Week in review

Instead of writing lots of short, choppy posts, I have decided to write one long, rambling post about our week.  So stick with me--there are lots of pictures!

Monday was prep day for the big blizzard.  The kids & I got groceries in the morning and ate lunch at the new McDonald's so they could play at the new Play Place.  It's pretty nice.  I know several people who have made special trips to Waverly just to go to the new Play Place.  It had already started snowing, but Austin was able to make it to Des Moines in the afternoon to catch a very early morning flight on Tuesday to L.A.  Tough, I know. :op

At supper on Monday night Emily made a stinging observation: "Mom, you're having a yelling day and Lincoln & I are having a cranky day."  In my defense, it was only the two hours before supper that had really been bad, and that's never a great time of day anyway.  Lincoln had not napped well in two days because he poked another molar through, so he was just tired and cranky in general.  Austin would be gone for 2 1/2 days, and I knew we'd be stuck at home for at least that long.  Then Emily asked, "Are we going to have a better day tomorrow?"  I promised her we would try, and that really set the tone for the rest of the week.  She held me accountable by occasionally asking, "Are we having a good day today?"  And we did.

We got about 4-5" of new snow by Tuesday morning.  The kids & I made Valentine cut-out cookies to decorate later in the week.  As expected, school was canceled, so Emily didn't have preschool.  We were both bummed.  During Lincoln's nap I spent over an hour outside with the snowblower to try and clear as much as possible.  The wind picked up by late afternoon and the blizzard conditions began.

On Wednesday morning the kids & I made Monster Bars for my bookkeeping clients.  Lincoln got into the peanut butter measuring cup.  I think he's a fan. ;o)  I don't know if you can see the big smudge on his forehead.  He was trying to pick the leftovers out of the cup with his fingers.

It was impossible to tell how much additional snow we got because it was blowing and drifting so much.  Another 3-4" had been forecasted.  I went out again at nap time, this time for over 2 hours.  I was very grateful for both the snowblower and the hood attachment.  It was extremely slow going through the deeper drifts because it was so packed.  I literally inched along at points.  I think it took 30 minutes just to do one pass on the front sidewalk, which covers half a block.  At that point I ran out of gas (yes, I had filled it before I started because I've been burned the last two times by not doing so).  So I had to pull the gas can down the street on a sled and lug it over a snow mound and then try to pull-start the snowblower.  I felt like superwomen when it started on the 5th pull!  I did most of the sidewalks and as much of the driveways as I could.  I left the big drift across the front porch and the 4-5 ft. high hard-packed mound from the snowplows at the end of the sidewalk for Austin just so he wouldn't feel left out. ;o)

 

Thursday was one of those days where you wish you could just go back to bed and start over.  It was a general cranky start to the morning after the third night of me not sleeping well.  The first two could be blamed on snowplows clearing the streets and hospital parking lots at 3:00am.  (There is a downside to living on an emergency snow route across the street from the hospital--they clear snow early and often.)  Not sure about the third.  

Anyway, Austin had made it home safely the night before.  Our van was scheduled to get some repair work done to one of the power sliding doors and replacing the AM radio, neither of which had been working since Christmas.  Austin dropped off the van in the morning, but on the way a huge ice chunk fell off the vehicle in front of him and totally shattered the right front bumper.  Great.  

The original van repairs took all morning.  By lunch time Emily was itching to get out of the house and go to preschool.  So was I.  Unfortunately, when it was time to leave, the loaner van the dealership had given us absolutely wouldn't start.  And it was parked in the driveway, so the truck was blocked in the garage.  I had to call the dealership and wait for them to come jump start the loaner van so I could bring Emily to preschool and then pick up our van.  That loaner was such a piece of junk that Emily & I laughed out loud as we bumped our way to school.  Luckily, the morning class had a late start, so everything was running late and Emily didn't miss out on anything.

