Phew!

I made it through...shipped off a five inch stack of reports on Friday at noon, and took a great big deep breath! Cleaned up the office, and now it's time to attack the "to do" list that just kept growing while I was in a report writing craze!

Spent the weekend just enjoying the kids. M wasn't eating Friday, and Saturday she woke up with a fever...just lay around, cuddled and slept all day long, poor thing!

I think she must be cutting teeth too, because she's rubbing her gums like crazy...and she was stinking up the daycare today like she was an old man who had beans & beer for supper ;-) Unbelievable!


These two played together really nicely all weekend, and last week too! They've been really into playing "The Incredibles" lately, pretending to fight the bad guys, pretending to fly the plane, and making up "super land." They use the pillows from the couch to play "Violet's Quest," a game that's all about jumping onto the different islands, and avoiding the bad guys in the water. I love this picture of them...it's blurry, and out of focus, but it catches them both in mid-jump! They've also been playing kitties together, making a little kitty den underneath their easel. And they've been loving their castle and pirates. It's great to see them playing so imaginatively together, even though there are the odd fights when they can't agree about the rules, or when L inserts completely improbable and illogical elements into the play.

Yesterday afternoon we went sledding. It was a beautiful sunny day, only -1. The snow was melting on the roads, but when we got to the hill it was very windy! The kids had lots of fun sledding and playing on the pond. G was a real dare-devil, and insisted on going down the hill by himself after the first run. He was sure that he was going at least 250 mph! Of course he insisted on going on the widest sled, which would not go in a straight line with his little body on it, so there were a few crashes. The first one happened when his sled cut right into the path of his Daddy's sled, which drove right over him! The second time he slowly slid into the snow fence. As nerve racking as it was for him, he got a real charge out of sledding, and it seems to be a really good activity for him. Hopefully it will warm up again so we can go soon!

busy, busy, busy

This is a crazy busy time of year for me at work. Spent two days last week at a school leaders' conference and submitted an interim stats report to the government. Over the next two weeks, I'll fill a three inch binder full of reports that my partner and I will write for the government, and I'll attend 8 (or more) school division meetings. I'm looking for things getting back to a more normal pace!

A few highlights from our long weekend:

G and I went for haircuts. L came along to watch, pretty nervous that she might have to get her hair cut. She is very dedicated to her long hair right now. She wants to be grow up to be Princess Sleeping Beauty. G was pretty thrilled to get a fake mohawk. At daycare today, he kept on trying to smooth it back up into the mohawk :-)







These two were getting along so well this weekend! They've been spending lots of time playing Pirates and Castle again. L phoned Grandma W yesterday to see if she could come over to play Princesses with the castle. It's so cute to hear both of these ones talking on the phone with their grandparents!










L has been talking constantly about dying lately. I'm sure it's just a normal stage, and it doesn't seem to worry her at all, but she sure is expressive when she's telling G her pirate DIED, or when she's asking us (with huge round eyes) if she'll DIE from a stomach ache....








And M is starting to walk more consistently now, and she has developed a real temper! She crawls after us when she's angry, head down, face red, screaming away. She does it at daycare too. It's so cute, it's hard not to laugh :-) And she gets really frustrated trying to climb onto the coffee table, screaming like crazy and crying while she's trying to get up. Then when she makes it up, she is so proud of herself, she just sits there and bounces with a huge smile on her face. It's always amazing to me just how rapidly moods swing at this age.
















And just to make your day... a kiss from M.

why?

Why is it that we have to wake our kids during the week (sometimes with lots of resistance) after 7 during the week, but they can get up on their own, cheerfully, before 6 a.m. during the weekend? Yawn.

Why is it that she can walk all over the place at daycare, but teases us all weekend by standing, squatting, and plopping? Today she took about four steps to each of us, lurching all over the place :-) Actually, I'm not all that impatient for her to walk, except that she's so frustrated by not walking these days!

Why is it that each of our children seem to get progressively messier? G couldn't stand being messy (but also hated getting cleaned), L got messy and didn't mind, M relishes in mess. Today she managed to squirt most of her milk out of her cup and onto her tray, and then she stuck her face in it and tried to slurp it up like a dog. Gross. She'd sit up and let all the milk run out of her mouth. There's always something stuck in her eyebrows or her hair. And, she loves to stick her finger up her nose while she's at the tray. Impeccable table manners. She must be her father's daughter ;-)

finally

M took four steps today, at daycare of course. She was very excited, and then proceeded to plop down on her bum and crawl around some more. She took two steps later when I was there, to go to G. He was so excited he hugged her like crazy before she could walk any further.

brrr

We had one nice warm day, and now it's cold and windy again. At least the nice day was on the weekend.

We had a good weekend. I got a few layouts done on Friday night while Ralph worked. On Saturday morning G and L went to Nita's house to bake some cookies, while Ralph and I cleaned like maniacs. We took the kids to see the Bee Movie on Saturday afternoon for the winter carnival. Of course L thought the movie was really scary and was on my lap, shrieking for most of the movie :-) After supper we played some balloon keep-up with the kids, read some stories, and cleaned some more. G is participating in the read-a-thon, and he's excited about his running tally of pages read. He's looking for sponsors, so give him a call if you're interested ;-)

On Sunday, Ralph took L to church, but the rest of us stayed home to make some soup. G said he was only feeling 80%, so we let him stay home. He kept busy drawing a picture to send to grandma and grandpa.

M is all about emptying the cupboards these days, which has reminded the other two kids how much they like to "collect" the food from our cupboards to make recipes. She also has lots of fun driving this little car (backwards of course), or running behind it. One of these days she'll decide to walk all on her own.