Powder

"Exactly one day in your life your kid will ski as good as you do. The next day, he'll ski better than you." ~Warren Miller

Ski Bunnies

Christoph was able to take the girls skiing yesterday. All three of them were very excited. A family friend and his two kids went too. I was happy to stay home with Micah. :D


Christoph was able to take Emily once last year and she had a blast and had been asking to go again. He was a little nervous about taking Katrina since she is pretty young, (4 going on 5) but of the two girls she is the more adventurous. After hearing Emily's stories she was excited about the idea. Things started off bumpy, Christoph actually called me a bit worried that the entire day was going to be horrible and half-debating turning around and coming home.


Gotta give you the back story. Right before Christmas break from school Katrina had a classmate who got sick and vomited in front of the entire class. Ever since she has been completely petrified of all things related to vomit. I'm sure it doesn't help that because of being pregnant I've been tossing my cookies pretty frequently. She had several weeks of huge fear, almost panic attacks related to going to school, just on the possibility that someone could vomit. If she hears the slightest gag she will run as fast and as far as she can.



You've probably figured out where this is going. On the several hour long drive to the mountain a couple of the kids started to feel car sick. Katrina FREAKED out. When Christoph called to let her talk to me she was crying hysterically and just kept saying, "Please Mommy I want to go home. I don't want to go skiing, I just want to stay with you. Please don't make me go." over and over. I was able to talk her down a little and between me and Christoph she kinda pulled herself together. Fortunately, that was the worst part of the day.

Ski School

Emily and Daddy

Christoph and Emily skied in the morning while Katrina did ski school and then they all skied together in the afternoon. The girls did really well and from what I've been told they had a blast.

Emily on the lift

Katrina on the lift

Making Lemonade

We took a little trip down to LA last week. Christoph had some paternity leave and we decided to use it to travel instead of just sitting at home. It was a fun time seeing friends and family, some of which we hadn't seen in years. We also got to meet our new cousin Spencer who is just a couple weeks younger then Micah. It was really fun to have the two little cousins "meet" each other.

I was a little worried about Micah and a road trip, but all the kids did really well. Micah slept great in his car seat and the girls kept themselves entertained without too much whining. Emily had a blast playing with all her "new" friends.

One highlight for both girls was being able to pick lemons right off our friend's tree and make lemonade out them. It was fun to watch them experience the entire process from start to finish.

Lemons!

 

Picking

 

 Prepping

 

Waiting Anxiously

 

Success!

Thank you to everyone who hosted us and made time to see us and hang out. It was a lot of fun!

Project #1

Life is always busy, but the last couple of months we've added an extra project. With a new baby, especially since it's a boy this time, we have been playing musical rooms. Emily has been longing for bunk beds since Katrina was born, so she had no complaints when we brought up moving Katrina into her room. We started by moving Katrina out of the crib into a toddler bed, which she loved. After about a month of that, we moved Emily into Katrina's room so I could start painting. It took a while, but finally I finished and we were able to move them into their new room together. Everything has gone smoothly. There were a few nights of talking and arguing, but things have been relatively smooth. Katrina doesn't seem to miss her crib at all. She loves having a big bed to spread out in, as well as climb in and out of on her own. Emily likes having her sister close by most of the time. She has actually been sleeping with Katrina in the bottom bunk the last few weeks. There have been a couple of times when she wants to be alone in her room and gets frustrated that Katrina won't leave. I think it will be good for them to share a room. It will help them build negotiating and teamwork skills. ;) The beautiful quilts on their beds were lovingly made by my sister-in-law Katie. What an awesome gift! I'm glad the girls seem to love their room. Stay tuned for pictures of the boys room.

Before: (sorry, it didn't occur to me to take before picture until all the furniture was out.)

After:

Yuck

Well, perhaps the age old adage holds true... pride goes before a fall. I don't know that I was exactly proud, but I did have a certain sense of satisfaction that Emily never got into anything as a baby, toddler, or preschooler. So it was with great consternation that I had to make my first call to Poison Control. The irony is that it wasn't that long ago that I posted our first poison control sticker by the phone. I saw them at work and it seemed like a good thing to have, just in case. It was the classic green yuck sticker and Emily hated it. For some reason that face just gave her the heebie-jeebies. After three days of listening to her implore us to take it down and many promises not to eat anything bad or let her friends eat anything bad, we replaced it with a more discreet plain sticker that is under the phone base, out of site. By the way, I didn't actually make the call. It was made by proxy through my dear husband. Here's how the events unfolded.