After picking up our van I took it to a body shop for an estimate on the bumper.  They had to snip it off and tape it together so it could go over 40 mph without flapping in the wind.  The bill is going to be twice as much as the original repairs and falls just short of our insurance deductible.  Superb.  Thankfully, the couple who run the body shop are really nice and accommodating and will try to cut us a deal.  I love the slogan on their sign: "We meet by accident." :o)  This is the point in the day where I decided it might be a good idea to go back to bed.  However, I still had a lot of stuff to do, so I turned to my favorite coping mechanism: an ice cold can of Diet Coke and Coconut M&M's.  They make me happy. :o)

Thankfully, Lincoln was back to his regular napping schedule and I actually had to wake him up after 3+ hours to get Emily from school.  From there we headed directly to Waterloo to run some desperately needed errands even though it was still bitterly cold outside.  After stops at banks and the bookkeeping businesses to collect bills and drop off Monster Bars, we skipped Sam's Club and went straight to Target.  As soon as I had the kids settled in the cart and happiness suckers (a.k.a. DumDums) unwrapped, I realized I couldn't find my extensive shopping list.  So we headed back out in the cold and found it on the front seat of the van.  We made it back inside just in time for Emily to announce that she had to go potty.  So we took a side trip to the restroom.  By this time I was down to 10 minutes before I had to be out of the store and on our way to a hair cut appointment.  That's when I decided to grab only a few of the most needed essentials.  These included diapers, new toothpaste for Emily (which cost her $3), and sprinkles for decorating cookies.  While in the Valentine section we also quickly grabbed some Valentine cards and treats for Emily to hand out.  Nothing like shopping under pressure.

We made it out the door and to Denver in time for a desperately needed haircut for Lincoln.  He has been channeling Justin Bieber and resembling a shaggy dog for quite some time now.  He did relatively well and was super excited for another sucker at the end. 

When we finally got home we found Austin outside tackling the snow on the corner.  I think he spent more time then I did outside cleaning up the edges and chopping through to the curb.  He said it was some of the hardest snow scooping he's ever done, and that's saying a lot considering he has been scooping snow since he was a little kid and survived the previous two harsh winters without any kind of snowblower.

Friday was a really fun day.  Since we didn't have Mom's Morning Out at church, we invited some friends over for a Valentine play date.  Emily made Valentines for everyone and we even broke out the birthday box to put up pink streamers and balloons.  Emily had declared that it was her imaginary friend, Alice's (she spells it Lais) birthday, so she had to wear a party hat, too.  We had four moms and eight kids playing, frosting heart cookies and eating lunch.  It was chaotic fun!  Next time we might have to wait until after lunch to frost cookies because who can resist eating them right away. :o)

After Lincoln woke up from his nap we decided to take advantage of temperatures in the 20's (weather is so relative in Iowa) and go play outside.  If spring decides to come early we're ready to roll!  We ended up taking a brisk walk/ride not once, but twice around the hospital.  That's a total of a mile up and down a big hill.  Emily did great on her bike and never had to hop off.  She pedaled hard up the hill with only a little pushing help from me and coasted down the hill using her brakes.  I was quite impressed.  Then Lincoln went inside with Austin and Emily spent another 45 minutes digging around in the snow banks along the driveway.

To top off an already fun day, Austin took Emily to the Waverly-Shell Rock varsity girls basketball game.  The head coach is in our small group from church and the team is pretty good this year.  They've already won the conference and are ranked 14th in the state.  Emily is already in awe of the high school, and after her positive experience at the UNI game, I think it was even more fun to go watch girls play.  She wants to play when she gets big!  She made it three minutes into the 3rd quarter before they came home.  That's probably when the popcorn ran out. ;o)  The game started later than normal because it was Parents' Night.  Emily was very ready to go to bed and she slept hard!

Classic quote

Classic quote from Emily on Thursday morning:
"Mom, you should be so proud of me.  I cleaned my room!  But some of the stuff didn't want to picked up, so I just shoved it under my bed."
And she did.

January 2011 videos

4 years + 3 months

This is a picture of Emily in one of her favorite outfits.  I confess to actually hiding it on a few occasions so she was forced to wear something else.  I try to limit it to not wearing it both preschool days in the same week.  In other clothing news, Emily figured out how to zip zippers all by herself on New Year's Day, much to our delight and the delight of her preschool teachers!

Emily also practiced counting to 100 this month.  She's usually pretty close.  We've done a LOT of counting!  She has a funny "video game" she plays on the basic calculator we have on the desk.  She types in numbers and then says, "Look, when I press the AC button it eats all the numbers!"  Kids can be quite creative!

