girls. Probably wouldn't be my first choice!" I replied flatly, "It's about a cult in the 1960s." I don't know what he assumed I was reading about, but he seemed a bit taken aback by that announcement. Eyeroll at the patriarchy.

We went to church on Sunday and Zuzu was super well behaved and Coco was... not. Then I went with my friend Erin to see Hamlet--the filmed stage production with Benedict Cumberbatch put on by the National Theatre Company that was shown at the Tivoli. It was fantastic. It was also like four hours long, including a 20 minute intermission, but still great. We felt very cultured and self-righteous afterward. Also full of popcorn and M&Ms.

Sunday evening we had dinner fairly early (the Blue Apron selections this week have been dynamite!) and then settled down with the girls to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox. We listened to the amazing audio book in the car a while back (the narrator is so great), but Zuzu still had LOTS OF QUESTIONS about everything happening in the movie, particularly what all of the animals were and what the names of the farmers were and what they were doing now and was going to happen to everyone. Over and over again. It started out cute and then verged on annoying so I finally had to say, "WATCH THE MOVIE TO FIND OUT!"

David said it was like watching a movie with his Grandma Peggy. (Our favorite movie memory with Gma Peggy: Watching Lost in Translation and getting about 2/3 of the way through it when his grandma had this epiphany and exclaimed, "Why, they're in Japan!" Oh, man. We miss her--especially this time of year.) The movie held Coco's attention, too, which kind of surprised me, and it made me get a little misty realizing that this was our first Family Movie Night and the girls are getting big enough for us to do this. The future is now.

I am trying to get on top of Thanksgiving prep and Christmas shopping. We are expecting 11 or 12 people at our house for Thanksgiving, so I need to figure out seating, since our dining room table comfortably seats 6 and can do 8 if we squeeze... I know we'll have plenty of food, but I want a cute table because for me table setting is more fun than food prep. (Also, I lost the party potatoes argument so we're having mashed potatoes instead which is okay but maybe we need both???).

I've decided to do a book a day advent thing for the girls. I realized we had 21 different kids' Christmas books (crazy! but awesome!), so I ordered two more from Abebooks.com and picked up this one new to get to 24. I wrapped them all up in shiny paper and numbered each one (this exact version of this one from when I was a kid is (obviously) number 24) so Zuzu can work on number recognition and we can read a new story each night.

And that's the update. Now I have a stack of papers to grade and I have to run a mile this afternoon and try to beat my previous time of 10 minutes and 10 seconds. Wish me luck!