February Adventures

Buddies

The lovely Sera amid one of her lovely messes

"Tobogganing"

Girls

Love is in the Air

We sure found lots to love this February! There were snuggles, some fun dates, and plenty of laughter along the way. And believe it or not, we actually enjoyed the cold and snow.

Sera topped our list of loveables with her stunning smile and enthusiastic attitude. She's started standing up, but she doesn't care much for walking unless she has someone's finger squeezed in her little fist. When she wants to get around, she scrambles at lightning speed on her hands and knees. But she knows other ways to move as well. When we're sitting at the dinner table, Sera likes to rock herself back and forth hard enough to move her high chair. More than once we've gone to check on Sera in the morning, only to find that she's moved her crib several feet from the wall. She hasn't abandoned her appreciation for applause either. She's figured out that she can get us to clap for her by clapping herself. We think this girl has a future in the performing arts!

Emerson has never cared for moving as much as his siblings. He still likes taking time to smell the roses . . . well, more like the snow . . . and the sidewalk . . . and the old piece of gum stuck on the sidewalk. Only Theo seems to have the ability to encourage him to get moving—at least sometimes. Along with everything else, Emerson's digestive system slowed down for a while this month . . . again. It took plenty of split pea soup and an excess of prune juice, but we finally got things moving in that arena as well (oops, I think we just lost all our non-parental readers). He has, however, convinced at least himself that he's fast at cleaning up. Unfortunately it's mostly just an illusion—he shakes his head back and forth while he works so that he feels like he's moving faster than he actually is. It's a riot to watch.

Addy has waxed so helpful recently. She learned how to sweep the kitchen (well, sort of), and she continues to be the best 4-year-old babysitter we've ever seen. She and Emerson both enjoyed Joy School this month as we covered the unit on interest and curiosity. We had the Joy School Valentine's Day party at our house this year, and the whole day was non-stop fun. We got to do all sorts of experiments and magic tricks, and wrapped it all up with a valentine exchange complete with some of the cutest valentines I've ever seen 3 and 4-year-olds make.

Theo, as always, was on the move this month. He has recently developed an obsession with tops of every kind. He makes tops out of Legos, ball-and-stick toys, coins, and virtually anything else you can think of. And they're pretty impressive—his lego top spins for well over a minute. He informs us that he spends a fair amount of time making and spinning tops at school as well, so we'll have to see how that is reflected on his upcoming report card. That's not the only thing he's informed us of recently. He had us all convinced for a couple of weeks that in addition to the swimming lessons at the YMCA, he was attending a hockey class at school and taking field trips to the local science center every week. Only when we began to question the lack of notes and such coming home did we realize that he made the whole thing up. Which resulted in the addition of "honesty" to our list of family rules. We're in trouble if he can already pull the wool over our eyes at six years old!

Aaron spent a weekend in Vancouver toward the end of the month for the Northwestern Division ACDA conference. He had the good fortune of meeting the Kings' Singers there when they performed, and making friends with their manager. Now he's in the process of scheduling them for a concert here in Regina (albeit not until October 2009)—we think this town made a good catch when they got ahold of our Aaron! Other than that, he's knee deep in rehearsals for a Carmina Burana concert this spring, and he's decided to forge ahead with trying to finish his doctoral exams by the end of the year. It's making for a stressful semester, but it won't be long before his students can call him Dr. Mitchell.

As for me, I'm loving feeling settled here in this city. Although I have been having doubts lately about how long we should stay in our current house, it's great to have friends and playgroups and especially time to write. I recently managed to submit a winning entry to a KidLit contest on a web forum I belong to. Although it's not the best thing I've ever written, it gave me confidence to have it appreciated by other writers, many of whom are published and agented. If you want to check it out, click on the link under "bloggin' around." But keep in mind I wrote and edited it in only an hour—every time I look at it now, I think of all the things I could have done to make it better.