Helping Hand

Well, don't ask me WHY it happened to us but yesterday we had the biggest winter storm of the season. It was not only snowing like mad, but there was also lightening and thunder. I'm talking "rattle the roof" thunder. Try explaining to a 3-year old why it's snowing AND thundering at the same time.... Ah, the joys of Minnesota weather... Anyway, we knew it was going to snow pretty heavily yesterday afternoon so I cheated by letting Caleb stay home from school. In the morning, I felt like a bad mom. By 2pm, when I would normally be picking him up from school, it was snowing so hard that I couldn't even see the end of our cul-de-sac (3 houses down). I was feeling pretty smart at that point! Although it was a good idea to stay home, Caleb, Hannah and I were stir-crazy, despite being couped-up for just one day. (I think we've had too many "home days" in the past couple of weeks!) :)

Despite the boredom in the house, Hannah surprised me by showing off some new talents. One major one being when she said "All done!" after her snack. She actually repeated it after I asked her if she was all done. Amazing! She also proved that her new hobby of pulling cups off the table will be a daily occurrence. Let me clarify: she pulls cups full of liquid off the kitchen table. Reaches right up and pulls the cups down. First, it was milk. Then, it was juice. Yesterday, it was a whole mug-full of tea with sugar in it. (Not hot--it had been sitting there for about 30 minutes.) Talk about a sticky mess! My kitchen floor has been washed 4 times in the past 9 days. You know you're making an impression on your 14-month old when she later finds a wash cloth and pretends to be washing the floor herself:


Today, I got both kids to nap at the same time, which was wonderful because then I could get a few things done around the house. I realized towards the end of the kids' naps that I should have used that "free time" to go in the basement and work out on my elliptical machine. I went up to check on the kids, decided that I could probably get a good 20 minute work-out in, so I headed to the basement with my earphones in and music blaring. Well, I got the 20 minutes of exercise, but by the time I came back upstairs, I noticed all sorts of toys littered on the stairs (they hadn't been there before I went into the basement). Turns out, Caleb woke up while I was downstairs, called for me to come and open the upstairs gate (but I didn't answer), so he hollered a few times and then started throwing all of his toys from his bedroom down the stairs, hoping to get my attention. He wasn't mad or anything when I found him but I asked him "Did you wake up your sister?" since he was hollering right outside of her bedroom, as usual. "Oh, yes!" he said. "I was making all kinds of noise so it woke her up!" He was just so proud of himself, as if waking her up was something he was supposed to do. I couldn't be mad, because, after all, it was my fault he was stuck up there hollering after he woke up. I'm just thankful that they took naps at all! :)