Feels Like Spring

I can recall some January's & February's of years past where we see nothing but rain for days on end; winters where the weather man tells us that our cumulative amount of sunlight in 1 month adds up to less than a day... But this year we've had beautiful warm sunny weather. Yes, not so great for the olympics but really great for the rest of us :)

My tulips started coming up in January and I planted the colourful flowers last week to brighten up our front door.


Despite the spring-like weather, the cold & flu season finally caught up with us last week. Not really any throwing up, but some fevers, lots of coughing and many boxes of kleenex. Keziah even got an ear infection out of the deal.

Keziah is challenging me more and more all the time with her stubborn personality. Something as simple as putting on her socks or washing her hands can turn into an hour-long tantrum. I'm trying to choose my battles, but I also don't want to walk on eggshells around her, and I definitely don't want to give in as soon as I meet resistance. But it is tough going some days. So, when I need a little bit of a parenting boost I just watch Supernanny and it totally inspires me - not just to be firm and consistent but to also give her lots of praise and keep my own emotions under control!

Keziah was a little troubled by the opening ceremonies on Friday night. She was fine up until the part where the "ice" started breaking up and the people were separated from each other. From that point on she asked every minute, "what's going to happen to the people??" with legitimate fear in her eyes. The next day when we saw a re-cap of the ceremonies on TV she panicked and screamed for me to turn it off! Poor girl.

Silas is nearing his 11-month birthday which is hard to fathom! He's growing up super-duper fast. He's still not crawling, but is making some moves in that direction. Erik really wants him to crawl but I'm thinking it's probably easier to keep him immobile! Soon enough he'll be getting into Micah & Keziah's things and we'll have to think about baby-proofing again (and this time we have stairs!) So... yeah. He can just sit for a little while longer :) I'm pretty sure that he won't be walking by a year at this rate. Micah started walking the week before his 1st birthday and Keziah the week after. I'm going to predict that Silas will take his first steps closer to 13 or 14 months.

Micah is turning into such a "kid" already. He honestly makes me laugh and surprises me with what he can do and remember. But with his age seems to come a bit more of an attitude which has required some discipline. But Micah had the idea to start a chart where he would get a sticker for every day that he avoids sitting on the "naughty step". It seems to motivate him to heed my warnings!

Micah suddenly LOVES to colour and cut paper. Our "craft area" has turned into a disaster zone with teeny tiny bits of paper everywhere, but the extra sweeping is SO worth the time that Micah is spending with these activities. I think that once he realized his ability to colour inside the lines and to cut around the lines, it has become a lot more fun for him! His attention span for activities seems to be increasing. Case and point - he sat on this excavator at the park, digging away for a good 20 minutes until I finally had to pull him away...

The end :)