Unicorns and dragons

The last day of February was quite dreary: cold and wet from the half-melted snow.  Outdoor activities were out, and we'd already gone to the museum and Marbles recently.  So our only plans for the day were for me to take Alice with me to the grocery store and library.

Simon loves crayons and markers.  He's not so good at coloring yet, and has a pretty short attention span, but he'll do some scribbling sometimes.

Alice, despite getting close to four years old, still frequently gets oatmeal all over her clothes while eating breakfast.  I look forward to the days when this is no longer and issue.

While I finished getting ready for the store, Alice drew a picture of a spider.  I reminded her spiders have eight legs, but she decided to draw how many legs she felt spiders have.

At the grocery store, Alice picked out the cart with a blue car in front.  This is good in the beginning, but she quickly grows bored and keeps hopping out, leaving me trying to traverse the store with this over-sized beast of a cart and a little girl running around.  So I took her down the toy aisle of Kroger and she picked out two unicorns and a sheep. They kept her occupied most of the time, although she did occasionally get out and try to ride them. The other shoppers in the store may be giving me dirty looks, but I'm too busy trying to complete my shopping list and keep an eye on Alice to notice. I never buy any of the crap I let her play with in the store, so some person stocking shelves will find two unicorns and a sheep abandoned in a soda display near the check-out aisles. 

We came home, unloaded the groceries and had lunch, then headed out to the library.  Among the books we returned was her beloved Spark the Firefighter, a great story about a dragon who became a firefighter to get over his fear of fire. It had two things she loves: dragons and firefighters.  

She never puts up a fuss about returning the books she likes though, because she loves reading all the new ones we get.

They may be television zombies, but they sure are cute when they sit together on the couch!

Darth Vader potato head

When Alice was playing with the toys in her bedroom, she came across the Darth Vader potato head outfit that some friends of ours gave the kids a long time ago.  She doesn't know anything about Darth Vader of course, so she called it a knight.

Simon doesn't know anything about knights so he called Darth Vader a spy camera.  I do kind of see the resemblance.

Nap Time Challenges Part 2

Earlier, I wrote about how Alice stuggles to fall asleep at nap time.  Despite all the extra stimulation from Grayson's visit, she still wasn't sleepy at nap time.  About twenty minutes after tucking her in, she was shouting, "Mo-mmy.....I'm awa-ake!"  So I went in and told her if she couldn't sleep, she could get out of bed, she could even play with toys, but she had to stay quietly in her room until 4:00.

The problem is that her closet door blocks the spy camera's view, and so she can be in a blind-spot while playing.  When I heard a bunch of banging, I had to go in to check on her. She was kicking the closet door with her legs.  I told her to stop kicking and reminded her she had to stay in her room until there was a four on the clock.

Around 3:55pm, I heard a lot of shouting coming from her bedroom, so I used the spy camera app on my phone to check on her.  She was shouting at the door, and, being a parent, I thought it would be fun to record it.  The video starts at 3:57 pm.

I was going to go talk to her, but I wanted her to have a chance to see the 4 appear on the clock, which would happen momentarily.  However, she fell asleep on the couch minutes later without ever checking the clock again. 

Once I was sure she was asleep, I snuck in and covered her up with a blanket (since she had taken her fleece off for some reason).  By the time I woke her up, it was after 5:00.

We know she will officially outgrow naps soon, but we want to maintain the alone-quiet-time aspect for a few hours in the afternoon, since Simon will be needing naps for several more years, and Zac and I need some non-kid time on weekends to get stuff done (like this blog!).

Anyway, all was forgiven when she and Simon got to watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood while eating what she calls "dried up cheerios" (as opposed to the ones in milk in a cereal bowl).

Snow day playdate

The schools were closed for the 6th day in two weeks, so I decided to invite Alice's good friend Grayson over for the morning.  This way, his mom could go to work for half a day, and Alice would have some extra entertainment.  It was really fun watching the kids interact.  I intervened as little as possible, but since Alice has hoarding tendencies, I would occasionally let her know when she needed to share better.

Zac texted me from work to let him know if I wanted to try for a third kid after today.  But really, there was some economy of scale and spending the morning with three kids was not any harder than with two.  In fact, it would be tempting to have three kids if we didn't have to go through pregnancy and infancy again and pay for another kid's daycare. But since that's impossible, I think we'll stick with two and just borrow a third kid every once in a while.

