As you all know, Lex is an
awesome speller! Right? :) Sometimes he surprises me with his
spelling abilities, like knowing which words need a “silent e”
at the end, and other times he surprises me with his creatively
misspelled words. He built a train station with blocks the
other day and asked me to write a sign for it. I grabbed the
DoodlePro and asked him how to spell “Train Station?” He got
“train” right and confidently spelled “station” as “Stashne”
Sta-sh-ne. I can see where he coming from with that spelling.
Yesterday I made stencils for him and using the circle stencil
he drew a pizza. The top word in the picture is his spelling of
“pizza.” Pete-sae. I showed him the proper spelling and tried
to explain how words aren’t always prounced as they are
spelled. The learning process is amazing.

At lunch today
Lex told me that “skunks are black and white, but the skunk in
the drawing on the blue paper over there is only black.” Then
he got out a white crayon to add some white to the skunk.
Looking at the picture you’d never know it was a skunk, but
when I looked more closely, the caption I’d written back when
he drew it in November is “A little river and a little skunk.”
I find this facinating because either he was up on a chair
reading that caption recently, or he looked at that bunch of
scribbles from 5 months ago and still thinks it looks like a
skunk! Either way, it now has the appropriate colors and life
is good again.

Grammy Lynn brought Eve a
fancy new Easter dress with matching hat, socks, shoes and
purse. Ever the little lady, Eve was very excited and got
dressed up right away. She wore the outfit for awhile and only
took it off because I wouldn’t let her use dry-erase markers in
her fancy clothes. But the hat and shoes stayed and the purse
was with her most of the day. After awhile she decided to try
on Lex’s new light-up Spiderman shoes and tromped around in
too-big shoes, a fancy hat and purse. Very silly little lady.
We will be having professional pictures taken in a few weeks.
I’m not sure what to expect from Lex, but I’m sure we’ll get
lots of good pictures of Eve!

I can honestly say that we have the
world’s best kids, and they were on their best behavior today!
This afternoon we met Gammy and Popcube for a performance of
Good Night Moon and The Runaway Bunny, done by the Mermaid Theater of
Nova Scotia. We weren’t sure what to expect with Lex
(we really never are) but he had a blast! They both watched
intently and behaved superbly! This morning Eve insisted on
underwear and went all day with no accidents! Alan even let her
wear them to the show, so we had a few extra bathroom trips,
but no accidents from either of them! (Lex has had a few
(dozen!) accidents himself lately) Lex even paid close
attention to the Q&A; session after the show and was
very interested in the lighting setup. After the show Grandma
invited us to dinner, so we all went and had pizza for dinner.
Lex sat patiently and colored while we ate dinner. Eve explored
a bit, but mostly colored with Grandpa and ate pizza. They were
so amazingly well behaved! On the way home we were debating
about attending a neighborhood party two doors down. We had
RSVPed, but the party had already started by the time we got
home and we were all feeling tired (I was anyway!). I asked the
kids what they wanted to do and they both said PARTY!! So we
parked in the garage and walked down the street. It was mostly
a grownup party, but they were super sweet. Lex circled the nut
bowl on the coffee table like a vulture, both eating nuts as
fast as he could and diligently defending Eve from the dangers.
Eve choose to sit by a cracker bowl and eat as many crackers
with “cream cheese” (turns out it was goat cheese) as she
could. Then we moved to the counter with the grapes and garlic
toast. Like we hadn’t just come from dinner. They both enjoyed
the cookies and we left before there were any tears. The
hostess was very nice and said “they are so sweet and
well-behaved, there’s no need to leave.” I told her that I like
to leave BEFORE the tears, not after! That’s the sign of a good
exit :) Anyway, we had an awesome day! Tomorrow afternoon
Alan’s parents are coming up to visit, so hopefully we can have
a repeat of the good behavior… although that may be asking
too much.

Lex watching the show.

After the show (no photography during the show) the
puppeteers did a Q&A; for the kids.

