The United States

Zachary's been working on learning the location of the 50 states. He's doing pretty well, thanks to several awesome puzzles! This one is magnetic, so each piece stays in place as he finishes it.
Good stuff!!

Bathtime

This week, I got some good bath pictures! The two of them have the best time taking their baths. I love listening to them laugh and play.
Allie was much more cooperative than Zachary, so I got some super cute ones of her (and her sweet curls!)!

This last picture is classic Zachary & Allie. Again, she's watching & copying him while he sings a silly song!

Playing "Trash"

I have no idea where this came from, but my kids have started playing a new and highly destructive game. When I say, "What are you doing?" They say, "We are playing trash!"
Apparently, the goal of "Trash" is to pile on as many things as possible and create a tower.
This is not my favorite game.
In most cases, I try to encourage their creativity, even at the expense of time, personal appearance or neatness.

But this definitely crosses the line.

I do, however, like that they flew the American flag on top of their tower.
I love my creative, trash-playing, patriotic kids.

Flowers with Grammy Claire!

While we were in Florida during Christmas, the kids had some fun planting flowers with Grammy Claire. They loved it!

The toughest of workouts

My life is not conducive to real cardio/pilates/Jillian-Michaels-style workouts. During the winter, I find myself coming up with lots of creative ways to get moving - running up & down the stairs way more than needed, dancing with the kids, wrestling, playing chase, etc.
But several times a week, I do make it a priority to have a structured stretching/sit ups/yoga style session in the playroom with the kids or while they are playing. If I'm really lucky, I can even play my own music in the background (yesss!).
Today, however, the CD was already playing a delightful[-ly annoying] set of tunes from a kid's CD titled "Silliest Songs." When I tried to change the music, Allie yelled at me for interrupting a song titled "When you find a manatee in your bathtub", about Mr. Manatee invading bath time and "filling up your tub with giant bubbles" (??).
I figured if I wanted to get a few minutes of stretching done without the kids interrupting me, I might as well leave the music the way they were already enjoying it.
So the song switched to "Billy the squid," (about a slimy octopus who walks into a bar complaining that he's lost his lollipop when all the people in the bar can see it stuck to his head. He's even offering a reward that includes "ten sand dollars, a rock that glows, and a ring that fell off a pirate's nose...") and I started doing my sit ups.
The next two songs weren't too bad and I even got a little rhythm going with my leg lifts. But as the fourth song started playing, I realized this CD is not going to work for me & my little "workout."
The title is "There's a Chocolate Moose on the Loose" and here are the lyrics that sent me to the fridge digging for a chocolate-covered anything...

"....chocolate on the windows, chocolate on the floors,
chocolate on the chairs and chocolate on the floors
....He's getting chocolate on the pie crust, chocolate on the pan,
chocolate all over the baker man.
He doesn't really mean to make a mess you see,
he's a chocolate moose as sweet as he can be..."

Swim Atlanta

Since Zachary can swim on his own now, we've decided to put him in a stroke class to get his technique much better. Today was his first lesson and it was a good one!
We did a lot of research and found a great swim program throughout Atlanta that also has a great swim team for kids and adolescents. I'm excited about it!!

There are three boys (including Zachary) in his class, all of whom are at his same swim skill level. They were all cute together, working on their strokes.

Here he is working on bringing his arms up & around.

He is working on his back stroke below. His teacher really pushes the boys, which is good.

Allie's First "Why...?"

Although she asks "Why?" about everything we tell her to do, Allie has only just started asking me specific "Why" questions like these two (her first two):


Mommy, why did God make us to have chins?


Mommy, why did God make animals?

Snowmageddon 2011: Atlanta

6 inches of snow overnight + 1/2 a day of raining ice on top + a city that has no snow recovery plan or equipment + 5 (FIVE!) days of no school + temperatures constantly below 32 degrees + undriveable roads laden with 1-2 inches of ice-covered-snow + grocery trucks unable to deliver food to any stores + no mail or trash service for 4 days + 3 million residents who have never driven on ice + 4 million residents trapped at home for 3-5 days + cabin fever + concerned citizens blaming the local government + the local government realizing they underestimated mother nature =
SNOWMAGEDDON 2011

Here's what we did on day 4 of Snowmageddon:

This is our "eco-friendly" snowman. All of his features are edible by animals in need of food after 5 days of ice.

This is a tree close to our house. Although the outdoor temperatures did not reach above 33 degrees from Monday until Friday, the heat from our house made the snow on our roof drip off onto trees. Then that moisture would freeze on its way to the ground. The ice was awesome.

This has been going around on Facebook and it made me laugh big time. So very true! See the area on the driver's side of the car? That is ALL road, all the way to that other car. The roads were just like this until Thursday. It was really crazy.

Snow Day 2

We are still cooped up and enjoying our snow days! Tuesday we ventured down the road and tried some sledding down a great hill in our neighborhood. We have some friends who brought some cool homemade sleds since none of us own actual sleds. Super fun!
In these pictures, I would like you to notice the road. We are sledding in the middle of the road on ice-covered snow. Atlanta doesn't really have snow plows to clear the roads, which is mainly why we've had three consecutive snow days - the city really shuts down due to the roads being undriveable. And every night, it freezes again, so the next day they are awful again.

