Where did spring go?

Argh! Last week was a LONG week for us. Anna didn't nap at all (besides almost falling asleep on the way home from the zoo on Friday afternoon) and the weather was cold and/or wet for the whole week. After a nice weather week the previous week, it was rough on all of us. The no nap week didn't help, either. Especially since Anna was waking up really, really early.

Oh, well. There were lots of tears (from more than one member of the family), but we seem to be starting off this week a bit better :)

Some of the activities Anna has gotten into in the afternoons are more complex puzzles (she's up to 48 pieces independently now), chapter books (we're reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis right now), books on CD from the library, and projects. I think we're both looking forward to the day when we can put Kate down for her nap and then head outside and do some gardening together :)


Kate is still doing well in underwear. She had an accident yesterday and Matt and I surprised ourselves by not being able to remember when her last accident had been. I've even been confident enough to go out in public without a pull-up. Yikes!


Because Anna is going to bed early these nights, Kate has gotten to have some good hanging out time with Matt in the evenings. Tonight they read books in the "little tent" for a long time :)

Here's funny church story from this week. We love our church; our girls know lots of people, feel very comfortable, love our pastor, and generally understand the rhythm of our worship experience. Lately, Anna has been wanting to try out different seats in the sanctuary (coming from Lutheran backgrounds, this can be very challenging for us grown-ups to do, so we're trying to encourage this trend). This past week she wanted to sit in the front row. Really?! The size of little girls' bladders, the minimal length of their attention span, and Kate's inability to talk in a whisper when we really want her to all came to mind when I saw Matt and the girls sitting there as I walked in to church. In the end, it worked out okay. Granted, there were four potty trips between the two of them, one or more "breaks" for each one at some point, and a chatty Kate during the sermon ... but on the plus side Kate was repeating to me the last few words of each of Pastor's sentences in his sermon and we were all very aware and focused on the entire service. I'm not quite sure that we'll pick those same seats again any time soon :)

Signs of spring!

Our world has been filled with some signs of spring! Hip, hip, hooray! Here are a few signs from the past week:

* We've visited our neighborhood park several times.

* I took the girls on a bike ride to a McFarland park. (No soreness for me the next day even though I was pulling 65+ lbs. of kid on my first outdoor bike ride of the year!)

* We've played outside WITHOUT hats and gloves several times.

* The snowdrops are blooming at Olbrich Gardens. Anna and Audrey ran circles around the Gardens for about a half hour when we were there.

* We visited A to Z Farms on Sunday afternoon to see the baby lambs and other animals.

Both girls were excited, eventually, to pet the lambs.


Anna got a kick out of this male turkey who was showing off for the females.

Kate was enthralled to see "in person" all kind of animals she hears about all the time.

Unfortunately, the predicted highs at the end of the week are in the low 30s. However, now that we've had a taste of spring, a few days here and there indoors won't seem too bad. This spring is quite different from last spring for many reasons, but one for us is that whenever Anna has been outside this past week, she runs wherever she goes for as long as she is outside. She can't seem to get enough of the freedom and space right now :)

This past week our household also witnessed a few major shifts besides the weather. First of all, Kate is now wearing underwear! We certainly weren't expecting this, but I'll definitely embrace it. We've wondered for awhile if Kate would be one of those early potty trainers, simply because she can communicate so well. A few months ago we tried a "no diaper" day to see if she was old enough to make the connection between here brain and her body. The answer at that time was a definitive no. About a week and a half ago I knew we'd be confined to home because of Anna's cold so we tried again. There were many accidents, but two certain successes on the potty. A few days later there were more successes than accidents. So I bought some pull-ups last week and after she was consistently dry in those for several days, we bought some underwear for her. She's done surprisingly well. There has been about one or two accidents the past few days, but for the most part she's got it. We're still not really expecting this to stick, but for now it's definitely nice to be done with diapers :)

The other major change was that we've decided Anna is ready to be done with naps. Last week she slept in a few days with the time change and didn't take naps, but then took one on Wednesday. Even after running around outside and going to the Lenten service at church, she still had a really difficult time falling asleep. So we've decided that unless she's up really, really early, the naps are gone. Of course, after we decided that, she fell asleep on Saturday afternoon on the bike ride home from the park, in the trailer, on a bumpy road, with Kate next to her singing at the top of her lungs.

