Winter Break

The kids had last week off for Winter Break. I had the kids write a list of things they wanted to do during the break and we tried to do as many as possible.

Play games, play Legos (with several tallies), go to Dunkin Donuts, go to Happy Feet (the sequel in the dollar theater), go to Bubble Show (performance at the library), go to the library, go to Kango x 2 (the only thing we didn't do, mostly because we heard it was really crowded all week), go to the musem (with 2 tallies), ride my bike.

6 month stats

Height: 27in, 86th percentile

Weight: 16lb 9oz, 59th percentile

Head circumference: 43.5cm, 75th percentile

Cheek circumference: 50cm, 90th percentile

Sweetness: off the charts
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This week's bread

Some slightly better wheat bread and some very disappointing bagels.

Six Months!

Yesterday Claire turned 6 months old! I can hardly believe it!

She sits up independently for a long time. We used to count "1 lumberjack, 2 lumberjack..." until she fell. Then we'd say, "tiiiimber!!". It was James and Ruth's favorite game. Now she can sit pretty indefinitely so I don't count anymore, despite James and Ruth's requests for me to do so!

One of my favorite things about Claire right now is watching her gain control of her hands. As you'd expect, most things go directly to her mouth, but she can also manipulate toys that spin or slide.

The best is that whenever I first pick her up, she grabs/pinches the sides of my face and then "kisses" me with a wide open mouth. I do not think it is an official "kiss", but I do think she's picking up on the habit of putting our faces together. Either way, it is SO sweet!

Melts my heart (and hurts my cheeks)!

and just for fun, here is James at 6 months:

and Ruth:

Claire is definitely her own baby, but I think she is more in James' camp than Ruth's at this point!

Hockey Fan

James is so grown up. He lost a baby tooth, has an adult tooth coming in, can ride his two-wheeler, and...is a hockey fan!

He went with Dan to another minor league hockey game last night, but this time the Amerks (Rochester's team) were playing the team from Philly. Dan was cheering for the Philly team, but James insisted on cheering for the Amerks. Way to have team loyalty, James!

The Amerks won.

They got home at 10:30 last night and I got to hear all about how many points were scored, in which periods, and other highlights of the game...all from James

First thing this morning, James said, "Hey Dad, do you remember what happened at the game last night?"

Dan replied, "What happened?"

"Your team lost!"

Apparently Dan no longer needs his friends texting him in order to have his team trash talked!

Running in a Winter Wonderland

I took this picture as soon as I got home from my run today. We haven't had much snow this year, but the last 3 Saturdays we've had a lot of snow WHILE we were running. The good news is, it is still coming down and looks to stick around all day. The even BETTER news is I have photo sessions scheduled for today that were hoping for snow--they are the first ones to get that wish all season!

I should also mention, that today I ran 8 miles in this with an average 9:20 pace. I'm pretty proud, excuse my bragging!

Two Wheels!

James is on break from school this week. I'll blog more about our fun week later, but today we took his bike to the church gym to practice without training wheels! The sidewalk scares him, but the smooth open space of the gym was the perfect setting (thanks, Charity for the idea)! After 2.5 hours of practicing (the first hour or more there were other kids there, which made it tricky), he can finally start, ride, steer (a little), and stop by himself!

Unfortunately, Dan couldn't make it home from work until after dark, so we video taped him riding at dusk. The sidewalk still makes him a little nervous as did the neighbors watching (although he's the one who insisted on knocking to have them come out and watch), so he stopped a little more frequently than necessary.

I am so proud of him! He responded really well to my pep talks and proved his own self-doubts wrong. He really is capable of anything he puts his mind to!

Definitely watch the first video. Poor Ruth was a little overshadowed today and her attempts to stay involved often back-fired!

 

Bubbles!

Watching a bubble performer at the library. James got picked to be a volunteer!

Once there was a snowman

The snow on Saturday was the best snowman snow I have EVER encountered. Literally. I've never been able to roll a ball of snow across the ground and have it pick up all the snow it touched. It took minutes to make huge snow balls and they left distinct paths of green grass behind them. It was so cool that we built 3 snowmen.

Then James made another with a friend.