Besides the letters and scrapbook (see previous posts), Emily has been quite preoccupied with all kinds of "projects" involving writing.  At the beginning of the month she was all about rules, probably because they talked about resolutions (which were more like rules), at preschool.  The picture on the right is one of her rule lists with interpretations. 

Next came the sign phase.  She made signs for everything.  It was okay when she was using free sticky pad paper Austin brought home from hotels.  Then she started using her glue stick to attach the signs to things.  Now we limit the number of signs and use parent-controlled tape to hang them up.  There are currently two signs hanging on our back door.  One says "No dogs and no cats" and the other (in Emily's own spelling version) says "You can play in my garden".  Not sure where either of those came from.  There is also a sign on her bedroom door that says "This is my room not Lincoln." :o) 

The latest craze is to-do lists, probably inspired by the short story "The List" from Frog and Toad Together.  She wants to make a list of things to do every day that she can cross off.  The lists include things like wake up, eat breakfast, make bed, etc.  I finally took my mom's suggestion and found a free font online that is dashed letters perfect for practicing handwriting.  With Emily's help, I typed up a basic list of 18 things that we can easily modify based on the day and print off for her to write (i.e. trace) and cross off.  It has inspired her to clean her room on more than one occasion.  However, we found out that you need to be very specific.  The last time she "cleaned" her room, most of the stuff ended up in the closet.  Then she said, "Next time we should put 'Clean closet,' too."

We have been very blessed with extremely healthy kids who rarely get sick, and then only have a runny nose for a few days.  Emily hasn't even had a runny nose for months.  However, there is usually at least one "friend" from her preschool class missing because they are sick.  Emily keeps careful tabs on this and reports to us every day who was gone.  She also prays for them just like they do at preschool, although she usually embellishes the number to 5 or 6 friends who are gone.  She also talks about being sick herself and tries to tell us that she is sometimes.  I just tell her that it's not fun to be sick and that means she'll have to spend the day in her bed.  That usually produces a miraculous cure! ;o)

Emily also is hung up on losing teeth.  She often says she really wants a loose tooth or she thinks she has a loose tooth.  Then she tells me what she's going to do with her loose tooth.  Then she asks if Lincoln has a loose tooth.  All in good time...

The last funny note about Emily involves food.  She likes her food cold.  Especially leftovers.  This is not limited to pizza.  She also prefers things like scalloped potatoes and ham, noodle casseroles and cooked vegetables straight from the fridge.  If she asks for oatmeal for breakfast she usually doesn't actually eat it until it has been sitting on the table for over an hour.  It seems really gross to me, but it makes leftover lunches a little easier to prepare.  However, just yesterday she apparently changed her mind and declared that she liked hot food and wanted things warmed up.  Whatever.  She also still likes slices of bread plain and straight from the bag, although once in awhile she asks for toast (still plain).  They learned about rectangles in preschool this month, so she likes to make "rectangle sandwiches," which just means folding her plain bread in half so it is shaped like a rectangle.  :o)

The great book sort

Like the great toy sort we did last October (and really need to do once/month), we were in desperate need of a great book sort.  I inherited my weakness for children's books from my mom.  Now that bookorders come home from preschool once a month (and will continue to come home for years to come) I needed a plan.

The first step was to gather all the books from all over the house.  There are a couple hundred at least.  Even with them spread all over the floor, Lincoln was still able to find one of his favorites. :o)

The next step was to sort the books into piles and categories and figure out where to put them.  Here's how it all turned out before I redistributed the books throughout the house.

