Morning

My favorite time of the day is the morning. I know, I know. I complain all of the time how I wish I could sleep in and how I loathe waking up for work, but really morning is my favorite time of the day. Especially weekend mornings. They're so quiet and relaxing. I almost always wake up to the chatter of one or both of the girls. We nearly always start our mornings in the play room, cartoons playing in the background, coffee in my hand, and them playing while they wake up.

Solar system and other play things

Our planets look like they're out of order, but they're hung in a circle, surrounding the sun. They are a *bit* off in terms of how far away they are, but we had limited space. So from left to right, here's what we've got: Neptune, Jupiter (the sun spot is on the other side, and it's glorious), Earth (with one of the ten red moons Stasa insisted it should have), Mercury, Sun, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Uranus. No Pluto.

I got a gift card to Michael's as part of my Christmas gift from Matt and Loula. I went to Michael's intent on buying scrapbooking supplies and walked out with the makings of a solar system instead. It took us a few days, and Stasa obviously had help on the painting front, but it was a fun project and it's now proudly displayed in the playroom.



Stasa started off painting the sun and got most of it covered before she spied the tiny styrofoam balls and the red paint. After that all bets were off. She insisted on painting like ten moons for Earth. All red. Since she was hell bent on using red, we had her work on Mars and some of Jupiter. After a couple of days, I finally convinced her to try white and yellow to paint Saturn. Then it was back to the moons.



I think I might make a little poster with velcro planets so she can learn their correct order, not that it's urgent she know that this very minute, but it would be an easy DIY project to make. And she loves the one I made for learning the shapes.

So far we've spent the majority of 2012 playing. Tom and I have become obsessed with Words with Friends and spend a lot of our down time playing it. Against each other. While in the same room. Really we should just break out the Scrabble board.

Lexi took her first steps right before the New Year and will occasionally take a few steps here and there, but only when my camera isn't around. She *will* stand on her own all of the time and walks with easy if she's holding on to something. Even if she has to hold that something up, like the baby doll stroller. I guess she just needs that safety blanket. I did manage to get a video of her taking few tiny steps and will upload that soon. She's shaping up to be just as headstrong as her big sister.


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Cat and mouse


Sink baths


Driving, already


Little Miss Attitude




Miss Blue Eyes


And the BrownGreenYellow Eyed Beauty


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Of course the dollhouse is still a bit hit. And the strangest things happen in that dollhouse. For instance, check out the feast going on here.


I love seeing how imaginative she is when she plays with the house.

We were actually productive this weekend

Okay, maybe not so much the whole weekend, but we definitely got a ton accomplished on Sunday. Tom installed a new door lock on one of our closets and put up a ceiling fan in Stasa's room. I hemmed Stasa's curtains that she ripped off her wall and anchored the curtain rod back in the wall - no way those suckers are coming down now. While the munchkins were napping, I fooled around with some old clothes and made Stasa a new denim skirt. It's a little big, but it's still cute and she'll be able to wear it for the rest of the year.




Once Stasa woke up, she and Tom made zucchini bread muffins. Well, really Tom made them. Stasa helped a little, but she was hungry and fussy, so she mostly just stood around whining.



After she got some food in her gullet, she was a much happier kid...not to mention a goofy one. She quite literally wore me out. Okay, she only partially wore me out. I, like the idiot I can be, decided that it would be fun to show her how to crab walk and chased her around the playroom like that. FYI to those of you that don't crab walk on a regular basis: it's not the best idea. Man, oh man, am I sore now.



(Oh, did I mention that she full-on pouts now? Yeah, it's kinda hilarious because she does it all the time now when we tell her no and then a second later she's cracking up because she can't keep the pout on.)






And we even managed to goof off a bit in the mirrors.


Oh and I didn't forget about little Lexi. She was such a fusspot and then was totally quiet and chill when I put her down on the floor. Probably the chaos around her kept her entertained. Either way, I wasn't rocking that boat, so I left her there, to take it all in.

Monday, Monday.

Huge progress this morning. Ha-uge. Stasa walked into daycare, happy as a clam. And stayed that way even as I was leaving. I've been trying to prepare her every night and morning and this morning we had quite the conversation about "skuuul."

Me: What do you do at school?
Stasa: Sleep all night and wake up.
Me: All you do is sleep?
Stasa: And pick boogies.

So. No crying. Happy Stasa. At school. Progress.

When I picked the girls up this afternoon, there was a sheet in Stasa's file alerting us that it's the start of the Splash Day season. Every Tuesday Stasa needs to come to daycare with her bathing suit, towel and sunscreen for her class's Splash Day. There was also a coloring of 2 dogs and a bunch of bones since they've been discussing animals and animal sounds.

We did a bit of playing while we waited for Tom to get home and finish his workout. Stasa was a busy bee and wanted to play with just about everything. She surprised me by cleaning up (without any prompting from me) between activities, singing "clean up, clean, everybody, everywhere!" She helped Lexi "play" with the jumperoo, prepared some delicious crabby patties for me, and helped build a robot and SpongeBob out of her Legos. Busy, busy bee.




The robot "we" built:


"What happen to robot, mommy?" Yeah, I'm not buying that innocent act. Not with that Cheshire grin.


Poor robot.


The best I could do with what we have.


What's that, you say? Isn't it obvious? It's SpongeBob. Duh.


And Lexi was busy snoozing away after all of that "jumping" and playing.