Balloons in the bath

It turns out that tiny water balloons, filled with varying amounts of water, make great bath toys!

...and more snow!

Wednesday night, another snowstorm hit, dropping about five inches of snow and ice.  

Simon is so ready to be done with this annoying, cold, white stuff!

He just sat on my lap most of the time, watching Zac and Alice play.  I eventually replaced the sled with a porch chair and a blanket.

Alice kept busy rearranging the snow.

On their own

On Wednesday, due to the remnants of snow, daycare was on a two-hour delay and then also closed a bit early.  I ended up picking up the kids and getting supper ready, a feat rarely attempted.  To keep the kids occupied, I let them color.  I don't know how people do it who are often the only parent present at this critical time of day.  Simon colored all over his tray, Alice put stamps all over her arm, and the broccoli was overcooked. It wasn't that terrible, but certainly less than ideal.

Since they were stuck inside all day at school due to the cold mess outside, we encouraged them to run around after supper.  Simon is getting better at running, and shouts "Go, go, go!" the whole time.

Later that night, Zac was talking to me in the foyer while Alice was in the bath.  I could hear Alice announcing things like, "Mom, I'm going to wash my own hair!" and a minute later: "Mom, I'm putting shampoo in my hair!"  By the time I got back to check on her, she had a ton of soap in her hair, but had only gotten the top half wet.  I helped her wash the rest of her hair, and assisted with a thorough rinsing.  But she's getting closer to being able to do things like this herself.

Surprise snow day

On Tuesday, an unpredicted snowstorm came in the morning.  School was cancelled at the last minute, and it snowed all day.  Zac went in to work, so it was just the kids and I.  Thankfully, Alice took less than two hours to eat breakfast, so we were able to get outside to play at a reasonable time.  Simon refused to wear mittens, so as soon as he fell and got his hands in the snow, he was really cold and cried a lot.  Alice brought some toy dinosaurs out because she wanted to use them to make footprints in the snow.

Alice wanted to go to the park again, but there was no way I was going to try and take Simon of the Snow Hands there.  Luckily, Zac came home from work early, so while he made pancakes and sausage for supper, I took Alice to the park.

She said she wanted to go sled riding, but was immediately distracted by the enormous icicles hanging off the restroom building.  Alice loves icicles, and these were as big as swords, so she could not have been happier.

I was finally able to convince Alice to actually go sledding, but she only went down the hill with me once.  The other times, she just ran down the hill while I sledded.  The snow was wet and slow, but let the record show that Alice runs faster than a sled going downhill.  She beat me every time.

On the way home, Alice wanted to walk through the woods.

She pulled the sled full of snow and icicles with the rope around her waist.

She'd been wanting to make snow angels all evening, but I convinced her to wait until we got home, so we could go in and warm up once she was all wet and cold.

I'm enjoying all these snow days, but I do wish they were spread out more!

Nap time challenges

It's crucial to our survival that both kids nap at the same time on weekends.  The problem is that Alice usually isn't ready for a nap until 3 or 4 pm, and Simon typically takes naps at school at 11:30am.  So we usually just try to stretch Simon out as long as we can, then put Alice down a half-hour later, somewhere around 2pm.  Some days Alice doesn't nap though, so now we just require that she at least stays in her room. She can sit on her couch and look at books, but she is supposed to not shout.  She is actually pretty good at doing this, and sometimes she will eventually fall asleep.

Alice in ice-land

Alice exploring the frozen swamp in the woods near the park.

Winter Swim

The plan for this cold, cloudy, and rainy Saturday was to go swimming!  I'd learned about the new Buffaloe Road Aquatic Center a long time ago, but we wanted to wait until Simon was old enough to enjoy it, too. We waited until this morning to tell Alice, in case we had to cancel for some reason. Alice loves swimming, so she was ecstatic to learn that there was such a thing as an indoor pool, where you could swim in winter. As soon as I told her, she went and got the pink pool noodle from the closet. She was ready to go!

This picture sums up their relative reactions to being in a pool.  Alice is as happy as can be, and Simon is like, "Aag!  Don't let that water get me!"

Simon eventually tolerated playing with a fountain while being held, but was otherwise pretty unhappy, except during snack time.

Alice was so happy the whole time, her blue lips in a quivering smile as she swam around.  The only problem with the pool was that it was way too cold for our low-body-fat kids.  Alice had her cover-up on and three towels before she warmed up in the locker room afterwards.

Simon fell asleep on the way home before we were even out of the parking lot.