1. I was especially excited about the new canvas sling bookshelf I just got.  I've been wanting one for a long time.  Now that we have a large and growing collection of thin paperback books it has almost become a must-have.
2. There is a special space reserved for the Sing-and-Read books from bookorders that both kids, but especially Lincoln, currently love.
3. This is where the seasonal books are (currently winter & Valentine's Day).
4. This is the shelf for our massive collection of board books.
5. All the treasuries and box-collections are kept on this shelf.
6. I decided to move all the Dr. Suess/Beginner Reader books out of Emily's room since Lincoln has started showing more interest in them--especially Go, Dog. Go!
7. This basket of books will go downstairs to the play area.
8. A lot of books came out of Emily's room, but quite a few are going back because the are either especially for her or just more age-appropriate.
9. This small stack consists of seasonal books that will be rotated out when appropriate.
10. This collection will go in Lincoln's room to read before bedtime.  They can be rotated out with any of the other board books.
11. This basket lives under the end table in the living room and contains all the bulky, oversized board books that don't fit well anywhere else.
12. This is a pile of books that are going to go away for awhile.  I might get them out later for Lincoln, or I might just pass them on.
13. This fabric drawer from Emily's bedroom cube shelves contain all the books that actually belong to my mom, including twenty-one Berenstain Bears books from my childhood. :o)
14. This final pile are the books that are definitely going away.  Most of them were garage sale purchases to begin with.  They served their purpose, but they are not favorites and are just taking up space.

Like toys, sorting books is a good way to eliminate things no longer loved that could possibly bless others.  It is also a chance to rediscover things once loved.  Austin & I both love books and are thrilled to be able to pass it on to our kids.  I'm sure there will be many more book sorts in the future!

Another mini money lesson

One of Emily's latest "projects" has been making letters to send to people.  She'll do a little drawing, maybe cut it out and put it in an extra return envelope leftover from my bookwork bills.  Then she'll write an "address" and want to send it to someone.  I tell her it will need a stamp, so she will draw, cut out and glue on her own stamp.  Then she wants to mail it by hanging it on the mailbox for the mailman.  One afternoon she made six letters, so I decided it was time for another mini money lesson.

I tried to explain that real stamps cost money.  Emily's initial solution was to write a check from the bank, which she quickly designed and cut out herself.  Then I had to explain that stamps cost real money, so she found a purse with some change leftover from her pillow pet purchase.  We had a quick lesson in coin values, which will definitely have to be repeated.  We determined that she had $.64.  Then we counted out $.44 and she bought a stamp from me.  I wrote out a real envelope with a real address and she put her letter inside.  Then we hung it outside for the mailman where she kept close tabs on it until it was gone.

Of course, she wanted to send more envelopes, but she didn't have enough money to buy any more stamps.  This was mostly due to the fact that the day before she "bought" one of her bookorder books from me.  As you may recall, she didn't have enough money at the time the bookorders were due to pick out a book.  However, I had ordered a cute (pink!) princess book called The Very Fairy Princess that I thought would be fun for her to have (it is a good book).  She was so excited when she saw it she wanted to "buy" it from me because she had saved enough money by then.  I decided it might be more effective to have a visual stimulus like an actual book to purchase rather than placing an online order and waiting, so I let her buy it and might do something similar in the future.  However, that book purchase pretty much wiped out her small stash of dollar bills.  Plus, one of the next times we go to Wal-mart she has to buy a new tube of toothpaste for herself because she squeezed almost everything out of her old one into the sink earlier this week after watching a movie that another little friend brought over.  Apparently she is very impressionable.


Anyway, as Emily continues to grasp the concept and power of money, I'm sure the list of things she wants to buy will grow by leaps and bounds.  This will create many more future lessons in money.  In the meantime, maybe I should come up with some ways she can earn a little money at home.  I'd love to hear any good ideas!  And if you get a letter from Emily, you know that it is very special, because she likely had to pay for it herself. ;o)

Barnyard dance party

This is our new post-bathtime activity.  Not exactly recommended for calming kids down for bed, but it does burn some energy. :o)

Emily's scrapbook

Another thing my mom brought from her basement last week was an unopened scrapbook.  The first thing we had to do was number the pages to 100.  Since then Emily has literally spent hours filling pages of it with drawings and letters and numbers.  Below is a movie slideshow of some of the best pages with explanations.  If you would like to study a page longer, just pause the movie.

You gotta start somewhere...

 

I haven't even begun to think about potty-training Lincoln.  However, Lincoln has become increasingly interested in the toilet--especially since he figured out how to open the lid.  Just for fun I pulled down his pants the other day and held him on the big potty with a diaper on.  He thought that was pretty fun, so I dug out the little potty.  He thinks it's pretty fun to sit on that, too.  I guess you gotta start somewhere!

Silly shoes

It has been a bit slow for the past week for blogging material.  

Here are some snapshots of a fun new activity...