It's Raining, It's Pouring...

...really. Raining, that is. Apparently the first official day of Spring is March 20th but we're well on our way. Temperatures have been up into the 50s and 60s lately and we're even supposed to have a few 70s later in the week! We are looking forward to Spring for a few reasons: we can go outside to play more often (without freezing our buns off), Carly can finally start to wear some of the short sleeved shirts she has been trying to wear all winter and, finally, cold and flu 'season' is coming to an end! Yay on all accounts!

We have certainly been sick a lot this year. Obviously with 2 kids, being out and about at shops, restaurants, church, school, etc, the chances increase drastically. However, we speculate that maybe it's been worse this year for us as well because Daniel and I haven't lived through winter in the USA for about 9 years and Carly and Kate never have. Our immunity to USA viruses is probably around 5%! So bring on Spring and Summer!

A couple of weeks ago, we started to "sleep train" Kate to sleep better. She was doing pretty well sleeping more in her bed and re-settling herself a bit better during the night for about a week before she got sick and it went out the window. We're still in survival mode of just trying to get sleep between coughing, feverish children and parents, so we'll have to start the sleep stuff again once Kate is well. But we know she can do it! She is really enjoying saying "bye bye" to anyone who will listen, particularly when I am on the phone and she hears me say it. She has said "Dada" for a long time but she is really calling out for Daniel more and saying hi to him when he gets home from work too, which is really cool to witness. I noticed the other day that anything she doesn't know or can't say the name for is "boh boh." She enjoys dropping food and saying "uh oh" and climbing on anything she can get on top of. For some time she has enjoyed peeling off the little foam bumpers on drawers and cabinet doors and chewing on them. We have pretty much removed all of the bumpers within her reach so she doesn't unexpectedly choke on or swallow one of them. She was pretty stoked this morning when she found some bumpers we had not removed on a bathroom drawer. She giggled, ripped it off and started chewing. I took that one out of her mouth and she almost had the other one off the drawer and in her mouth before I could get it. Yikes, this kid is fast! I can see that her reach is increasing..."uh oh".

Well the extra cool news with Carly is that it has been 2 weeks now sleeping without a nappy/ diaper on at night! We are pretty proud of her and she's pretty proud of herself too. It kind of came about by accident- we forgot to put a diaper on her one night and in the morning she was dry so we figured we'd try it again. That's kind of how it happened when she started not wearing a diaper at nap time in the middle of last year. Oh, how I miss nap time for Carly! She has not had a regular nap time since last year when I gave up after 3-hour battles to get her to have a nap. It's definitely more peaceful this way but she truly doesn't need one most of the time. If she's sick or really exhausted she will usually fall asleep in the car or on the couch but that's not too often. And if she does have a nap, she's not tired again until about 9pm!

We had two extra fun outings in the last couple of weeks! About two weeks ago we went to Chuck E Cheese for playgroup. The kids had a great time playing together, going on rides, playing games, eating pizza and trading in their game tickets for prizes. It was Kate's first time to do little rides like that so she though it was super-spiffy! The girls were exhausted so Kate quickly fell asleep in the car and, thinking I was very clever, I drove around long enough for Carly to fall asleep as well. Of course, being reminded of just how un-clever I really am, they both woke up and were rearin' to go the minute we pulled into the driveway!

Two Fridays ago we went to see Sesame Street Live with our friends, the Troyers (they have three girls- Hannah 8, Brinkley 5 and Allie 3). Carly and Allie have lots of fun together and are "stuck like glue." Neither Carly or Allie were too sure about all those characters at first but they were up and dancing before too long. Kate's response was one I wish we had gotten on video- she went crazy! She was smiling and clapping and bouncing up and down, pointing and 'singing' and just generally going crazy for about 5 minutes at the beginning of the show. After that, she just wanted to get up and walk around but for that 5 minutes she was on fire! Though we miss many things about Alice, one advantage of being in a bigger city is the ability to go do random fun things like that!

Well, that's it for now, friends! Take a look at some pics! Over and out- Mom