Spring is in the 50° air and tiny flowers are poking their noses out! Hooray!
Little crocus (croci?) poking up. We moved the snow shovels this afternoon and got this wonderful surprise!
Amongst the dead growth from last year you can see little bits of fresh green poking through the dirt.
My first Irish Soda Bread. I hope it tastes as good as it looks!
Lex finished his “get out the door on time” sticker chart last week so we did some chart making this afternoon. I made one for myself (dorky, I know, but I really need to figure out how to motivate myself to lose these last 10lbs!) and then Lex made himself another one. I was going to make his, but he wanted to do it himself. His spacing was a bit off, which worked out well because Eve wanted a chart too, so he cut his apart and made one for him and one for her. Isn’t he sweet?!
Lex making his chart
Smiles for the camera!
He wanted me to write the days because he was worried he couldn't fit them in the boxes. When I explained the M/T/W/TH/F shortcut he was thrilled.
After our chart making activities we decided to make cookies (hmm… and I wonder why I have trouble with those last 10lbs!). Lex helped for a few minutes, but on the way to the recycling bin with the empty egg carton he announced, “We could recycle this, or… we could do a craft project!!” Coincidentally I recently read about an egg carton dump truck project that I thought looked like fun. Lex loved the idea. We brought my laptop to the table and he followed the instructions while Eve and I made cookies. He needed some help with the cutting and hole punching, and he made a few modifications of his own (need tape, no time for glue to dry!) and he had a great time. It was awesome.
Lex is excellent at following directions.
I got the glue out but Lex insisted tape would be better. He was right.
Lex told me decorating the truck was his favorite part. This is his "stop taking pictures of me" smile :)
The finished dump truck. Pretty cool, huh? It even has a license plate on the front.
Kindergarten has him well trained. He wrote his name on the truck so we don't get it confused with all the other egg carton dump trucks around here!
The sun was shining today and we got out the door a few minutes early, so I grabbed the camera.
Eve went to a birthday party at the bowling alley this weekend. She was the best dressed there!
She wanted a ponytail, but she doesn't have enough hair anymore for a ponytail, so we settled on barrettes instead.
Except maybe this girl! :)
The party had a St. Patty's Day theme, but the birthday girl wanted purple, so they settled on green and orange outside, and purple cake on the inside!
We had a fun-ish movie night on Saturday. Lex and I picked up Happy Feet at the library and thought we’d have pizza and a movie and a fun family night. Turns out they had a lot of “screen time” all day, then we got the movie started later than I had hoped for, then Happy Feet was too scary for Eve so we switched to The Incredibles after half an hour and even that was too much for Eve. Of course she was pretty tired by this point. Neither of them ate any pizza, although they chowed on the fruits and veggies I set out as appetizers so I can’t complain about that! We ended up turning off the movie at 8:30 (I think it was) and Lex had a total meltdown. In hindsight I think we should have let him stay up and finish watching and just put Eve to bed, but obviously my brain wasn’t operating a peak performance. Sigh. It was a fun idea anyway, and Sunday morning the kids were talking about the fun movie night, so I guess that’s what matters most. Here is my favorite part:
Aren't they sweet? :)
Yesterday I said,
“Pete and Repeat had a race” (a smile slid across Lex’s face, he loves this one)
“Pete lost. Who won?”
“THE TURTLE,” yelled Eve!
Laughter erupted in the living room. When things settled down, she added,
“As you know, slow and steady wins the race.”
For the past few weeks the kids have been waking up at 5:30. Sometimes they manage to stay in their room until 6am, as is the rule, but more likely than not Eve is out way too early. Now, with the time change, it’s 6:45 and they are both still sleeping! I got up extra early to get a shower before they woke up, but now I may have to wake them for school this morning. I guess the joke is on me this morning.
Eve has been doing a ton of writing lately. I LOVE it! She is so smart. Sometimes the writing is well spaced and evenly sized, and sometimes it’s all over the place. All the time she does a great job with the spelling (with a bit of help) and she has so much fun.
