Winter beauty

Although it can be long, cold and depressing, winter can also be amazingly beautiful.  I have been in awe of the frosted trees for the last several days as the freezing fog leaves its mark every morning.  All these pictures were actually taken yesterday afternoon from our house.  After another night the frost is even more beautiful and exquisite this morning.

Big helper

Emily has really been into "helping" lately.  She'll ask to help with about anything--especially in the kitchen.  Even though it's usually easier/faster/more efficient to do it myself, I've tried to oblige as much as possible because a) it's entertaining for her and better than having her sit in front of a video b) she might actually be learning some important skills and c) she won't always be so willing to help around the house.

This afternoon Emily & I both had a craving for cookies.  Since my once glorious freezer supply had dwindled down to one lonely oatmeal raisin cookie, I decided it was a good time for some fresh chocolate chip cookies.  Emily helped make the dough by counting the eggs, assisting in scooping & leveling the flour and stirring the dry ingredients.  We both enjoyed the fun part--licking the beaters. :o)  I even let Emily try to transfer the cookies from one pan to the cooling rack by herself.  She didn't do half bad.  Of course, eating them is the best part!  Emily doesn't seem to mind melted chocolate on her face, but she doesn't like flour on her hands.  She had to run to the bathroom at least twice to do a full washing. ;o)

Another thing Emily was excited to help with today was laundry.  She did a great job moving clothes in and out of the dryer.  Too bad this is her idea of folding clothes!

The last big help of the day was washing the potatoes for supper.  I had to do a quality control check, but she was starting to get the idea.  She wanted to wash the whole 5 lb. bag.  Or probably just play in the water.  She only stopped because the front of her dress got wet and she had to run and go change into her other Christmas dress. ;o)

Some of the other things Emily likes to "help" with are setting the table (silverware & napkins), giving Lincoln a bath (dispersing bath toys), reading bedtime books to Lincoln (i.e. selecting the books and trying to turn the pages for him), feeding the fish (when she feels like it and I remember), and holding Lincoln's sippy cup up to his mouth.  She is also asserting more and more of her independence.  Not only does she insist on dressing herself, she is now insisting on going potty all by herself, including the hand-washing.  She hasn't been tested with #2 yet, so we'll have to see how that goes. :op  It's so fun to see her grow and learn every day!

2nd Blogoversary

Today marks two years for this blog.  I've made 457 posts, have had over 17,000 hits since I installed the counter a year ago and now have Google Analytics installed to track blog traffic in even more detail.  In the last 4 days there have been 79 unique visitors.  Crazy!

I enjoy blogging even more today than when I first started.  Probably because with two kids now I have even more to post about! ;o)  I consider it my main hobby and set it as a high priority.  I've let many other things slide like cleaning, organizing and recently even cooking and baking, but I always make time for blogging.  I consider it our family scrapbook and hope to get around to having it printed in books some day.  So if you ever scratch your head and wonder why in the world I'm posting about something, it may be just a nugget of family history I'm saving for myself.  I'm realizing more and more how many of the little things I forget, so I want to record them to enjoy again later. 

I always love getting comments, so feel free to share.  Thanks for enjoying life together with me! 

Fun in the snow!

It was finally nice enough to go outside and play in the snow today.  I don't know who was more excited--me or Emily.  They talked about snow and read books like The Snowy Day at her preschool story hour at the library this morning.  Plus I've had to sing the entire "Frosty the Snowman" song from a book we have more times than I can count in the last week.  Emily even willingly traded her Christmas dress for a shirt when getting all the snow gear on!  She thought the pockets in her snow pants were pretty cool--especially when I gave her some carrots to put in them.

Our main objective was to build a snowman--or three.  It was a little tricky because you could only use the very top layer of snow where the sun had hit and started melting it.  Everything else was too powdery or hard.  Here are our creations...

