Snow day

We got about 3-4 inches of snow overnight, so the schools were closed again today.  Zac stayed home in the morning too, to wait for the roads to be cleared.  Alice, who normally takes forever to get out the door, was chomping at the bit to go out and play in the snow.  She was actually the first one ready, while Zac and I were still digging out our warm gloves and layers.  We don't have a sled, and the little hill in our yard goes straight down to the street, so we didn't sled.  She wanted to make a snowman, but the snow was too powdery. Instead, she just walked around in the snow, made snow angels, took her mittens on and off, carried around the occasional snowball that Zac or I compacted, and helped us brush off the cars.  After a while, I got the sandcastle buckets and shovels off the porch and we made snow castles.  It actually worked quite well--much better than sand.  After a while, the cold (20 degrees) got to us and we went in.

Back inside, all warmed up!

Hanging out with the cat

Today, school was cancelled in anticipation of a big snowstorm predicted to arrive mid day.  Of course, nothing happened until about 6pm, so I was home all day with the kids without any pretty snow to look at.  Simon decided to nap sparingly and poop often, while Alice adopted the cat as her new best friend.  She and the cat already share an interest in similar toys, but today she talked to the cat like it was another, slightly younger, toddler.  She would encourage the cat to admire a lady bug with her, or to come in the kitchen and drink water, or even to look at her train.  Luckily, our cat is very patient and not too prone to scratching, even when Alice was driving a toy car on her.  It probably helps that the cat is starved for attention and will take anything she can get.

Marbles magic

I think there is some saying about returning to the same place to realize how much you've changed. When we went to marbles today, it really showed me how much Alice has grown up over the last several months. The visit was very enjoyable because Alice could do almost everything by herself. We also give a lot of credit to her daycare because Alice knows how to handle herself in a crowd of kids.

Specifically, in the money section there is the part with the stairs and the climbing things and then the slide to go down.  I went up it with her the first time, but once I saw she was able to do everything fine and handle herself, I didn't go up it with her again. We just stood where we could see her and let her do her thing.

The bonus of this particular trip was that shortly after arriving we saw her friend Ellie Rose from daycare there. Whenever I ask Alice who she played with when she gets home from school, she always says Ellie Rose.  She gave Ellie Rose's mom a little hug and then went with Ellie Rose up to the slide many many many times again and again and again and was ecstatic with Joy.

Sometimes the independence she feels is too much though. Zac and I call it "daycare mode" where we are in a public place and after a while she forgets all about us and just runs off on her own.  At one point she turned left after going down the slide instead of right and ran off into another room, took a toy car put it down the racing truck without ever looking behind to just see if Zac was following her.

Anyway, 2 1/2 years old seems to be the sweet spot for Marbles.  Alice had a lot of fun and knew how to do everything, pretty much without our help.

110%

Alice was being a little too helpful with making supper so I tried to distract her by asking her to bring a toy for Simon.

She likes to bring Simon toys.  She likes to give 110% to any task assigned. (If she ever says that cliche at an interview, it might not be an exaggeration.)

But Simon didn't seem to mind her over-zealousness.

Pizza lane

Pizza is our go-to easy meal for when we don't wave time to cook dinner after work.  It used to be quite rare but since Simon was born we usually get it twice a month.  We get the Hot and Ready pizza from a Little Caesar's near our house because, as the name implies, we just get a ready made pizza without any wait.  They also have a drive through where I can pick it up without needing to unbuckle the kids. To get to the pizza place, at a certain intersection we go straight instead of turning to our house.

Alice loves pizza and she picked up on the pizza day driving pattern surprisingly quick -I wouldn't have been positive she was paying attention to or could make sense of the different roads we were taking.  Now that we get pizza more often and her communication skills are better she has taken to asking about going to get pizza almost everyday.  Of course, I usually have to tell her that Sera is making dinner at home and that we have to turn to go home.  The day this video was shot Sera had texted me to get pizza and I wanted to share Alice's reaction when she got the good news.  

Hat hair

First Snow of 2014

The recent cold front brought a small amount of snow to North Carolina.  School was delayed a few hours to make sure the roads were safe so Alice and I had some time in the morning to go outside and check it out.  She liked the crunch it made on the ground but otherwise didn't seem too impressed - maybe next time there will be enough for a snowman.  Also, she wanted to watch the video of herself as it was being made. (This is understandably confusing because this is possible with video calls but not in shooting movies.)  I tried to make a meta joke about how she would see herself when we watched the movie later but I don't think she got it.   -Zac

Bed-night snack

Routines are important for young children, but as we keep realizing, the routines are constantly shifting.  We're back to the yogurt and videos before bed, as Alice claims she needs a "bed-night snack" whenever we tell her it is bath time.  We're OK with this because we just start the bedtime routine earlier, so even though she feels like she's delaying, she still gets in bed about the same time as before.  Also, she's been doing a great job eating cereal for breakfast lately, and the bedtime snack is a good way to try and get some more meat on her bones.  The only downside is that she gets so absorbed in the video that she has to be constantly reminded to take a bite (or sometimes we just spoon it into her while she watches).

