Figures

I realized that I was 'due' for another post so I started to go thought the recent pictures of the kids. The problem is that, for whatever reason, the kids are stark naked in most all of the shots. Ella naked and wearing my red heels...Noah in the buff playing trains... One of these days, I'll take some pictures of my kids with clothes on. Until then...

Hot un mits

I asked Ella to sit on the couch so I could take a picture of how she dressed herself for the day.

Noah thought that he should show off his half dressed look as well.

As she sat, she explored the way that she could manipulate her toes with her hands in mittens.

...and then proceeded to tickle her brother. So many activities end in this manner.

That is about it for now. We are taking it very slow this morning thanks to the snowstorm.

Miss Annika

Happy 2nd Birthday!

Baby its cold outside

With the exception of a wagon ride in the snow yesterday (more below on that one), we've been spending most of our time inside. Thanks to Aunt Liz & Uncle Stephan, we are now finger painting. I love that the kids' attention spans are increasing so we can actually sit and do a project.

This is Ella directing me on her next color choice: 'geen peas'.

Noah was totally serious about his painting.

And my other go-to activity when I think that we all might lose it: playdoh. Both kids love squishing, rolling, piecing, etc. I love seeing their creativity come out...

And this one just made me laugh.

And now about the wagon ride. I'm writing it because I don't want to forget it. Around Christmas we attempted to get the kids in all their snow gear so that we could all play in the snow. Noah struggled so much over the snow bibs, hat, mittens, etc that he worked himself into a rotten mood. Matt and Ella went outside and played in the snow. Once Noah saw what they were doing he agreed to go out. He liked it for all of one minute until he face planted in the snow and hated feeling the cold on his face. Play time was over.

We had not tried playing in the snow since that day in December and yesterday was much the same. Ella thought that it was cool to get dressed in all the layers but Noah, not so much. With each item of clothing that I put on he he protested. 'No socks, no pats, no beeb (snow bib), no cot (coat), no mits (mittens), no hot (hat)'. Once we were outside he was still whining but I asked him if he wanted to dig in the snow. He stopped whining and said in a really quiet voice 'dig'. I guess he remembered digging from the summer and he promptly took up his little shovel and pail and moved snow around the yard.
Once they tired of digging, we took a wagon ride around the neighborhood. It is probably not the most typical item for traveling in the snow, but I have to say that it worked far better than a sled for the one inch of snow that was down. It moved over shoveled sidewalks and just glided over the unshoveled stuff. They loved it.

Because one spoon is simply inefficient...