We are so lucky to be able to stay at Lake George in the middle of the winter - something we have never been able to do! My aunt and uncle are nice enough to let us stay at their house for the week. We got here just in time to walk across the ice with them, which is something that none of us had ever done before (except aunt liz who thinks maybe she did this with an old boyfriend??? but we won't bother her about that tidbit of information we learned :))

We began the trek across the bay - a beautiful day and clear skies!

Amelia insisted on walking by herself (shocking, I know).

She insisted on stopping to make a snow angel.

She needed a little help for the walk back.

Family photo in front of our house - we are in the middle of the bay where we all usually start our water-skiing route.

Little miss mischief

Zoë has transformed from baby-content-to-eat-a-spoon-on-the-floor to baby-we-can't-keep-in-one-place.

I am estimating she is about 2 weeks away from pulling herself up. She tries with everything she can...

"I think I"ll mosey on over here to check out some stuff I shouldn't get in to..."


Again attempting to stand up... Yoda keeps a close eye.

Contained! Ready to go for a car ride...

Our family's American Idol audition tape

Snowbound

We are ready for Spring. We are getting stir crazy cooped up inside - everyone is sick and has contracted just about every illness possible. So far this week:
-ear infections x 2
-sinus infection x1
-24 hour stomach flu x1
-RSV x1

Here you can see Amelia's attempts to have fun inside:

Playing with flour in the living room. Actually one of my favorite activities for her because it is such easy clean-up - just vacuum and it's done. She loves to pour the flour from cup to bowl to spoon, etc...

Haha love this.

Yoda/Carl keeps a close watch.

The aftermath - it looks bad but it was clean in under 5 minutes.

Let's hope this week is healthier for this house...

Off work

Tom here. I have been off work now for a week and while I have gotten a ton of work done from home I have also begun to get a little stir crazy. A few things I have done.

• decided that all of the old New Yorker magazines needed to be burned up because they were everywhere. I kept on the task of feeding magazines into the fire place until I was distracted by a pressing issue on Law and Order SVU--that show sucks you in.
• researched the workout program P90X from computer while lying in bed. I think the presenter might be too annoying to listen to for an hour a day.
• played bristle blocks with Amelia for so long that I started to get a little mad when she wanted to take down my towers to build more of hers.
• researched how I could buy loose Lego blocks instead of kits. This took about an hour.
• listened to an interview on Morning Edition with Lawrence Wright about his profile of Scientology in the most recent New Yorker. Listened to Fresh Air interview with Lawrence Wright about his profile of Scientology. Read original article by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. Went online and researched Scientology. Watched videos of L. Ron Hubbard. Decided that I had learned enough about Scientology.
• went to hardware store. bought one bag of salt. came home. spread the salt. returned the the hardware store. bought one more bag of salt. spread the salt. it still wasn't enough so I made a sandwich.
• took all the dishes off of their shelves. Cleaned the shelves. Reorganized the dishes and put them all back.

All in all a pretty good week but I think I'm ready to go back to work.

Total non sequitur...Amelia has been an amazing little girl recently. She talks so much and about such interesting things. Yesterday she told me a story about how Ryan and James and Henry and she were playing superheros. Ryan and James and Amelia were all playing Spider-Man so I asked if Henry was Spider-Man too. Amelia frowned deeply and looked at me like I was the biggest idiot on earth. No, she said, Henry was playing Batman. How was I to know.

She also does this cool thing where she lists out everyone that she loves.

I love mommy.

I love daddy.

I love Zoe.

I love Yoda.

I love Badger.

And then we ask her if she loves Toonces, our mean cat, and she will look at us skeptically and say, NO!

7 months!

Just for comparison, this was Zoe last month - I don't think she looks that different but she is much more mobile :)

7 Months:
She's crawling
She's eating crackers
She's yammering
She's enamored with her sister
Her sister is pi$$ed off she's getting into her stuff...but she loves her.

It was harder to keep her still for this photo shoot...

"Mom! I don't want pictures; I want to cuddle ALL OF THE TIME."

"You think by moving me into the kitchen I will sit still?"

"ooooh what is that over there..."

" A WOODEN BOWL! IT'S AN AMAZING DISCOVERY!"

"I'll sit still if you give me Amelia's toy cell phone! Shhh don't tell her...."

Another week in February!

Our little Zoe bear is just so cute....

She wants to feed herself... she's progressed to crackers but can't handle the other stuff quite yet!

so I can't figure out how to get rid of one of these - so there are two - enjoy.

Amelia has been under the weather (again) this week and home with Daddy. She finally got a referral to go to an ENT so hopefully she will get tubes and stop getting ear infections every few weeks. With this round, she has done some regressing to baby-like behavior - and spent some time sitting in Zoe's car seat watching tv. It was kind of cute.

Today she felt better and built a "home" with her blocks - she said it was NOT house or anything else, but a home.

A future architect?

No words. Just cute.

Evidence!

Here we have evidence of:
1. Zoë's cuteness.
2. Zoë's crawling.
3. A lifetime ahead of sibling rivalry.

We love our girls! :)

Princess Wishes....

I took our princess to Disney's Princess Wishes on Ice this morning - it was a bit of a last minute idea and I got us the cheap seats - but in my mind they were the best ones. I don' t know who had more fun:

Amelia is enthralled watching the show...

After the intermission she got brave enough to sit in her own seat...

I bought her a spinning wand and we BOTH had fun with it..

A true princess insists on going down the stairs by herself...

Thanks for coming with us, Alli!!!! We had lots of fun together (and Amelia enjoyed that your boots matched hers).

the spinning toy was a big hit.

WE HAVE A CRAWLER!!!!

pictures to come ... but someone is very proud of herself...

snowpocalypse 2011

First of all, I wanted to share this super cool baby plate. My grandmother gave it to me before Amelia was born - it belonged to her brother who died when she was 2. The cool thing about this plate is that it fits perfectly on top of a pot, so I can heat up something else (in this case, noodles) and warm up the baby's food. It is INGENIUS - why hasn't anyone replicated this? Nonetheless, I love this plate - it is useful, it is cute, and it reminds me of my grandmother.

Amelia did some crayon make-up application before she fell asleep...

The snow on our back deck....

Amelia helped cut up mushrooms for dinner last night - she did an awesome job and took her job very seriously! :)

Heidi Makes a Movie

If you've got 10 minutes to spare, enjoy this video I made - my first iMovie! Yay Heidi :)