Spring fever!

The Kansas City weather has been up and down, but the kids have been loving the outdoor time. Here are some recent pics:

Elizabeth shows off her version of appropriate running attire during a trip to the track so Dave (and Ben) could run.  Outfit and accessories coming soon to an athletic store near you.

Sarah A. sent this wonderful music geek shirt for Elizabeth :)

Being goofy with her bunny from Great-Grandma Anne. Note the choice of her favorite orange socks to go with the purple, blue & green skirt.

Enjoying the swings at the park. She still seems to like these better than the big kid swings.

Ben LOVES being outdoors!

Here's a shot from the same swings when Ben was almost 2:

Ben at almost 2

Ben at 5 1/2

Elizabeth has been watching Ben play on the Kindle and occasionally gets a few minutes to listen to the storybook reader app. This night, she wanted the Kindle, so I decided to introduce her to the Swedish Chef while I finished making dinner. She was enthralled by his cooking antics and kept asking, "What IS this?" (one of her favorite questions).
 





This was Teacher Appreciation Week and one of the school's suggestions was to make a picture/write a note for the teachers. Elizabeth decided she wanted one for each of her teachers, so we printed out "Thank you for being my teacher" and after a suggestion from Ben, she decided she wanted to finger paint them. This is kind of crazy, since she usually will only paint with brushes and doesn't like certain textures on her hands. Ben was the same way at her age. I'm not sure if it's due to her beloved Ben suggesting it, but she had a blast.

"This is fun!"

Ben used stickers from his Easter basket and typed a note on the computer for his teachers.

Very focused in decorating a sign for another teacher we thought of later.

Elizabeth loves singing and was repeating the ABCs as she decorated a card for her daycare director. She got a little distracted midway through this rendition, noticing that there were letters on the paper!

Elizabeth's First Haircut!

Elizabeth got her first haircut today. We had been talking about trimming it for a while and finally got around to it. She would protest when we mentioned it, but did great when it was actually time for the haircut. One little "uh?" whimper when she realized she was the one that was going to sit in the big chair, then she was fine after that. She also appreciated the jellybeans she got to eat during the haircut! They just trimmed an inch or less, so it's not really a noticeable difference.

Before the haircut (please excuse the laundry!)

Before

After the haircut

Eating a victory jellybean!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter started a little earlier than planned, as Ben woke up chattering at 6 a.m. after having been up a little later than usual as we were celebrating Passover at his grandparents' house. (Photos from that coming soon along with more from Easter.) He went back to sleep for a little while, but the damage was done. He and Elizabeth were both looking pretty sleepy through the 8:30 Mass. We came home, gave them a small snack from their Easter baskets, and sent them upstairs to nap for a little while. Ben was his normal self when he woke up about an hour later, but Elizabeth was still really tired:

"Please, put me back to bed!"

Her eyes were still glazed over for the ride to Dave's aunt's and uncle's house. But both of the kids perked up after the big lunch and had a lot of fun playing outside. Ben and a couple of other kids enthusiastically participated in an Easter egg hunt. Elizabeth trundled along at her own pace, looking for eggs and not particularly caring when one of the bigger kids found an egg that had been put in an Elizabeth-level easy-to-find place by Grandma. She collected about 6 or 8 eggs, then put her basket down, said "All done" and bolted off toward the swing set.

Hunting for eggs

Slide and swing set!

Ben & Elizabeth see-sawing

Drawing with chalk in outfit # 2 after spilling bubbles all over her dress.

"Huggies" with Uncle Jeff

Let's Go, Flyers!

Elizabeth and I got decked out in our Dayton Flyers gear to cheer on the Flyers as they played the Syracuse Orange in the second round of the NCAA tournament. None of us got to watch the first game (60-59 win over OSU) live, since it was Thursday afternoon, so we were excited to watch their second game.

