Tonight, after some late giggling and shrieking, I went in to have a word with them, and of course discovered Siena in Thalia’s bed, at this point pretending to be asleep. Here’s how things transpired:

Me: It’s too noisy in here, time for bed.

Thalia: Siena was putting her foot in my mouth.

Me: Siena, don’t do that. And, you aren’t supposed to be in Thalia’s bed. You need to be in your own bed.

Siena: (pretending to be asleep, on her tummy facing the wall)

Me: Siena, I know you’re awake. You need to be in your own bed.

Siena: Daddy, is it OK if I’m in Thalia’s bed?

Me: And Thalia, no more horsing around, OK?

Thalia: No.

Me: Thalia?

Thalia: No horsing around.

Siena: Is it OK if I’m in Thalia’s bed?

Me: I’m not going to answer that, Siena. No more horsing around. (I give Thalia a hug and Siena a pat on the back and get up to leave.)

Siena: I’m gonna assume the answer is yes.

Me: Good night girls.

It was a lot funnier in person and in the retelling to Mama than typing it out her can relate. Siena is one smart cookie.

Thalia, meanwhile, eats all the oranges left over after half-time. Here she is chowing down:

I finally let them go outside around 9 because it was such a beautiful day. Then I hauled them back inside for a quick snack, and preparing for Siena’s soccer game. That’s where it got interesting.

Siena had a great game and great fun. She’s really blossomed this season, her third in the “under 5″ league despite behind closer to six than five now (the cut-off dates for the league are out of alignment). It’s not just that she’s a head taller than the other kids (which she often is) or that she has two more seasons under her belt than the kids that recently turned four. It really comes down to her drive. She’s finally showing some aggression, always going after the ball. I see some of the younger kids doing what she used to do: chase around after the pack of kids but not going for the ball. Siena, meanwhile, is going in and kicking straight at the ball, knocking other kids over, and scoring lots of goals (probably 6 today, I lost count). It’s enough to make a father proud.

In any event, after her game we rushed home to do some final prep for a scheduled showing that was set for thirty minutes after Siena’s soccer game ended. Just as I was going to scoop up Tenzing to put him in his carrier, the doorbell rang and it was the first real estate agent, 20 minutes early. I was not pleased. I managed to get all the animals into the car and back on the road in a few minutes. We took the animals to Mama’s office, where we dropped them off for a brief visit.

We then headed to the mall for a quick lunch at Burger King. The girls love getting the fries and apple slices, and since Siena wanted a hamburger and Thalia wanted the chicken fingerthings, I got two kids meal. This means they each got a crown, which is of course my real motivation for writing this tonight:

and

After a trip on the food-court carousel (literally, a merry-go-round in the food court), it was 2 PM and time to head home. The girls fell asleep as I drove by Mama’s office to pick up the pets. Amusingly, Tenzing was so stressed that he was drooling profusely.

We got home, and Thalia went right back to nap. I was sufficiently tired that I went down for a brief nap too, but Siena as usual just powered through, had a snack, and went outside to play. When I finally went out to really check on her, she had gathered her gardening tools and our weeding bucket, and was working her way through our front garden weeding out the grasses and weeds. How awesome is that!?

Thalia was up around 5 PM, they watched “Elmo’s Potty Time” — digression: first time ever watching this, I had to take the protective tape off the DVD case, but the girls had seen it in the morning as one of their play time activities while I was cleaning up a bathroom was to go through our DVD collection and see what we had, which is the first time they’ve ever done that (the DVDs are stored in a closed cabinet) — and then we had dinner, bath, books, and bed. Whew.

I was very happy and proud of their behavior today, and especially with Siena with the unprompted gardening after all the other stuff we’d been doing. As usual, such a good set of girls.

We are, nonetheless, very much looking forward to seeing Mama back home from the conference!

The next morning, after she got up and went downstairs, she saw Siena and Thalia sitting at the kitchen island, bowls full of cereal and milk, glasses full of milk, Thalia bibbed, and the girls happily chowing down “at the bar,” as they call it. Yes!