As I mentioned in my last post, the girls and I traveled to Ecuador, to visit my parents. It was a great trip, and fun to experience parts of my childhood through Emily's eyes. Anyway, one day Emily and Katrina were outside playing. I was  doing something, laundry I think, when my Mom says, "You better come, Katrina ate something". She fished some of it out of her mouth, but she had swallowed most of some strange tomatoish thing growing in my parents front yard. Oh great. Here I am in a foreign country, how am I going to figure out what it is that she swallowed and if it's going to kill her? She was acting fine, happy as a clam, so I turned to tracking down Emily to see if I could get to the bottom of what happened. After much reassuring that she wasn't in trouble, Emily finally confessed that she had given the fruit to Katrina to eat because she thought it was a tomato. On a side note, Christoph and I have been noticing a trend recently. Emily likes to use Katrina as her guinea pig in all kinds of ways. So, not knowing what else to do I call Christoph (waking him out of a dead sleep) and ask him to call Poison Control. They weren't much help. They advised taking the plant to our local nursery for identification purposes and then calling them back. They did reassure us that with most poisonous plants you have to consume large quantities to produce any ill effects, so one small fruit would not likely harm her even if it were poisonous. They advised to watch for vomiting, diarrhea, and unusual sleepiness. She acted perfectly normal for the rest of the day, so I'm guessing it wasn't poisonous. I did sternly tell Emily she must never feed herself or Katrina anything without first checking with someone. I will confess however that as I was going to sleep that night my active imagination couldn't help but summon up some images of Katrina not waking up in the morning. It took me a while to fall asleep and all my willpower not to go into her room to make sure she was still breathing. Here's to firsts in parenting, and to hopefully never having to call poison control again.

Sleeping Beauties

 

There is something so wonderful about sleeping children. Aside form the obvious reasons, (finally they're still and quiet) they're faces are just so beautifully relaxed.

I think it's safe to say that adults don't relax as much when asleep. I think we're aware of the limits that our larger bodies require. If we were to spread out that much we would quickly run out of bed. Or maybe it's just that kids expend so much energy playing, learning, absorbing, assimilating that when they sleep, they sleep. I think I can remember sleeping that hard, before I had kids. It's funny how that happens. It used to be that once I was asleep nothing could wake me up. I remember being concerned when I was pregnant with Emily that I might not wake up to her crying at night. Then she was born and it seemed that with the slightest noise I was awake. It seems like I always hear the girls in the night long before Christoph does. Maybe he's just better at ignoring them. :) Anyway, I love watching my girls sleep.

Sisterly Love

I come from a family with two younger brothers. The only time I can remember wishing for a sister was when I was nine years old and my mom was pregnant with my brother. According to the ultrasound he was supposed to be a girl, and I was excited about that. We were waiting in the hospital waiting room and I'm told that when my dad came out to tell us HE was born I grumpily stated, "Jonathan (my other brother) always gets what he wants!". After that momentary disappointment I quickly grew to appreciate the joys and benefits of being the only girl. I never had to share my room, and my brother was never interested in getting into my stuff. All this to explain that I had very mixed feelings when my own ultrasound told me my second child was a girl.

Never having had a sister, I wasn't sure how I felt about having two girls. Most of my friends growing up who had sisters fought like crazy. They complained about having to share birthdays, rooms, possessions. And, for some crazy reason I've always been concerned about having one daughter that was really pretty and one that, well, wasn't. Shallow, I know, but I would feel so bad for both of them.

So, two girls. Sisters. Since my childhood I've met many girls who loved having sisters and are great friends with them, so I wasn't completely freaked out by the idea. However, Emily's lack of interest in the baby and her repeated requests for a dog instead of a baby sister did nothing to assuage my fears. She has on a couple of occasions talked excitedly about getting bunk beds or a swing set when her sister is older, but I think that's more interest in the possessions then in sharing them with Katrina.

And then last week, a breakthrough. I was upstairs getting ready for work and Katrina was downstairs secure in her bouncy seat. Emily appears at my side and says, in her inimitable emphatic way, "Mommy, I dragged my little chair over next to Katrina so I could keep her company, and she SMILED at me TWO times. And then she fell asleep." She was so happy and excited about it. Christoph got home a few minute later and she had to tell him all about it too. It was so cute. I went downstairs and there was her little chair snuggled up next to the bouncy chair and the little sister, sound asleep. Since then there have been other occasions she has shown appreciation for her little sister. We were traveling in the car last weekend and Katrina was crying. Emily started singing her a lullaby. After a few seconds Katrina stopped crying and went to sleep. Emily whispers to us from the backseat, "I was singing to her so she wouldn't be sad." The best was yesterday when I was getting ready for work. Katrina was in a hold-me mood and was crying quite angrily. Suddenly I see Emily go over to her and start singing the lullaby again. Then She says, "Do you like that Katrina-B? Why are you sad? Do you want your milk? Do you want your breastmilk from Mommy?" I couldn't help but crack-up. Maybe they will like each other after all.

As an aside, just to show God has a sense of humor, my two girls share the same birthday and look VERY similar to each other, even down to their blue eyes born of recessive genes. Of course I think they're both beautiful.