Emily, of course, wanted to build more (she suggested 10), but I had only brought 3 carrots outside, and I was having a hard time remembering where to dig for rocks and/or sticks in the landscaping.  She was very proud of them, though, and even had to check on them again before going to bed to see if they were sleeping. :o)

She also enjoyed trying to pull me in the sled and tromping around in the backyard carrying the stuffed snowman from the decorative bench on the porch and singing lines from "Frosty the Snowman."  Check out the January video player for more on that.  Our time ended when Emily sunk deep into a drift and got snow all over her hands and up her sleeves because her mittens were off.  I'm not sure how we managed to lose 3 out of her 4 mittens, but we did.  We may have to make an emergency trip to Wal-mart tomorrow.  Anyway, Emily went inside while I finished picking up and putting away stuff outside.  By the time I got inside she already had her Christmas dress back on along with her snow pants.  In fact, she insisted on wearing her snow pants for the next half hour because she was pretending to be Papa Bear from The Berenstain Bears working in his shop.  This is the exact same pair of snow pants she almost flat-out refused to put on last winter.  Go figure.  At least they fit better!

After Lincoln woke up from his nap we bundled up again and went for a sled ride up and down the block on the snow-packed street.  I LOVE the expression on Lincoln's face in the first picture when he's sitting on Emily's lap (click to zoom in for a closer look).  However, after we got him propped up with the stuffed snowman I think he somewhat enjoyed the short ride.

Then we had fun making "chairs" in the snow banks along the driveway.  Lincoln still didn't know what to think.  Notice Emily with one pant leg up and one mitten missing but loving every minute of it.

The sunshine was beautiful and fresh air was wonderful.  Both kids conked out after we got back inside and the silence was deafening.  I'm sure we will be having another adventure outside tomorrow despite Emily's insistence at bedtime that the snow was going to melt and it was going to be spring tomorrow.  One can only wish!

The Christmas dress

I had mentioned Emily's current obsession with wearing Christmas dresses in her monthly update post.  We are now on Day 15 of the Christmas dress phase.  This is a picture of Emily at 7:45am this morning shortly after I pulled the two dresses out of the dryer.  I try to confiscate them every 3-4 days and wash them overnight.  I make her put on black tights or leggings when we go out in public, otherwise just about anything goes as far as accessories.  Feel free to vote in the blog poll on the left sidebar with your guess of how long this phase will last!

Emily's prayer

The other day Emily volunteered to pray before supper for the first time.  She was very serious as she said a slightly mumbled version of the semi-standard prayer Austin usually says with the added phrase, "And thank you for Morgan's potty."  We had just gotten home from a play date at a friend's house where she successfully used the potty without a potty seat. :o)

Foyer tile

Austin has been working on the bathroom all week.  I'll post pictures as soon as it's finished.  Today's big project was tiling the foyer.  It looks awesome!  I didn't catch much of the blue walls in this picture, but I'll post more pictures when it's closer to finished.

Sitting tall

Lincoln is becoming an expert sitter-upper.  He'll eventually tip over, but I can run in and out of the room now.  Here he is being a cheese for the camera.  Unlike his older sister, Lincoln immediately smiles whenever I get out the camera.  He squints sometimes in anticipation of the flash.

Lincoln's second tooth also popped through yesterday.  I think teething really affects his eating habits.  He's doing better in that area, though.  His favorite baby food so far is pears.  He ate the whole container on his first try!

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

One thing I forgot to include in Emily's monthly update is her current wacky sense of time. She's going to have a very busy day tomorrow because everything is going to happen tomorrow. She always says she's going to see you tomorrow. Or maybe we'll go to Grandpa & Grandma's house tomorrow. Or maybe she'll stay clean & dry and won't have any axe-a-lents tomorrow. Or maybe we'll go to Waterloo tomorrow. Just recently she has added, "or maybe on Saturday" as an alternate option. :o)

New Year's Christmas

Since we didn't make it down to Waukee on Christmas Eve due to the weather, Austin's parents made the trip up to Waverly to deliver gifts and watch bowl games on New Year's Day. Emily had the present thing down by now, and it was hard for her to wait to eat first. Then Lincoln finally fell asleep for a nap, but we didn't make her wait for him to wake up. He was a little out of sorts because his first tooth officially poked through today! Emily loved her new Little People princess castle and carriage (which she calls a "cabbage") and her new dress-up clothes. Princesses have finally infiltrated our household, but I'm okay with it. It's not the princesses themselves that I have a problem with, it's the "princess attitude" that often comes with it. I feel confident enough that we have established rules and boundaries to counteract such a thing.

However, we are going to have to quickly establish new rules and boundaries about where certain toys are kept and played with. Lincoln is growing more mobile by the day and can roll, pivot and slide himself backwards just about anywhere if you leave him alone long enough. All floor space is now fair game. Just today he started really going up on all fours. Emily is going to learn fast that her safe territory is shrinking!