We're happy to have found a program that we like and she likes: Caillou.  It's a show based on some French-Canandian books that airs on PBS.  It's realistic, tells a coherent story with a good lesson, and doesn't shift scenes too much.  Each episode is about seven minutes long, which works well because it's long enough for Alice to learn to pay attention, but short enough that we have a good stopping point.  Although Alice often whines to watch Cars, she doesn't really get it and just asks "Where's Mater?" the whole time.  We used to have her watch Thomas and Friends episodes, but those were longer and she had a little more trouble relating to it because all the characters were trains.  Caillou is a four-year old with a younger sister, a mom and a dad, and has experiences that are closer to Alice's world.

In other news, Simon is finally slipping into a nice routine of going to bed around 8:30.  He sleeps through the nights most of the time, and just requires a little pacifier maintenance now and then.  Things are looking up!  We just might survive this two-child gig after all.

Boots off

Normally Zac picks up Alice from daycare, but they closed early today due to fear of some ice or snow headed our way, so I left right after school and picked her and Simon up.  Part of the way home she was babbling about the routine when we walk in the door: "I take off my coat, I take off my boots, I wash my hands, I get marshmallows!"  When we got home and I backed the car into the driveway, I turned around and saw that she had taken her boots and socks off in the car.  I guess she figured she could get to those marshmallows quicker if she took care of one of those steps in the car.  She was really happy to walk on the sidewalk in her bare feet even though it was cold out.

Sharing trains

Since it was a three-day weekend, we had Alice's friend Grayson over this morning.  She has gone to Marbles twice with his family, so we needed to reciprocate.  Grayson loves trains too, and is quite a good kid, so having him over wasn't much trouble at all.  I was really curious to see how Alice would interact with him.  Before he came over, I talked to her about the expectations: that she should share her toys.  She had no problem with this, although there were a few minor tussles over who got to hold the Thomas train.  Here is the overview of the morning:

Grayson comes over and Alice and Grayson are both really hyper for a few minutes.  Then, Alice remembers she should share her toys, so she starts taking every toy out the toy box to share with Grayson.  After a few minutes, they play with the trains.  Grayson puts a few trains together then inches them along the track as Alice lays down new track as fast as she can.  Grayson has a much longer attention span than Alice, at least when it comes to trains, so he stays pretty focused on them all morning.  Alice soon wanders off and starts doing her own thing, although she comes back to the trains every once in a while.  She is very good at including Grayson in her non-train-related activities such as inviting him to read stories with her and one time asks, "Grayson, do you want to come poop with me?"  (He declines.)

Alice laying track for Grayson's trains

Examining a lady bug that has wandered into the train yard.

Story time! Alice is in the zone.  Simon and Grayson are more interested in each other.

They dumped the blocks out.  Alice immediately started sorting them by color.
Grayson immediately started stacking them.

Simon had a fun playdate with his reflection.

Overall, it was a fun morning.  I'm relieved, because I can recall even before having kids living in fear and dread of playdates.  It turns out it wasn't so bad.  However, I'm glad I don't have to arrange this sort of thing all the time.

Sunday morning bike ride

It was a chilly morning, but sunny, so we went to Bond Park for a walk on the greenway--where Alice could also ride her bike.  At one end, we came to a playground where we stopped and let Alice play for a while before riding back.  When we had her get on her bike to head back, her innate sense of direction kicked in and she turned her bike around and said, "I don't want to go home!" To convince her to go the right direction, we had to remind her that there was another playground at the park where we parked.

Here are some pictures and videos from the morning.

The light at the end of the tunnel

Because that's what a purple elephant would do

Several times today Alice was walking around the house holding this elephant's trunk up to her nose.  When asked why, she would reply, "It's sucking my blood."  I really have no idea where she got that idea.

Lap time

Zac snapped this picture when picking up Alice from daycare one evening.  Somehow I suspect she probably claims more than her fair share of lap time from her teachers.

At home, however, she is very good at sharing her parents' laps with her little brother.  She has never tried to push Simon out of the way, but she does often wiggle her way close.

Simon, 6 months old!

What a joy this child has been.  I can hardly believe it's been six months.  Zac says it feels like it's been much longer. But it's true--I can already hardly remember what it was like before we had his bright smiles every day.  I commemorated the day by trying to document some different moments throughout the day.

He currently weighs about 15 pounds, is almost 27 inches long, and has two bottom teeth.

Happy Town

Alice was doing a lot of singing at supper, but of course it started to wind down by the time I thought to try and record it, and then actually got my camera to do it.  She still had a little left in her though.  She sometimes sings songs correctly, but a lot of times she does her own renditions by changing the words, combining them with other songs, or just mixing up the lyrics.  This is one of those cases. In the following video she sings, she dances, and she wonders about the true nature of the hypothetical happy town.

In case you didn't catch it, here is a rough transcript of the last part of the video:
"I have happy town...or sad town....or mad one...or time out one....[inaudible...]...I go in time out today...because I didn't say 'no.'"  (We put her in time out if she shouts "No" at us when we ask her to do something.  Here, she is already absolving herself of any guilt, since she "didn't say 'no.'")

