More From Davos...

Mark asked me to send him pictures of Lyla while he was gone.  So, I send him this:

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From: Laura Murphy
To: Mark Murphy
Subject: New Shades!



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Mark's response:

From: Mark Murphy
To: Laura Murphy
Subject: Not as cute as LG

Snow Day

If you were wondering if Lyla likes the snow, she does not.

We had yet another winter storm last night -- something they are calling thundersnow!?! -- so we are home ready to pull our hair out keeping busy. Lyla is taking a long nap after trudging through snow that was up to her chest and I am dreaming of opening a tiki bar in Costa Rica.

Tea

Lyla's first tea party was by invitation only. It was a motley crew.

Charmed Life

My husband leads a pretty charmed life.  He works hard, but he loves his job and gets to travel to beautiful places.

For example...I get this email from him this morning.

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From:  Mark Murphy
To:  Laura Murphy
Subject:  FW:

My view from afternoon coffee...



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And here is my response:

From: Laura Murphy
To: Mark Murphy
Subject: RE:

My view from morning coffee...

Keeping Busy

We've been trying to have indoor fun in this very cold weather.  We can go through about 50 activities in one day just to keep the little miss happy. She is pretty moody lately...this is her diva scowl.


So we go from one game to the next, kind of a like a kiddie buffet. We do play-doh. She really only likes to bang the jars (more on that in another post) and then lets me do all the hard work. On Friday, we made stars and rainbows. Her contribution was a little bitty thumb print in the middle of each star.




Next up -- castle building. Lyla is actually getting good at building. She did this castle with just a little creative direction from me.  Other than that, she does not want my help.  If I start to build, she usually pushes me away and says "I twy.  I twy."




Lyla's one castle-building rule is that Dora must always be looking in the mirror.




We've also been stacking some good, old-fashioned wood blocks (we're trying to stay low-tech over here. Once the technology comes out, a tantrum of some sort is generally not far behind). Lyla can stack up to 14 blocks before they tumble.

Lyla's First Haircut

The bangs just had to go.  Lyla was crying because her hair was in her face, so we had to take the plunge.  I  called Mini Max on Saturday and made an appointment for first thing Sunday morning.  Then all day on Saturday I stressed over whether to actually go through with it.  She had NO hair for so long that the thought of cutting what she now had made me terribly sad.  But we did it.  We bundled up early on Sunday morning and headed to Mini Max in Brooklyn.  I was a little bit worried about how Lyla would react because let's just say her behavior has been less than stellar lately.  We walked in and the first question was what cartoon she wanted to watch.  When they opened a drawer of Dora DVDs, I knew things would be okay.









And everything went just fine.  Lyla was actually great through the entire haircut.  She sat in a little taxicab seat and watched Dora as Danielle, the hairdresser (what do you call someone who cuts 2 year old hair?  hairdresser? stylist?), cut about 1 1/2 inches from Lyla's hair.  I explained my Billy Ray/Beiber theory to Danielle and she totally got it.  She cut just enough so Lyla's hair wouldn't get in her eyes and will hopefully now grow evenly all around.





Lyla seemed to like it.


She even got a little certificate to memorialize her first haircut :)


I tried to get a before and after picture, but she was such a grump that morning that the before picture is just kind of goofy (looking at them again...both pictures are pretty goofy...).

Monkey Talk

Lyla's animal du jour is the monkey.  I started calling her a monkey because she likes to hang from the foot board of our bed and now she adores monkeys.  Sunday morning at breakfast she told me that monkeys swing in trees and go "ooh-ooh, ah-ah".  She also told me that Diego has silly monkeys called Bobos who are always causing trouble.  It was the best breakfast conversation I have ever had.

FAO

Mark had to work last weekend so I took Lyla to check out FAO Schwarz. I hadn't been there in forever and even then I had only been during the holidays when it was a zoo. It is a great store where they let you play with everything. Lyla loved the Barbie section and the huge stuffed animal section. Making a decision which one to buy was very difficult.


Mad Men barbies!


And, of course, no trip to FAO is complete without a dance on the giant piano a la Big.


