Snow Day #3

Okay, so it wasn't really a "snow day" since it was sunny, the wind was relatively calm and we went to Denver for playgroup in the morning. It was still bitterly cold. However, we still had a fun afternoon at home. Today was "Craft Day". I had lofty ideas of making all kinds of cute cut-out snowflakes to hang up. I got as far as cutting out two before Emily totally lost interest and decided she'd rather eat a banana. She's not quite ready to cut through multiple layers of paper or in patterns. Maybe next year. ;o)

The activity Emily really enjoyed was putting together some of the "bird balloons" from a kit she received as a birthday gift. Each bird came in a separate package with the balloon, all the necessary stickers/materials and a picture to go off of. Emily ran around in circles, banging the balloons around for quite awhile. It was a good way to burn off some energy! It will be interesting to see how long the balloons last and what happens when they start to deflate. ;o) Good thing there are four more in the package!




Snow note: I think we got close to the foot of snow they predicted with some pretty significant drifts. Austin finished the third and final round of shoveling last night. He said he won the award for the most time spent shoveling in his office. He was out there for 2+ hours last night alone in the bitter wind chills. It turns out the sidewalk in front of our house is pretty long! I still don't think Austin is convinced that it's time to get a snowblower. What do you think?!? At least I bought him a new $12 snow shovel on clearance last spring. ;o)

We're on the Potty Train!

I've been holding back on posting about potty-training, but I think it's time. When my mom was here to visit a few weeks ago she jump-started Emily again by convincing her to actually sit on the big potty. After that she would sit on the potty for me but only went on one or two occasions. Since we were home sick a lot last week (strep throat & cold), I spent two days setting a timer and having Emily sit on the potty every 20-30 minutes, rewarding her if she had a dry "Dora" (i.e. pull-up) when the timer went off. She went along with it, but never actually went in the potty except on one occasion when I refused to give her Dora and pants back until she went because I knew she needed to go #2. The next two days I made her put on real underwear after breakfast and let her experience the consequences. Luckily, there were very few messes to clean up outside of a couple loads of laundry.

Then something clicked and it's like she turned on a switch. For the last four days (beginning Sunday morning) Emily has been almost perfect in staying clean and dry both day AND night, regardless if she's wearing a Dora or real underwear. She runs to the bathroom when she needs to go, does everything herself and only needs supervision with wiping and washing hands. She has stayed dry through church, a 3-hour errand trip to Waterloo and every single night so far. She even got out of the bathtub halfway through tonight to go #2. Her only two "accidents" have been when she happened to be wearing a Dora, and one of them has a somewhat amusing explanation (drama about the band-aid from her seasonal flu shot).

Now I'm not declaring complete victory since we haven't taken any major road trips, expeditions or even successfully used a toilet outside our house (although she has willingly sat on toilets at church before). However, I am so proud of her progress and so is she. She cheers herself on, and if she catches you going to the bathroom, she narrates and cheers you on, too. :o) It has been a LOOOONG, patient wait, but now it seems worth it. This time I'm sure I've purchased the last box of "Dora's" for Emily! :o)

Snow Day #2

Snow Day #2 was declared "Baking Day". Emily was quite the little helper. She helped roll and cut out the Christmas cookies and even used her own special pan to bake some.

She also liked helping "paint" the melted butter on the cinnamon rolls.

(And yes, she is wearing 3 different outfits in these pictures)

Here are the day's results: 5 dozen chocolate chip cookies, one large loaf of Banana Bread, one batch of Christmas cut-out cookies and two pans of homemade cinnamon rolls (one frosted, one caramel)

I kind of decided what I was going to bake at the last minute and didn't take an inventory of my pantry supplies beforehand. I was doing fine until I discovered I only had half a bag of powdered sugar left. That's why there's one pan of caramel rolls and the cut-out cookies will be frosted at a later date. I was too tired to do it today anyway. ;o)

Most of these items will be given away, which is what brings me the most joy. The corner caramel roll is missing because it got messed up in the flipping process and I decided I better taste-test the pan. ;o) I also have a theory I'm going to test. I'm planning to send both pans of rolls with Austin to work tomorrow. I have sent things in the past and had the pans/containers returned still half full. Now I've worked in an office setting before, and I know for a fact that with only 8 people we could have at least one pan gone by lunch time. Austin has 25-30 people working in his office. My theory is that if you set a full pan of something or a whole cake out in the breakroom no one wants to "mess it up" by being the first person to take a piece. So if I send it already "started" maybe they'll eat more of it. We'll see. I promised a frosted cinnamon roll to Emily for breakfast in the morning.

