And then you spend the afternoon trying to trap Carmen Sandiego on the Mississippi River before she ruins it.
And then your older sister washes the mud out of your hair with style.
Sometimes your orange bat toy is the coolest thing ever..."Because I'm Batman!"
And then you're Ant-man and Wasp and you attack/interrogate your mom.
And then you forget all about your differences and play with colors in ABC Mouse.
Sometimes your mom teaches you what April Fool's Day is by having a water fight. In the house. And she wins.
And then you enjoy a clean rec room the one time it's clean.
And your Dad can be suckered into reading a second bedtime story.
Sometimes a mother wakes up and the seven-year-old is cooking breakfast for everyone.
She made egg sandwiches.
And sometimes the five-year-old is sick and while you're busy stripping sheets and doing laundry and scrubbing carpet, etc, she falls asleep playing Minecraft.
But then you finish all your work and spend the rest of the day cuddling.
Now that warm weather is here to stay, it seems I'm busier than ever because we are constantly outside on adventures! I almost wish for cold, rainy days just so I can have a break! But it's good. I love the warm weather and all the outdoor frolicking and sunsoaking we do.
End of March, Tommy was at a sleepover at his friend Tucker's house, so he wasn't with us when we went to hike in Palmer Park and ended up doing a little over 3 miles. The kids were troopers, but they were definitely done at the end. Future note: slightly shorter hikes so we're all still in happy moods to leave with.
{Samson, Dancy, Thora}
Painted rock :)
Thora. She'll be fine and happy one minute, pouting the next. Kinda like Colorado weather!
{Dancy, Thora, Shad, Samson, Katie}
I've decided that I can break down and be one of those people with a selfie stick because it's really hard to get 6 and 7 people all in a shot.
{Me, Dancy, Thora, Shad, Samson, Katie}
* * *
Fast forward 2 days to a blissful afternoon in our forest! One of the girls in our group keeps a nature journal and she was on a mission to find snails. Tommy found them for her to sketch!
Fishing poles
{Dancy, boy I don't know, Noah, Tommy}
It's been so great to be back in the forest! I stay home in the cold weather because it's just not worth it to me to spend an hour getting kids ready, drive 20 minutes, walk 10 minutes in, and then kids are clinging to me and whining after 5 minutes. No, that's just what a backyard is for. But we do really miss our forest during those times. I'm ready for it to green up a bit now so I can breathe all that wonderful air in.
Mallards came to visit! All the kids got super excited. The mallards did not.
Thora has really grown in her comfort in the forest. She's really embracing life as a forest fairy/elf!
Last year there was no way she'd go up this hill without holding my hand and needing me to push and pull her. At her demand.
And then we finished with cuddles. happy cuddles that don't interfere with Mom chat time are way different than whiny clinging that does.
I suppose it had to hit us sometime, right? End of March being the first time we got sick all year? SAWEEET! And even though this sickness meant that my three-year-old was exploding out of both ends for 4 days straight, it also meant that whenever I wasn't showering myself, bathing him, washing laundry, stripping his sheets off his bed, or scrubbing carpet, I got to be cuddling him.
We watched Incredibles 2 (awesome!), Cars 3 (meh), and...some other kid movie sequel I needed caught up on. If I recall, it was also meh. But the cuddles were divine!
Katie set up a hair salon for Thora and Dancy.
She got creative with her techniques and experimented with using Q-tips as curlers. Thora wasn't impressed with the result. I had to convince her to stand there for me to take the picture.
Um, this is out of chronology, but it's because I realized I never took a finished-product picture. I went to a painting party at my friend Katie's house in December to celebrate the end of her school semester. This is what we created. I put a ton of pennies on this sunflower, so it is HEAVY!
And more cuddles with this human. This time he was on the mend.
"Let's show Dad my water bottle."
And a slight relapse.
I wanted a blanket for my bed for next winter season, so I invited Katie to go to Costco with me to get it. She really liked the ribbon sash that bundled the blanket and has spent many days since played British Royalty.
February is when people start to get tired of winter. I mean, the groundhog said spring was coming, so why do we have to keep putting up with this snow? Well, here's what I had to say about that:
It is 16 degrees and snowing again. Big, soft, fluffy, beautiful flakes floating down from the sky. And it is GLORIOUS! It can be hard to appreciate winter. Being this cold makes my back muscles tense up and ache. Kids wanting to go out to play and losing gloves all the time is exhausting and exasperating. But in Colorado, snow is so important to our environment. Snow = life. We can't enjoy our summers without it. And so every time we get snow, I love it for all the good it brings. Thank you, nature! And so I'll enjoy what snow helps me to enjoy: sweaters, slippers, fires, blankets, tea & hot chocolate, cuddling with my kids & husband, curling up with a book, all of that at once. Scandinavians know how to handle winter and I'm thankful I've learned their practice of hygge. It helps me to maintain joy and sanity in the winter and I look forward to snow when I see it in the forecast. The snow itself has become hygge to me.
This YouTube video was also helpful for me in learning hygge, especially to hear and learn the pronunciation!
This boy likes to start stories with, "Mom, when I was a kid..." and I can't take him seriously.
Katie finished a level of ABC Mouse and was so excited to choose Mimi's Café, which she's heard about so much but never been to. You know, because cafés are fancy and French which makes them even fancier. And we are all things fancy. Like Nancy. She was not let down!
She chose me as her date, which was really fun because we don't often get along...something about having similar personalities and being stubbornly strong-willed. I dunno...
Parenting is full of moments of "I never thought I'd have to say that to another human being," and "What did you just say?!" Cutting Sam's nails after his shower and he says to me, "This is like my vagina!" No, no, it's not. "Well, I'm pretending it's like my vagina." What is going on? Oh, my ears!
Katie helped Shad install a coat rack for the kids.
And my babiest boy turned 3!! Hooray! I love celebrating my humans. We played football, he had a Costco lunch date with Shad, Shad cooked egg pizzas for dinner at Sam's request, and we had brownies. He had a blast and planned the whole day. And then he kept coming to me, saying, "Mom, we need to plan my birthday party. I want football and blue and brownies."
Sam was full of all the quotes that week:
Remember when he said, "This is like my vagina?" Well, now the quote is, "These are my boobs! See my huge boobs? My giant boobs? They have nipples!" Oh, child...
I was busy when Sam asked me to identify a letter on the Happy Birthday banner. I referred him to Thora because she knows her letters. When I heard her say, "Um... 'Q,'" to had to come see. It was the bow between the two words. Understandably confusing and an apt interpretation of what letter that might be. Good job, lady!
Sunset from my favorite window. And if you don't live in Colorado, note that there's full snow on the south side of the street that doesn't get direct sunlight. That's life.
We had a super warm, fun, swampy afternoon in our thawing-but-still-frozen forest!
Sam had a bathroom accident at the ERC prior to this and got to borrow our friend Vera's leggings. He loved them.
Moms are allowed to goof off, too.
These two aren't always friends...Thora's a bit explosive for Dancy's personality...so it's nice when they happily play together.
