Happy St Patrick's Day! Bring on the Pedialyte!

I took this picture moments before the onset of yet another stomach bug at our house. Charlotte was the bug's victim. We'll hope for a short-lived (and contained!) attack.

Clubs of Her Own

Having Nicholas as a brother means spending a lot of time outside while he hits golf balls. Charlotte wants so much to do what he does, which has meant using one of the clubs from his bag (and dragging it across the driveway) or one of his original plastic clubs, which are being held together by lots of duct tape. We decided that she could use her very own set. So we took her Christmas ToysRUs gift card (thanks Grandpa Doug!) and bought this little number. She loves loading the ball onto the tee and ever so gently knocking it off. Nicholas is of course jealous that her clubs are pink and has decided that he needs to learn to play with the "baby clubs". They're a hit with everyone!

Assigned Seats

We hosted a brunch for some friends on Sunday, and I was (shocking, I know) running a bit behind, and needed to finish some things up and keep Nicholas entertained before everyone arrived. I decided he could set the table to help out. Nicholas is very big on deciding where people will sit (as many of you know), so as he was figuring the seating out, I asked if he wanted to make place cards. I never imagined he'd say yes, being that any art project-type suggestion I make is almost always shot down. To my surprise, he was really excited to do them. Despite the fact that I had no actual time for it, we sat down and made place cards. It was so cute to see him concentrate and write everyone's name. Our guests got a kick out of it too!

Craig, Amy, Eric, Evy, Mama, Dad, Abbey and Barr

It took a little deciphering, but everyone ended up in their preapproved seat!

Babaloo!

Nicholas is a big fan of Babaloo (a local kids' entertainer). We've probably seen him 5 times. He was playing a few shows at Pottery Barn Kids today. We stayed for both of them! The 10:00 show was really crowded, and Nicholas gets a bit nervous in big crowds of strangers so he stuck to my lap. Charlotte was fine from the start, but since we were in the back, she spent most of her time playing with the fabulous pretend kitchens. After the first show cleared out, both kids wanted to stay for the 11:00. There were probably a fourth of the kids at that show, so there was lots of room for dancing and we moved right up front.

Charlotte was glued to him. He sang original favorites such as "My Hair Had A Party Last Night" and "Freeze Dance"

Babaloo is big into crowd participation, so he passed out sticks to use on the 5 gallon buckets the parents used as seating. They played a souped up version of This Old Man. Both kids loved rocking out!

A new addition to the show. A paint roller fitted with toilet paper attached to a blower. The kids all went wild!

Babaloo and his biggest fan

One Day, Two New Molars

Charlotte now has all four of her molars (10 teeth total), but still only those two lone teeth in the front on the bottom.

She sure does like taking care of them, as well as doing anything else involving water and the bathroom sink.

The Adventures of Snow by Nicholas King

The literacy bag we took home over the weekend was about polar bears (they are studying bears in Nicholas' class this month). We read some polar bear books, snuggled the stuffed polar bear, then settled down to write an adventure story to include in the journal we sent back to school. Here is Nicholas' story:

Once upon a time, there was a little bear named Snow. One day, Snow went to the bowling alley. Some people thought he was cute, but he scared some of them away. Three of them. The ones who thought he was cute stayed. There were five of them left. They wanted Snow to play with them. Snow was pretty good at bowling. He got up to 99 points. After bowling, they went to the basketball court that was at the bowling alley. Snow had fun playing. He could throw the basketball into the basketball hoop. He got to 99 points. After basketball, Snow went home to watch a DVD (Cinderella) with me.

Daddy-less Sunday

We had a great family day planned, but Tom came down with a migraine and needed some peace and quiet, so I packed off the kids and we did the day on our own!

First stop...the zoo. They were having a "Spring Forward" event focusing on amphibians. Our first activity was playing Tic-Tac-Toad where we had to find different amphibians, learn facts about them and mark our board...for a prize of course.

Charlotte was in frog heaven. "Ra-Ra!!"

They had a mat set up to see how far you could jump compared to different frogs. Nicholas was somewhere between a mountain chicken frog and a bullfrog. I was impressed with his long jumping!

Two days in a row with people dressed up in costumes. You'll notice that Charlotte is also missing from this one!

We had some time after the Spring Forward activities for a train ride around the zoo. Nicholas could ride all day, but Charlotte was signing "all done" about 2 minutes in.

From the train we saw the five "baby" tigers that were born last year. They've really grown up since we saw them as scampering cubs. (You don't get a lot of perspective from this picture, but trust me, they're big now!)

Off to the next stop....the History Museum

Our dear music teacher has two daughters involved in an Irish Arts group. The group was singing, dancing and playing music at the museum. Nicholas' favorite part was the dancing. Charlotte's favorite part was the rice krispy treat I bought to keep her happy! Nicholas was having such a great time I didn't want to leave...but Miss Charlotte was once again signing "all done" early on. We only made it through with sugar.

We had a great spot for watching.

Once the performance had ended, we headed home for much needed nap and rest time. We missed Daddy, but still had a really nice Sunday.