Movie Mania, Happy Birthday Grandmama!

We love you, Grandmama! Hope you got a laugh out of that video. Myself, I love the potholders!

I don't know why, but we have more movies than anything else from our past week and a half. Maybe it's 'cause my little one's noses looked mostly like green goo for most of the week, so pictures just wouldn't have captured their golden personalities as well as a movie. At any rate, you're in for it now.

Aside from blowing our noses, we've stayed home. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun. It just means that everyone else missed out on our fun.

Alden and Rhianwen really love to dance. Rhianwen is getting picky now and must have her dance floor clear of all toys before she can begin. I hope we're not raising a diva...

Despite the cold weather, we've spent much time outside. I've really grown to love our field out back. It's sunny, wild, full of natural color, and leaves so much "room for the imagination" as Anne of Green Gables would say.

We "ride horses" quite often back there.

One benefit to being way behind on winterizing our yard is that we were able to make a skating rink out of the water in our kiddie pool. Daddy almost threw all that lovely ice away, but mommy saved it for some winter fun. It's about the best you can do down south.

It's all melted now that some warmer weather has hit, but I bet Rhianwen will be excited to see the winter Olympics now that she's tried it out.

This is the most successful attempt to date at keeping Alden from clambering over us to get to the computer keyboard. I keep wondering if we gave him an old one, if that'd work, but I think it's the fact that it's way up on the desk and connected that really gets him interested.

We've been reading lots of books. Alden is really loving the train books and goes into his bedroom and says, "Toot toot!" before he selects one, climbs into his giant chair and reads.

I can't believe my little honey is going to be 18 months tomorrow! And we've made it without a hair-cut. I'm ready but have to decide who's going to do it. I guess eventually, he'll have a say in what we do. We do let him pick out the first piece of his outfit (pants or shirt) and then we match what he's picked. One day he picked out a shirt and I picked out his pants, and I said, "What do you think?" Alden said, "That'll wuk" (that'll work). I almost did a double take. I'm just amazed that he's speaking in complete sentences and being pertinent too, but that's really how he's been all along. He's picked up phrases instead of single words. He does have some single words such as "chickee" for chickadee and "showa" for shower and "Rhian-n" for Rhianwen. He's also still showing a lot of interest in using the toilet and has done so successfully many times now. If he isn't successful, he'll often just bend and spit instead. It's quite satisfactory in his mind. As if that wasn't enough, he's taken to checking other people's pants for poop, so watch out any of you who come to visit! He is very eager to reassure you that there is "no poo-poo" and in fact believes it is his duty to tell you so.

Maybe you can try Wally's tactic in preventing a poop check.

Singing is something Alden likes to try out too. This is the first time we sang this song with him aside from when he was a tiny babe. I think he did a great job!:

Rhianwen still loves to pretend to be Bert from Mary Poppins. When will this obsession end? Not any time soon apparently. She was sitting at the breakfast table, and said to Alden, "I'm Bert!" and Alden replied, "Bert!" Oh, no, it's spreading.Then in gymnastics, she got to fly like Mary Poppins.

The first time she had an opportunity to try it, she balked, but after telling her I'd take a video if she did it, she was all for it.

And, if you are wondering where on earth those thank-you cards are, they will come. Eventually. Hopefully they will not disappoint, since they probably will be hand painted or marked or scribbled by some munchkins.