Monday, March 7, 2016

Adulting Is Hard Work

It is pretty amazing just how much can happen in the matter of a few weeks. It can make your head spin. It is either that or we could not manage to get the cold bugs out of the house for weeks and made trips to doctor's offices and urgent care. It could be a little of both.

Our little fashionista has started completely choosing her outfits in the morning. While there have been a few unusual choices, many of her outfits have actually matched. As long as they coordinate with her tutu that is. She has a couple of them, and they are her favorite accessory. In addition to picking the outfits, Elska has been getting much more independent with getting dressed. Some help is still needed, and sometimes it takes 20 minutes or more to accomplish, but she needs a little bit less every day.

Are you sure that's right Papa?
Weather permitting, we walk to the library most days. While we don't make it quite there and back, most of the way we walk with occasional bursts of needing to run. The reason for running is both that it is fun and the library is one of the best places to go. We are on a first name basis with many of the librarians, and they are always on the lookout for new suggestions of titles. However, we can not get enough of the favorite titles - the "no monkeys" book, the Teeny Tiny Farm, and anything by Sandra Boynton. We have started to transition to some "big girl" books too and are working on turning pages nicely and sitting for the entire book. It works better on some than others.
Leftover movie theater popcorn for breakfast!

Last weekend, Elska went on her very first trip to the movie theater to see the new Star Wars movie. She did even better than we had expected and definitely enjoyed the movie as well as getting to gorge herself on pizza and popcorn. 

Charlie is continuing with his wood tech program at school and will be finishing in a few months. He has been learning a lot and discovering which aspects he likes the most. (FYI - if you want a beautiful cutting board, he could probably be convinced to work on a commission to make them.)

After over two years of talking about it, work on the kitchen has begun in earnest. Wallpaper is almost entirely removed (except from behind the oven and fridge), the walls are patched and sanded, and painting has been started. We have yet to finalize plans for the back splash, and we will be installing new flooring to round out the project. We are already trying to figure out which project to tackle when we finish. There are a lot from which to choose.

Other projects have included getting our couch moved out and a pull out couch moved in, replacing the leaking drainage pipes from under the kitchen sink, replacing the shower head that fell off, working on picking up all of Gretl's "leavings" from over the winter, clearing out all of the things stored in Elska's room, so she we can transition her to a "big girl" bed when we do potty training, planning what will go in this year's garden and designing the raised beds we will be installing, defrosting the chest freezer, and doing and figuring out what we have stored in the pantry, so we will be able to figure out what needs to be canned for next year. These would be the things that no one mentions as things for kids to look forward to when they grow up.