a great week!

we had such a fantastic week with mema here!!

i want to put together an album from the week, but that'll only happen tonight if the girls get in a good nap and go to bed before i fall asleep :) vacations are wonderful and exhausting! we love you mema and can't wait to come visit YOU!

bff's

this morning, avery is at school and instead of running errands, nola and i are hanging out at home and getting some quality time together. she can be so engrossed in something. intent on playing with her blocks, for example. (placing buzz on the top and knocking him over is a favorite pastime these days...)

but then this one enters the picture and all bets are off.

nola meows over and over as you're acknowledging that "yes! a kitty! cleo came to see what you're doing!!"

then she tries to sit on her. and cleo is amazing and lets nola do just about whatever to her until she has had enough and runs away. nola loves cleo which means she loves to poke, smack, snuggle, rub and stare at her. and cleo loves nola which means she tolerates a lot more than she probably would like to.

a match made in heaven ;)

my loves

:)

this is all for today. i have a sore throat, a headache, a mini- project due tomorrow, reading to do, nola woke up early from her nap, a meeting tonight, dinner to make, and a little bit of stress added to all that.

happy (late) valentine's day! hope it was a lovely one.

a little gymnast

avery had her first gymnastics class last week and...to put it lightly, she was excited.


i'm not sure where my little chubby baby went. she's blossoming into a little girl complete with grace, manners, long legs, humor, hugs...

and a sassy attitude to boot ;)

wish i had a picture.

spring is 44 days away. so i have no shame in admitting that we're using all sorts of tactics to get the girls to nap and give us a little break from time to time. the latest "bribe" is telling avery that we can watch a movie with popcorn in mama and dada's bed if she takes a nap. the past 2 days it's worked wonderfully! (it also doesn't hurt that she's a bit stuffy and a tad under the weather so she definitely needs the extra rest anyway). sometimes though, it's hard to keep nola occupied enough to stay in our room or stay safe playing upstairs while avery's engrossed in a movie.

yesterday though...it was the kind of scene that i have subconsciously dreamed about, it was perfect. nola proved that she could eat popcorn like the rest of us (i had been breaking it up into tiny pieces for her--i'm a choking hazard freak, i know) and was showing off her skills with big smiles and endearing coos. avery was lounging with her popcorn and juice. shrek was on. the sun was streaming through the windows onto the bed. everyone was beyond relaxed and happy.

these are the kinds of lazy afternoons that i adore. but they're also the kind that haven't happened around here in about 2 years (maybe longer) no joke. but i think that we're on the brink of a new phase. a preschooler that's allowing things to slow down every now and then. a toddler that doesn't need 100% motion 100% of the time sometimes. it's bliss!

last snow post. hopefully.

i'm getting sick of posting about snow. and people are probably getting sick of reading about it. but seriously?! there is just so much snow it's hard not to think about it often.

so, the last storm. it definitely didn't hit us like it was supposed to. instead of getting 20 inches of snow, we only got 10 or so. the rest of the precipitation was rain, ice, freezing rain and sleet. nasty stuff. zane had a delayed opening this morning, the doors to the van were frozen shut and all around i'm just happy to see the sun shining right now!

anyway, our backyard a few days ago.


our backyard yesterday, after all the stuff was done falling from the sky.


one more storm and i'm pretty sure the snow will be flowing over the fence. our neighbors have a wall in their backyard that we can't even see anymore. i saw on the news this morning that our area has 3-3.5 feet of snow on the ground. we just made it into the top 10 snowiest winters with just over 70inches so far in boston- and, i should add, boston never usually gets as much as other spots in eastern mass! so, definitely a crazy winter. i keep hearing that things should be warming up from here on out, but i find that hard to believe, considering it's february 3rd. we'll see.

okay! enough of the snow. avery has gymnastics tomorrow and she's already requested that zane take her :) can't wait to hear all about it and share some pictures of her in her leotard ;)

cinderella and snola.

