Snow again!

We woke up to yet another heavy snowfall this morning. Fortunately this one was over by the morning commute and the temps are back up to 30, which feels really warm after the icy weekend.

Here's Molly playing at a "wool festival," which she insists is that little spot at the end of the sidewalk corridor. I wonder how she knows what a wool festival is. ;)

Undoing Daddy's snow-clearing work again.

'My different mama'

A couple days ago, Molly started telling stories about things that happen with "my different mama." Usually it's just silly stuff -- Different Mama rocks her in a swing then goes to the swimming pool with her and dries her with a towel. This morning, though, she told me that when she calls out for Different Mama in the middle of the night, Different Mama comes in to her and snuggles her and stays with her all night long until the morning. (Original Mama stands in the doorway and reminds her that the sunshine isn't on yet in a voice that she hopes isn't too cranky and then goes back to her own bed). Ah, well. Different Mama wins that one.

She briefly was calling Jim "Old Daddy" one day, too. Then she went over to her little table and told us she was going home with some "New Daddy" she had invented. I guess with all this talk about a new baby, fair is fair. Maybe we're all being replaced. :)

This is the rockin' outfit Molly chose this morning. That's squirrel pants, monkey skirt and kitty shirt, all of which she calls "fancy." She was in a fancy mood. She put on the backpack and socks, too, to match.

Ohh, that reminds me! Speaking of Molly's fearlessness in the face of bold pattern-on-pattern fabrics, here are the room-darkening shades I made for her bedroom (pretty hard to photograph with the lighting contrast, but you get the idea).

We went to the fabric store having discussed that she wanted light pink and light purple shades. Then we get to the quilting fabrics and she fixates on these two fabrics. I tried to push her toward pastels, little flowers, anything that wasn't so loud. There was no changing her mind.

I was convinced it would look like clown curtains, but as soon as we draped the fabrics over the curtain rod I changed my mind. These fabrics are so much better than girly pastels. They really warm up the room and they pick up the bold purple of her sheets and the bright pinks in her room. Plus, it's very Molly. Hurray clown-ish curtains!

Childbirth class

We just had our childbirth refresher class at the hospital. What a relief to have that over with! They only offer the class on Sunday evenings 5-8, right at dinner and kids' bed times. What are they thinking?

Fortunately we were the only couple in the class. It was supposed to be last weekend but the instructor's flight from somewhere was delayed so we rescheduled it and, because she called us ahead, we were able to talk her into starting it an hour earlier for us.

Still, it was a bit of a hassle to plan Molly's evening at the neighbor's house and prep her for it, then have it rescheduled. So I'm just glad it's over. Molly had a good time playing with Teddy, ate pancakes for dinner and was home in time for bath. We had a really nice time with the instructor, lots of chatting and advice, and we wrapped up in less than two hours, including a visit to the birth rooms.

I haven't taken pictures in a while (I just downloaded what's on the camera and all I have are some shots Molly took of her toys and a couple pictures of her covering her face).

These are from a week ago -- we've had two storms since -- but they give you an idea of how much snow is on the ground.

It's so deep now that if Molly walks along the sidewalk all I can see is the pom-pom on her hat over the snow banks. With temperatures dipping below zero this weekend, we didn't spend much time out there playing. Molly is constantly talking about summer and making plans to go to the beach at the local pond and using my blue yoga mat as a pretend pool. Clearly she's had enough of winter already. I think we all have.

Winter storm

We're at 14 inches of snow so far today and we're having a great time! I didn't bring out the camera, but Molly did a ton of shoveling with her own little shovel and waded through some very deep snow. There was plenty of warning for the storm so Jim made plans to work from home and we hit the grocery store yesterday. We didn't have to leave the house all day. What a fun snow day!

Blog hijack

Hi! Still here. I got a new toy last week -- a new sewing machine -- so I haven't had much time for blogging. Frankly, I have no idea what Molly's been up to. Here's what I've been doing.

Twill bag with hand applique leaves to hold Molly's rags.

Cowl-neck shirt (too tight with baby belly, so no modeling)

Another shirt, this one actually fits now. Bonus!

Another cowl neck shirt to fit now and post-baby, just needs hems and edge stitching.

Maternity jeans (doubles as belly shot, right?)

Just a little sample of the new baby's diaper stash. I'm shooting for a nearly free newborn and small stash from scraps and materials I already have around (then I won't feel so bad if we opt for disposables in our sleep-deprived madness).

But seriously, life with Molly has been fantastic lately. It's so exciting to watch her learn and grow. We had her 3-year check-up today and everything was perfect. No more doctor anxiety here. She's in the 75th percentile for height and weight, which is actually lower than I thought based on how tall she is compared to all her friends.

We've pretty much settled on the Waldorf preschool for next fall ... put in our application last week. We'll be doing the mommy-and-me class there this winter/spring (for as long as I feel up to it) because I really enjoy it -- it's so calm and they have mommy crafts and Molly's getting to be good friends with the kids who will be in her class next year. We just had a play date at Jadon's house yesterday and it was really nice. It's fun to be making mom friends outside of our neighborhood.

Here's just some of the stuff Molly's been up to while I've been sewing.

Catching up on 16th Century French philosophy ... just kidding. But she has been more interested lately in pretending to read books, both her own and ours.

Drumming for Daddy while he graciously agreed to come to her "dance studio" class in her bedroom.

Polishing her Dutch spoons from Beppe. Montessori classrooms have kids polish silver for some educational goal I can't remember, and it always seemed funny to me. But Molly really got excited about the spoons so we finally got some polish at the grocery store. She had a good time with it.

Molly's grocery list.

This was a big surprise last week. Molly has been into pretend writing lately, particularly writing grocery lists. These are almost always lines of zig-zag nonsense. Cool enough. Well, I sat down at the counter to make my own grocery list and Molly sat next to me and asked for paper. I gave her a scrap and she wrote this. I helped her sound out the letters in "milk" and she came up with "mil" all by herself. I had no idea she knew how to make an i! She didn't know about the k, so I wrote one on my own paper and she looked at it and copied it -- also surprising because usually she gets easily discouraged when trying to write and doesn't like to try. The word below milk is onion (she made m instead of n). Obviously I wanted to save the paper and this really annoyed her. She wanted me to put it in my purse and use it at the grocery store. Silly Mommy always misses the point.

New Year

What a great week we've had, just settling back in at home. I haven't gone through my Christmas pictures yet but this is what we've been doing yesterday and today. Playing in the snow!!!

 It's been about 50 degrees, but the snow is still deep in a lot of places from all the drifts from the storm last weekend. It's great packing snow, too. Molly and Teddy have been making snow balls, snow angels and snow men every chance they get. They haven't had a single argument, they've been so busy playing in it.

Now that the holidays are over I've jumped in to serious nesting mode. So far that has mostly meant cleaning with gusto. We took down our Christmas tree the morning we got home and all week Molly has been very patiently playing with her new toys while I scrub out the inside of the refrigerator, rearrange closets and generally go nuts on the house. We've had no activities and I've had a cold, so we hardly left the house all week. It feels so nice to just be home cooking and cleaning and napping and regrouping. Ahhhhh.

We're baking a lot of bread this weekend, even more than usual. I think everybody has made a loaf already and there's more dough rising. Here's Molly working hers last night (in her ADORABLE new apron from Auntie Grace).

Jim put it in the oven for her after bed time last night and this morning she woke up to have her own little boule for breakfast.

It's good to be home.