Grady the Elder

Two birthday parties in under 24 hours was plenty of activity for the ladies.  We had swim on saturday morning and I am happy to report that Ellie continues to talk incessantly while swimming after a plastic cat.   The teacher referred to her as “little miss independent” which would be a bit more accurate had she not had a large inflatable balloon strapped to her.  He has a point though because she is fine on her own and that has made me a bit more lazy about pushing her.  We gathered back at the house and then procrastinated for at least an hour so in the face of an impending storm and ended up behind a slow moving row of useless plows on the way to Tootsie and Poppy’s house.  Plenty of time to catch up on listening to “shooting stars”.   The common theme among the great musicians that Stern interviews is that they all remember their parents listening to certain classic records growing up.    I don’t think katy perry is going to be discussed in that context twenty years from now.  The girls really like going to the grandparents houses and the routine in Wellesley is to run upstairs and get dressed up for a kind of show. I don’t know what kind of show because I never get a satisfactory answer on that question.   We had to accelerate this process because Maura had been waiting for help frosting the cake for Grady’s birthday party.   It wasn’t really his birthday, we were apparently celebrating that he is now the longest living Howley-owned standard poodle.  This went a bit better than I had imagined, partially because Phoebe had requested we bring the cake frosting knives from home which turned out to be some kitschy cheese spread knives that Cristin bought when we had more time on our hands.  Sometime during the process Ellie sneezed directly on the cake from point blank range but Maura kept tabs on what section was compromised and ensured me that I got a piece from the safe zone.  This trip was their second sleepover and I think it took 90 minutes to get them to bed.   Cristin took the first few trips and I went up around 9:30 and found the room in complete disarray.  Ellie had knocked the bars off the side of her crib and there was a large pile of books on the floor which represented the wholesale clearing of one of the shelves.  They had also been throwing stuffed animals at each other.  It took me a while to get the safety screens back in so we sat and watched the plow come and go and then we discussed electricity for a while and I read them more books and that seemed to do the trick.    Those who stayed up chose to watch Captain Philips which was a great movie.  We are 2/2 in our saturday night movie viewings at the Howley’s, the other movie being “the way way back” which was surprisingly funny.   Sunday we went to the Boffa’s for the ladies 5th birthday.  The theme was “frozen” and the place was pretty decked out.  I was most impressed however by the bacon.  Dave had cooked a whole bunch of bacon and it was perfectly done, every single piece.  When queried about his technique, he really hid his cards.  I still don’t know how he did it.   The kids carb loaded pancakes and cake and partied for a while and both were asleep by the time we hit Rt 24.