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To The Beach, We Say!

We’ve been going to the beach a few times a week lately – the bad weather and horrible rain got nothin’ on us and we’re determined to be there, even if we’re a bit freezing. Last week we saw a man wind surfing, so our tough-factor was bumped down a few notches after we watched him for a few minutes. But we’ve been balancing on logs and tossing rocks into the water, hard to imagine in a few months (more like 6 or 7) we’ll be sparing on sun screen and fighting crowds.

One of the highlights of the Edmonds beach area is that trains often come roaring around the corner and captivate our attention. The anticipation builds quickly as we hear the far-off whistle. Maggie is pretty dramatic about covering her ears and yelling “Loud”  as it rumbles by. After we can no longer hear or see the locomotive, she promptly asks demands for another. It is one part adorable and one part bossy-pants.

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With a few hours of daylight left this weekend we pile into the car to find a good walk to do with both Maggie and Sydney. We ended up along the waterfront, an old standby that we never tire of, and watched the ferry come and go before ditching the backapack and Syd in the car (No dogs allowed, remember?) to frolic on the beach and wait for trains to come.

I now know why I was alway boiling hot when I was pregnant ~ it’s because Maggie NEVER gets cold. Ever. She is as warm blooded as they come and I’ll be the first to admit that I am ALWAYS cold. Always. At this point she doesn’t fight when we ask her to put coats and hats on, but know that day is coming. Whenever we go outside and the elements (read: freezing, snowing, pouring) are not uber enjoyable, she outlasts us, every single time.

Walking up and down the beach, throwing rocks and digging in the sand can now be moved to almost the top of Maggie’s Favorite Things list, the girl loves the beach and everything about it. I love that about her.  I have visions of our sumer adventures already forming in my head….Jetty Island here we come!!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, fantasizing about tank tops and popsicles, I have no doubt that we’ll squeeze in plenty more impromptu trips to the beach just minutes away from our house. No need to pack the beach bag quite yet, a winter coat will do just fine.

I love her smile in this picture. Totally Maggie.

 

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HBHQ Gets Snowballed

You’d think that we’d never seen snow before the way that we’re celebrating it here…or at least the way that Maggie is celebrating it. Yesterday morning she woke up early and started poking Barry in the nose insisting that he get up. When he’d finally wiped the sleep from his eyes and wandered down the hall after her, she ran up to the window looking into the back yard and yelled at the top of her lungs “NOOOOOOOOOO!!” (which translates into snow)

So we piled on the layers and went outside and Maggie was in heaven and so was Sparky. Sydney, on the other hand, had to take a moment to herself before she got off the back stoop and when she did she too ran around like a mini snow plow. We frolicked in the back yard and I demonstrated my best pitching stance while hucking snowballs at one of the big trees in our yard. Barry informed me that I may or may not have some serious skills when it comes to my pitching of snowballs.

That afternoon when the Little Miss wanted to go out again, I was smart and brought my cup of tea to enjoy because I learned earlier in the day that Maggie just doesn’t get cold. Period. When I was pregnant with her I was constantly warm and often light-headed because I was so hot, and now I feel like I know why. The child does not get cold ever and poor little me does. So, I brought my tea and kept it close by for occasional sips while we rolled out a couple snowmen.

Today when we woke up to more snow, I found that good snow really does make a difference when it comes to rolling snowmen.  The snowfall from last night just wasn’t as good as that snowball material the other day, but we made do and put together a mini snowman.  The squirrels didn’t seem to mind, and immediately stole his entire facial structure. Poor guy.

The prediction is for more snow to dump tonight and all day tomorrow. That’s fine, I guess. We’ve been busy inside also.  Mostly in the kitchen baking breads, muffins, chili and other snow-related things. I can do this for a while longer and can battle the cabin fever by going outside and making forts, but I’m slightly excited for it to melt. Then we can crack open the windows and welcome nicer weather.

But until then, we’re going to be watching the “NOOOOOO” fall from the sky and work on perfecting the best drying techniques when it comes to our jackets and hats. It isn’t so bad. We had our yearly snowy visit from Chach, she is fearless driving her little car in this weather. I’m a wimp; however, we did go across town yesterday just to get out of the house. I decided I didn’t need to do that again, at least with the predicted snow coming.

And aside from cooking and watching the snow fall, we’ve got other indoor activities to do. For example, reading the paper and making sure that we haven’t missed an important story. Maggie, like her dad, likes to read the advertisements. [B-mills edit 1/17/2012: “That’s how you know where the best deals are.” ]

Most importantly, we’ve got a new game that we can play all hours of the day: “Night-Night”. Maggie invented it and I’m almost certain that this game is just part of the developmental process. She loves bossing us around while piling blankets on our heads insisting that we go night-night. She also loves to pop up and yell “Morning!” to whomever is playing with her. Every once in a while I only wish night-night time was as simple as a pile of blankets and a simple “night-night.”

I’ll give it a try here and see how it goes.

Night-Night.

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Spitfire

 

Today is one of those days that I feel really lucky to be a mom….or really, really lucky to be Maggie’s mom. Last week I spent most of the time obsessing over her temperature, fluids and food intake. We didn’t really leave our house and it was pretty pitiful and sad. There really isn’t anything worse than having a sick child.

But she’s back. In full force and it seems that while on the upswing, she picked up a little bit more feistiness and spitfire. I’m drinking it up because having her flop on me and do nothing just wasn’t right. So today when I thought she was flouncing on the bed getting ready to fall asleep, as I’d left her 15 minutes before,  and I found her trying to get her boots on in the front room to come outside and hang Christmas lights with Izak and Me, I had to laugh.

I also found that she’d pulled off four or five of the ornaments off our tree and was piling them up sing-songing, “ball, ball, ball!”

We’ve been working on just smelling the tree, but last night after she got her HO, HO, HO jammies on, we asked her if we could take her picture in front of the tree and she nearly knocked it over because she was as close to “in front of the tree” as she could be without knocking it over.

Without trying to fall over ourselves from laughing at her, we gently reminded her that the tree is for smelling or looking at, not for hugging. We were able to distract her with some books and she worked for a really, really long time to get her boots on.

The girl loves boots and we’re entering into a very independent stage right now because she’ll work for a long time trying to put on shoes, coats and even pants. Sometimes I admire her perseverance and desire to do it alone, but sometimes I know that if she’d just let us help, we’d be on our merry way much sooner.

But life isn’t really about going along the merry way sooner, I believe it is more about stopping and smelling the roses ~ or in our case the Christmas tree.

I’ve still got last week’s sicky feeling imprinted in my brain and our inablility to do much other than be home, so I’m fine if we’re taking a bit longer go zip up our coats or squeeze our feet into boots because it sure beats sicky-poo baby any old day.

Little Miss I Can Do It Myself & Mama