The Hills Are Alive...

with the Sound of Music. In our house, it's all about Maria and Captian Von Trapp and "the children" as Lily calls them. She has the movie and Naney sent her the cd, and so she's always singing and asking random questions about the movie and saying things like,
"Maria lives in Austria."
"Why is Gretel five?"
"What's the littler boy's name again?"
She bit her hand at school yesterday while eating raisins (or so I hear), and at first I thought she might have done it on purpose to be like Gretel. I'm sure you remember the part when Freidrich bites Gretel's finger. WHAT? You don't remember that part? You haven't seen the movie 4 times in the last week and a half? So today she presented the following to me at dinner. I'd been wondering when this was coming. FYI, Liesel is the oldest (16 going on 17...)
"I want to go see Liesel."
"Sweetie, Liesel is just in the movie."
"No, she lives in Austria." Never mind that to Lily Austria could be a 5 minute drive away.
"Lily, the movie was made a long time ago."
"I know, in Austria. Where is Liesel?"
"Sweetie, I don't know. She's older than Mommy and might even have granddaughters."
"No, Mom, she does not, Liesel is a KID!"

Imogene had therapy today and Susan the PT said she's seeing a lot of improvement in her hand and arm. Specifically she's opening her hand up more, reaching out with her right arm more, and bearing a little weight on that arm. Of course after all that she gave us about 5 more new things to work on, and mentioned that at some point Imogene might need "Hip Helpers." These are like shorts that would help Imogene with her hip rotation. Basically when she's laying on her stomach (which is "supine" - all these things I'm learning) her hips are 'abducting' which is not helpful when she one day starts to push up on all four limbs. Yet another fun piece of gear to keep up with for the Siglers - hopefully she won't need them, but we'll see.

Speaking of gear, we need get GPS for the splint. When the Brown kids were growing up, we had a friend who lost her retainer everywhere we went. She would wad it up in a napkin and it would get thrown away. I have many memories of our parents all searching trash cans at restaurants and at our houses. These memories have come back to me lately because we (read Lauren) keep losing Imogene's splint. Yesterday a restaurant and a store were called in the search. Fortunately it was found, stuck to a toy in the bottom of the stroller. The thing is just so darn tiny and it's purple and it gets lost in the mess that is life with two small children!

Hope you can all get some sleep tonight. We know it will be hard since you're all so excited that tomorrow is BILL'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy Birthday to the most amazing and dedicated father and husband you'll ever know. People might throw those terms around, but I mean it. We are so blessed and lucky that Bill is the man in our lives! What a treasure he is to each of us.
Happy Birthday Sticky!

PS ... is the Memphis Basketball coach a dead-ringer for Bill or what?