Cold Days at Home

We've been spending many days at home lately. With all the snow, ice and cold temperatures we just haven't been wanting to get out much. We were snowed in for 3 days after Christmas, so it was lucky that the kids had new Christmas toys to play with to keep them occupied. Now, LPS is on our 6th snowday for the year, and that means a lot of extra time spent at home, not at preschool or daycare. Don't get me wrong, I love the days off, but the days can get long when we can't get out or don't want to get out (as in the case of today and tomorrow).

As I already mentioned, the kids have been getting some quality time in with their new toys. Some clear favorites have emerged, these popular ones get played with for hours a day. So far, the most popular has been the Tag Reading system from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Chad. For you who don't know what this is, the kids call it the "magic pencil." It's a wand that you use on special books. You download the book onto the wand and it will read the book to you. You can read word by word by pushing each word, or you can push a special button on each page and it will read that page with sound effects, voices and music, then it will ding to turn the page. The kids love to do this. They know how to turn it on, start it and push the right buttons. The pictures also talk and some pages have games to play. Let me tell you, they love this magic pencil. We have four books, and they spend hours taking turns using the magic pencil on those 4 books. One day, they read each book 3 times, that's 9 times! It took at least an hour. When they have some time alone with the magic pencil, they play the games, answer questions and explore everything it does. I highly recommend this toy for anyone with pre-reading kids, they love it!

The other favorite toy is a marble race. It has many pieces that you build and make the marbles race from the top to the bottom, through tunnels and ramps. This appeals to Xander's building sensibilities. It's the first thing he does in the morning and spends all day honing his towers. Batman, Grace's new toy dog named "Whitemas" (don't ask, she came up with that name all by herself!) and the new sing along CD player round out the list of most popular toys getting played with everyday. They got lots of games and puzzles, and we've done some of those, too. However, the puzzles are 60- 100 pieces and they have a hard time doing those without help. So, we haven't been doing that as often.

In other news, a round of sickness has gone through the house, although everyone who has been sick has had something different! I started it off by getting sick on Sunday with what I was pretty sure was strep throat. By Monday, I thought I was dying. I took the kids to Grandma Ellen and she watched them while I went to the doctor. She kept them until after lunch. When she brought them back, she told me that Will had thrown up at her house. Well, he kept throwing up all afternoon. I had canceled my Monday piano lessons, but my mom came and picked up Xander and Grace. Will and I spent the rest of the day watching movies and dozing on the couch. Tuesday, Will was better, but I was not. So, they all spent some more time at Grandma Ellen's that day. Will perked up and was back to his normal self by the end of the day. Wednesday was a snowday, but I had planned not to go to school before it was called off for snow. Luckily the kids went to Ellen's for a third day, so I was able to rest a little more, and by the end of the day was starting to feel more like myself. Since school was called off Thursday too, Dale and Ellen brought the kids home Wed night. Grace woke up today with rosy cheeks and a cough. She ran a 102 degree temp all day today and was coughing from postnasal drip, I think. Poor thing. She has drank a lot today, so I'm hoping it is short lived. The snow days came at a good time, no one had to take days off for illnesses!!!

Two other small but notable developments. On Christmas Day, Will had to pee while we were in the car, so my dad pulled over and helped him pee on the side of the road. Well, that made me think that we should teach the boys how to pee standing up. So, Brian took advantage of his days off to help the boys do this. Now they will pee standing up if they remember. Old habits die hard! So far, no big misses or messes and they put the toilet seat down. They have been taught well! The other small development is that I took the bed rails off Xander and Grace's bed. No reason really while we hadn't done it already, but I just arbitrarily decided to do it by their 4th birthday (which is tomorrow, Friday). So far so good with that. It seems kind of silly that we waited so long to do these two things, but I guess we just got comfortable where we were and didn't think about moving up! That's it for now. Stay warm everyone. Thanks for checking up on us, here's hoping we're all healthy by next week!