little star

2 days of rain brought us to a rare trip to the mall yesterday.  i think we've taken ella to the mall 2 times in her life (including this trip), plus maybe 4 times we've gone just to picture people to have her photo taken.  i really hate the mall.  we did our part to stimulate the economy by purchasing 4 sheets of stickers to help occupy our time on the plane in 2 weeks.  and we let ella sit on the big plastic merry-go-round.  she liked the train best of all and started spontaneously saying "lovely tea mabel," which is from a book we have titled "and the train goes..."  we were going to let elenora poke her head into the pet shop, but it apparently is a victim of the economic recession.  which i don't mind terribly.  there are too many animals in this world who need good homes without [in]breeding more just to charge $1000 for a puppy.  (why does the mall bring out my soap box?)  j. was hungry, so we went to the food court.  also a victim of the recession, there were about 4 places offering food.  not wanting to give ella sushi or pizza, we ended up at mcdonalds.  oh the shame on my face as i sat there feeding my baby chicken nuggets and milk from a bottle with a weird red-and-yellow man on it!  j. remarked on how uncomfortable i looked.  that food is so nasty.  ugh.

tomorrow we are going to maine to see my grampa and uncle and cousin e., who is pregnant.  we'll spend our day by the lake under the trees.  much more my idea of fun.

last night when we got home i turned on the lights in elenora's room because the cloud cover made her room dark, and she suddenly started saying "twinkle twinkle little star, how i wonder what you are, up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky..." over and over!  i didn't know she knew the entire thing in order to recite it.  she's never done that before.  then she'd say "another song" and start in on "close your eyes my little baby girl" and then she'd say "another song" and recite "jesus loves me this i know" all the way through.  

j. grabbed the video camera and we got some good footage.

i did a lot of cooking last night.  during ella's snack time i chopped onion and garlic and mixed up the dry ingredients for a meatloaf (ella liked watching "mommy's chopping an onion"), so i finished mixing that and cooked it for dinner.  then i made cupcakes for k.'s birthday celebration tonight.  i was going to make an apple pie but decided to leave that for today.  i'm taking it up to grampa's.

j. and i are into a new tv program lately.  it's called "in treatment" and is focused around a therapist.  we watched a few episodes on demand last night.