Fun in the snow

Much to the dismay of her parents, Claire has figured out how to climb the dining room chairs. This means that NOTHING is out of reach anymore. Not the folded laundry, not the camera...not your drinks...not the poor cat trying to nap on the table runner...

Of course now that Claire has figured out how to get up on the "big girl" chairs, that's all she wants to do. Poor kid. Poor resourceful kid - the second we turn our backs, she's on a chair or pushing a chair close to whatever has caught her eye (namely the ornaments on our tree).

As a peace offering for saying "no" all day long today, I took her out for a walk in the snow. It was freeeezing, so we only walked down to the end of the driveway before turning back to play in the front yard. Claire tasted the snow, tried to pull her mittens off and generally seemed to enjoy herself. This is quite an improvement over the last snow adventure where she cried - I think she hated the deep snow because she couldn't walk in it.

So tomorrow is sure to be another adventure. If anyone has tips on entertaining a VERY active toddler when the weather is too cold and she wants to climb everything - I'm all ears!

Our Christmas Dinner Adventure!

Ingredients for a Christmas adventure:

• a smoking oven from that toy your toddler hid in its depths
• a stomach bug that said toddler shared with Grandma Caca who now cannot leave the couch
• a grocery store that closed earlier than expected leading husband to announce:

"Honey, let's play Food Network challenge!"

Oh my gosh.

So...we have no where to cook the giant 24 lb. turkey, two of the four burners in the stove are acting wacky and the root vegetables, all the appetizer ingredients and drink mixes are missing. The only side dish I ha d pre-made were mashed potatoes and lasagna.

Dan was resourceful and grabbed a bunch of acorn squash, mozzarella. tomatoes and pre-made seafood dip. He did this while the store employees followed him around ushering him along. Thank goodness he made it INTO the store, they were turning people away at the door since they wanted to get home to their own families. And in case you were wondering, a store clerk had told Dan they closed at seven earlier in the day, well that clerk was off by an hour.

I have to say that dinner turned out great, even if it wasn't what we planned! We had a bunch of apples and pears so we stuffed the acorn squash with fruit and raisins (and drizzled 'em with a healthy dollop of butter, sugar and bourbon). The mashed potatoes reheated well on our wonky burners and I baked the lasagna and sweet potatoes in our microwave/convection oven. GrandBob and GrandCeil arrived with mini-quiches and brussel sprouts which rounded out the meal. I had a nice stash of frozen peas with mushrooms in the freezer so we served those rather than the garlicky string beans. We did the turkey on the grill (having enough propane to cook it all 3.5 hours was our own little Christmas miracle). All I can say is the creation of this meal was quite the culinary adventure.

Of course the best part of our celebration was gathering the family together! I hope you enjoy all the Christmas photos in the slide-show below. It was so nice to have everyone together, especially the little cousins! There are plenty more photos from Aunt Laurie and McManda's cameras. Hopefully those will be added shortly!

Happy Christmas!

Photos to share later, Claire is loving all her new goodies!

Where are you Santa?

Outside?

Eating with Forks!

I took these pictures before we all caught a nasty stomach bug this weekend. I think this was the last time we all enjoyed real food! We're on the mend now and looking forward to the buckets of soup that Grand-Bob and Grand-C brought us. They risked catching the super-bug themselves to look after Claire on Sunday while Dan and I spent the day in the bathroom. Bleh...what a weekend!

It's time to get Claire some real utensils. She did so well playing with Mommy's fork!

Come Play With Me!

Craigslist is my new favorite place on the Internet. We were able to snag this awesome playset from a family with older children. They even threw in a table and chair set perfect for a toddler. Merry Christmas, Claire!


Our playroom is complete! We turned a bookshelf sideways and filled it with some of her favorite toys (baskets, metal mixing bowls, books) to keep things organized. Her stuffed animals live in the monkey tent and the old stroller toys found a new home in her "treehouse." Aside from climbing and sliding, Claire really enjoys sitting at her big girl table and taking the dishes out of the its drawers.

There are a few more photos in the slideshow below!

Roller Rink Photos!

I'm rather late posting these photos from our trip to toddler time at the roller rink, but I'm sure I'll be forgiven once you all see how cute the photos are.

Obviously, Claire is too young for skating, but the rink is open for kids under 4 to bring their ride-on or push toys and use them in a nice wide open area. They have a great indoor play area with all kinds of things to climb on too. I was too busy spotting our little monkey (and playing myself) to take photos in there though!

For the first hour of rink time it was just three of us. The kids, whose ages I hopefully have correct (Ryan - 13 months, Isabella - 15 months and Claire - 13 months) enjoyed swapping toys. Ryan, who is learning to walk really loved Claire's car walker and pushed it around the entire time. Claire and Isabella teamed up and pushed each other around in Ryan's car. The grass is always greener on the other side and other kid's toys are always cooler than your own, right?

Claire LOVED pushing everyone around in the wagons and cars...it was too cute. She'd ride around for a minute and then try and squirm out so she could push again. My goal for this week is to find a setting on my camera that takes nicer looking photos in the strange dim/fluorescent light in this place! There are a few more photos in the slideshow below.

Here's a link to the album online for downloading photos to your computer. I should also point out that if you click on the slideshow while it's playing it will take you to a full screen view in Picasa (thanks McManda!). I usually post it small so it will fit in my entries section :-)