Another day, we heard them get up at 5 AM and make racket like a comedy farce, opening and closing doors like they were rehearsing Noises Off. Nevertheless, as we stubbornly resisted rousing ourselves, they eventually made their way downstairs, and the noise subsided. Then at 6:10 AM we heard them tromping back upstairs into the bathroom. By 6:15 they had gotten themselves up, fed, and brushed teeth, and were ready to play. Fortunately they are also good at keeping themselves occupied, so even though we were awake at 5, we didn’t actually have to get out of bed until just before 7.

We could really get used to this whole getting-themselves-breakfast-at-the-bar situation.

For the record, Thalia is 991 days old. She’s later than some of her friends in school (like Elina), but she is earlier than Siena, who, as documented here, was around 1055 days old when she started underwear. But who’s counting?

Maybe that’s just an indicator of how normal the funny or amazing events are, that I can no longer remember individual ones, and instead they coalesce into the single continuous flow of what it means to have two kids who are now, actually, kids.

Aside from the news that we just returned from a 7 night Caribbean cruise, and a daunting 700+ photos await my analysis if I can ever get around to it (and nevermind how much fun the girls had on the trip; Siena would probably get right back on the ship for another cruise), I don’t feel like there is much to report.

So here is a recent picture of the girls.

One particularly amusing segment was a video of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The video is pretty much only a shot of his conducting, so it wasn’t as compelling for the girls as some of the other videos we’ve been watching. I made the amusing but ultimately self-defeating mistake of trying to perk their interest by saying, “take a look at his hair!” (in my defense, it is very impressive):

After a few minutes, the girls got bored and started running from one end of house to the other, chasing each other, and returning to the computer. Every time they came to the computer, Siena said, “look at his hair!” Eventually Thalia started saying it too, “look at his hair!” Apologies, therefore, to Maestro Dudamel.

The video we’ve been watching the most is a recording of the BBC Proms from 2009, a performance of the “Jupiter” movement. Nevermind that I think this is probably the best 7.5 minute piece of music ever, the girls especially like this not only because they like the music (Siena sings along to it now) but also because of all the people and their instruments:

I’ve been quizzing Siena on what the different instruments are so that she learns them, and she is now reasonably proficient about distinguishing among the trumpet, trombone, tuba, and french horn. We are working on the clarinet, oboe, and english horn still.

One time as Thalia and Siena were watching this video, Siena informed me that she was going to play the french horn. She then changed it to say she was going to play trombone, because she knows that’s what I played and she likes pleasing other people almost more than anything, but upon further inquiry, she has reliably declared french horn as her instrument. “When I’m older, I’m going to play the french horn.”

Based on my arguably limited knowledge of french horn players (high school band, regional and state orchestras and bands, college orchestra, a traveling orchestra, might have kind of dated one or two, or wanted to), I actually think french horn would be a pretty good choice for Siena. Certainly, she’ll have to go brass; even if she doesn’t end up on trombone she needs to keep it in the family. And french horn players always struck me as the quietest, kindest, most thoughtful, and most musically invested if not gifted of the bunch. These are characteristics Siena possesses in abundance. Of course, they were also the most maligned and trod upon by the other brass players, but c’est la vie. I would still love to hear Siena playing a french horn someday.

Meanwhile, Thalia upon watching the video and hearing us name the instruments as they appeared, declared (and has repeatedly confirmed this upon subsequent grilling):

“I’m gonna play tuba.”

And that too fits right in line with her character. Ooompa oompa.

We’ve asked the girls not to come into our room at 5 in the morning. Siena will try to physically restrain Thalia or keep their bedroom door closed as Thalia tries to open it if it’s early, and the end result is quite the opposite of what we were aiming for, namely an amount of sleep that reasonable, sane people might assume they should be able to get with kids these ages. Instead, we get Thalia screeching at the top of her lungs as Siena tells her she can’t leave their room.

Or, Siena will pick out two sets of clothes for Thalia to wear in the morning, and Thalia will hate both of them, and then both girls will get upset: Thalia because she doesn’t like her options, and Siena because she’s only trying to help and she can’t stand it when her sister is upset.

We are now telling Siena to just try to worry about herself, and let us be the parents. “Some kind of help / is the kind of help…”