First snow day as a family of four!

The year is just moving along. It’s hard to believe that January is already gone. We’ve had quite a busy month with touring preschools and preparing for the snow. We took a trip up to Tahoe with a group of friends to get some snow time in. The kids all had a great time together and on the way home Maisy kept asking if all her friends could come over to sleep at our house.

Maisy and William cuddled watching Winnie the Pooh

Maisy and Rowan share a late night carrot snack

Maisy tried mini skis and did very well and giggled the whole time, but quickly said, “I’m done.”

Maisy’s first ski

Maren slept through most of the snow activities, mostly because she was sooo cozy and getting rocked right to sleep. I got an amazing work out carrying her around!

Ready for snow!

Snow play

There are just too many cute pictures to post, but I’ll put in just a couple more anyway!

Snowy blue eyes

Dad and sled rides

We will be returning to the snow next month with Mimi and Papa J, I’m sure they can convince her to get a few more runs in. Getting to Tahoe was lovely as was the company once we arrived. Getting home was a looong day. Traffic was back up for hours. We pulled over to comfort the girls and let them stretch out a bit and out of the blue, Uncle Steven pulls up next to us! He had also been returning from Tahoe- but neither of us knew the other was up. Due to the horrible traffic we stopped for some pizza altogether.

Maisy was very sweet in trying to calm Maren down on the ride home singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (incorrectly) but with ever so much sweetness and heart.

It’s been a fun month with lots of little projects. Maisy helped Todd bake cookies.

Bakers

Maisy made a huge painting on a large piece of corrugated paper. She LOVED it.

Painter

Maisy has come up with her own accent. No idea where it has come from. So now Daddy sounds like, Dey-ah-dey, That sound like They-at, There sounds like They-er. It’s quite amusing. She has also been very interested in ballet lately. She wears ballet shoes all over the house practicing her pirouettes. She requests “ballet music” and puts on her leotard and twirls about most afternoons. She even requests to sleep in her ballet shoes. She is also quite the conversationalist asking questions like, “How was your day? And what do you do?”. Her sense of humor is also starting to develop which is also very amusing.

Maisy is excited to begin school in the fall. She will be going to Griffin Nursery School 3 mornings a week. The good part is that the teacher was impressed with her and loved her spirit for adventure, so they are willing to take her early! Maisy will start going one day a week on Fridays. http://www.griffinnurseryschool.org/

Maren is already 5 months old! She is growing so fast. I told her today, just to slow down a bit. It’s hard to believe that soon she’ll be walking around. I just want to keep her so sweet and cuddly!

Maren being cute

Maren still has not rolled over again, but has found her voice. She loves squealing in delight. She and Maisy have squealing conversations. It’s really cute for about 60 seconds and then it gets a little loud sounding! We have started giving Maren a sippy cup with water in it and she seems to get putting it in her mouth. She’s still not sure of the water inside though. We practice sitting up, but no sitting independently yet. Last week we also started “brushing her teeth”, stopped swaddling her and started giving her a little square monkey blanket to sleep with for comfort. She is doing well with it and is still waking just 2 times a night. I’m definitely looking forward to getting that down to zero! We’ve moved her feedings to first in the good night routine, so hopefully she’ll just learn to fall asleep totally on her own without needing a feeding to make her feel sleepy. She’s just a very sweet, happy, smiley and easy going baby.

Maren sippin’

More in a few weeks!

Much love, Todd, Becky, Maisy and Maren

Side view of new baby at 12 days 6 weeks

We had our nuchal translucency (NT) ultrasound on Friday, Feb. 25. The appointment was bright and early. Todd and Maisy were both able to come. Maisy was a perfect big sister and just hung out with Todd on the couch while we all watched the baby TV. It was a long appointment because the baby was being quite active, so it took a while to get the right measurements. It was fine with us, it meant we got a longer peek at the baby. The tests all came back fine and the baby is doing perfectly well. The baby’s heart rate was 140 beats per minute (BPM). I have another regular appointment on Monday and we find out the gender on April 15th!

Face shot of the new baby- I’m told the baby will get cuter

In other news, we ventured up to the mountains to visit Todd’s parents who had a vacation spot there. We made a long weekend of it. Unfortunately, it took us 8 and a half hours to get there (it should only take 3 and a half). There was a huge storm and we had to put chains on (ok TODD had to put chains on) and I could only drive about 15 MPH up the mountain. Slow going! Boy were we glad to finally get there, especially after a few slippery slidey times trying to get up some steep snowy passes. Todd was happy to get some ski days in with the boys and Maisy was happy to get to visit with her Mimi and Papa J. She got to play in the snow and go swimming at the pool.

Maisy all giggles with Mimi on the swing

Papa J and Maisy swinging

Maisy’s language skills are really blossoming. She understands pretty much everything and can speak in sentences. Her vocabulary is growing each day. She is becoming much more assertive and she will let you know exactly what she wants and how she wants it! We are working on “please”, “thank you” and “no, thank you”. She has suddenly become EXTRA picky about food. (No idea where that would have come from)! She pretty much just wants to eat waffles, fruit, PB&Js, applesauce and yogurt. I suppose she could want worse things. We still encourage her to eat other things, but if you aren’t careful or quick enough- she’ll send the plate sailing to the floor. We are not pleased with this trick at all. We are working on breaking this horrible habit.

Way messy yogurt face

Just today I also noticed two more teeth coming in (the canines). After she gets these two, she’ll have only two more canines to come in and then the big molars.

Maisy has now gone potty on her potty training toilet 3 times. Each time has been right before bath time, but she’s really good at letting us know when she needs a new diaper, so we are hoping it may be possible to get her good and potty trained by the time the baby arrives.

Today we turned Maisy’s car seat from rear facing to front facing. Although technically we could have turned her at a year old. There is mounting evidence that keeping a child rear facing for as long as you can is most safe for a baby. We decided that Maisy would like to see the world- her legs were also getting pretty cramped!

Family driving home from Tahoe with a big girl!

More next time!

Much love, Todd, Becky and Maisy