Our day is going relatively smoothly (so
far!), especially considering we’ve been up since 4:00am! When
the kids started losing interest in the Pampered Chef boxes, I
decided to take things to the next level. Welcome to the
Pampered Playhouse! They love it! They decorated it with
crayons, Lex drew a blue sky on top and wrote “in” and “out”
above the doors in “fancy writing,” which just means his
scribbles. He writes his name in “plain writing” (real letters)
and everything else he writes in “fancy writing” (scribble
characters, his own symbol based language perhaps). Anyway,
they have been launching airplanes out the windows and Lex
brought as many toys as he could fit into it :) Whatever it
takes to get through the day!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDUT8S6q_Q]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O14DdQccObA]

In addition to the architectural work we’ve done today, we
also made eight loaves of bread…

and uploaded eight videos! Look for them in the
updated posts below. I’m trying to get Eve down for her second
nap of the day and the snowstorm is rolling in. We’ve got all
sorts of winter weather advisories, so I guess we’re settling
in for a long winter’s night.

Check out Eve reading Highlights magazine!
Such a smart girl! Then check out her messy hair :)

We’ve had some funky sleep issues lately.
I won’t go in to detail, but the result was Eve took a nap from
9-11am this morning (they were both wide awake at 5am!). Lex
and I played Trouble and ate popcorn. Popcorn is a special
treat that Lex only gets when Eve is napping. It was such a
beautiful day that we decided to go outside. I wanted to get
the driveway shoveled before tomorrow’s snowstorm. We had a
really nice time. Lex cleared off the Saturn (“Daddy’s little
black Saturn car.”) and hit the snow off trees with sticks and
practiced his snow angels, while I got the driveway and porch
clear. Then we played for awhile. I pulled him around on the
sled and then he decided it was his turn to pull me on the
sled. That lasted for about 30 seconds. I’ll post the video. :)
Then we came in, Eve woke up, and they had apples, raisins, and
sunflower seed butter for lunch. Some days things just go
well.

Lex is
taking “a quick little nap” in the snow. (mostly he was just
trying hard NOT to look a the camera)

Lex
tried really hard to pull me on the sled.

Lex does
not ham it up for the camera like Eve does.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATZS_1ravOI]

I like
taking pictures of the messy kids.

My Pampered Chef party resulted in the delivery
of three large boxes today. The kids always get so excited when
we get a Pampered Chef delivery and I think its hysterical, but
it occurred to me today that its really the boxes they are
excited about. They were moderately interested in unpacking,
but got bored because I wouldn’t let them play with the
products (they aren’t for us!), but when the boxes were
empty… the fun began!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygP7NA35rEA]

I’ve been amused lately (kind of!)
realizing all the things that seem ingrain to me, but
apparently have to be taught to children. Germ related stuff is
frequent these days. I don’t consider myself to be overly
germaphobic, but simple things like not licking door knobs…
or the wall of a public bathroom!! I mean who does that?!?! Oh,
yeah, small children! I have caught Lex putting a freshly used
toilet seat (the removable kiddie kind) on his head as a crown!
Yuck! He also likes to carry his full potty to the toilet to
empty it, before pulling up his pants. Huge recipe for disaster
there! The potty training thing in public restroom is rough. I
think it’s kind of yucky with him, but then I also have to keep
a super close eye on her because she’ll grab the plunger, lean
on the toilet, lick the walls, etc. Blech! One time he sat down
on a public restroom floor, bare butted, to put his pants back
on. I grabbed him and pulled him up and realized that I have to
teach him that sitting on our floor at home with no pants is
ok, but public restroom floors… not so ok! The other day she
leaned over a toilet, both hands on the seat, and said “smell
it?” All I could do was grab her and say, “no! don’t smell it”
She seemed confused and I didn’t even know where to go from
there. So many things to teach. Bring on the Purell!! It’s
amazing my kids aren’t dying of all sorts of nasty diseases!
Perhaps this is where the expression “What doesn’t kill them
only makes them stronger,” comes from?

On the bright side, we bought some regular
(non-rechargable) batteries for the camera so you can expect
more pictures in the near future. I took a ton of them today!
How’s that for a tease… :)

Eve has become quite the singer lately.
She knows most of the alphabet song and parts of other songs.
She gets very happy when someone else sings and she can jump in
with the lines she knows. Today she was sitting by me and
started singing a little medley. It went something like this…
“Twinkle twinkle little star, now I know my abcs, have you any
wool, yes, yes, three bags full.” And so on. I was trying hard
not to crack up. When we first took away the plug I used to lay
down with her every nap/night and I sang the alphabet song to
calm her now. Now she jumps in and sings along, so I’ve been
trying to mix it up and sing different songs. Her singing along
is cute, but doesn’t help the sleep efforts :)

She has also taken a liking to the toy computer
(“puter!” she calls it and Lex calls it “my very little toy
computer”). Whenever I sit down at my computer she runs in and
grabs the toy computer and sits right down. The computer plays
little games and gives you the option to play in English or
Spanish, and she usually prefers Spanish. Guess I can’t argue
with that. The other day she sat down next to Alan and I ran
for the camera :)

We put up our tree on Wednesday and decorated it
this morning. The kids had fun. I felt bad though because our
tree is small and weak (poor tree!) and Lex tried so hard to
put the ornaments on and they just kept falling off (poor
Lex!). I had to give him the lightest possible ornaments
otherwise they all came cascading down. We ended up with one
broken one, but it’s just a small break and I’m hoping I can
glue it back together. But we had fun, so that’s all that
matters :) I tried to get a picture of them together, but no
luck, so here is a picture of Lex and the tree.