Puddles

It was another beautiful day today!  I feel a million times better this week than I have in the past few weeks.  I was in a total funk and I KNOW it was because of the dreariness of the weather.  I think I’m an undiagnosed SAD sufferer… but really, who isn’t?  Anyway, sunshine today meant more melting, which meant… puddles!

Eve

It's been so long since we've seen the sun that she forgot how to wear sunglasses! (just kidding, of course)

puddle boots

Puddle boots.

walking and talking

Walking and talking. We miss Lex when he is at school.

splashing

This puddle was super deep!

alan and eve

Alan went for the first run of the season. Eve was pretty worried about him :) We were outside when he got back and when he ran past the house Eve took off after him. Here they are walking back towards the house.

Lex

I know you haven't seen a lot of him on the blog lately!

boots

Their boots were FILLED with muddy water :) We emptied them outside and I'm hoping they dry overnight.

After all the excitement outside we came in for showers. Eve cried her way through a shower and almost continually for the next half hour until Alan laid down on the couch with her and they both fell asleep. I woke them for dinner, but Eve sat like this the whole time. We aren’t quite sure if she was sleeping, but she definitely might have been. :) I brought her up to bed after dinner and she was mighty glad to be there.

sleeping eve

Is she sleeping? We aren't sure.

She has been waking up a lot at night this past week and coming into our bed. The other night she was wide awake at 4am. I have no idea why. I’m dreading tonight after her early bedtime and she hasn’t really eaten much since lunch. Maybe I’ll bring a snack upstairs so when she is wide awake at 2am I can feed her and put her back to bed :) We’ll see.

I feel bad sometimes about her and naps. With Lex I clung to my “respect the nap” stance until he was almost in kindergarten! Eve would still nap most days if I let her, but even a short nap results in her being wide awake until 10pm. That’s too late for me! When I do a good job of being home for the regular schedule (lunch, stories, quiet time… all on time!) she does well for the afternoon, but lately I have been doing a very poor job of that. Trying to squeeze in errands after playdates, or lunch dates, or “quick” grocery shopping after preschool, or whatever. More times than not these past few weeks she’s had either a late quiet time or none at all. I need to get better at respecting her quiet time. The problem is that she’s just so sweet during the day it’s easy to try and fit in “just one more thing.” Slowing down will be next on the agenda… but not tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are going to two parties! Good Beginnings of the Upper Valley (of which I am a past volunteer, recipient, and current board member) is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary and we are having a big kid party tomorrow morning. It should be fun. Tomorrow afternoon we’ve been invited to a March Madness party. We know next to nothing about basketball, but we will dig out our SU shirts and enjoy the party all the same. It may be our last seeing as we are not sports people and I volunteered to bring cookies but copped out at the last minute. I envisioned nicely decorated cookies that looked like basketballs, and maybe some with the SU logo, just for fun. Instead when it came time to decorate I was tired, the kids were tired, the day grew late and I had to put them to bed, the royal icing got too stiff, my hands hurt trying to do the piping… so I grabbed a knife and just swiped orange icing across the top. Today I bought store bought icing in a tube and “decorated” them to look like basketballs. When our dear host tomorrow sees them he might kick us right out the door!!! :)

basketball cookies

World's worst decorated cookies! (they don't even taste fantastic either!)

I’ll bring a box of Thin Mints as well, maybe that will redeem me!

Birdy buffet

We made peanut butter and bird seed pine cones a few days ago to give the birdies a treat. As usual, everything gets done in stages around here so they were sitting on the table for awhile before we finally got around to hanging them today.

making bird feeders

Don't they look like they are having fun?! :)

on the porch

I can't reach any good tree limbs to hang them from, so instead I hung them from the porch and...

 

in front of the window

in front of the window. I hope we see some birds soon!

Little leprechaun

The soda bread came out pretty good. Better, in fact, than it looks on that cell phone picture! :)

eve eying the bread

My little leprechaun

irish soda bread

Yummy. We had some for snack, I brought some to my Good Beginnings meeting, and Alan brought the rest to poker. I love when baked goods are out of the house by evening :)

leprechaun mirror

Eve made a leprechaun mirror at school. We had a lot of fun with it!

lex

This was supposed to be a picture of Lex trying on not one, but two, pairs of sunglasses, but instead I got darkness and a sunny background.

Spring!!

Spring is in the 50° air and tiny flowers are poking their noses out! Hooray!

crocus

Little crocus (croci?) poking up. We moved the snow shovels this afternoon and got this wonderful surprise!

iris

Amongst the dead growth from last year you can see little bits of fresh green poking through the dirt.

Charts and crafts

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 writing

Lex making his chart

smiles

Smiles for the camera!

writing the days

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.

following directions

Lex is excellent at following directions.

glue

I got the glue out but Lex insisted tape would be better. He was right.

coloring

Lex told me decorating the truck was his favorite part. This is his "stop taking pictures of me" smile :)

finished

The finished dump truck. Pretty cool, huh? It even has a license plate on the front.

open dump truck

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!

Off to the bus stop…

The sun was shining today and we got out the door a few minutes early, so I grabbed the camera.

Party girl

Eve went to a birthday party at the bowling alley this weekend. She was the best dressed there!

eve in the mirror

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! :)

cake

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!

Movie night

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:

watching tv

Aren't they sweet? :)

Joke

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.