Do the Conga

Last evening, after dinner, the girls decided to make a conga line and dance around the house, but in order to do so, they had to look the part.  Both kids donned ballet leotards and put headbands over their foreheads; according to Julia, this was so that they could look like they're from India.  Julia asked me if I knew what country from which the conga line originated, and while I assured her that it was most definitely not India, she still chose to imagine herself "a girl who lived in India who was a conga dancer and I was a TEENAGER."  While the following video is dark, you viewers can at least get a sense of the raucous fun the conga dancers had before getting ready for bed:



After Madeleine was sent off to brush her teeth, Julia performed some solo interpretive dance, providing her own musical accompaniment:





This morning, the girls were no longer conga dancers, but that didn't stop Madeleine from glamming herself up.  When I walked into the living room to check on the girls, who were watching "Tangled" while Ethan and I relaxed over coffee, I saw that Madeleine had chosen to decorate her face with stickers:

Her facial decorations got even more outrageous as the movie progressed.  Next time I took a peek in at her, I was greeted by the Bearded Lady:

She is 1/4 Greek, after all.  Women with mustaches are not all that uncommon in our culture.

After the movie ended, the Rowe family headed out on a family trip to Best Buy, to purchase a new computer for me.  My laptop suffered a premature and unexpected stroke this morning, suddenly going black and, while clearly still running, refusing to show anything on the monitor forevermore.  So Ethan and I piled the kids into the car, with Madeleine still sporting her facial decorations:

Unfortunately for everyone at the Best Buy, Madeleine decided to remove her mustache and forehead sticker once we arrived, so none of the customers or staff got to see her snazzy look.  She was SO over the mustache by the time we got out of the car, because there was something WAY more interesting to capture her attention in the parking lot.

JULIA: Mama!  Look!  I see a seagull flying really close to us!
MADELEINE: Mama!  Eagles!  I see eagles!
JULIA: Mama.  It's not an eagle.  It's a SEAGULL.
ME: I know that, Julia.
MADELEINE: Oh!  Eagles!  More eagles, Mama!
JULIA: No!  Mama, it's NOT an eagle!
ME: Shh.  Calm down Julia.  I know.
MADELEINE: Another EAGLE!

The eagles were not the only highlight of the trip, however.  The girls were quite interested in all the computers - a little too interested, perhaps.  Climbing up on the bottom shelf of computer products so they could attempt to get their hands all over the keyboards of the model computers, the girls had all sort of opinions on which ones we should buy.  Heck, Madeleine even fell in love with a whole aisle of computers.  "Oh!  This is my FAVORITE aisle!" she proclaimed joyously as we turned the corner to look at more computers.

In an attempt to keep the computers safe from little hands, I let Ethan do the browsing while I took the kids to the home entertainment section of the store.  I mean, you have all seen what happens to my children whenever there is a television on.  It was only moments before they had made themselves at home before the movies playing on the multiple big screens:

I'm pretty sure they could have stayed there all morning if I'd let them.

When we got home from the store, Julia headed off to a birthday party, while Madeleine decided to don yet another dress-up outfit.  This time she was McKenna from the American Girl movie "McKenna Shoots for the Stars."  Here she is, the mighty gymnast, completing her couch routine:

It is pretty evident that Madeleine has fully entered the period of pretend play lately.  And she doesn't even need dress-up clothes to engage in her imaginative play.  She really needs very little inspiration.  I'm talking the most banal things turning into creative play.  Like fingernails.  As I clipped her nails yesterday, she decided to embody the persona of each individual fingernail, lamenting, as one by one the nails were clipped off, "Oh no!  But I wanted to STAY ON THERE!"  I have to admit, it made me feel irrationally guilty for the poor discarded nails that were so mercilessly clipped away and dumped into the trash.

As for Julia, she continues her new creative phase of writing books, and after attending her friend's birthday party this afternoon, she has a great new writing outlet.  She is now the proud owner of a small journal-like book full of lined paper, and she has certainly wasted no time in writing in it.  She has already filled up the first few pages, with some of the sweetest possible sentiments I could imagine:

I guess that instead of being from India, she is now embodying some kind of new culture in which words are written from left to write but pages in books are read from right to left.  Fascinating!

All right, faithful blog-readers, I am off to do the conga.  Conga, Conga, Congaaaa!