New home

Fingers crossed, this is where we're going to be living in a few months. We had our offer accepted last Sunday and got to go back this morning for the inspection. The house is old but thankfully in great shape. 

The children made themselves right at home already. :)

We are super excited about the house and perhaps even more excited to (hopefully) be done shopping. Hooray!!

Nap ...

Who needs it? Clearly not this kid ...

Pretty sunrise Sunday --

Girl play

Two giggling girls just brought me to the living room to show me something.

What is it?
"The helicopter and airplane are eating."
Giggles.

Back to winter

The kids are in the midst of a somewhat momentous cold. Kate has been so stuffed up that she stopped nursing. She's been pretty much weaned for months now, just nursing at nap and bedtime. It's funny that a day or two went by before I even realized that she hadn't nursed. It's also funny that she weaned within a week or two of the same age Molly weaned.

The unintended consequence however is that Kate also seems to have forgotten how to nap. And she doesn't seem to care! It's really my only sadness about weaning -- that nursing was like a magic trick that would take her from wide awake to snoring in about two minutes at nap time. (No such magic at bedtime, she was almost always still awake when I put her in the crib at night, thank goodness).

I've tried for a few days to close the curtains, turn on the white noise and rock her at nap time -- the whole routine minus milk. She never asks to nurse, seems to enjoy the rocking, then pops up to play. She flips out if I put her in the crib.

On the first child, no doubt I would have fought her on keeping the nap. Poor Molly. I read too many parenting books back then.

This time? Meh. I hate everything about trying to get a person to sleep when they don't want to sleep. Hands down that's been my most frustrating parenting experience.

So good-bye nap. Maybe it'll come back. Maybe not. Whatever. Kate's not melting down in the late afternoon or anything. In fact, she goes to bed easier at night and wakes up fewer times before morning. She's getting 11 or 12 hours of sleep. I'm just not going to sweat it.

Here we are making brownies with mint chips. I don't know what's gotten into me but we've been baking a ton of junk lately. Meh. Molly's also into eating whole raw radishes lately, so whatever.

It's been very cold but we've been self-quarantined long enough from these colds that we need to get outside at least a little bit whenever we can stand it. This past snow was a really good toddler depth yet still enough for Molly to make angels.

Warm-up

I guess it's a bad sign that I go to take photos off the camera and there are 100 on there, dating back to the last thaw a few weeks ago. Good thing I have pictures at all, I guess, because I already don't remember that one. :)

Anyway, it was warm today. The girls are very sniffly so we skipped our morning class and played outside at home instead.
 

Playing with rain water and sidewalk chalk.

Kate has developed this weird squinty "cheese" face that she makes at people at random times.

At Molly's request ...

"We should put those on the blog, Mommy."

Why?

"Because people will think they are awesome."

We just took a bunch of photos off Molly's camera.

Personally, I like this one.

Baby ballet

I found myself in the very unexpected position this morning of a toddler ballet class. Really, a 1-year-old leaping across the room? She can barely walk!

It happened when we took Molly to try out a gymnastics class at a place in Penfield. Molly trotted off with the teacher, all the other parents left and Kate and I settled in to entertain ourselves for an hour in the parents lounge. The friendly receptionist saw us in there alone and asked if we wanted to try out a little mommy-and-me class that was about to start. I tried to tell her that Kate was too little to follow directions, learn anything, point her toes, etc. but she said it didn't matter, it was really just a creative movement thing. So we did it.

I think we blew Kate's mind. She spent the first part of class dumbfounded. I have to admit, I was kind of dumbfounded, too. There were three other little girls and their moms, essentially doing real ballet. What could they possibly do with kids that little?

The teacher did some silly stuff -- putting a beanie baby unicorn on their toes for tondue, having them pretend to do balloon arms over their heads. They did some stretching, some imitating the teacher through little dance moves, some leg work at the barre, some free dance where she just played music and let them dance around in front of the mirrors. Kate got into it as soon as the teacher reached out a hand. She followed the teacher around and stood right next to the other girls, watching what they were doing.

I didn't take it too hard that she couldn't actually leap over the little foam strips because, well, she can't leap. She's a baby! I didn't know until after the class, chatting with a mom, that one of the other girls is three weeks younger than Kate! Of course, that baby didn't leap either. In fact, I think she's the one who tripped over the foam strips. They all had a good time, though.

And most importantly Molly loved her class. They do most of it in a special preschool room. There was some pretending to be cars, some obstacle course, and a nice dose of trampoline at the end. Seems like a good fit.

The other excitement this week was that the first day of the new session of our parent-child Waldorf class was postponed. When I mentioned to the teacher how excited Molly was for it to start, she suggested she get together with us instead. So we had the teacher over yesterday morning to play. What a very special occasion. :)

I have pictures of none of this. What I do have are some snow pictures that I'd better post quick before it all melts.

 

Kate joins in for bedtime stories with Molly sometimes -- usually just to sit between Daddy's eyes and the book, but occasionally to follow along.