Blueberries and Billy Goats

It's always time consuming to pick out books at the library because I basically have to pick random books off the shelf and then read a page to two and flip through the pictures.  I have a pretty good idea of what type of book Alice likes by now: It has to have good pictures that help to tell the story (abstract or highly artistic pictures are no good).  The story cannot have too many words per page or Alice gets antsy.  It is better if the story is told in rhyme, but not necessary.  The story needs to have a good, but simple plot that Alice will understand.  There are a surprising number of children's books that do no fit this criteria, and so it is a tedious process.

That's why it is always fun to find a book that I remember liking from my own childhood.  However, there is some added pressure with these books.  Most books I get from the library, even after my careful selection process, are still hit or miss with Alice, but it doesn't bother me at all if she doesn't like some of them.  But I would be a teeny bit sad if she rejected the books that I remember fondly.  Zac also experienced this with the book Harry the Dirty Dog.  Alice refused that book for a long time, but later it became one of her favorite, much to our relief.

Two books I've gotten her from the library recently that I remember from growing up are Blueberries for Sal  and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  From the Billy Goats book, I remember hiking as a kid and always thinking about a troll being under every bridge as we trip-trapped over them. I was quite pleased when she took an immediate liking that book.  Similarly, when, the morning after reading her Blueberries for Sal for the first time, I found her reading it in her crib the next morning, my heart was happy.  She was pointing at the pictures and babbling about the bear following the wrong mommy.

Drool

Simon has, like any baby, had his slobbery moments.  But with his two teeth coming in, he has been a veritable fountain of drool lately.  Otherwise, the teeth haven't dampened his smiley, happy nature.  He actually loves getting his picture taken, especially when the flash is going off.

Riding reindeer and swinging on a circle

We enjoyed some beautiful weather at Pullen Park on Sunday morning.  We started, as is tradition now, with a carousel ride.  This time Alice rode a reindeer.  She decided it was Dancer.

Then we walked around the pond.  Here, Alice is sitting on a wall pretending to be Humpty Dumpty.

She has a lot of energy.

There is "water play" in the playground part of the park.  Alice apparently had no qualms about plunging her hand into dirty, icy cold water.

But the best part was at the very end, she swung on the tire swing for the first time.  She had so much fun and she talked about it the rest of the day.

If you give a pig a pancake

One of Alice's favorite books recently was If You Give a Pig A Pancake.  It started with the girl giving a pig a pancake, then syrup, then a bath, and on and on until pretty soon the pig is wallpapering a tree house in the back yard, and ends with the pig needing some more pancakes.  I think it's a cautionary tale for parents.

Now, whenever we have pancakes for breakfast, I recite the first few words of the book to Alice, changing "pig" to "girl" much to her enjoyment.

The best medicine

I read some advice somewhere to make lots of videos of your children laughing.  So here is Simon:

Make some room

A few minutes of our evening:

Waiting in the Rain

Alice will often "read" books on our trips between home and daycare but today was a very dark and rainy day so, with no light, she was out of luck.  Or so I thought. She wanted to read her new books with Mater from the Cars movies.  (The books make no sense so Sera banished them to the car where we won't be asked to read them to her.)   When we got home I freed her from her seat and then opened the side door, turning on the interior lights.  I took the picture as I stood in the rain convincing her that, although she now had enought light to read, we needed, in fact, to go in the house and eat dinner. -Z

Simon has a tooth!

One week shy of 6 months his bottom left tooth came in. He was really fussy in the middle of the night and we thought his tummy was bothering him. Now we think maybe he was pushing a tooth out.

Here he is in his sleep sack getting ready for bed. You can't actually see the tooth in the photo though. 

Simon's new move

He just started being able to push his bottom up in the air.  So exciting!

Birthday cake

The day before Zac's birthday, I asked Alice what we were going to do for daddy's birthday.  She said, "We're going to eat and eat and eat and get fat."  She was quoting  a line from the beginning of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.  It did, however, turn out to be somewhat accurate.  I made Zac a yellow cake with cream cheese frosting for his birthday.  I designed the cake with Alice in mind, knowing she would enjoy a snowman.  It was also convenient because the "5" in "35" became the snowman's hat and head.  The smiling face on the snowman was used instead of the word "happy" to convey the "Happy Birthday Zac" message of the cake.

The first video is dark, and the singing is terrible, but I'm including it here because look how happy Simon is.  We also figured out later that when Alice talked about eating the top, she meant she just wanted to eat the frosting.



Here is a continuation once the cake has been cut:



Zac reported that his birthday was a lot of fun, since Alice enjoyed the cake and was very helpful in opening his presents.

On the fifth day of feeding...

Simon ate the whole jar at one sitting. 

He had sweet potatoes and loved them. 

Maybe this is normal, but by comparison it took Alice forever to be able to eat a whole jar of food in one sitting. We are excited that Simon is eating so well. 

Two smiles

Simon's first bite

We celebrated the new year by giving Simon his first taste of solid food.  Up until now, he has been exclusively breast-fed (aside from a few licks of an apple core).