(Almost caught up!)

Today was... frustrating. Jenn has gone back to school, and the ONLY day she can get her class is on Sundays, which means I have the nieces most of the day. They're... not happy about the change.

Yesterday we went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. Michele has her birthday at the same time, so she was there too with her cute kids. (The baby really is VERY cute, and very verbal for a two year old! Her birthday was just in December, and she's using full sentences and everything! At one point her sisters and the nieces and I were crowded around her playing the "Point to a body part" game and after she obliged us for several minutes she finally shook her head and said "I have to eat, you know, guys."

She was ADORABLE. Looks nothing like her sisters, though. (They were equally cute at that age, but they looked nothing like her.)

Near the end of dinner, Ana got sick and ended up taken to the emergency room, where they tentatively diagnosed her as having reflux. Michele drove them down, and Azra was very concerned. "Where's Anne (Ah-nay, Turkish for "mom")?" "She's gone for now. Let's sit down!" "No, Anne sits there. Where's Anne?" "She'll be back! Let's sit down, come here now!" "No, I have to look for my Anne. Anne?"

Anyway, we packed up our remaining food and went home after Michele got back.

Today I overslept in the morning, and decided that since we'd all woken up so late it was better to skip breakfast and just eat lunch early. So I went to heat up the leftover sesame chicken.

Evangeline: There's not enough broccoli in that!
Me: You're right, there's only four pieces. That's all right, we have a whole head of broccoli in the fridge, I'll just cook some of that to go with it.
Ana: No, don't do that!
Me: Why not? Don't you want broccoli?
Ana: Yes, but I only want four pieces!
Me: Right, and there's four pieces left. That's why I'm making some more.
Ana: But I only want four pieces!
Me: Yes, and?
Ana: And don't cook any more!
Me: There are ONLY four pieces.
Ana: Right.
Me: And you WANT four pieces. What, exactly, does Eva get?
Ana: BUT THEN SHE'LL HAVE MORE THAN ME!
Me: Well, if you want more, you can have more. I have a whole BUNCH of broccoli in here.
Ana: I ONLY WANT FOUR PIECES!

Apparently, if Ana gets four pieces (by her own choice!) and Eva gets four pieces but had some yesterday while Ana was at the hospital, this is massively unfair. Once this was revealed, Evangeline started hollering that she didn't even EAT any broccoli, baby Azra ate it all. I just noted that we pretty much finished dinner when Ana left, Ana - alone out of all of us! - was permitted to eat her dessert first (lychee nuts), and that Ana had finished her dinner before she left to go to the ER.

ANA is massively unfair. Once this was revealed, she got the lecture of her life on the subject of fairness and why it absolutely does not mean that she gets to dictate who does and does not get to eat broccoli when there is a very abundance of the stuff right now. Once we'd exhausted the subject of fairness we got to move onto the concept of sisterhood and the difference between reasonable and utterly reprehensible behavior.

Ana was really just in a pissy mood because her mom wasn't there and she'd been sick, but god damn if her attitude didn't completely infuriate me. We all calmed down after eating, though, and later the nieces teamed up in an attempt to stuff a sash in my mouth, climb on my back, and make me be a horse.

(It's really a very strange family at times.)