I also made an appropriate supper: "Perfect Winter Beef Stew". You can find the recipe here.

They've even added slow cooker instructions. It's one of my favorites!

Green beans

Lincoln tried his first vegetable today--green beans.

Snow Day #1

With the monstrous snow storm forecasted for Iowa this week, I made preparations to not leave the house for three days. I was actually pretty excited about it. Day #1 was declared "Puzzle Day". Emily stayed in her pajamas and I was one step removed. The two of us put together 16 puzzles, including seven that were 100 pieces. Actually, we put together one of them twice b/c Emily stepped on it and made it all "smashy" after the first time. Here is a picture of our handiwork...

Emily did quite well with leaving all of them alone on the floor to show Daddy when he got home. After supper, though, my fears were realized when she demolished and completely inter-mixed the two 100-piece Nemo puzzles. It's going to take at least an hour to sort them. We really need to number the backs of all the pieces with the corresponding puzzle number sometime because you know it's going to happen again...

Lincoln's baptism

We had Lincoln baptized at our church today. Pastor Ed married us and has now baptized both of our kids. They both did great up on stage, but they didn't exactly cooperate for pictures afterwards. :op

All the grandparents and Great-Grandma Boote came to church and over for lunch afterwards. Unfortunately, the impending snow storm meant they all had to leave early. When Emily was scheduled to be baptized there was a huge snow storm that prevented family from coming, so we postponed it. Maybe it's a curse! ;o)

I was just really glad that my Grandma Boote was able to come and see our house. With Austin's prodding, she & my mom helped me get some pictures hung up on the walls that I've been meaning to do for quite some time. I'll post those at a later date.

New toilet!

After some big hints and a little nagging, Austin has replaced the 60-year-old pink toilet in the master bathroom. Besides having a very uncomfortable wooden seat and a weak flush that required plunging a couple times a week, the $5 flapper fix didn't quite work out and resulted in the user having to remove the tank lid and manually push the flapper down after flushing. Plus it didn't seal tight, so water would run in the tank every 30-45 minutes. So it was time.

Of course, as with any home improvement project, it wasn't without some hiccups. The back of the new toilet ran into the radiator, so Austin had to slightly bend the radiator cover to get it in place. Then at 10:30pm on a Friday night he discovered the supply line was a 1/2 inch too short, and he hadn't been able to get the water all the way turned off. A quick run to Wal-mart turned up empty, but luckily he had an extra dishwasher line that was the same size and could be temporarily run into the sink until the hardware store opened in the morning. While putting everything away we discovered all the water had been leaking through the floor and dripping into the basement during the replacement and a minor flood had started. Thankfully, I had just moved a bunch of boxes of books to the other end of the basement that afternoon. Except for a chair cushion that easily dried out, nothing else important got wet. Whew!

Anyway, here are the before and after pictures. The new toilet seat leaves much to be desired, but that can be easily remedied with another trip to Home Depot. The important thing is that it flushes like a dream and uses a fraction of the water. Yay again for handy husbands!

New slide!

Thanks to the wonderful generosity of a good friend, we acquired a Little Tikes play cube/slide. It was a bit of an adventure getting it in the van, in the house and in the basement without disassembling the whole thing, but Emily thought it was pretty fun--even though she's almost too big for it. Give Lincoln another year and it will be well used! ;o)

Another fashion statement

Emily made another fashion statement today. She completely dressed herself and even pushed me away when I tried to help straighten out her pants. If you can't tell by the picture, she's wearing khaki-colored socks that are inside-out and upside-down (skid words on top) with black dress shoes. There are sparkly silver stripes on the pants. This outfit was debuted at the U.S. Cellular store, the polling place at Redeemer Lutheran Church (mayoral run-off election) and the Waverly Recycling Center. I think she had her purple coat on the whole time. :o)

Sippy cup

I introduced a sippy cup to Lincoln today. He loves to gnaw on it, but is quite surprised when something actually comes out. He was more interested in playing with his cereal spoon. :o)