More Sproutage!

More and more are coming up! Just overnight there was an increase! Here we have lettuce: Broccoli: and Basil! Woohoo! There are also three different kinds of tomatoes sprouting, but you can only look at so many pictures of seedlings before you just don't care anymore. I may have already exceeded my allotment!

Hair Salon

Poor Leiden. I feel so bad that her Spring Break has been thwarted by colds. Today we spent some time playing hair salon, which she loves to do--we always start out with writing our names down like you would for an appointment. We pretend to wash, dry, brush, curl (iron and curlers!), apply color, apply shine, apply sparkle, and finally put in clips. As many as we can. While I was embarrassed to take my own picture at the end, as I didn't have makeup on, Leiden always looks cute, and her hair was remarkably fun looking when I was done with it!

More Meems

I still find myself photographing Mimi more than the other girls, even though my concerted effort to take a picture a day for her first year is over. Habit, and she's just really funny right now. These are all from today. Like we said, she loves the sunroom.

We also find her a lot in the hallway, trying to put on jackets and coats. One time I found her she actually had her arm in the right place!

Butterfly Clowns

Leiden drew this while sitting in the cart at Target the other day, and has been making minor adjustments until today. This is me. (Mercedes/Mommy) I am apparently a butterfly clown. I am juggling, while wearing a crazy awesome costume with butterfly wings. Check out the detail. My favorite part? Where she erased my 'body' because it's under the costume and you can't see it. And I really like the little butterflies on my knees and shoes in the picture above.

Gogo Gaga: A Comic Strip

Leiden has been working on a comic strip. This was entirely her idea, her wording, her pictures, and the vast majority of it is her spelling. Entitled: Gogo (read: googoo) Gaga! A Comic Book She's even got down the tiny little boxes for each little part. (The typing is correct spelling, but no change in grammar, etc.) "Once there was a baby." "She was pretending to be a regular baby." "She actually was a superhero." "And her name was Mimi." (Love the wink.) "Mimi has a symbol." "And her symbol was a butterfly." "Then she heard someone yell, 'Help!'" "Then superbaby came flying there." "And while she was flying, she said, 'Gogo gaga'." "She flied, flied, flied." "Then when she got there she saw a building on fire." "And then baby saved the day." She is SO cute. It is so fun to watch her little mind work. She is developing a great sense of humor and loves to laugh. Even when we know how smart she is, she still surprises us all the time with her astute comments and awareness. We LOVE this girl!

Sproutage!

We have sproutage! A mere three days after planting, the lettuce seeds are showing signs of life! The girls couldn't be more thrilled, and we can't wait to see what happens in the next few days. Leiden is going to get out her magnifying glass and check them out, soon. We opened up the sunroom and turned on the radiant floor heating so the seeds would have a warm room where there's plenty of light to sprout. We keep the sliding door open, now, for air circulation. An added benefit to this is that Mimi now has a new place to play. I found her in there several times, today. She has to go down a step to get in there, and at first she was going feet first, like she's supposed to, but then she decided it wasn't worth it, so she goes in hands first.

Like so:

The Library

I guess I should mention that it's Spring Break--the herald of warmer weather to come, a time to go and do something crazy fun. That was part of the plan, until we all (save Brad) picked up Mimi's cold. So, now we're sticking home a bit, trying to recuperate before Grandmere comes next week! Today was a trip to the library. This place has got great light. I wish my house had a wall of windows. I'm not sure what Mimi was doing, but it was funny. She loves to look at books--for approximately 6 seconds. Every single book this one picked out was science related. I have got to keep that interest up!

Learning All the Time

My Primary lesson yesterday was the wise man and the foolish man. I've been trying to make the lessons more interesting and provide them with something to take home at the end--enter rock cookies. I had such high hopes for these. The dough here, pre-oven, looks kind of like rocks! The recipe said they wouldn't spread, so they would end up just like this. And then I would coat them with grey glaze. There are some very clever people in this world. Well, they spread. So they ended up looking more like just regular cookies. But the grey glaze looked good! I suppose I may have had more success if I had followed the recipe exactly, but the dough was SO crumbly when I went to form them that I added a bit more milk. This may have ruined my no-spread capabilities. Then again, do 8-9 year old boys care about anything other than the fact that they've been handed a cookie? Probably not. Mimi was equally excited--she actually laughed out loud--when I put a big dollop of mashed potatoes on her tray last night. And she then proceeded to eat what she could with her hands. (I really need to introduce a spoon.) Best part? She flicked her hands everywhere and mashed potatoes went flying--the ones that weren't already smeared all over her face. This morning Mimi did the funnies thing that really showed me that she's paying attention, even if she's not talking. She picked up an empty cup left by one of the girls on the counter. She toddled over to the refrigerator and tried desperately to reach the ice/water dispenser with the cup. She knew exactly what to do and where to go. She's just not big enough!

