Now that the hustle and bustle of Christmas has come and gone, we've gotten into a groove of Winter fun and activities! I intentionally cut back on our YMCA schedule of activities in order to give the girls more unstructured playtime at home! And this also helped me stay away from more of the crazy winter germs that are floating around and also stay off the snow-covered roads! Makayla still has pre-school, dance, and gymnastics and Lydia still has gymnastics, so the girls still have plenty of activities! This has been a much better balance for all of us! We've found lots of fun things to entertain us around the house! Baby dolls, kitchen, gymnastics, school, and doctor are some of the girls favorite pretend play! We also continue to do lots of art projects and the girls like to "help" me in the kitchen! As I've probably mentioned in previous posts, the girls are pretty good at playing together...but they do have their moments, especially when they have been cooped up at home for a period of time!
Lydia is a very active and verbal 2 year old! She turns 3 in less than 2 weeks and I have no idea where the time has gone! Her vocabulary includes words like "otherwise" and "apparently" and she can clearly articulate what she wants! She has not potty trained yet, but keeps telling me that when she turns 3 she will potty train! She has the ability to be potty trained, it's just a matter of her deciding she wants to do it! She knows that she gets a big girl bed after she's potty trained, so hopefully one of these days she'll decide she's ready! Lydia's main mission in life is to play! When she wakes up at 6am, she just wants to go down stairs and play! She has no interest in running errands with me while Makayla is at school...she just wants to go home and play! She loves singing songs and dancing! Makayla taught her quite a bit of the performance song that she's learning at her dance class and it's so cute to watch the two of them dance around the living room! Lydia and I like to sit by the window watching for Makayla's school bus. We sing the song, "Miss Suzy had a Baby." I feel like I've sang it about 100 times and now Lydia can sing the entire song by herself! She's even getting the clapping pattern figured out too!
Makayla is an inquisitive 4.5 year old! She also knows what she wants and she wants it her way! She likes to try to boss Lydia around, but Lydia has learned to be bossy right back! One day we were driving through our subdivision and it was after a few days of warm weather and rain...Makayla looked around in astonishment and asked, "Mom, did they widen the road?" Of course, I explained that the snow banks were just melted! One day Makayla asked me if we could make gold! I asked her how to do this and she said, "You just get some straw and spin it into gold!" Hmm...apparently she was watching rumplestiltskin on TV! (And apparently I am the reason that Lydia knows the word, "apparently") Makayla loves to watch "Super Why" and "Sid the Science Kid" on PBS Kids. Dinosaur Train is probably another favorite, although we don't see that one as often. She will sit and watch TV for a half hour while I get some housework done, but Lydia isn't at the stage where she will watch for long or without me sitting right next to her (which kind of defeats the purpose of me letting them watch TV). Makayla enjoys her 3K preschool and got a great review from her teacher at conferences! Makayla also LOVES her gymnastics class and can do all sorts of flips and cartwheels! She also likes her dance class too!
Anyways, enough about the kiddos! Chad and I are also doing well. I have gotten into a pretty good groove at home and still have a nice balance of "me" time. I'm starting to meet more of the moms of the other kids in the girls activities, which has been fun! I'm still finding time to workout a few times a week too! I had fun planning a baby shower for my sister-in-law Monica...pix from that will be in a separate post! Okay, now that my rambling is over, here are some random photos from the past few weeks!
Chad's birthday is in January, so the girls helped me make him a cake! I asked Makayla what we should get him for his birthday gift. She said, "A computer!" I told her that was kind of expensive and asked her if she had any other ideas! She thought for a while and then replied, "Some socks because he has lots of holes in his socks!" :)
We had fun with puzzles one day!
We had tea party one day!
(You may have noticed, the kids like to stay in their PJ's when it's not a school day!)
My nephew, Erik, showing the girls a volcanic eruption demonstration!
We made french toast using the recipe that was in Makayla's "High Five" Magazine. Both girls decided they don't like french toast, although I enjoyed it! :)
We played nail salon one day and the girls had fun painting nails with pretend polish and brushes!
I love these photos...they show Lydia's cute little smile!
Here's a photo of Makayla at dance!
Here's one of our forts that we built...this was from back in December, but never made it into any Christmas posts!
