Update

We had a fun weekend. Our weekend usually starts Saturday night and ends Monday night, since those are Dustin's main days off. On Saturday, we had lunch with company. In this picture, Lara is cozying up to Gregg, who is a friend of our's from church. Gregg loves little kids (and with 4 boys, he never got a girl) and he knows how to kick back and relax wherever he goes, so Lara helped him get really nice and comfy. Lara is usually the star of these get-togethers. Lara can be shy around children, but it seems the older they get, the more confident she gets. So she was all chatter and questions while our company was over, asking our friends to join her in her princess castle, etc.

Being rather opposed to football, on Sunday, we went to my sister's place and hung out for the afternoon. I love to visit my family, but I tell ya...you put all these little girls under the same roof, and it is chaos. My sister amazes me though. She works about 30+ hours a week, and comes home to cook, clean, and do homework with her oldest. She is a great mom.

As I mentioned before, Lara has been learning a little bit about penguins this winter. I thought I would show some of her projects. It's really easy to do these things for me. Being a preschool teacher -in what feels like a past life-, I have a lot of books full of activities and ideas. So just in case some other mommies need some ideas for filling up these cold, snowy days, here ya go. Below is a video where I am trying to keep Lara's attention long enough for her to show us what she is learning about penguins. I am just praying she will start to calm down when I officially start homeschool! Please just watch Lara, and don't mind the house in the background. :)

Emperor penguins are at least 3 feet tall, but Lara is taller!!

I am not sure if Lara thinks penguins are as cute as I do (they are my favorite; I used to have an adopted penguin in South America), but she enjoyed the crafts. We've read a lot of books too.

Claire is in her 8th month. Guess what! She can finally roll around, haha. It's only been quite recently that Claire will tolerate being on her belly, so we've been putting her down on the floor more, which means she finally started getting in some rolling practice. She continues to sleep well at night, and her 2 naps are good too. Her top teeth are coming in now. She has started playing peek-a-boo, which is really cute. Although there is no expectation on our part as to when Claire will start getting around the house, I am nonthless looking ahead to baby-proofing strategies. Instead of baby-proofing cabinets (which still are), I will need to baby-proof Lara. I've started teaching Lara not to throw just anything on the floor in case it could be bad for Claire if she gets a hold of it. Little pieces of things have to stay off the floor. I figure if I start training now, maybe we'll be ready. I just have a feeling I'll have to watch Claire more than I did with Lara, but maybe not.

Here is Claire looking happy. In most of my pictures, she looks so serious.

The girls are staying healthy, and though I'm ready for Spring, things here are going really well. Sticking to a solid routine has been so helpful.

Most of you know that Lara wears tall, plastic braces for half of the day. She can walk better without her braces, so she is not required to wear them all the time. However, she tends to walk on the inside of her feet, which is pretty bad, so for the other half of the day, Lara will need to wear "supplemental" braces, as I call them. They are quite expensive, but what I really like about them is that Lara can put them on by herself. Which means less work for me, AND Lara likes them because of the independence they afford her. Otherwise, Lara continues to do very well with everything.

I've started a new blog. It's a kitchen blog that I plan to eventually turn into a book, and give to all of my children. It will be a book of kitchen stories, recipes, and what-nots. Of course, I am going to try to be intentional about teaching my children their way around the kitchen, but I know this book could be helpful to them. I still have a lot to learn in the kitchen, so I expect the blog will mostly turn out to be, "I did this and this bad thing happened so don't do this bad thing I did."