Spring Break Day 1

We're inadvertently having a little "staycation" for Spring Break. I planned a few new 'activities' for the kids to do at home and a few day outings. Quick rundown of Day 1.

Breakfast :)

Overnight oatmeal pancakes, strawberries from the CSA, morning star sausage, milk and fresh squeezed OJ.

Post breakfast activity. I wrote out the alphabet for Juliet and our address and my phone number for Aidric. (He really needs to learn these!!) They traced over with q-tips and paint. 

He just painted :) 

 After his "work" he painted this.

We headed upstairs to get dressed and I took these with my iphone. I love impromptu reading dates. Here, they are listening to a Christmas Hallmark book my mom bought them. It has her voice recorded, reading it to them and they looooove it. They've memorized most of it and often sing the Frosty song throughout the day, and then at the end, they say the part she added, "maybe when you come to Indiana this year, Juliet, we can build a snowman". So cute!! 

 Fave babysitter, Alyssa, came for a couple of hours and I ran some errands and went for a run. On this CRAZY windy day the waves were just insane!

While Cormac napped, I surprised these two with perler/fuse beads, which I had just picked up while they were with Alyssa. They used these during our Santa Barbara vacation with the Nords and really enjoyed them then. I was not expecting almost TWO HOURS worth of enjoyment from them though! 

When Cormac woke up, Aidric and Jules were still busy with the beads, so he and I headed out to water the garden. This is one of his favorite parts of our day. Each time, I only fill his watering can up with about 2 cups of water. He lugs it over to the garden and dumps it all in the same spot. Each time. I think I had planted cilantro there. Safe to say the cilantro might not grow this year. 

  

Juliet had dance class and then we came home for hot dogs on the grill. Read two chapters of The Box Car Children: Surprise Island and tucked them in. A day well spent!                                        

Cormac at 18 months (even though he's almost 19 months now)

I've been compiling a list of his likes/dislikes and fun things (and not so fun things) he's up to for the last month or so. It's taken me way too long to get this posted and I'm sure it's not complete, but he'd be 2 by the time I'm really ready to post it, so here goes!

Faves foods: 

Yogurt

Smoothies "moooothie"

Chicken

pizza

Fave books:

Llama Llama Red Pajama (yama yama, as he calls it)

lift and flap (Grandma and Me & Grandpa and Me are faves)

That's Not My Puppy

Fave activities:

climbing, climbing and more climbing

watering the garden

being tickled

reading books (so glad this is on the list...I wasn't sure he was going to be as into reading as his siblings, but he loves it now!)

snacking

Little things to remember:

The way he raises one shoulder while leaning his head in that direction and grinning adorably to get out of whatever trouble he was about to get in.

The "ah" he adds to the end of random words. "phone-a" "no-a" "more-a" "mommy-a". Although when he says yes the "ah" goes at the beginning. "Ah-yes"

How he does something ornery and then very pointedly looks at you and says "ha ha ha...hee hee hee" with perfect annunciation on each letter..piggie and elephant style :)

How fearless he is. He wants to do everything the big kids do and he wants to do it just like they do. He is never happy to be left out of any activity and will often try to worm his way in. He constantly climbs up onto one of the kitchen stools while I have my back turned. and I never can't laugh when I turn around to see him just sitting up at the counter like he's ready to have his lunch. He's recently decided that riding his little "coaster" while holding on isn't nearly enough fun. So, once he pushes off and is going down the ramp, he lets go of the steering wheel. And falls off and rolls over onto the ground every single time. And gets up laughing and ready to go again.

His empathy. The other day, I was kneeling next to juliet, while she screamed about something (she was in trouble) and he pushed his way in between us to give her a hug. Another night, aidric was crying b/c we had just finished a facetime conversation with chris and he felt like his turn wasn't long enough. Cormac walked up, put his arms around him and his head up against his chest.

His manners. This kid is so polite that the other day while I was clipping his finger nails, I got a little "daint doo mommy" after each nail. When I caught him playing in the toilet this morning, he immediately and repeatedly said, "sahh eee mommy". (Sorry mommy)

ETA: in the last week, he has thanked me for changing his diaper and washing his hands

Sooo helpful. He really loves to help. We bought him his own broom and dustpan for Christmas bc he is so into using ours. He loves to help put the dishes away and even separates measuring spoons from regular spoons. Unfortunately when I'm folding laundry he insists on helping by taking piles I have folded, walking into a room with them and sticking them in any random drawer.

Oh, he's bossy. If I'm telling Aidric and Juliet to do something or not do something, he immediately repeats the instruction in an incredibly bossy voice. "Ju-yet- NO!!!" "Aidric!! Um'ere" (come here)

Cormac, continued

Cormac, cotinued....

