Mostly Successful....

Well, both girls got to school on time and picked up on time, and everybody was fed and clothed appropriately.  And there were no big temper tantrums by any of the girls in the house.  And I got Nathaniel to sleep around 7 tonight, after trying for only 40 minutes.  So that's all good.  Megan had fun working on the United States puzzle before lunch today, although she wasn't sure she wanted her picture taken.  She did it almost entirely by herself, and knew the names of a surprising amount of states!

But Nathaniel took only one nap in his crib today; admittedly, it was a very nice 3 hour long nap.  I spent a long time trying to get him to sleep after coming home from taking Megan to preschool, and then when he wouldn't fall asleep, I let him cry.  And scream.  And then I got him up so that we could go pick Megan up.  Until he learns to fall asleep more quickly, driving to and from preschool is really going to mess up his naps (and make both him and I crabby).

Success!

It's my first day taking care of all three kids completely by myself (Ben is in Lowville all week), and it's 8pm, and everyone is asleep!  Or at least everyone is in bed and quiet.  I'm pretty sure Megan is laying in bed playing with her dreamlite, but at least she isn't talking.  And we all had a very nice and happy day!

In addition to nursing the baby, feeding the girls, packing Amelia's lunch and snack, and getting Amelia to school on time, I gave both girls a bath, did a load of laundry, cleaned my room, did dishes, cleaned half a bathroom, made sure the girls did their chores, read books with Megan and did the grocery shopping.  I managed to get Nathaniel to take two good naps in his crib, even laying him down drowsy but awake once, and I didn't even have to spend hours shushing him to get him to sleep.  That list of accomplishments may not sound that impressive, but I am extremely pleased.  :)

To be fair, Amelia had girl scouts after school, so I didn't have to wake the baby up from his nap to drag him out in the cold, and we picked up Culver's takeout for dinner, and the girls watched a movie while eating dinner.  But STILL. 

Now I just have to figure out how to get the driveway and sidewalk cleared if we really do get the 5" of snow that is predicted for tomorrow.

Amusing Ourselves Indoors

Megan and I had fun playing Uno on Thursday Amelia was at school, although Megan doesn't exactly play by the rules.  The penguins had fun playing, too.

We also made some breakfast cookies together, and packaged them up in Pringles cans decorated like snowmen to give to the girls' teachers on the first day back at school.  Thanks for saving Pringles cans for us, Jeff and Jane!  We made three different kinds of cookies, and everyone liked the ones with the chocolate chips the best.

Amelia tried to convince Megan to wear underpants on her head again, but Megan wasn't interested.

They used blankets to create a fort under the dining room table, but I only managed to get silly pictures of them on top of the fort.

Amelia has made it her mission to try to get Nathaniel to smile at her, and he was very obliging after nap time this afternoon.  He really smiles a lot when he hears the girls talking to him.  Amelia tried to entertain him during tummy time, but he persists in rolling over as soon as he can.

I suggested that Ben get out the wii and see if the girls would be interested in playing with him.  They really like a game where they can fly a plane around an island, although Megan primarily flies upside down and delights in stalling and crashing into the ocean.  Amelia also likes bowling, and Megan likes fencing.  In fact, on Thursday evening, she ran up to Ben as soon as he got home to see if she would sword fight with him.  Ben lets her win about half the time.

They tried to build a lego trebuchet this afternoon, but didn't have enough regular bricks to build the supports.  So Ben got out his wooden trebuchet, and flung marshmallows at the girls.  They had a lot of fun!

Oh, the weather outside is....

....FRIGHTFUL!

Our official low temperature today was -18°F with a windchill of -46°F.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be a balmy low of -13°; thank goodness school is cancelled again!  Our weather station stops reporting the windchill once it gets below -40°F, which I thought was pretty funny, so this is the coldest that I managed to capture:

We spent the entire day indoors, although I did make the girls stick their arms outside to feel how cold it was.  They were not amused!  Don't worry, we had the door open just long enough to feel the cold and snap a photo, and then we shut it again.  Although when I dragged the Christmas tree to the curb in the afternoon, I was surprised that a windchill of -40 didn't feel nearly as cold as I thought it would.  As Brian said, it wasn't cold enough to freeze my eyeballs.  But when the girls asked if they could play in the snow, I said no.  I am so mean.

The girls played dressup Cinderella for a while this morning.  I have to be the prince (and the clock) and when it is midnight, they run out of the living room, leaving a shoe behind.  Then I have to take the shoes into their room and drop them on the floor to accidentally "break" them, whereupon they each produce their other shoe and I pronounce them each my darling Cinderella.

This game lasted until Megan started hitting Amelia because Amelia took her fairy wand, and I told Megan she had to sit in the uncooperative chair (an idea we stole from Julius, the Baby of the World).  After she apologized to Amelia, I told her she needed to wash the kitchen floor as her consequence.  Then I realized how perfect that was, since she was still dressed as Cinderella.  Clearly, I was channeling the wicked stepmother!

Nate was being a cooperative baby this afternoon (he slept very well last night - 9 hours - and took a good nap this afternoon) and so I took a few photos of his funny faces.  He does smile, but not on command, so I mostly captured his serious and suspicious faces.

5 weeks old

Ben's family has a tradition of taking photos of their babies in this blue sleeper at 5 weeks.  Here are my kids, can you guess who is who?

Happy New Year!

We've all enjoyed our lazy pajama-wearing movie-watching day today!  The girls are currently watching Toy Story 2:

We've also watched Madagascar, Planes, Cinderella, Monsters University and Shrek 2.  Amelia and Megan both say that their favorite movie has been Madagascar, which they didn't want to watch at first.  They wanted Tinkerbell again, but I told them we needed to watch something new.  And look at that - they tried something new and they liked it!  Guess Mommy's pretty smart after all.

Here they are watching Madagascar, during the funny parts:

 and during the silly parts:

Nathaniel has been a great sleeper today; well, great for his age, at least.  He will be six weeks old tomorrow.  He fell asleep last night around 8:45, was up from 1:30 to 2am, then again from 6 to 6:30am, then woke up for good around 9:30am.  He has taken two very good naps today, also, with very little struggle to get him to fall and stay asleep.  He has also enjoyed some snuggle time and some play time.  He has been socially smiling a fair amount the last few days, it's so cute!

Edited on January 2nd to add: He slept great last night, too!  Fell asleep for good around 8:30pm, and didn't wake up until 3am!  Then fell asleep around 3:30 and slept until 7.  It was so nice to have a little bit of time to myself last night, and then get a good night sleep. 

More Snow!

The girls were THRILLED to get more snow yesterday!  Amelia took a ruler outside and measured a total of 9" of snow on the ground, but it was light and powdery and drifted around a lot, so it was very hard to get an accurate measurement.  When we walked across the backyards to get to the neighbor's sledding hill, I had to pull Megan in the sled because the snow was too deep for her to easily walk.  It was up to her mid-thigh.  They tried to sled down our front walkway, but the snow was too deep for them to get a good track going.

They had a lot of fun anyway!

Then they had fun climbing and sliding down the snowdrift along the street.  They had a hard time getting back up it because it was so deep!

Of course, their favorite part of a new snowstorm?  Eating the snow!

They went outside again this afternoon, but they only lasted 10 minutes because it was only 7° outside and they got cold!  

I realized we didn't have a good photo of Ben with Nate, so I took a few this afternoon when Nate was happy.  Isn't this cute?