Here's Eve writing a birthday card for her friend's party this weekend. We put together a butterfly themed present with a butterfly kite, butterfly crayons, and a butterfly card. :)
Eve drew a picture of me and wrote "To Tessa Love Eve" in an artistic sort of way. Then she told me a story about the special glasses she had that made my face look orange to her. She has an AWESOME imagination!
We went to visit a friend this morning and Eve made her a game. It's a maze and at the end it says "Central Park Straight Ahead" The green grass at the bottom is Central Park.
We have been dealing with an interesting sickness in Lex this week. Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning he said his stomach felt bad and he needed to throw up. He never actually did throw up (then) and he seemed fine otherwise (no fever, ok energy, ok color, etc.) so I sent him to school on Wednesday. I was wondering if maybe it was nerves more than actual illness because he kept saying his stomach was “flipping over.” He apparently did ok, but when he got home he ate a few bites of snack, threw up, then fell asleep in my arms on the couch at 4:45. Alan got home awhile later and put him to bed and he slept straight through until 6am Thursday morning. He woke up happy and ready to go to school. I chatted with his teacher Thursday morning at drop-off and she had two theories. She said on Tuesday his best friend announced that they were no longer best friends, but apparently continued to play with Lex all day Tuesday and Wednesday anyway. She said other than the statement he made there seemed to be no change in behavior. She also said that they played the game that Lex doesn’t like in gym class again last week, after not having played it for a long time. He did fine Thursday, but when he got home today he spent the afternoon on the floor saying his belly hurts and he needs to throw up. Fortunately he didn’t actually throw up this time.
I’m left wondering if he is really sick or feeling anxious or something. One thing I do know is that he is VERY tired. We’ve had several busy weeks and weekends with lots of travel and I think he (and all of us!) just need a rest. We are looking forward to a low-key weekend coming up. Eve has one birthday party to attend, but otherwise I think we are going to be camping out at home.
Wednesday night when I brought Eve up to bed we found Lex sleeping like this:
Our official “throw up bowl” is in there somewhere and for a minute I was worried he was going for the bowl in his sleep and missed. I was quite nervous about what we would find under that pile. Fortunately, it was just him, sleeping. Crazy sleeper!
By the way, did I mention that he is completely out of diapers now? I think it has been a month or two now that he has been sleeping in underwear and waking up dry. Yay!
Hmmm…. what have we been up to? Busy. I think I’m going to skip the details and just post a few pics from the past week or two. If it weren’t for the camera I would never remember what we did last week!
The kids love dried papaya so we thought we would try some fresh papaya. It was ok, but not a favorite fruit.
In celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday Lex made a Cat in the Hat hat at school. Eve loved it, but Lex insisted he never wears any hats that the makes in school. That boy comes up with some funny rules.
Eve and I had fun with the FaceSelf-Timer feature on the camera.
On Saturday we went to visit the Johnson's. On the way the kids and I stopped at Chuck E. Cheese while Alan did some work at his nearby data center. Lex had fun with the games.
They lasted about 10 seconds on this pretend roller coaster before they were both asking to get off.
Lex LOVED this little ride and spent most of his tokens here. You put in a token and get about a minute to peddle the peddles and raise yourself up into the air. He did it over and over and over.
Eve trying her hand at video game baseball. She didn't last long, but Lex took over and won some tickets.
After we ran out of tokens they took to the tubes in the sky, frequently coming down via the slide and then heading right back up again.
This made me laugh. It must be really loud up in the tubes because they spent most of the time covering their ears.
After C.E.C. we had some much needed quiet time. Eve did some beading and made me a monkey necklace :)
After quiet time we got out the highly anticipated box of transformers. Last time she visited, Grammy Lynn mentioned they had found a box of Alan's old transformers and Lex has been talking about it ever since!
Lex, intent on figuring out those transformers.
We capped off the evening with dinner on the floor in front of the TV :)
Sweet sleeping beauties