mini sentences are now spewing from our child’s lips.
ALL. DAY. LONG.
“eat nanna”
“bye bye dec-an”
“moe moohk” (more milk)
“get down wahhk”
“”nie nie mommy wuv yuu”
I know, you’re all thinking, how cUUUUUUUte! but mommy and daddy are thinking, aww rats! those crazy words that mommy and daddy use when little people aren’t around, are now going to have to be put into a suitcase and packed into the attic to be brought out in 15 years. double rats. with cats.
It’s been getting closer and closer to spring, and we’ve been watching the crocuses and tulips sprouting. During a warm spell last week (it was 73!) Baby and Mommy took a long walk to look at all the little green things sticking up out of the ground. There are cute little patches around our backyard of spring-y joys. After so much snow and cold the last little bit of winter, we are truly enjoying the sunshine and green that has at last come back to Michigan.
Meanwhile, in other news, our little linguist has a few new words to add to her vocabulary. Among them, are “oap,” “baaa,” and “ehhbow.” Roughly translated, in order, these are soap, bath, and elbow. It’s so amazing what she can communicate with so few words. But she does pretty well with the sign language and body movements as well.
It is simply too cold to go to school today. It’s -4, and with the wind chill, it’s just plain Arctic. So they canceled school for Monday. What did Mommy and Daddy do? They did lots of fun stuff! Daddy played a lot of video games (mostly Zelda, Rayman’s Rabbid Rabbids, and a little Wii sports) and Mommy did more art.
I had a request asking what kind of crafts have I been up to. Well, I finished a felted bead necklace last week, along with several quilt squares for my quilt guild swap. Today, I did a quilt square for myself and cleaned out my “studio.” I also started a pair of socks (ok, it’s just one right now) with a fabulous self-striping yarn. I spent most of my day holding it up for Daddy to see the progress and exclaim, “isnt’ that sooo cool?!?!”
I’ll post some pictures later.
Meanwhile, our wonderful angel has been running laps around our house in nothin’ but her sweatshirt since she learned how to take off her pants.
Can you believe it? Yet another snow day! I was almost dressed today when I got the phone call. Can you believe we got that much snow in 4 days? That’s a lot of snow!
Again, Baby and Mommy had some nice, leisurely morning time. This time though, she started asking about her friends, so we bundled up and off we went. She ran right off to her friends and ignored Mommy completely, so Mommy went off to do some errands without her trusty sidekick.
I got to have another wonderful day of laundry and crafting. Although, to be completely honest, I was kinda bummed about not going to school today. I was all set to go in and paint the paper mache masks that my 7th graders had done. Oh well. They’ll have to wait til next week.
Tomorrow, there is absolutely no way we are going to have another snow day. Absolutely no way. Besides, Daddy would be totally jealous if I had 4 days off in a row!
So, as 5:30 rolled around again Tuesday morning, Mommy’s principal called and said those precious words “snow day.”
With that, Baby and Mommy had a grand morning of playing in the living room before heading off to daycare to play with our friends.
Mommy totally needed the day off. Although, by 1 pm I thought, hmm, what are the odds of another day off? Nah, no way. Besides by then, I had totally had enough of the whole snow day thing and was anxious to get back into my regular schedule.
I had two glorious days of crafting, sewing, cooking, eating, and playing with my baby.
Daddy had to work both days.
What’s the latest at Camp Rimes? The terrible twos. Yup, I know, she’s only 18 months (will be on the 1st, anyway). She is independent, opinionated, and very aggressive.
Her latest trick is to bite Mommy. Whenever Mommy turns around to do something on her own (like stir the macaroni or go to the bathroom) little miss decides she is not getting nearly the attention due to her. She grabs a hold of one of my legs, or a sleeve, or whatever she can grab and then takes a big ol’ bit out of Mommy’s nice, soft flesh. At first, I was quite distraught over this development. What an awful Mommy I was for allowing my child to even get to this stage. Then, I realized, wait, she’s not that unique, other moms must be going through this as well.
Sure enough, a few clicks on the internet and there’s my answer. Yep, everyone goes through some biting, kicking, pushing, yelling, and otherwise being a terrible two.
So, we have started ignoring her when she bites us. She gets a time out where Mommy and Daddy ignore her and pay no attention whatsoever to her. It seems to be making no difference to her at all. But we’ll keep up with it and hopefully this biting thing will be done soon.
We’ve also been showing her “nice touches” on her favorite kitty. She likes to pet Kitty, so it seems to slow her down at least. She still tries to grab on to my arm like a rottweiller, but at least it buys me another 5 minutes of stirring the mac and cheese.
Until the time when she becomes a serene three year old, we will just start referring to her as our little vampire.
Even though it was a Sunday, we still had ourselves a lovely snow day. We all got up at 7 am and peeked out the windows to see the snow falling in light, flaky drifts. How pretty. Daddy thought, hmmm, maybe I should go out and shovel. Mommy said, nah, let’s eat some breakfast first. 8am and we peek outside again, and the snow is falling so thick that we couldn’t see the houses across the street. yikes! Now is not a good time for shoveling either. Let’s play a game!
 that’s the view from our front porch
9 am, let’s call Papa and see if they’ve gotten out of their driveway yet for church. Nope. They didn’t finish their driveway until 10, but then couldn’t get out of their driveway because the roads hadn’t been plowed.
11 am. No church, maybe we should start shoveling. Daddy goes out to start shoveling and makes a teeny tiny path to the garage. Mommy goes out a little later and re-shovels the teeny tiny path.
Here’s what the driveway looked like at 11.
By 2 pm, we had about 20 inches of snow. Daddy and Mommy had both taken turns shoveling the driveway a couple more times, and finally decided that if we could just get the CR-V out of the garage, we were going to splurge at Lowe’s for a snow blower. Not just any snow blower, no way. We were going to get ourselves a big, fat monster, eat through anything snow blower.
4 pm, Daddy arrives with monster snowblower to finish the work in 30 minutes. Nice.
So, overall, we had 4 hours of procrastinating about shoveling, 3+ hours of actual shoveling, and 30 minutes to do more than half the driveway with a snowblower.
Hooray for snowblower!
Lately, we’ve been really pushing the words with Baby Rimes. When she says, “Eeeaa,” we say, “would you like something to eat?” When she says, “teee,” we say, “would you like to brush your teeth?” And, when she says, “cooee,” we respond, “are you putting on your coat?”
But, the other morning, as Daddy and I were sitting in our bedroom chatting while Baby was on the floor playing, she simply astounded us. She looked up at Daddy, said, “Eeaa.” He said, “Are you hungry?” She got up, turned around to the door, and said, as clear as could be, “Time to eat!” and marched off to the kitchen.
We stood there looking after her, and then at each other, both asking, was that what we think she said? Yup, there she was, standing in the kitchen at the refrigerator, ready for breakfast.
It’s amazing what happens when you aren’t looking.
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With all that time off for the holidays, what do you think we did? Well, besides visiting the fam, and opening presents, we also painted a bathroom, went to a New Year’s Eve party (for awhile), and took a trip into Chicago.
Here’s some photos from our trip to the Shedd Aquarium.
    
The dolphins.
The Caribbean Reef and a giant fish.
Standing over the rays habitat.
We all had a great time watching the fish swim, the dolphins play, and the baby beluga with her mommy.
Happy New Year!
Now with pictures!
Santa visited while we were gone!
   
   
Christmas at the farm.
  
 
Christmas with the Herrmans.
Overall, she had a pretty good Christmas. Lots of toys, lots of unwrapping, lots of treats, and lots of hugs.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!