Then, for a couple days we admired them and waved to them every time we passed by.

Then a neighbor kid knocked them down. 

Now they are being slowly chopped up for snowballs since the rest of the snow melted.

All in all, a fruitful endeavor!

Snow Pictures: Take 2

I really wanted family pictures in the snow this year. I gave up for Christmas cards and took a "cold weather" picture and decided to take more pictures when we got more snow. Unfortunately/fortunately, we haven't had much snow this year! Usually we have a constant blanket of snow all Winter! After a long run in heavy snow on Saturday morning, I decided to take pictures of the kids out in the snow. Since it was last minute, I had to cut James' hair and I also had a baby shower to stop by in my neighborhood. By the time we got out for pictures, almost all the snow was off the trees and it was no longer snowing. So these are STILL not the Rochester-esque snow globe pictures I wanted, but they were cute. 

Here are some I edited:

 Mental note: cloth diapers are not very slimming and should not be worn during portrait photos!

 Showing Claire their wiggly fingers.

 He looks SO old!

 She is definitely looking more grown up, too--especially with her hair down!

 A classic Ruthie expression:

 This is the picture I am MOST glad I got. Claire loves it when I tickle her cheek with my nose. It's an almost guaranteed laugh. I was afraid she'd grow out of it before I remember to photograph it while someone was around to stand on the other side of the camera! I often say "tickle tickle tickle" when I do it, but it sounds more like "ticko, ticko, ticko". Ruthie thinks I'm saying "giggle" so she calls this "giggling Claire." When Ruth tries to "giggle Claire," however, Claire usually ends up crying.

 Daddy is smitten by Claire, too.

And some unedited photos that were too cute not to include. This way they'll at least make it into my blog book!

Homemade bread

One of my goals for the year, or for the past five years, is to learn to make homemade bread. I finally asked a friend of mine to let me watch her and to teach me the basics of bread making. Now I am trying different recipes each week to get some practice and settle on my favorite. I have made white bread, challah, 2 different types of wheat, and cinnamon raisin. Today was wheat and cinnamon raisin. For some reason they took forever to rise today and I wasn't as patient as I should have been, so they're a little dense, but yummy! Dan and the kids always get so excited when someone serves homemade bread, so I'm glad to finally be learning how to make one of their favorite foods!

Pinterest Request

I have not yet ventured into the world of Pinterest, for fear of becoming attached to yet another time-waster. However, I have heard great things about the craft and recipe ideas available there. 

Is there a pattern for a baby version of this?

This would be the world's best baby bib. Baby hands are such a vector for mess!

Fashion Show

I have been saving my frequent shopper punch card for our local Once Upon a Child (children's clothing consignment store--not as cheap as garage sales, but better than the store). I used it today to buy the kids' basic Spring/Summer wardrobe and get 20% off! I plan on supplementing this wardrobe with some things leftover from last year that we bought a size big and the inevitable gifts from generous grandparents. 

Ruth was thrilled to try on all her new clothes! Everything in these pictures is new, except the socks.

I'm not sure about this skirt. I think she will end up showing her underwear a lot at this length. Unfortunately, she tore the tag off before I could stop her.

 Action shot of tearing tags off:

 Notice the cute rose on the left shoulder of this one:

 Rainbow shirt and shorts with "butt bling". She's showing it to you.

 They don't necessarily go together, but I was trying to have her wear all new clothes:

 Showing the skirt uncovered.

 A different shirt:

 I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

James was not as excited to model. 

In fact, he didn't even care to look at the clothes. When I said, "Look at this silly one:"

 

 ...he laughed, obligingly.

When I said, "Look at this cool one:"

 He said, "That's cool!" He would also only pose in that one way. I gave up after 2 outfits, but there were more. Claire is wearing one of her new outfits. She has plenty of Summer clothes from Ruth, but her 6-9 month wardrobe is almost exclusively sundresses. So instead of getting Summer clothes for Claire, I got her 5 actual outfits (I'm slowly moving away from having her live in jammies everyday).

 Just to keep me grounded, the weather decided to have a brief blizzard right as I was reveling in all these Spring clothes. Literally, this was taken while Ruth was trying on her first outfit.