We decided to take a night away and check into a local hotel for a change of scenery. It was an extreme success. The kids loved the pool and had to be drug away despite pure exhaustion. Beckerings were able to join us for a couple of hours and I'm not sure how they slept, but our kids slept like rocks.
The Brouwer girls have become "frequent flyers" at our house lately and that is a good thing because our girls LOVE them. It has been so wonderful to join forces with the Brouwers in getting the girls to and from school, exchanging child care, and transporting to the constant kindergarten birthday parties.
Last week I spent a day away at a seminar to keep me up to date on my nursing education; Mike took the day off to be with the kids. I was greeted at home with "bombs" from the fort.
We had a nice break from the snow, but it's back! The difference with the snow this time is that it is warm enough to play in. Carter has surprised us with his aggression in the snow. When Hailey and Taylor were his age we were used to taking a 1/2 hour to get their snowsuits on and then watching them sit in the snow like statues. Carter acts like its his personal playland. While Mike was shoveling the driveway he crawled out into the yard and almost disappeared at one point.
This past Sunday afternoon we spent the beautiful day outside ice skating with the kids. Hailey had been ice skating all month at school for PE and was super excited about her progress. We wanted to see for ourselves and we were pretty impressed. There were still lots of falls, but not too bad for her first season. Taylor suffered from some jealousy, but love the sleigh rides. Carter was lucky to have his fingers after crawling around the ice with hundreds of amateur skaters.
Carter enjoyed his very own bowl of spaghetti the other night. The girls were appalled by him and wondered if we would ever be able to get him clean. He had three servings.
We have been waiting for Taylor to take some interest in letters/numbers for quite some time. We obviously know that it is not healthy to compare, but Hailey knew all of her letters and numbers before the age of two. Taylor could have cared less until recently; she is now noticing letters all around her. I do think that she knew them well before I knew that she knew them. Her initial response when I ask her what letter it is "I don't know." If I wait and ask again she always knows it as if she needed to show me in her own time; on her own terms. Should I really be surprised by this?Carter is finally showing some progress with walking. He has now mastered crawling to such a degree that he is wearing holes in his pants and crawling backwards at the same speed as forward. He knows that we are excited for him to start walking, so much that if he stands up, he waits for us to watch, and claps for himself before he even begins. His other adorable skill is the stairs. He knows that he needs to turn around at the top of the stairs in order to crawl down backwards. He knows this so well that some times he is backing up a good five feet away from the top of the stairs.
Our winter game of choice is football downstairs. We get all of the toys picked up and then it begins, however it always ends in tears.