(my parents came up with the "snola" nickname, given how much nola detests snow. we actually got her to walk outside yesterday on the dirt/grass mess of a walkway to our car. she only cried a couple times when she got close to ice.)

so, i was up until 4 am last night with the worst heartburn i've ever experienced. awful. it seems like just after i fell asleep on the couch (with a couch cushion as my blanket), i heard the phone ring and assumed it was zane's school announcing an early dismissal for today. instead, it was cancelled. yay! i got to go back to sleep until 8! heaven.

we already have about 5 inches of snow and when we ventured out this morning at 9 to get some donuts for the girls and zane the roads were a mess. now they're saying we're going to get a nasty mix for most of tomorrow, which will keep the snow totals down but make the roads just awful. yuck.

anyway, we broke out the paper and pens today and let the girls color their shadows. tomorrow i have a color-your-own fort to take up some time. off to take a nap while the girls are quiet...

hurt so good? maybe not.

i desperately want to be in bed right now. but i have major heartburn and breathing is hard enough, let alone laying down. these girls have permanently changed/destroyed my esophagus!

anyway, a random post because i'm bored and in pain.

*i went to target today in search of a leotard for avery. she starts gymnastics this week! i found the dance/gym stuff in the girls section. and as i was looking around i was astounded that i could technically start buying her clothes in the girls section. the height and weight of the xs stuff would probably fit her. but she's only 3! and slowly her 4t pants are creeping up her ankles! where did my baby go?

*all of our months spent saying "please" and "thank you" and all those niceties has started paying off immensely! for a while it was just an automatic response from avery (and now nola is starting) to say "thank you" when we gave her something (juice, her jacket, etc). there's been a shift lately. now she'll say (completely sincerely) "thank you for picking up the doll for me, mama?" or "can you please get me my yogurt for lunch, mama?"

*along with the shift in sincerity and appreciation, she's started to notice/understand/conceptualize other peoples views/feelings. the other day we were in the car and we saw someone walking their dog. nola got really excited for some reason, and kept woofing to signal she had seen the dog. avery turned to her and said (yelled) "nola! that's not our dog. that's someone else's dog and if we took it they'd be really sad." :)

*nola's ear infection(s) have cleared up it seems and there was only a little fluid left in one ear at her checkup on friday. of course, saturday she came down with a horribly stuffy nose, etc and i thought for sure we were in for another infection. so far though, the nose has calmed and everything else seems okay.

*the other day nola was running around in a sweatshirt and her diaper and i noticed how skinny her legs are becoming. "skinny" might be subjective, but they're definitely changing :)

*we're getting more snow tomorrow. and tomorrow night. and wednesday. and wednesday night. depending on who you ask, we should get anywhere from 10-22 inches. it'll be interesting to see what actually happens, as no storm this season has gone exactly to plan...i've already compiled a (too short) list of things to do to occupy time and energy with the girls, but if anyone has suggestions, i'm all ears :)

strange

i could talk about the snowstorm we got last night that was expected to give us maybe 3 inches, maybe 6 at most. i would say there's close to 10 inches out there right now? gotta love boston weather and no one knowing what's going on. ever.

but i'd rather talk about my classes that i had yesterday. (ps, i'm in school for library science, school library science to be exact.) the first class was okay, a couple people that liked to hear themselves talk and prove they know more than everyone else in the class (ps, there are only 8 people in the class). then i went to my next class on instructional strategies. and asked the professor if she worked in my elementary school. she did.

my professor in grad school is my elementary school librarian! she remembered my mom (she worked in the office) and she knew my dad worked as the media/tech guy in bedford and did an on-site visit to his school years and years ago when his district was doing something big. she wanted me to say hi to them for her and genuinely was excited and thrown off that she had a former student from 25 years ago in her class.

aside from that, she's a fantastic teacher. i went into the class thinking "holy cow, there's so much i don't know and how am i ever going to learn it". midway through the class i started thinking "wow, there's so much that i get to learn in this class and use in the future when i'm teaching".

i got home before the snow started (i heard that some parts of the state had snowfall rates of 3in/hour overnight!) and today zane has a snowday :) a very good start to the new semester.

impromptu

a little impromptu dance party before naptime. for the first time, avery asked for music on to dance to. i happily obliged :)

nola apparently loves outkast. zane will be one proud papa ;)

you know where to find me.