Legos + Star Wars? We wished Nicolas was with us.

Where did January go?

Sorry this blog has been so boring lately.  It's a combination of me being really busy at work and it being so darn cold out that we've been hibernating (seriously, I'm ready to move to some tropical island -- this winter is bringing me down).  Weekends have been spent hanging in our pajamas, going out to brunch and playing with Disney figurines.  We have a new mission to take her out to lunch/dinner as often as possible so she learns to behave in a restaurant.  So far, so good thanks to Color Wonder markers and, of course, the nuclear option -- the iPhone.

Lyla has been leading some intense games of freeze dance and has mastered a one-man game of fetch with her little dog Cookie.  She holds Cookie and her bone, throws the bone, and runs over with Cookie to fetch the bone.  As you can imagine, it is very entertaining.

We've also been debating what to do with her hair.  To cut or not to cut.  It's a little Billy Ray Cyrus in the back, a little Justin Beiber in the front.  And she gets major bedhead.  I just don't know if I'm ready to cut those little curls in the back.

That's about it on our end.  I promise to jazz things up soon, as long as Mother Nature promises no more snow.

My Fancy Husband

A text from Mark: I'm in the west wing lobby right now....kinda surreal.

Santa

This was at the STB holiday party. No smile was seen in Santa's workshop. Just tears.

Two Words

Lyla picked up two new words over Christmas break -- "pwesent" and "chocowat".  That pretty much sums up what we've been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Day With My Favorite Girls

One of the highlights of Christmas vacation was getting to spend a ton of time with Julia and Kelly.  They stayed over Christmas night and we all stayed up late watching Eclipse.  I've never read/seen anything from the Twilight series, so Julia (and Bammie) explained everything to us and Julia kindly put up with Mark poking tons of holes in the premise of the story (Edward can go out in the sunlight???)

The next day (after a trip to the urgent care center for Lyla where her diagnosis was nothing more than being cranky), the girls and I had a fun shopping expedition.  First stop was Target, where we picked up some stuff for Lyla, and then onto the mall.

We had lunch at the Nordstrom cafe, then stopped at all the hotspots -- Hollister, American Eagle, Pink, Forever 21, Pac Sun, J. Crew and a couple of baby stores in between.  We had so much fun picking out clothes and they are such good girls.  They were so careful with their money and were only interested in age appropriate stuff.  When we walked into Forever 21, Kelly looked at me and said "I think this store is too old for me."  I'm not sure if being at a mall surrounded by teens and tweens made me feel older or younger, but I had a ton of fun.  And speaking of age appropriate, I ended up buying a pair of cargo jeggings at American Eagle.  And I'll admit it -- I am loving them!

But back to the girls -- They are also amazing with Lyla. She adores them and has been carrying their class pictures around the house for the past week. I can only hope that Lyla is as intelligent, kind, well-mannered and funny as those two.


She is still a work in progress.

Christmas Day

We woke up Christmas morning to a [kind of] White Christmas. There were light snowflakes falling to the ground, a perfect backdrop as Lyla dug into her presents.

From Christmas 2010

She was really in the Christmas spirit...


We celebrated Christmas at the Winter Wonderland that is Bammie and Pa's house.



If I could sum up Lyla's Christmas, I would say all Lyla wants for Christmas is to eat Pirate's Booty in Bammie and Pa's basement. The girl was seriously obsessed with that basement. She sat at her new princess table and ate bowls and bowls of Pirate's booty.









We opened gifts in the basement (because a certain someone wouldn't leave the basement).








Sheila, Bob and Sue joined us for dinner. Sheila brought a delicious caviar torte and latkes that were practically gone before I could take a picture.







We had a great time with Laurie, Sean and the girls.  Dinner was delicious and Lyla actually sat in her chair the entire Christmas dinner, thanks to our new live-in nanny, the iPhone.








The fun continued late into the night because the girls slept over. Eating cheesecake and playing the "night night" game.





Finally, I cannot end this post without reminding myself that I had TWO slices of cheesecake that night...


Merry Christmas to me!