Popcube and Eve coloring. He drew a picture of Eve,
which is her all time favorite thing to do. Whenever some else
has a crayon/marker/pen/etc. she says “draw
Eve!”

It was in the high 30’s and sunny today
and the kids were restless (ok, mommy was restless!) so we went
to the playground! It seemed like a bit of a crazy idea and I
figured we’d be there for 15-20 minutes until everyone got
cold. Turns out it was a great time! They had fun climbing and
sliding in their snow suits and it was sunny enough that I
didn’t even freeze :) Come on spring!!

We seem to be regressing a bit in the “big
girl” department. Eve has been in her pack-in-play for awhile
now, instead of the toddler bed. For awhile she loved the
toddler bed, but now she only wants the PNP. I really want to
get her back in the bed, but it is nice having her confined,
especially since she’s been particularly fiesty lately and
today has decided to take no nap! I’ll be putting her in the
car soon for a drive to see if that helps with the nap efforts
:) She is also completely back to diapers. I think her stomach
thing was a big set back. With three days of throwing up
followed by a week of diarrhea I had her in diapers the entire
time. Now she asks to wear underwear, sometimes, but refuses to
sit on the potty. Not sure if she’s scared, worried, stubborn,
or maybe just the “newness” of the potty has worn off and
diapers are easier for her. At BJs yesterday she found a bag of
“potty treats” (jelly beans) and wanted to buy them. I told her
we could buy them if she would earn them by sitting on the
potty. She said “no thank you” and put them back on the shelf!!
Sigh. I’m eager to get back to the toddler bed and underwear,
but I keep reminding myself that she’s not even two (yet!!) and
still very young for both efforts. Maybe she was just teasing
me with those early bursts of development and now she’s
settling back in to her babyness :) Actually, more likely,
she’s working on other bursts (vocabulary and independence!)
and no longer interested in the bed and the underwear. “Geez
Mom! Underwear are so last week!!” I can hear it
now…

This is from the other day, but I forgot
to link it with the others. I think I’m done with videos for
awhile as it seems to be slowing everything down!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuddeykdC3g]

We went to the grocery store
today. We needed to go Monday but it was snowing and ucky out,
so we didn’t go. Tuesday was beautiful and sunny, but we had
playdate plans, so we didn’t make it to the store. Today we
REALLY needed to go and, of course, it was raining! But we made
the best of it. Eve wore her “new” (new last year, fit this
year) rain boots and her “new” (hand-me-down from Parrish) rain
coat. Lex wore his “new” (hand-me-down from Joshua) rain boots
and insisted on his winter coat. Eve cried when she realized we
were driving to the grocery store, not walking in the rain, but
then we splashed in every puddle we could find in the parking
lot and that made her happy.

At BJs I
bought a pack of dry-erase markers, mostly because I wanted a
few but also because I thought the kids might like them. Turns
out it was an awesome purchase!! The kids LOVE them! I try to
encourage Lex to write and draw more but he’s a bit of a
perfectionist and gets frustrated quickly when he makes
mistakes. With the dry-erase markers he just erased his
mistakes and kept going. He drew and drew and erased and drew
some more. Eve did her best to get some drawing in too. When
Eve was napping he drew a really cool picture! He even put his
name on it so I would know who drew it :)

I should have gotten a video of
him explaining the picture, but I didn’t, so I’ll do my best to
explain it instead. There are two trees with green leaves on
top, the one on the right has branches on it so you can climb
up. The blue and green things near the trees are the leaves
falling. There’s a moon (the circle) with the sky in it and the
sky all around it :) Birds in the sky and, my favorite part,
Lex’s name!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlC6lt1jirE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz8jrtB3ITE]

We had a very silly day yesterday. Lots of
hanging out and wrestling and running and just plan silliness.
I was also a bit camera happy and now I’m YouTube happy!! Watch
or not. All just silly though :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPPXUdsQ9U]

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

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

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0MI1XlbS4]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyyZDqVfl4E]

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