The "no nap" has been an adjustment for me, but I think God certainly had the timing work out well. Kate has taken a lot more immediate attention this past week ("Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom" means I have to drop everything and deal with her NOW)), so Anna and I have had some good one-on-one time while Kate is napping.

One last short story ... this morning the kids in Anna's music class received the assignment of making a photostory for next week. They are supposed to collect pictures of some event in their lives and create a page or book describing the event. Miss Debbie suggested events like birthday parties, vacations, fun with friends, etc. Anna had a playdate set up with Eli this afternoon and on the way home from class she suggested that her playdate with Eli could be the topic of her photostory. So here are some pictures of "Anna and Eli's Fun Day".








And we even forgot to take any pictures while we were at the park!

Recovered?

Kate ended up with a double ear infection. I finally took her in on Tuesday morning because she still had a fever and had a pretty rough night on Monday night. So Kate experienced her first round of antibiotics (ever!) and was doing noticably better after just the first dose. We realized she was back to her happy, energetic self by Thursday when she was practically running circles around Anna, who by that point had caught the crud from Kate. Anna seemed a bit better able to fight off her viruses, however, and we didn't have any doctor's visits for her.

We were fairly well confined to our home for most of last week because of the alternating colds and coughs. Matt came home for lunch on Monday so I could take Anna to her Kindermusic class and then a tea party at Sadie's house; Tuesday was the doctor's office; Wednesday we were home. It will be nice this week to get back into our routine.

On top of the girls being sick last week, on Saturday and Sunday I had one of the yucky migraines I get sometimes that my medication just can't quite seem to kick. Boo :(

At least our whole family seems to be on the upswing today and we were all able to get outside for some fresh air together ... AFTER dinner while it was still light out! Hooray! We're all looking forward to the spring-like weather that is predicted this week. We have highs predicted in the 50s by the end of this week and the later daylight makes our evenings more fun, especially after having 4 or so months of indoor evenings. Matt is even planning on biking to work tomorrow! (He hasn't since sometime in December.)

One evening last week we made some ice cream in bags as a treat. The girls were a little surprised by the process and the product, but we all liked the treat :) The experience reminded me of all those times I did the same "experiement" with my kids at school.


Another day I taught Anna how to play Mancala (another throw-back to my teaching days). She is quite the fast learner and even picked up on strategy fairly quickly.


Today Anna received the assignment at music class that she was to be a "sculptor" and create a sculpure to bring to class next week. Here she is hard at work.


We can't forget to include a picture of Kate!


Hopefully our expectations for spring are met this week :)

Recovering :(

Every time I start thinking that we've been going through a fairly healthy stretch, something happens. Alas ... this is the stage of life we are in.

Kate's pretty sick. Somehow between starting last weekend with a bit of a cold, swapping germs with the other kids, being exposed to all of the Chicago museum crud, and having one more virus enter her system when we visited friends in Milwaukee on Tuesday, she got sick. The poor kid hasn't been sick like this in a long, long time. Coughs, stuffy nose, fever, lack of appetite, fatigue, etc. Thankfully she's at least sleeping a lot. Yesterday was the worst for her so far. She was so tired in the evening that she was falling asleep at dinner. We put her to bed at 6 last night (crossing our fingers that we wouldn't regret that at 4 a.m.) and she didn't get up until almost 8 this morning. Poor, poor kid.

Before the viruses overwhelmed her system, Kate was already recovering from a sledding accident last Monday. We'd gotten a few inches of snow over the weekend and the temperatures were supposed to warm up on Tuesday and Wednesday enough to melt the snow, so I decided to take the girls by myself to the neighbor's hill in the afternoon. Anna went down on the tube pretty slowly the first time and then Kate choose to use the sled. Well, the sled went faster and didn't exactly go straight. I ran after her down the hill, but I wasn't quite fast enough to stop her from disappearing beneath a pine tree. Kate had a nice bump on her forehead that evening and a few scratches on her face, too. After Kate got over the initial discomfort, she proceeded to go down the hill again for about a half hour ... no trees this time :)

Matt, Anna, and I have done much better this past week than Kate. Neither Matt nor I have caught any of the viruses yet, and Anna has just had a relatively mild cold for a few days. Hopefully we all are able to stay clear of Kate's illness!

