New in February

Since Charlotte turned 16 months on February 9th, she's become a big girl in so many ways. It's as if some switch clicked in her brain. She's down to a single nap. She no longer wants to be held. She only wants to "walk, walk" and hold hands. Usually it's the three of us holding hands, although Nicholas has a tough time walking slowly enough for her! One frustrating thing is that she has started wanting to stand up to go up and down the stairs, both of which require that I be holding her hand. I'm so used to her just crawling up and down that to watch her whine at the top of the two (yes, two) stairs down into our family room is a bit much. Usually she gives up, sits down, turns around and goes down on her tummy on her own. But she has also learned to throw some serious big-girl tantrums over just about anything.


Charlotte all of the sudden has learned to sign "please", "eat", "all done" and "milk" (although she uses the sign for "more" to mean "milk"...I decided since we're not exactly communicating with official ASL, that it was good enough and we'd just go with that!) When her "ma-ma" can currently mean: more, milk, Mama...or anything else that starts with 'M', having the milk sign is really cool! Some of her (and my!) favorite spoken words are cookie, backpack and ra-ra (for "frog"). She talks more every day.


After we turn the lights off and are rocking in her room before bedtime, we sing a little prayer song. Charlotte now contributes to the Thank You, God song. She usually asks to sing for our family members, but mostly is thankful for cookies and frogs.


And not to leave Nicholas out of this post... He has learned how "I'm sure" is used. This may seem minor, but try having this conversation:


Do you want more milk?
No.
Are you sure?
No, I'm not sure.
So you might want some more?
No, I said!


Now it goes:

Do you want more milk?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure.


Not sure how this finally righted itself in his mind, but we're happy it has happened! He's also obsessed with drawing pictures of caves and volcanoes and telling us all about them.


It's so fun to watch the kids change and grow. The time is sure flying...

Daddy's Disneyland

What could be more fun that a family trip to Bass Pro Shop? Tom has decided he wants to learn to fly fish, so we went to BPS to check out the equipment. Nothing like a good half hour of free entertainment!

Animals, animals all around. Charlotte loved her first Bass Pro Shop visit

Driving boats

and ATVs

This is from Oct, 2006 in Branson - Nicholas and my first time in a Bass Pro Shop

That's one big bear

The kids and I spent time looking at the fish while Tom looked at the fly fishing equipment

Fish Kisses! (totally unstaged, I'll have you know!)

Piggies For Two

Charlotte really loves pigtails. She wears them most days now. Today she got out the container of elastics...

and wanted me to wear them too! We all agreed that she can pull them off a little better then I can.

Short Sleeve Weather

As we drove home from school today, Nicholas mentioned that since it had gotten so warm since he'd dressed for school (it hit 70 degrees today), he'd like to change into short sleeves on the top when he got home. I said that would be fine. Then he added - "I think I'll wear short sleeves on the bottom too." And he did!

Nicholas Turns 4 1/2

Otherwise known as Fat Wednesday. We put off Lent for one day and celebrated with our traditional 1/2 cake. What I seemed to have forgotten from last year when we instituted this tradition was that it's best to make a one layer cake into the half-cake. I made a two layer cake, which then morphed into the world's tallest half-cake. It was lemon, with pink (lemon flavored buttercream) frosting and yellow sprinkles per the birthday boy's request. Nicholas used that phrase all day (since I think I mentioned it once this morning). "Mama, I get to choose the song. It's the birthday boy's choice". etc. We had a nice little family celebration of our little man. Four and a half seems so old...

One cute anecdote: Nicholas eats lunch at school on Wednesdays. I rarely send a dessert in his lunch, but being his half birthday and all (which to Nicholas' dismay was not celebrated with cupcakes in his classroom), I sent him with half of a sugar cookie. When I picked him up and looked in his lunch bag, it was still there. Nicholas (being my son) isn't one to turn down anything sweet, so I asked him about it. He said he didn't eat it because he didn't finish all his lunch vegetables. My, my that rule has taken hold!

To the Park!

Today was the first time I put Charlotte in the backpack and walked to the playground at the park instead of driving over. Nicholas rode his bike. I tried to keep up! While we were there, the kids played on the slides and swings, as usual, but also spent some time on the musical instruments. Some of the mallets were missing, so we improvised with sticks!

