"It's shnowing in the shummer! It's a dramatic change in the weather. As if we're on a shpeck floating to shpace. I don't know how you knew it, but shomehow you did. And Whoville is headed for...DIZHASTER!"Okay, so Tom has been watching Horton Hears a Who lately and so when it started snowing on Wednesday morning last week after 70 degree weather the preceding Sunday, I couldn't help but think of Dr. Larue. Shad got a snow day on Thursday, with a mandatory work day on Friday. Fair trade. A good bit of Natoma's employees come from Nebraska or countryside, not to mention that it just doesn't work well to have power flickering on and off at a machining company. The snow finally stopped around dinner time Thursday. We accumulated about 18 inches. There are mounds in the streets left from the plows that are taller than our mini van. My bet is that they'll be there til April. Or at least the biggest one we found...
We had a very lazy day on Thursday. Even "very lazy" sounds like an understatement. We did nothing. I cooked breakfast in bed for Shad because I felt like it, but after that, I felt nauseous. My method for coping with that is to lie down...and then I just naturally fell asleep from there. Tom wanted to play the Lego Pirates video game with Shad, so they did that while I slept. And Katie beat up one of our plants. And then the rest of the day we just hung out on the couch. So I made up for that on Friday by getting all of the dishes and laundry done, vacuumed the living, dining and basement rooms, watered the plants, cooked dinner, and still managed to write a lesson plan, study scriptures, and let myself have fun in the sewing room.
We did try to go out and play in the snow on Thursday while Shad and I shovelled the driveway. Katie lasted 5 minutes and Tom lasted 10.
Tom always has to pick up a walking stick everywhere we go...even if it's a block away to the mailbox in 20 degree and windy weather. Gosh, he made things slow!
Tom and Katie like to play in the snow now that it's not actively snowing in their faces, and a little bit warmer. It amazes me how warm 35 degrees can feel. Just yesterday, we played in the snow on the driveway for over half an hour without coats or jackets, or pink noses! Here they are helping Shad shovel more off the driveway today.
We had a very fun visit with my parents over Presidents' Day weekend. My mom didn't have work Friday, Monday or Tuesday, and Dad's been out of work for a couple months, so they were able to come have a nice long weekend with us. Tom and Katie loved it. Katie asked for Grandpa every morning when Grandma got her out of bed. The first morning, she asked for Grandpa, so I took her and Tom to go wake him up. Even though she had asked for him, it still took her a couple hours to warm up to him. I've never had her so clingy to me--physically clinging onto my side, refusing to be put down from my hip. But then she was good friends with him after that. Tom introduced Grandpa to sword fighting, complete with, "Make it sword stone!" "I'm Kay. You be Wart." We got to go to the park on Saturday. Tom took Grandpa for a walk and found huge sticks for them to continue playing swords. Katie found little 3 inch sticks on the playground and handed one to me so that we could play "engarde."
For 5 of the last 6 baths the kids have had, I've had the joy of Katie pooping midbath and having to re-run the water after washing everything out. I wouldn't bring this up, because who needs to discuss this over the internet and broadcast it to the world, but I'm getting a bit pooped out with baths. Any suggestions from parents?
Tommy likes the word "probably." His food is "probably so hot." Or today, when he was done eating cornbread for dinner (he tried a bite of the lentil soup), I asked if he was done and the reply was, "Yeah, I'm all done. I'm probably so full." He also likes casting our family to be characters from movies he likes, and he also relates things in his life to things in movies. Yesterday morning, he told me that he was Captain America, I am Iron Man, and Katie is The Hulk. Any time I slipped up and called somebody by their real name, I got corrected. And at bedtime, I always have to tell him, "Tiger, it's bedtime." He's Tiger, Katie is Monkey, I'm Panda, and Shad is Mantis, all from Kung Fu Panda.
Tommy is our designated prayer sayer for meals, mostly because he just enjoys doing it so much. He can pray all by himself, and is quite proud of himself for doing so. Once when we were at Paul and Mallory's house (they're our weekly Thursday night dinner and games friends), Paul was going to pray and we explained to Tommy that it was Paul's turn to say the prayer. Paul had just started when Tommy started praying quickly in a volume to be heard over Paul. Paul stopped, allowed Tommy to finish, and said, "Yeah, what he said, Lord. Amen!" Tommy also says his bedtime prayers. Once, when it was naptime, he told me he needed to say prayer, so I let him. He said it by himself, and prayed for Lori to have a good day. Shad and I have never prayed aloud for Lori, so this was entirely out of the blue for Tommy. I texted Lori to tell her, and her response was, "Thanks! That just made my day. The past few days have been really hard and I was worried about today, but it's been great." When Tom woke up from his nap, I told him that his prayer worked, that Lori had a good day. He was so happy about that.
We started another round of potty training today. I simply told Tom that he was all done with diapers, that I'm not doing that anymore because he's a big boy and big boys go to the bathroom on the toilet. I explained to him that he gets jelly beans (yeah, we opened our Jelly Belly's before Easter) when he is successful. He had one accident this morning in his train underwear. All morning he kept telling me that he needed to sit on the potty. I didn't have to regulate him. He never went, but at least he was taking the initiative. Then after lunch, he suddenly dropped his toys and told me he had to go pee on the potty. We ran and got to the toilet in time for a successful pee! It's been hours, and I'm still elated! Katie was super excited too, because she knew that meant jelly beans for her as well. And aside from the successful pee and jelly bean excitement, Tommy kept telling me over and over about how happy he made me, and that that made him happy. Yay, Tom!
When Shad comes home from work, Tommy often wants to play games in the basement. He usually asks for a video game, or ping pong. He's tall enough to actually try now, and Katie gets to sit on the table.
Katie is a spunky little being, and starts wrestling wars with her brother. We often see her come up behind him, whack him a few times, then grab him in a headlock and knock him to the ground (when he's sitting). From there they wrestle, and Katie will then squeal for help, but when we remind her that she started the fight, she stops and continues to just enjoy the playing.
She's a princess and she knows it:)
I let Katie feed herself oatmeal one morning...
Tom needed me to take his picture, too.
I think I'll continue to feed her the oatmeal for a while...it's just not worth the mess to me. It was all over her hands, arms, face and hair. She can be independent for her cereal.
Tom and Katie love after bath cuddles. This was before they got evicted from my bedroom and bathroom.
Kiss me, I'm Irish!...and quite the flirt, especially when she knows she's being cute and silly.
We had a pizza and movie night a couple weeks ago. Tom was flappin' excited. Weird kid doesn't like pizza though. He had salad.
My parents brought a new pair of shoes for Tommy when they came, because nowhere in our town or the next one 33 miles over sells toddler shoes. Really? You've got to be kidding me. Garage sale season can't come soon enough. Anyway, they got a Buzz and Woody pair, so I had to check out Toy Story from the library. They only had Toy Story 3 on dvd, so I told Tom that Grandma and Grandpa would watch that with him because I hated it. He now knows who Buzz and Woody are. He thinks his shoes are pretty darn cool, and that they are "just like Grandpa." They do look relatively like the running shoes he wears! And Katie loves them, too! She grabs them from by the door daily to ask to wear them around the house.
No comments:
Post a Comment