It's time for an extended Anna story now. This kid is quite the storyteller. Our "assignment" last week in Kindermusik was for Anna to tell a story with a stuffed animal and then draw a picture depicting the story. Anna's eyes lit up with excitement when Miss Debbie explained this task. Anna usually tells multiple stories every day with multiple stuffed animals, so to be able to do this as an assignment was very appropriate for her :) Actually, we ended up writing a small book, complete with pictures she helped take with the camera of scenes from her story. And this was about only one small part of one story she told one afternoon.

Along those lines, many of her stories the past few days have been about the movie Cars. To understand the significance of this, you must realize that we don't watch many movies with the girls right now. Up until this Christmas, the longest they'd watch TV at home would be for a half hour, or maybe 45 minute, VeggieTales video, Sid the Science Kid episode, or SuperWhy. Anna received Beauty and the Beast for Christmas from Uncle Adam so we've watched that a few times, but never with Kate. Then Anna watched Cinderella on the way down to Chicago last weekend. She hasn't really been too enthusiastic about any of the full length movies she's seen so far.

Well, I'd been thinking for awhile that she might like to see Cars, mainly since we refer to Matt's old truck as Mater, but also because she's seen some of the Cars merchandise around. So since the girls were both feeling ill on Saturday we had our first family movie night and watched Cars together. Oh my goodness. Anna was in heaven. Kate was, too, at least at the beginning. She kept saying "Cars go zoom, zoom!" We were a little worried that the girls might be afraid of Frank (the combine), but we prepped them for it and they were fine. The only part Kate was worried about was at the end when The King crashed.

Since we've watched it, all of Anna's stories have had something to do with racing, or cars, or Lightning McQueen, or Mater, or all of the above. She's also asked to watch Cars every day, but we pull out our standard line of "If we did it all the time, it wouldn't be special." She's not falling for that as easily anymore :)

It's good to know that a family movie night can be a fun option for our family sometimes :)

A weekend in Chicago

This past weekend we took an adventurous trip to Chicago with some friends from church. Six adults, two four-year-olds, a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and two one-year-olds travelled, ate, and slept together for 48 hours ... whew!

On the way down, Mary and her kids piled in our van so that Michael could come down later in their car. We met Peter, Tina, and their kids at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier for a few hours on Friday afternoon and then headed to Tina's sister's house (her family was out of town). We managed to get everyone fed and in bed before the grown-ups got to have some quality time together.

Saturday morning we headed to the Museum of Science and Industry. The younger kids and moms stayed until just after lunch, but the dads and older girls stayed a bit longer. We went out to dinner at a great Chicago-style pizza restaurant and then tried to get the kids to bed early again so we could have more grown-up time.

Sunday morning it was all we could do to keep everyone under 5 content while we packed up, cleaned up, and left in shifts :)

Overall it was a great trip filled with lots of fun memories. All 6 kids had meltdowns and trouble at some point, but it was certainly worth it to be able to spend this kind of time together with friends. A year ago I don't think we would have considered doing a trip like this, with or without friends, but with our girls being a year older and us being a year wiser, we thought the good parts would outweigh the bad ... and they did :)

Here's our weekend in pictures:

It was a crowded trip from Madison to Chicago in our van.

The firefighters exibit at the Chicago Children's Museum was a hit for all of the kids.

Anna probably would have stayed at this imaginative dollhouse set-up for hours.

Kate liked running in circles with Sadie. "I dizzy!" she kept saying.

Brave Anna climbed up to this rope walk and went across with no hesitation!

Four happy girls (Audrey, Sadie, Anna, and Kate) ate breakfast together on Saturday morning.

