The girls and Jordi went along with my dad ice skating quite a few weekends this year, enough to go through a whole pass of tickets and some more. The difference from the first try to now has been amazing. We got Celia some single blade skates and she’s determined to move herself across the ice. Josie likes to hang out, but when we found her a friend at the last session, she just went around and around holding that little girls hand in friendship and moving herself along. Nothing like a new friend for some motivation! Celia is mostly walking but she just goes where she wants, when she wants. Here’s a rare photo of her holding on to one finger as she watches the action around her. My dad’s facebook page has some video of them actually moving to get the real effect. Can’t wait to join them next year zipping around the ice.

Josie got a stomp rocket for Christmas this year, and now that’s it’s finally nice out we’ve taken it out a few times to play with it. She’s got it mastered and Celia’s got the hang of it too. It’s so much fun for all the kids at the park and the girls have been great about sharing it and taking turns. Today we got a few minutes of playtime before it started to rain on us.

Celia has taken up an attachment to Josie’s old ballet leotard. If you’ve seen us about town lately you’ve probably been treated to Celia lifting up her shirt and showing you her leotard. At home it’s pretty much all she’ll wear, if she’ll wear anything but a diaper and undershirt. It’s for games like ‘ballet class’, ‘gymnastics’, and ‘doctor’. It’s a wear-everywhere type thing apparently in this two year old’s mind.

She’s also obsessed with Josie’s new lace-up shoes and I found her an old pair of Josie’s that just happen to fit and have laces. The only other lace shoes we’ve ever owned. Lucky coincidence.

Poor Josie caught a bug that took her OUT yesterday. She doesn’t get a fever often, maybe once a year, but this one left her out for the count. She barely ate anything until dinner, drank some throughout the day, but spent the day laying on the couch and even took a few naps which is unheard of lately. Today she’s much more on the mend, the fever broke this morning and she’s willing to get up and move around, plus her appetite is back. Her chocolate bunny lost it’s ears this morning and she’s been asking for hearty food ever since.

Celia is still feeling well, but Jordi and I could appreciate having only one rambunctious kid for the day instead of two. Even though it meant we missed out on some fun parties we were sad to have to skip.

This week we got the quilt I made for Celia back from the quilter. I made the top and bottom, but the quilt is too big for me to machine quilt on my machine and there’s no way I’m going to hand quilt something so I sent it out to a woman with a ‘longarm’ quilt machine who sewed the lovely flowers on the top and the bottom and even did the binding for me. It’s a mis-mash design on top, nothing official, just something I made up from some pictures I saw on the web and liked too. It was my first applique usage too. The back is all purple, same as Celia’s name.

And now I’m on to the next one. Josie got a bug theme quilt, Celia got an elephant one, and the new baby will have an owl theme. Hopefully I’ll be close to done with it by the time the baby arrives and not as late as I was with Celia!

Finally here at the end of March it feels like spring! Today we went into town and played on the Boston Common and met up with Jordi for lunch. Home again for nap, reading and chore time before we headed outside to play. The girls had very minimal patience for me to snap a photo but I got one I liked.

In the beginning of February, we took our annual pilgrimage over Jordi’s birthday weekend with our lovely neighbors Christina, Chanh and kids to the cape codder resort in Hyannis. We got down there Friday afternoon and got our first dip in the pool after setting up the beds and clothes. Josie and Celia jumped right in this year, Josie was even brave enough to walk herself under the umbrella/mushroom/water-spraying thing.

We enjoyed many nice dinners including a thai restaurant that was tiny but the food was oh so yummy. It’s basically a weekend of good clean fun in the water, and eating three meals a day where I don’t have to clean or cook! We also celebrated the dad’s birthdays with a yummy cake.

We didn’t make it to the outdoor pool this year (yes we went last year!) as the time just flies by. Celia jumped right into the water, not quite understanding it’s power the first time. It took her a few times of getting knocked under the water to understand just how strong the waves were and why she needed to stay close to us. Both Josie and Celia preferred when the water was calm.

Looking forward to taking the new little one next year as part of our  traditions!

I knew it had been a while since I posted, but I hadn’t realized quite how long. We’ve had a bunch of busy weekends of snow storms and logistical hassles like buying a new TV and a new car. We also had a week of sickness, but mostly healthy otherwise. A few other kids birthday parties, some doctors appointments and trying to keep food on the table and bam the weeks are over short and sweet.

