'winter' activities

We signed Clara up for 2 year old indoor soccer.  Soccer Planet just opened in Urbana-- it's a hockey rink sized soccer field.  Clara's gang kicks balls, stacks cones, plays with a parachute, plays freeze (red light, green light), runs through obstacle courses, and more.  She enjoys it.  We are happy to have a big play space available during the winter.

 Speaking of winter,what a mild one for biking around town!  As the car drives, the soccer field is 4.5 miles from our house, but the tolerable bike route is 6.5 miles (Frasca should pay for a pedestrian route to connect Willow Rd over or under I-74).  Last weekend we took a slightly longer detour on the way home to hit the Apple Dumpling for lunch.  We were the only non-farmers there.

 Since Janny can sit, both girls are now stuffed into the trailer.  Janny falls asleep within minutes while Clara sings, talks, and checks out the scenery.  Though Chad pulls it on these longer trips, Jill has no troubles taking both girls herself.

 Janny went from walking behind this toy on her own ...

 Interlude about Clara.  She is off the charts small [either nurses don't study the weight distribution function closely, or the actual numbers don't matter for kids in this part of the curve.  I don't know the percentile.  I do know that she weighs 23 lbs and that Janny weighs 15 lbs and is in the 3rd percentile for her age].

We have been trying new schemes to get Clara to eat more.  As you can see below, she has the option of peanut butter or jam on bread, mac and cheese, goldfish crackers, and applesauce.  But she scrapes jam off the bread.  A new scheme involves Jill reading books to Clara.  Jill will stop until Clara eats another bite.  So far, this has been successful.

Clara continues to talk more.  The only unfathomable word at the moment is something like hookeeya.  As in, 'I'm riding in the hookeeya.'  Big bonus points to the first to decipher this.

 ... to standing up by herself without any assistance.  She practices walking while holding our hands every chance she gets.

Finally, our house is once again filled.  Fereshteh is back from Iran (thankfully, we decided to not start WWIII while she was still there.  Maybe we can not start it ever!).  We're glad to have her back.

post holidays

I didn't make a resolution to blog more this year.  Did you notice?  I have an additional excuse for not blogging besides the fact that the girls are conspiring to eliminate my alone time.  Jill and I were using our down time to read Hunger Games, the trilogy.  The series was unlike anything I had read before:  a mix of brutal violence and teenage romance.  [To be clear, I don't read books in either genre, especially the latter.]  The main character has a fascinating blend of bravado and massive self-doubt. I'll leave it to Jill to write the full review.  In short, the story telling was excellent, but the gore made me ill.

We spent the holidays at Jill's parents' place near Nashville.  Except for Jill getting the cold the rest of us had previously, the week was a relaxing time of playing with the kids, visiting some sights (mansion of the Maxwell house coffee people and a children's museum), and resting.  And eating.  

 Ricky and Enoch are quite good sports with their bossy, nosy cousin.

 I grew my first mustache for Christmas.  I felt very proud, but Jill did not love it.  So it's gone.

Quick updates for the kids:  Janny can walk behind her push toys and has a tooth.  She wakes up once per night to yell, drink milk, and go right back to sleep.

Clara likes to say '2 minutes' whenever bedtime, naptime, or dinner time is announced.  She's eating slightly better now (albeit oddly.  She at hot dogs for breakfast twice during our trip.), but she's still crazy skinny.