I think Anna's smile here shows how much she enjoyed the preschooler exhibit at Science and Industry.

The tractor and combine were hits with the girls, too!

Carson probably loved the train set-up most, but our girls thought it was pretty cool, too.

Another crowded trip back to the house, this time in Michael's car. You can't see Audrey face because she's fast asleep. Anna only wishes she were.

The kids watched a short Veggietales video Saturday afternoon before dinner. No one is actually sleeping here, but it sure looks like they could be.

Reading books on the couch on Sunday morning helped keep everyone occupied while the adults packed up. By this point all present were very tired. Anna's face was quite pale and her eyes were practically bloodshot. Both our girls were asleep within about 10 minutes of being on the road on Sunday morning.


A few memorable stories:
-Anna was probably the most sleep deprived of the older girls, but fared very well considering her lack of any nap on Friday or Saturday and a very short night's sleep on Friday.

-Kate was probably the most rested of any of us there. She was the only pacifer kid in attendance and I'm sure if any of the rest of us used a pacifier like she did, we probably would have slept well, too :)

-Anna's only major meltdown happened at the Museum of Science and Industry on Saturday afternoon with Matt. The "straw that broke the camel's back" was the automatic flushing toilets. Enough said.

-While we were waiting for our dinner on Saturday night, Kate leaned over to me, stroked my sweater, and said "I like your sweater, Mom." I laughed and said thank you. Then she said "I like your head, too." This kid is hilarious :)

-Anna told us Saturday morning that on Friday night after we said good-night and went upstairs, she went over to check on Kate a few times because Kate wasn't alseep yet. The third time she sang her a song and then Kate fell alseep. Sweet, sweet sisters (most of the time).

-Kate felt it was her job to tell Lukas (who is six months older than her) and Carson (who is six months younger than her) exactly what they shouldn't be doing.

Like I said, all in all, a good trip. Exausting, but good.

Living in Wisconsin

February has been a pretty eventful month in our state. In the first week we had a major blizzard. Soon after that the Packers won the Super Bowl. We didn't even get to celebrate that for a week before the protests started at the Capitol. And then this past weekend we were under a winter storm warning for about 48 hours. (Thankfully for us, things were not too bad here ... just some ice, rain, and then snow.)

I'm not going to say too much about the political situation going on here. If you live in Wisconsin, you already know the story. If not, you can certainly find many, many stories and opinions online. The only thing I will say is that we've had some interesting discussions, also known as healthy discourse, in our house. Matt and I have both contemplated a trip to the Capitol at some point, but to show our support for different sides. As of now, neither one of us had actually acted on these ideas, for various reasons. Enough said about that.

I think the girls' lives have been more affected by this past week's weather rather than the local policital climate. Last week we had several days in the 40s and 50s (gasp!) and much of our snow melted. The girls and I were SO excited. Anna suggested one afternoon that we take a trip down to the park to see if the snow had melted there yet. It hadn't, but that didn't stop us from playing around in the wet sand, many puddles, and taking a few trips down the slide.


The next afternoon we were actually outside playing for about an hour and a half (another gasp!). We played in the backyard on the swings, got out the bubbles (which were a HUGE hit), splashed in puddles, and just plain explored. What a nice break that was! After rain and ice this past weekend, we got a few inches of snow last night and were able to play in the snow again this afternoon. At least we have variety right now :) Someday soon we'll be able to play outside without boots, snowpants, gloves, hats, winter coats, etc.


The other highlight recently was that Matt and I got a mini-date night last night ... hooray! A neighbor girl has been our babysitter-in-training for awhile now, but we hadn't yet taken the plunge and left the girls with her while we went out. But we've got plans for an extended evening with grown-ups next month and figured it would be better to give all of the girls involved a shorter evening to get ready. So Alexia came over last night for a few hours while we went to dinner. I think we'll be doing this more often now that we know it works ;)

Finally, a couple of random side stories. First Anna ... While we were outside this afternoon I was trying to shovel the little bit of snow we got last night off (so the ice would melt tomorrow when the sun comes out). The girls were ready to go in before I was done so Anna informed me that she "could be in charge of Kate" while I finished. So I left the front door open (but the entry door closed) and finished things up. When I got inside the girls were sitting at the kitchen table with bowls filled with raisins and cranberries in front of them. Anna told me that Kate asked for a snack and this is what she came up with.

