Yup, that's my mail carrier.

My mail carrier is awesome. Rides a Harley and saves lives. Oh yeah!

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Monday I had the day off so I was able to spend it finishing the floor in the kitchen. That project is now officially done. There are still lots f other things to do through out the house, but that part is now finished. The rest of the week felt fairly normal. Like we are finally getting back into our lives now that the holidays are over. There really isn't anything else that happened this week.

Aina

Alice has an imaginary friend. Sort of. Her name is Aina (pronounced A-nuh). She is all things, all ages, owns everything, and has experienced many, many exciting and terrifying situations in her short lifespan. She dies every other day. Alice has talked about Aina for a long time. As far as I can tell, Aina is not a "real" person in Alice's life. Alice doesn't see her and talk to her as if she were physically present. It's more like Alice tells stories about her.

I can only illustrate this through examples:

Alice perches on her seat, interested in something she's doing at the kitchen table. She loses her balance, tips in the chair, and scrambles to remain standing. She smiles and says, "I kept my balance! I didn't fall!" I cheer for her, we celebrate, and she climbs back onto the chair. Then she turns to me and says, "You know, Aina fell off her chair once."

"Oh really?"

"Yah. And she got a big bonk. She had to go to the hospital ("hos-i-puhl")."

Another time, we were talking about visiting family far away and Alice shared, "You know? Aina lives in Utah. You have to take 5 airplanes to get there."

Conversations about her upcoming birthday party prompted Alice to say: "Aina invited me to her 8 birthday party! She got baptized."

So, I figure Aina is the one who experiences all the things Alice wants (and doesn't want) to experience. It's a way for her to think about possibilities without putting herself in that imaginary situation, which can be super scary for an almost 4-year-old. Aina is a safe thought experiment.

When Alice is tired and a bit grumpy or sad, sometimes she'll say she's sad because Aina has died. Sometimes "she dies only a little" and sometimes "she dies forever", depending on how sad Alice is feeling at the moment.

Recently, Alice was playing at the Family History Center while I was trying to check in some films and she drew one of her cute little self portraits. She gave it to me to "keep forever" (translation: don't throw it in the recycle pile when we get home, okay Mom?). Then she drew a picture of Aina. This is the first time I've ever seen Aina:

 

Alice tells me those are freckles on her cheeks and a bellybutton under her smile. She looks like a pleasant sort of girl, happy and strong despite her periodic misfortunes :)

Update

Youtube messed up the videos from the previous post. They are updated now so if they didn't work before they do now.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week I have several videos. The big news this week is.

Yes that's right he is walking, sort of. Mostly he just needs more confidence that he is not going to fall over, so he is not doing it on his own without a lot of encouragement.

Alice has felt a little jealous. Whenever we applaud Robert for walking she wants to get applause for doing the same thing, or having her dolls do the same thing.

But for the most part their relationship is very good.

And another video of Alice playing/Dancing this morning just for fun.

And yes she wore the outfit to church. She likes to dress up fancy.