Is Spring Coming?

Today while Brad was working on the fireplace all day, the girls and I planted a bunch of seeds for our still-to-be-designed vegetable garden. We've never gotten seeds to work before, but we're trying again.

If this works, we could have the beginnings of lettuce, broccoli, basil, peppers, roma tomatoes, big beefsteak tomatoes, currant tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. We still need to plant, in bigger pots, the watermelon and pickling cucumbers. We also have seeds for carrots, spinach, and sweet peas. Mac has asked about 15 times today if the plants are done growing. We keep telling her it will be about a week before we see anything. She will be thrilled when it finally happens! It's still really cold, so the thought of being outside still seems like a faraway dream.

Friends and Parties

I watched a friend's kids today while she went to her ultrasound appointment and Mimi was doing great at parallel play. All the kids doing the same thing, but not really recognizing anyone else. She also kept trying to steal their milk cups. And the little girl's binkie. Mac was excited all day to go to a birthday party for a kid in the neighborhood, a kindergartener at Leiden's school. His mother is kind to include younger siblings when she has birthday parties. It made Mac feel special to be invited to a party where Leiden was going. When we wrapped his present, Mac latched on to a strip of the wrapping paper, and wanted to make a crown with it. She wore it to the party. Tomorrow Brad starts work on the fireplace, which is pretty exciting.

Body Slam!

Mimi loves to wrestle with whoever is on the floor. She specializes in the body slam. Arms straight up, and then everything down! You can imagine how the scene might be different from smiles and laughter when she attacks one of the little people in the house. She doesn't fight fair--pinching, pulling hair, and throwing her (considerable) weight around. But with Daddy, it's great!

Mimi

The last two days have been filled with Mimi antics. She loves this little ball toy we got her at Christmas, and she's learning how to make it go by herself. And of course, walking has become her favorite pasttime. These pictures don't convey what I saw initially--I walked into the kitchen and found her on the floor. She had gotten the empty raisin bran box out of the garbage and was looking at the back--like she was reading it. And then as soon as I get the camera out, she moves around. This is the closest I got to the original pose, but picture the back of the box facing the right way to actually read it. She is so proud of her newfound skills.

June Bugs (Box Elder Bugs)

So we really have these bugs all over the place. They are box elder bugs, but for some reason we call them june bugs. All that I'm reading says we must have a box elder tree somewhere either in our yard or in one of the neighbor's. And this is where they come from. They like indoors because it's warm, so they are all over. And Mac loses it whenever they fly and land on her. I mean she loses it. We've been fighting the good fight, 'getting' them when we see them, flushing them down the drain when we find them on the kitchen window, etc. But they are still around. This afternoon Leiden was in my room while I was getting ready for the Relief Society Birthday dinner. Remember the nursery/primary song, 'Snow is falling all around, On the rooftops, on the ground. Snow is falling on my nose, On my head, and hands, and toes.' Well, as I'm applying mascara or something, I hear her singing, 'There are june bugs all around,' and she didn't make it any further because I started laughing. And then sang the rest with her. It is so apropos.

Busy Day

Today was action packed. I was standing at the kitchen table, wiping it, with my back to Mimi, and I hear her fiddling with the door knob to the basement. I didn't think anything of it until I heard the basement door close. She had somehow managed to turn the doorknob and pull the door open a bit before the spring caught and it closed again. So I had Mac stand in front of the door with her hand on the knob while I ran to the laundry room and got a door knob cover. Phew. Another disaster averted. She figured she'd keep trying.



And this was her reaction when she realized she couldn't even touch the door knob anymore!



We got gas inserts put in both our fireplaces last week, and I had forgotten to take pictures of them. Brad is going to get the stone soon for the outside. The brick showing is the low quality filler brick they put behind the mantle and facade.



Here's some more Mimi in action. She is truly zooming around, with really pretty great balance and control. She's pretty proud of herself.