Now Kate ... She really likes the word "tomorrow" even if she doesn't quite get the concept. If she asks for something and we say no, or not right now, she'll respond with "maybe tomorrow" while nodding her head knowingly. She is also gettting pretty good at expressing her feelings. Such as saying "Daddy, you scared me!" when he did something unexpectedly or "I am crabby" one day after a lunch, before which she had screamed for about 15 minutes.

And now for both of them together ... Anna has been having a rash of temper tantrums lately, which are not fun for any of us. After one particularly loud and long one, she finally cooled off and decided to come downstairs to be with the rest of the family. Kate happened to be going downstairs at the same time. Here's the approximate conversation they had.

Kate: Anna, you o-tay?
Anna: Yeah
Kate: Anna, you cry?
Anna: Yeah
Kate: Anna, you crabby.
Anna: Yeah, I was angry.
Kate: Anna, you need big hug?
Anna: Yeah. Thanks, Kate.

Life doesn't get much sweeter.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The other day I was trying to get a good picture of the girls together to send out to family and friends for Valentine's Day. I'm so thankful for digital cameras; I think I took about 50 pictures, but at least we ended up with a few that look okay. Our most successful shot was with Anna sitting on Kate's lap, so that Kate would stay still :)

Now that Anna has a pretty good concept of holidays as well as giving, she is participating more in activities like making valentine's cards. This is exciting for her (and me), however, it means that it takes us a LONG time to make and write in cards for all of the people she thinks she should give one to. They were almost all done on time ... she just needed to write in Matt's and Kate's cards yesterday morning before breakfast :)

Last week was a COLD week here in Wisconsin, with highs in the single digits - yuck! Then on Sunday and Monday we got a brief taste of spring with some sunny warm days. I think yesterday the temperature was in the upper 40s - hooray! Today it's windy and cold again, but at least some of the snow melted these past few days. Yesterday Anna had a lot of questions about when spring was coming; I think she actually said at one point "Since we can see some of the grass now, that means that spring is almost here!" If only that were true!

So we're still doing lots of indoor activities. Playdates, trips to the Children's Museum, playgroups, Bible Study, etc. Last week Anna started up her second semester of Kindermusik, and Kate went to her first class. Anna still loves it, of course. She was so excited about the new music, the new game she got, and the new instrument (resonator bars). Kate was really fun to watch during her first class. She seemed pretty confused as soon as Anna left to go to the room across the hall, but then when she realized that this class was just for me and her, she got the biggest smile across her face. She's already been listening to the CDs from this curriculum for several weeks and brightens up whenever she recognizes one of the songs during class. This kid also has a pretty strong love of anything musical :)

Sunday Anna started up another round of swimming lessons. Kate was a bit bummed while we were at the pool because she didn't get to go in the water. Unfortunately, she won't be old enough for anything other than the "water adjustment" class until she's 3. Kate certainly doesn't need another round of "water adjustment".

And finally, one of the indoor activities we've started recently is "mattress surfing". Somehow Matt ran across this activity a few weeks back and thought it might be fun. The basic idea is that a kid holds onto a mattress as it slides down a flight of stairs. I wasn't quite sure of how it would work, but Matt coached Anna through her first few trips down a small part of the stairs until she was good enough to do the whole flight. She loves it. Plus, constantly running up the stairs to go again is a great way for her to burn off energy. We haven't had a lot of success uploading videos to blogger, but I'm going to try to get this one posted. Keep trying back to check if it doesn't seem to be working the first time you look at this post.



A few things we've learned from our mattress surfing experiences ... Kate isn't quite old enough to understand that you're supposed to hold on tight (she hasn't been injured, but we just don't trust her to do the whole flight) ... Adults need to use a longer mattress (Matt tried and got some pretty wicked carpet burns on his knees.)