Zachary & his favorite friend Kayla. So cute! See the sled? Homemade and completely functional!

This is Allie & Zachary free-stylin' it down the hill. They were laughing so hard and having a great time! Zachary's sledding on a piece of linoleum, which was super fast and never stayed straight, so he was twisting around like a Tea Cup at Disney. It was a lot of fun! Allie is on a tupperware lid, which definitely wasn't as good as the other 'sleds.'

After the sledding, we had hot chocolate while the kids watched movies and the grown ups played games. Good day!

Snow Day 2011

Well, it seems for the past few years we've had 1 awesome snow here in Atlanta each year. Sunday night around 10pm, it started snowing and dropped 2 inches in about 30 minutes. It kept snowing all night long.
I wanted to wake the kids so badly and take them outside so they could see & hear the beauty of a thick heavy snowfall at night. I resisted my urge and instead walked around outside by myself like a big dork. It was nice though.
Anyway, when Zachary woke up at 5:56 am and started running around looking out all our windows, I knew we'd have a fun day.
This is the most snow we've seen here, I'm pretty sure. Our yard had about 5-6 inches.

Here's Allie, eating the snow. She got the hiccups awhile later...I'm not sure how much she actually ate.

We took a walk down the street and watched some kids sledding down the big hill in our neighborhood. This is the street. As you can see, no snow plowing here in our neighborhood. The kids liked watching them sled. When we got back to our yard, they got their swimming kickboards and tried sledding down our driveway. I'm not sure what went wrong there, but it didn't work at all. It was still fun and very funny to watch.

PG-13 post

*Disclaimer: This blog post contains content that may not be suitable for children or modest God-fearing adults. The contents of this post are true and uncensored. Please use caution and be gentle in your judgments of the author.

Recent conversation overheard in my house:

Zachary: "Allie, are you still on the potty? Hurry up so we can play."

Allie: "Yes, I almost done."

Zachary: "Do you have to wipe?"

Allie: "Yes, I wiping."

Zachary: "Be sure to wipe the front and the back. Because girls have to wipe the front too."

Allie: "I wipe the front and the back because I have two butts. One in the front and one in the back. But boys just have 1 butt and 1 pee pee."

Necessities

Allie: "Mommy, I need to get down."

Mommy: "Allie, you're not done eating, you can get down when you're done eating."

Allie: "Mommy, I be right back to finish my food, but I need to get down right now."

Mommy: "Do you need to go potty?"

Allie: "No, I need to go dance. I be right back."

She proceeds to get herself down out of her chair, run to the playroom, dance for a few minutes and returned to finish her meal.

Imagination [train] Station

Some days, the kids play so very well together that I'm certain they don't even need me there to supervise. This was one of those fabulous mornings. I was finishing some laundry upstairs and they were really quiet. When I came down to check on them, I found them engaged in a super-fun imaginary adventure that included a train ride to the circus. When I asked what they were doing, Allie said, "We're riding a choo-choo-rain to the circus!"
Allie kept referring to Zachary as "Engine" (instead of conductor) and continuously made requests for snacks, reading material, seat-switching, etc...to which he immediately obliged and served her with exceptional zeal!
Except when it was time for him to "drive" the train, as pictured below. He's yelling, "chugga lugga choo-choo!"

Pictured below, Mr. "Engine" is doing his very best to appease a disgruntled passenger. Apparently, she'd requested a peanut-butter & jelly sandwich, not a turkey sandwich (seriously, that was the real argument).

When she requested a seat change, she wasn't upset that her new seat gave her absolutely no leg room. As long as she had her reading material, she was happy.

In the picture above, behind Allie, you can see Raccoon & a bird, enjoying their fruit. And below, Allie's baby doll Abigail is enjoying her "hot soup and iced tea."

And of course, Panda found himself as the caboose, and was spoiled rotten with a lot of ice cream.

When I asked if I could ride the train, I was told that there weren't any seats left, but if I wanted to sweep (the carpet floors with a broom), I could.
Which I did.
Also with zeal.

Legos!

I have enjoyed Zachary transitioning to an older stage of toys - especially Legos! He & I spent an hour today following the wonderfully detailed, step-by-step instructions that the Lego company diagrams in a little book that comes with their products. It was really fun. I was surprised at his patience and attention span throughout the entire project.
We followed the instructions exact on the "garage" part, but Zachary wanted to create a car that had a truck bed in the back, so the "little man can transport his tools." So we improvised and created a car/truck on our own!
Being raised in a house full of girls, I don't recall having many Lego experiences, so I'm excited to know that I officially love Legos.

Birthday weekend pictures

I stole these from my sister Raschelle since I didn't take any of my own pictures over the weekend.
Here's Ari in her birthday dress!

She's eating her rich chocolate raspberry cake that Grammy made. It was fantastic. Ari has a whole piece of just the icing in her hand!

Allie & I were reading a cute little book.

Here's a picture of my family stealing a photo-op while I was asleep. They are wicked sneaky.