I have been enjoying Downton Abbey on DVD and reading and then watching the Twilight series of books and movies. I finished Celia’s quilt, which I will post a picture of later. I registered Josie for kindergarden in the fall. But mostly I’ve been tired, cranky and unable to do much of anything at night because we are expecting baby number three! Hence my enjoyment of some good entertainment from the couch in the evenings. My hips have decided loosen up really early this time and so I’ve been struggling with that for a few weeks which makes walking, standing and bending difficult and by the end of some days I can’t walk without a lot of pain. I’ve been doing some stretching and exercising to help get them back in line. The baby is due in middle of July, I’d put my money on the 16th or 17th if I were an odds maker given my previous births. Hence why we needed to buy a new tv car.

It’s a new honda minivan, so we can fit all the car seats and even shove my parents in there too. It just barely fits behind our house and in the driveway – we’re getting better at parking it every day. See all that snow above? This picture is from Sunday, now it’s all been long gone with a few warm days. I can’t wait for spring and getting more fresh air and out of the house more often. Hopefully less time in the car too!

[This post officially counts as my “We are Family – March 2013” picture in case I don’t get another one done, I’ve barely been picking up the camera lately.]

If anyone is interested in buying a 2005 Toyota Matrix XR, let us know, we’re selling it, we don’t need two cars and it can’t fit three car seats. Low mileage.

This was her idea. It took a lot of concentration on her part to hold up the sign so it was legible.

The end of last month Josie turned 4 and 3/4 years old. It seems I am a very bad mother and missed age 4.5 and I’m late with even this one, ah well. Time is flying by so quickly and we’ve been fairly busy in a good way.

Josie has been doing great in school this year. She is excited to go (except for one day this year when I was taking the cats to the vets and she wanted to go to that instead) and is eagerly greeted by her friends. She loves to do projects there every day and is loudly upset when there aren’t any projects, especially two days in a row. I’ve learned to work on having some home ‘projects’ to be able to counter anything she’s missing in school. She’s generally tired after school and our usual routine of having quiet time after lunch when Celia naps and Josie and I work together has worked out very well. As Celia starts to drop her nap we’re going to have to work on figuring out how to get us all the break we need.

It’s in this early afternoon that I’ve been working with Josie on her reading during this school year. We’ve been working through a book that gives step by step lessons for us to do each day, starting with letter sounds and then putting it all together. I’m thoroughly impressed with how quickly Josie can pick up the sounds and words, but she hasn’t started showing off her talents yet outside of our work sessions. She brings me the book and whiteboard though so I know she’s excited about it, we take the weekends off too. She loves for me to read to her a lot too, right now at night we’re reading ‘Bean and Ivy’ and we’ve read a few of the ‘Clementine’ books lately too at night. During the day she’ll request fancy nancy, or some llama llama but she’s not so stuck on reading one book all the time anymore.

Josie has continued her gymnastics lessons and enjoys them every week. She’s making progress each week and we’re trying to work on one skill at home too at a time so she can really see the difference. These past few weeks have been for working on cartwheels and getting her legs really up in the air. She’s excited to show her teacher how hard she’s worked and how she’s improved this week. She finished up her ice skating lessons and she’s asking for more, but we’re not up for a multi-month weekend commitment that this entails. She’ll just have to enjoy free skate with the family. Today she went and was trying to give Celia lessons.

She’s also gained an interest in more board games. She like Sorry, and she’s even trying to play a game I got for my birthday called Forbidden Island which is made for older kids as it’s fairly complicated. She’ll take our suggestions as to how to play though, so it works out so long as Celia is asleep and not trying to make off with the pieces.

Josie is a planner, she likes to know what’s the plan for the future and she generally wants to make those plans for herself. She has lots of ideas for art projects, often mimicking what she’s done in school lately. She’s interested in cooking and will help me from time to time. She can fold laundry, diapers, empty the dishwasher, put together the recycling, but she’s generally reluctant to do any of those things without some prodding. She did have one day last week when she was so excited that the following day was her special day at school that she volunteered to help! That was pretty nice.

All in all Josie’s a lot of fun to be with. She tells coherent stories, she’s interested in learning new things. She plays with her sister all the time and includes Celia even when her friends come over to play. She is mostly kind and tolerant given that Celia is 2, if not a bit bossy. She loves to go out and do things and explore. I can’t wait for this winter to be over so we can get moving more easily and not be so cooped up in the house!

• Size/weight: 5 and 6, around 43 lbs perhaps and 42 inches? It’s been a while since we’ve checked
• Favorite foods: pasta, cheese, sweets
• Favorite toy: her sister
• Favorite book: Clementine series, complicated picture books
• Favorite activity: gymnastics
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:45
• New skill: cartwheels
• Teeth: holding at 20
• Reading/writing: We’ve been working on consonant-vowel-consonant words as well as some consonant blends that she can put together now. Her penmanship is pretty good, but she prefers to stick with uppercase letters and I have to cajole her into the lowercase ones. Keeping the d’s and b’s straight is also a challenge.