Cutest Kiddos

Nectarines are No Match for Charlotte

It would never have occurred to me to give Charlotte an entire nectarine. That's why there are Daddies...

North Pole Rumors Debunked

Apparently Santa resides at....Old MacDonald's Farm. Or so Charlotte would have you believe. I try and insert other animals, but Charlotte only wants me to sing about Santa going "Ho, Ho" here and "Ho, Ho" there.

Christmas Lives On

I'll admit that it took us a while to hang the Cheerio garlands we made at Christmas outside. But even after we got them hung...we just didn't have any takers. They just hung there, sadly uneaten, in the trees. But today, a squirrel finally figured out the deliciousness that are Cheerios. We watched out the kitchen windows as he ate the Cheerios off the fishing line, then attempted to steal the whole thing and take it away with him. It was pretty fun to watch! I did come to the conclusion that we should go with a more biodegradable option than fishing line next year. Twine perhaps?

Pigtails - Take Two

Charlotte Sports Pigtails

Not Quite Lone Elk

The Cat class headed to Lone Elk Park today on a field trip. Charlotte and I tagged along.

We met the rest of the class at the classroom building for an intro by the fabulous park ranger. She did a great job entertaining a room full of 4-year-olds. Above she's teaching us about beavers. I learned that all chewing animals (beavers, squirrels etc) have orange incisors. We looked at and touched a lot of different skulls.

The ranger also let us "pet" many different animal pelts. A few of the children were a bit unsure about the whole thing, but Nicholas loved it. As did Charlotte, who was pressing forward off my lap to touch everything that went around. That girl loves animals. Apparently even deceased ones.

After the presentation, we drove through the park to find the herds of bison and elk. The bison were right next to the road so we had a great viewing! We learned from the ranger that there is only one male...because they fight if there is more than one. We also learned that they ship off the "babies" to other parks right before the new batch of babies arrive so the herd doesn't get too big. The almost year-old "babies" looked like they were certainly ready to take care of themselves!

When we first saw the elk, they were across the road, high up a hill. Zoomed all the way on my camera I took this picture. Nicholas couldn't even make them out as I was pointing them out since they were so camouflaged in the forest.

We thought that was going to be the best we got, but on our way out of the park, we came upon the rest of the herd, again right next to the road. It was the perfect way to end our field trip.

Our family had taken a drive through this park a year or so ago, but having the presentation by the ranger and seeing both the bison and elk herds up close was really special!

Not the Way to End a Trip to the Zoo

It started out like any other of our trips to the zoo...

Charlotte gazing adoringly at the guinea pigs...

...then checking out the insect x-rays

Nicholas wrangling some snakes

And then they found it. The bin of poop. Fake poop. Very, very realistic fake poop. Perhaps you remember our first discovery of fake poop at the zoo. Turns out there's an entire bin of animal scat, complete with pictures on cards to match the animals to their droppings.

Charlotte showing off the rabbit droppings...

and promptly putting them in her mouth. The rest of Nicholas and my time was spent keeping all the poop out of Charlotte's mouth and telling her that poop doesn't belong in mouths. Like I said...not the best ending to a trip to the zoo! The only bright spot in this story is that it was all fake!

#8 Makes an Appearance

One of Charlotte's top molars appeared today. I keep thinking a wave of new teeth will be popping up, but they are taking their own sweet time...

The Kings Go Bowling

Since I missed the bowling adventure last weekend, we headed out to celebrate Valentine's Day with family bowling.

There just weren't balls quite light enough for a super smooth delivery, but Nicholas did a great job anyway.

Waiting, waiting...

The happy, "I knocked pins down" dance

It just isn't all that much fun for Charlotte to be held and wrangled the whole time (I think we've determined that bowling is more of a special date with Nicholas type activity), but she did like the air blower on the ball return.

And she did have the cutest shoes

Friday at the Park

Charlotte loves feeling the wind on her face

Nicholas is all about height


This tube slide is a big favorite of Charlotte's:

Another Occasion to use Pink Sprinkles??

Well then - Valentine's Day cookies it is!

Chef Nicholas is on it! He's not shy about the pink sugar...

Admiring his work

The finished product

But the real reason for the post is this series. One of my favorites ever:

Charlotte eyes Nicholas tasting the spoon...

Please, oh please??

So cute!!!