snow days

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Whitney combing her hair. She actually did a good job of it.
Whitney in a trash bin. It's obviously funny. Good thing I JUST finished giving her a bath.
Tucker doing a forward comb
Second snowman. First snowman is in the background
First snowman buried in second snowfall.
First snowmanWhitney being cute
I don't know what they are looking at, but it's something
"This is great!" and "I'm cold"
Running in the snow

Sledding at our house
Whitney waiting for Tucky to get ready
First slide down the hill



This week we have had snow on the ground for 8 days. For us it has been great fun. Pretty much everything else has been quiet, too. Schools shut down for three days and had a late start another day. Lots of people ended up working from home, either because they couldn't get out of their driveway (without a lot of effort) or because the daycare their kids attended was also closed. What was nice about all that is the silence. I didn't realize how much freeway noise we usually have that was essentially turned off for a day (the day it was snowing all day and they didn't plow roads). Another fun thing is all my neighbors that were usually working were home, out and about shoveling snow. I got to talk to a whole bunch of people I rarely see because they are usually out and about during the bedtime routine. That was fun! And it was fun for us mostly because we had power the whole time. There were people the next city over that didn't have power for 3 days, which makes life a little more interesting.

A comment about the snow here. I could easily have gotten out of my driveway if I really wanted to put chains on, but I was lazy and didn't. I think they didn't plow roads because usually it melts the next day. Which is partly true. It did melt the next day with the first storm, but the second storm came 2 days later with a freezing rain first. That snow still hasn't melted.

Whitney is starting to clearly say lots of phrases. One of which is "picture Whitney" when she wants to see a picture of herself on Daddy's Iphone. Tucker is also saying words and phrases, but his pronounciation is much different than Whitney's, so sometimes I don't always catch on that he has those words and phrases in his vocabulary, too. Whitney pretty much went outside to "make a snowman" a phrase she can say herself. Sledding was fun for five seconds. She learned to say "inside" quickly this week, too, in order to avoid being cold Tucker loved sledding, but didn't love his gloves, so it was short lived, too. Whitney did better when we went for walks. She liked to see her footprints in the snow. She would step, then step back to look at them.

Whitney continues to like to be independent. She is learning to put on her panties herself, comb her hair and pull apart orange segments. She also still loves to beg food off our plates. I've been getting really irritated with it. One day she was begging me for some of my salad, so, in order to stop the begging, I gave her a piece of feta cheese plain. Didn't work. Apparently she loves feta cheese plain. She calls it "mommy cheese". Jim also gave her a bite of kimchi. She ate it, but didn't ask for more. If you've never had kimchi in your house, it smells like bad breath. I've never tried the stuff, but can't get over the smell. It must taste as bad as it smells if Whitney didn't ask for more.

Tucker continues to work on gross motor skills. We were outside sledding and Whitney fell down on the walk back up the hill and couldn't get back up. Naturally. Tucker was still walking up the hill and I was already at the top, so I left the empty sled at the top and walked down to help Whitney up. In that amount of time Tucker reached the top and sat in the sled. The motion of sitting down also started propelling him down the mountain at a slow pace. He was sledding all by himself! But I think it scared him he was moving because he was also crying loudly. We played with balloons, throwing them down the stairs, then walking them back up. Tucker helped Whitney a bunch by walking down and getting her balloon for her. One time he brought both up at the same time. I about had a heart attack watching it, as he had to hold a balloon in each arm, barely being able to see the next step up between the balloons, but he did it. He has been doing some really cute things, too. He has learned to ask me for kisses by leaning his head toward me and I think he gives kisses by pressing his face against our cheeks. I also found him mimicking a baby crying, then walking into the playroom to feed Whitney's doll milk. That was pretty cute. One day I had to borrow some Tucky pants for Whitney to wear. Too many accidents and she had gone through all her clean pants. Tucker had a fit. He did NOT want her to wear them. I explained to him why she needed them. He was ok after that. I then started getting him dressed for the day and he tried to pull off his shirt saying "Whitney", as if he wanted her to wear his shirts, too.