He's funny and he knows he's funny. He does things for a laugh and often repeats whatever gets the biggest laugh.The other day he grabbed both of my cheeks in his hands, looked right into my eyes and said "chubby". I died laughing. Juliet often does this to him, much to his dislike. Now that he knows it was funny, he does it over and over. (and honestly, it's funny each time b/c now he laughs hysterically while he's doing it  :)

Yesterday, he called my bluff. We were in his room and needed to leave to pick up Aidric. Our convo:

me: come on buddy, it's time to go

c: no

me: well, mommy's leaving now (I get up and walk out of his room)

c: ok, bye bye mommy. luh you.  (shuts the door to his room with him in and me out)

A few pictures taken in the last month:

So proud of my little skiiers!!

They did soooo amazingly well! And more importantly, they both absolutely loved it. When asked if they liked skiing better than Disneyland, skiing won for Aidric and Disneyland only slightly edged out skiing for Juliet and her reasoning was that she got to have cotton candy at Disney :)

We arrived at Big Bear on Friday afternoon. Despite the 65 degree temps, we were SO lucky to have snow at our cabin!! Many yards were snow free, but since our cabin was set up on an incline and the yard hadn't been touched, it was full of snow! The kids were soooooo excited. And I was so relieved since they had been discussing what they would do first in the snow the whole way up there. (Aidric was voting for snow ball fight and Juliet wanted to make a snowman). They played outside for about an hour before we pulled them in for dinner.

Saturday morning, we took a quick 5 minute drive to Bear Mountain Ski Resort. They both had 2 hours of instruction in the morning and then lunch with us. They each took a turn going up the smallest chair lift with Chris and then went back to ski school for 2 hours in the afternoon. I was a tiny bit disappointed in the ski school at first. They just didn't appear to be doing much. The slope was just a TINY decline they seemed to be practically shuffling down rather than learning to ski. But, they must have been learning something b/c they did awesome when Chris took them down the mountain.

This morning, we had to be checked out of our cabin by 11:00, so I dropped just Chris and Aidric off at the resort. They had about 2 hours to ski while we packed up the cabin and checked out. We then met up with them on the mountain and Juliet was ready to go! Aidric had learned to maneuver getting off and on the lift without Chris's help by then, so Chris was able to take them both up with him. The first time they all came down, Juliet was holding Chris's hand and they were going relatively slow. The second time they came down, Mary pointed out a little girl in pink snowpants and we both said it looked like Juliet, but it couldn't be, b/c this little girl was skiing on her own...and skiing well! The closer she got though, we realized it was Juliet! I couldn't believe how well she was doing! Aidric was just a little in front of her, so excited to tell me how he was skiing backwards and on one foot.

It was just a wonderful, amazing weekend. So fun to do something with the kids that we could all enjoy together. Can't wait for Mac to be old enough to get out there too, but in the meantime, he had some great bonding time with grandma. They even went to the Big Bear Zoo on Saturday! The kids were all excited to share the weekend with grandma and Chris and I were so glad she was able to meet us there....both to share the experience and hang out with Mac for the day. Thank you Grandma P!!!

Some pics and video of our weekend....

 Sledding in what was left of the snow at the cabin. It was HOT, but wet snow is still cold, so short sleeves and snowpants/gloves seemed to be the perfect mix!

 Family pic before we headed out on Saturday!

 Juliet's in the white coat/pink pants here- took this while we peeked in on ski school from the run.

 My daredevil husband did the double black diamond "Geronimo" a few times. I patiently waited here for him.

 tuckered out....Aidric almost fell asleep at the dinner table. You can see our very "cozy" little cabin here.

I didn't bring my little camera in with me on Day 2 and while I did take some pictures and video wtih iphone earlier in the day, my iphone was lost and then stolen right before we left. (still hoping to retrieve it but expectations are low there....) However, Chris did get a few videos with his phone...this one of Aidric going backwards cracks me up. I'll post the other ones of them each going down in the next post...

Hiking and Horses

This is one of those, "why don't we do this more often" activities! We drove about 15 minutes from our house to hike these gorgeous trails. Overlooking the ocean for the majority of the hike. The kids whined at first and didn't understand that we weren't going anywhere specific...we were just walking to walk. Once we found them each a "hiking stick" and they took turns being our nature guide, they were more invested. I still wasn't sure if it was a hit with them, but they've asked several times since if we can go back and do it again.

We had a little time to kill before getting home for naps, so we stopped at a tiny little playground. The fence separates it from a horse stable and while we were there, a woman was out walking a horse. The kids walked over to say hi and pet him, and the woman offered them each a ride. They both ended up taking two turns riding Jackson.