Getting ready for spring, and 5th birthdays

Change is in the air for us this week.  Literally, in the sense that the weather has been positively May-like.  Or even June-like, really.  Several days this week have seen highs in the high 70s.  We've been sleeping with the windows open.  And the kids have been living it up in the backyard and playground.

But a few other, less meteorological changes have been happening too.  Tuesday, Eliza, Noah and I ventured over to the school district headquarters to register her for kindergarten for next year!  Wednesday, I baked (and froze) 30 cupcakes and a small cake with this recipe, in anticipation of Eliza's upcoming fifth birthday.  Thursday, I dropped Noah off at preschool, and for the first time there were  absolutely no tears or protestations (this is his second week of staying at preschool without me).  And today, we celebrated Eliza's birthday in school.  Tomorrow is her actual birthday and the day of her birthday party.

The weather certainly helped with the cupcakes.  The kids played outside for nearly 2 hours while I baked, Wednesday morning:
he

This was the smile I got when I asked for a "nice almost-5 picture":


Yup, that's a lot of cakes!








It would appear that Noah is wearing two very muddy shoes:


When in reality, he's wearing one muddy shoe and one muddy sock!




But at least it's fun!

Ready for preschool!

The Minty Van!

We got a new car!  It's a 2009 Toyota Sienna and it's a lovely shade of silverish green.  Aunt Rachel dubbed it the Minty Van on her visit here last weekend.  We all love it, and Dan is thrilled to finally have his own car (he's been riding the bus or biking to work for the past several years, and though he enjoys biking in the warmer months, waiting for a bus in the Chicago winters leaves something to be desired).   Here's another picture, which shows the color a little better:




In other big news, we consolidated the kids rooms this morning!  We have 3 bedrooms upstairs.  Until now, Noah has slept in the smallest one.  Today, we moved his bed and belongings into Eliza's much larger room.  So far the kids love it and have been reading stories together and "taking naps" for the past few hours.



We're lucky that Eliza's room is big enough to fit 2 kids really comfortably. Though we did end up moving their dresser into the closet to free up some space:



Here are a couple more pics:




(New animal bedding for Noah helped sweeten the deal)



We hope it works.  Also, maybe sleeping in the same room as big sis Eliza will help prevent Noah's random sleep mishaps such as this recent one:

Yup, that's Noah sleeping on the floor of his (old) bedroom, under both his blankey and his pillow.  Eliza placed the teddy bear atop the pillow for artistic purposes but the pillow and blanket was Noah's own doing.  This is a kid who can fall asleep anytime, anywhere, including but not limited to while sitting at the dinner table, chewing food.

Anyway, now we're ready for our next big project: turning Noah's old bedroom into a nursery for the baby girls!  I'm leaning toward painting the walls a light shade of aqua.

When I uploaded pictures today I found a whole series of shots taken by Eliza, unbeknownst to me.  She has her own camera but I suppose mine was closer!  Here is a particularly great self-portrait:


Want to see more pictures of the kids?  Just click on any of these and page through our photostream at Flickr. There are a LOT more pictures up there and the ones from the last several months are public (so no login needed).

Old MacDonald Part 2

OldMacDonald_Pt2 a video by katieanddan on Flickr.

For real this time! (I hope!) :)

Happy weekend!

Old MacDonald is soakin' hot

This has been a slow week for us.  Noah has been sick with a fever and cough/cold since Sunday evening. Though today (Thursday) he seems to be mostly better, he stayed home from preschool just to play it safe. (Noah has started "going to preschool" two mornings a week at the same great preschool Eliza has been attending for the past three school years, though at this point I am still in the room with him as he gets acclimated.  The idea is that we'd rather have him get used to preschool now, before the babies are here.)

Anyhow two highlights of the week:

1) Dan and Noah play and sing Old MacDonald together, after Noah insists that they actually turn to the correct page in the piano book:

Honestly, I think that is the cutest part of the "performance", but if you'd like to see the actual song, click here.

2) Eliza-ism of the week: "Soakin' Hot".  Defintion: being really hot and sweaty, as a result of exuberant jumping/running/dancing/etc preschool craziness.  Use: "I love to bounce on the mattress and pillows in the basement. I love to do it with Daddy and Noah while you make dinner.  We get soakin' hot!"  [editorial note: we recently moved Eliza's old (and totally trashed) crib mattress down to the basement playroom, where it now functions as a trampoline).]

Mat sat on Sam

2012-02-19 001 a video by katieanddan on Flickr.

Eliza is learning to read! In all honesty, she has read this book once or twice (or thirty times) before, but we still think it's really exciting.

TCoB

That is, "Taking Care of Business".  There's nothing Dan loves more than getting stuff done.  It's a quality that has rubbed off on me during our marriage, which is definitely a good thing because pre-Dan I was more of a LJDIT ("Let's Just Do It Tomorrow") type.  So this weekend, thanks to Noah's sports class (if you can call a dozen boys between 2 and 3 attempting to play indoor football, hockey, and basketball either "sports" or a "class") being cancelled for the long weekend, we have decided to get some of our backed-up house projects taken care of.

1) Cleaning out all the random boxes of stuff in our room.  Our master bedroom is big, something we really like about our house.  At the same time, its size means that it tends to become the repository of crap.  So we finally went through that this morning -- boxes of my non-maternity clothes, boxes of cloth diapers, boxes of random junk I threw in a box before having people over, etc, and can actually walk comfortably around our entire room again!  Good thing because before long we will need to set up a co-sleeper and changing area in there!

2) A trip to Ikea! Eliza and her good friend A are both fighting colds, which means that we cancelled their swimming lesson this afternoon. So what could be more fun than driving an hour and wading through huge crowds, in order to procure this lamp?  I really want this lamp for the top of our piano and haven't found anything similar elsewhere.  I hope it's worth it!  We may also check out some new bedding for Noah's toddler bed, given that one upcoming TCoB project is moving him into Eliza's bedroom, in anticipation of the twins needing the smaller bedroom.

3) Finishing up our overdue house updating projects.  If you've glanced at our Flickr account recently, you might notice shots of some new light fixtures (or the horrendously ugly ones they replaced) or some particularly lovely monogrammed cabinet pulls (the previous owners' last name started with S, which ours does not, which is actually not even the most compelling reason to change those babies). We haven't taken a picture of the new cabinet pulls yet but here is a link, for those who are still reading! I'm having a little buyer's remorse about those but they're still a heck of a lot better than what they replaced.  Still left to do: spray paint the white painted hardware on this kitchen light and the cabinet hinges with Rustoleum "oil rubbed bronze spray paint" (really works well, I used it on some 1980s bright-brass lamps with great results!) and paint that annoying circle of off-white ceiling paint above the kitchen light, white.

4) If I have time/energy, I ordered some really pretty modern-ish blue-paisley upholstery fabric when it was on sale at Joann last month, and I want to replace the ugly red-geometric pattern on our dining room chairs (also purchased from the previous owners of our house, who apparently really really liked dark red) with that.  I'll post a picture once the chairs are done -- the picture of the fabric on the Joann website doesn't do it justice.

Springtime in Chicago!

2012-02-16 013
Originally uploaded by katieanddan

Apparently, there's no time like mid-February to make mudpies in the backyard.