i start classes this week. yep, 2 of them. on the same day. not freaking out a bit! i just checked the syllabi for the courses and i need 10 books. i'm praying that there aren't any days that will require all books to be with me, my backpack isn't nearly that large.

moving on...in preparation for "back to school" we had high hopes of fixing up/cleaning out/simplifying the office so that it would be a useful, purposeful, comfortable space. it took far longer than we expected, mostly because i was holding onto so much emotional clutter--napkins that i wrote on in college with my friends, sugar packets that i wrote the date and special memory on, a wine cork from the first bottle of wine zane and i shared in new orleans. a lot of the stuff i looked at, "awww"ed at, then tossed. other things i kept (the wine cork ;)) and put everything together in one place. other than the clutter, we had to figure out what furniture was staying and what wasn't necessary. after that it was organizing and putting back together. i had visions of it being our command center. and so far, so good. every single piece of paper we need (from bills to phone lists to birth certificates to quotes from the girls) is in that room. it makes the rest of the house run smoother. a happy new year indeed :)

other than some baskets and frames, i didn't spend any money to finish this room. i still need to put some pictures away in albums, paint the file cabinet blue and put more pictures on the wall, but for now, it's done and it's our new space. pass a highlighter and coffee, please :)

got pants?

i'm pretty sure i was the only one that wore pants all weekend (a 3 day weekend! zane had another snow day on friday, it was w.o.n.d.e.r.f.u.l!)

today though, we'll all be wearing pants. with windchills -15 to -20, i dread taking avery to school and the process of getting ready. i think a hot coffee is in order. maybe 2.

beef stroganoff and stuff.

sledding yesterday. we dropped nola at my parents and were so excited to have avery experience her first time on a sled! she was bouncing off the walls she was so excited too. she kept saying that we were going to a mountain to go sledding. we stuck to a pretty tame "mountain" so we wouldn't scare her off from sledding forever.

that wasn't a problem. the sled we have (a gift from a friend last year) is for infants and has such deep grooves, it wouldn't go too fast unless it was on sheer ice...

at the beginning of sledding.

and 5 minutes into it.

:) it was brutally cold and windy. she didn't like walking in the snow. her hands got freezing cold because she was wearing 2 pair of my crappy mittens. so, not the happy experience we were going for, and hopefully the next time we bring up going out in the snow she won't resist as much as nola!

onto the recipe. beef stroganoff, just about as easy as the chicken recipe (you have to chop some onion which i hate doing, so it's not as cut and dry ;)) and absolutely just as delicious.

1 pound cubed beef stew meat

1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed golden mushroom soup

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup water

4 ounces cream cheese

*combine the meat, soup, onion, sauce and water in crockpot. heat on low for 5/6 hours until meat starts to fall apart. add the cream cheese and mix just before serving. (again, we serve with egg noodles or regular noodles, either way, delicious.)

(i should add that yesterday morning zane and i looked in the fridge and saw that we had leftover stroganoff and fought over who got to eat it for lunch. we ended up splitting it 3 ways :))

this one.

this one:

...gave me SUCH a hard time today. she is right in the middle (geez, i hope it's the middle and not just the start) of asserting her independence and attitude and arguments and likes/dislikes. (it doesn't help that she has an older sister who she sees doing all these same things with more words and less tears!) let's just say that i almost gave up the battle to go to bj's today because i didn't think i could wrestle her to the ground to dress her one more time (i persevered though, and we did get out to buy diapers and aside from my tantrum when the van door was frozen shut, everyone was relatively happy and well behaved), and at bedtime zane and i found her in the upstairs sunroom, hiding in the futon matress.
it's amazing to see her growing up so much, so fast. and it's fun to see her (strong-willed) personality come out more and more along her funny side. but man, days like today were tough. and tomorrow we get more snow! which means we'll find her looking out the back door saying "snooo, snooo, snooo...." and not because she wants to make a snowman ;)

a 3 year old...

at her finest ;)

avery: mama, what are you doing?

me: i have an eyelash in my eye and i'm trying to get it out. it hurts.

avery: oh. well, i don't even care. i don't have an eyelash.

never a dull moment!