Ben has outgrown his Flyers shirt but was a more attentive cheerleader than Elizabeth, who watched a little bit, asked me to read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and by about pg. 7 returned to her previous activity of sliding head-first off the furniture. The kids went to bed at halftime but I recorded the game for Ben, although I'm not sure I can stand to watch the nail-biting ending again as the Flyers won 55-53! I'm hoping the Dayton women's team wins by a slightly wider margin today so that the blood pressures of the entire Flyer Nation don't skyrocket for the 3rd time in 4 days!

Visiting Grandma

We took a couple days off recently to visit my grandma in Toledo. She moved into a nursing home in December and this was the first time we were able to visit her there. It is a really nice place (and I say that, having been in a LOT of nursing homes for my job!) and the staff seems very sweet and attentive. We broke the trips there and back into 2 segments each and the kids were pretty good travelers. We turned Elizabeth's car seat around so she got to face forward and watch DVDs with Ben for part of the drive and didn't have the sun glaring in her face through the back window. Between the DVDs, books, stuffed animals, and Magna-Doodles, they kept themselves pretty well occupied.

My parents were already in Toledo and Tony, Jen & Gwen came down on Saturday so we all had lunch together at Grandma's nursing home. The kids also discovered that there was a magical Starbucks machine in the little coffee lounge that dispensed delicious, free hot cocoa. Between that, their great-grandma's candy drawer, and the nurse's supply of animal crackers, they had a pretty treat-filled weekend!

Ben and Gwen chasing each other around Grandma's house

Cousins in their tiaras

Elizabeth & her great-grandma hugging

Grandma & Elizabeth (with her doll Annabelle) cuddling

Grandma & Ben

Grandma telling us stories

Ben & his Grammie, who was brave/foolhardy enough to let Ben play with her phone!

Finally gave in to a nap on the way home, right in the middle of writing in his journal.

Sometimes the biggest parenting victory is stifling your laughter

On the way home from dinner tonight, Ben was looking through the solar system page of the Knowledge Encyclopedia we got him last week and telling us facts about the planets. Earlier, he'd been reading the science of colors page and sharing slightly garbled facts about what made different colors. The combination of the two probably brought us the following inevitable conversation:

Ben: Daddy, what color is Mars?
Dave: A lot of people call it The Red Planet because its dirt is red.
Ben: What about Mercury?
Dave: I don't know. Mars is the only planet most people know by color.
Ben, totally seriously: Daddy, what color is Uranus?


On a side note, we stumbled over the Super Nature Encyclopedia at the library last month and Ben loved it so much we bought it and the Knowledge Encyclopedia. The Knowledge Encyclopedia in particular is meant for slightly older kids, so he asks for a lot of explanations, but they are still accessible enough that he'll sit and read them for a half-hour+ at a time. Both have vivid photographs/illustrations and fascinating information. They are definitely books he can read and grow with for quite a few years. Highly recommended for any child's library!

Snow days

Watching Daddy shovel the snow

 
According to the National Weather Service, the KC Metro area got 9-11" of snow in the past 2 days.  They advised that Tuesday morning's commute might be ok, but the afternoon/evening commute would be "decidedly unpleasant" and dangerous. My company closed all of its offices other than our inpatient hospice facility, and Dave's company strongly encouraged everyone to work from home. Today my office was open on a 2-hour delay, but I took vacation time as the roads still looked bad and the kids' regular daycare was closed, with the option of going to a neighboring center. Ben sometimes has a rough time going to a different classroom in the morning if we get there before Pre-K has enough kids to open, so a totally different location would not have made for a happy kid.

 
Yesterday, it took the 3 of us about 45 minutes to get ready and get into our outdoor clothes. We were outside for about 10 minutes before we all decided it was too cold and we wanted back inside. Today we took a short cut and just brought a baby bathtub of snow into the house. I tossed in some bath toys, kitchen spoons and measuring cups. The kids had a ball playing with it and then throwing it into the regular bathtub.

Oh no! Sock Hands!! (She also likes the game Marker Cap Fingers!)