We took the kids sledding for the first time in January. We found a little hill near the ski resorts (about an hour away) that was perfect for the kids to go with us or by themselves. They had a blast sledding but found walking in their snow outfits difficult.
I had a genius idea to let the kids finger paint while sitting on the floor. I didn’t really think thru the whole leg/foot thing and would have been better off with them sitting at the table! Our kids really hate being dirty and having a “mess” so I’m not sure what they thought of it. My luck ran out when Gabe got paint on his toe. He flipped out and was done painting.
We had our first big snow in the city this year. We had gone to the Aquarium for the afternoon and didn’t bother to carry our jackets inside since we parked right across the street. By the time we came out it was like a blizzard and the roads were pretty terrible. About 2 miles away from the downtown, the snow stopped and there was not a trace of the snow for the next mile or our neighborhood. While we did not get any snow the entire first day, Ciara (our nanny) had over 6 inches in her neighborhood only a few miles away. It was a strange storm! Seattle historically doesn’t do well in snow storms because they have very few plows and do not believe in salting the road (affects the salmon population). We ended up working from home the entire week because we only had one car (Z’s car doesn’t work in snow!), and he would pick Ciara up and bring her here so we could both work from home. We had a lot of fun sledding in the neighborhood with the kiddos but by the end of the 7 days, we were all pretty happy to be back to our normal routines!
Zara and Gabe are continuing to talk more and more. Our favorite word is helicopter pronounced something like keli-cop-cop, other favorites include pocket – pock pock, airplane (we live in the flight path!) – bear-plane, clementine – clem-tine. Maggie is no longer nah-nah to Zara, she’s Cat. They’re starting to have a lot of opinions about what they want to wear and do (or not do!). They love giving kisses (and blowing kisses on skype), they love it when I jump out and say BOO, and they also love the water.
We took them to this award winning pool that is essentially a large baby pool with fountains, water dripping from above and a padded floor, a deeper pool, and a pool with a lazy river. The kids had a blast. We took them to the deeper section where they had floating mats you could jump off of. Even though they were wearing life jackets they still went under when they jumped in. We thought they would be upset but they immediately said MORE Please when they came out above water. At one point Zara lost her balance and fell backwards off the mat to the other side. I quickly swam under and met her on the other side but she wasn’t bothered in the least! We’re excited that they like the water so much and are looking into swimming lessons in the spring.
View our January 2012 photos.