Marble Madness

While in NC over President's Day weekend, Grandma treated us to a fun morning at the Marbles children's museum.  All this exercise, on top of not enough sleep, tuckered everyone out fast.  The sign of a perfect outing!

Rule of Three

For Eliza's Goldilocks / Curlylocks party we played 3 games:

The "Go out of the room and see if you can tell which of the 20 objects we've moved" Game
(kind of like how the 3 Bears noticed differences when they got home)

Musical Chairs
(Because Goldilocks liked to sit in different chairs, and this game is a good way to break one)

The "Talk in a funny voice and see if the person can guess who said 'Happy Birthday'" Game
(Because Eliza can talk in a funny bear voice when she tells Goldilocks)

Then we did presents, candles, cake, etc.

Storytime with Curlylocks

Eliza's two favorite stories are "The Three Little Pigs" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."  While she enjoys looking at the pictures, no books are necessary for the many re-tellings that often fill our day.  We tell the story in the car, in the bathroom, in the store, etc.  In fact, due to her heavy interest, we decided to theme her 3rd birthday around Goldilocks.

Through all of this, she has become very skilled at telling these stories all by herself.  So, pull up a chair, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy a little storytime with Curlylocks.

Nothing's Safe

Put up the baby gate.  Shut the door behind you when you go downstairs.  Don't leave anything that shouldn't be consumed by a 9 month old within a foot of ground level.  Watch out, world, Clarissa is on the move.



The head shake is a new trick she's learned and enjoys performing.  Why do kids always learn "no" first?  Her laugh is developing into a sheep bleat.  Makes us laugh!  We love our little lamb.  

Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Our mini-vacation took us from Frederick, MD to Ocean City, MD with a special stop on Assateague Island, home to wild horses.  We crossed a lot of cool bridges on our drive.

The 1947 newberry honor book, Misty of Chincoteague, is based on these wild horses and the kids and I recently read it aloud together (thanks, Aunt Louise!).  It was so fun to get to see them in person. 
The book's actually about the horses that live on the VA side of Assateague - there's a fence dividing the two herds.  The MD side (in green) prides itself on being hands-off with the horses, but the VA side (in red) does a big round up once a year and swims all the horses and their foals across the bay.  They auction off the foals to help with population control (and continue tradition) and then swim them back across to their sanctuary.  We hear it's a huge event and people come from all over to see it.

These horses are wild in the same sense that the elk at Yellowstone are wild. They don't have owners, but they obviously are used to having people around, as one searched our kid-less stroller for food and then tried to get into our van.

Henry sums it up well at the end of this video.  We had an awesome vacation! (minus the Eliza part mentioned in the previous post)

How We Took Pictures Of Our Child's (Near) Death

With a long MLK weekend, we went to Ocean City MD to see the wild horses and stay in a fun hotel.  We were swimming in the pool, and we had divided kid duty, Alvin with Miriam and Henry and Tammy with Eliza and Clarissa.  After a while Tammy got Clarissa out of the pool to take pictures of A, M, & H.  We left Eliza happily playing in the quite expansive shallow end.  Eliza is almost three and old enough to stay where she can touch, right?  After all, there's never a problem when we're actually watching her. 

So Tammy is taking pictures and video of the others trying to get the perfect moment when the water splashes down from above (tricky, because there's no pattern to when it happens), when a nice little girl about 7 years old comes carrying Eliza back to us.  We politely say thanks, but we're sure Eliza was never really in danger.  The nice girl was just being over protective, or Eliza just got scared when it was no big deal.

Then we go back to our hotel room and look through the pictures.  First, we see a video where Eliza (momentarily highlighted in hearts) leaves the shallower end following a ball she was playing with...



Then we see this picture!

Eliza's in the back, but you can only see the top of her head (to the right of Alvin's shoulder).  Here it is zoomed in:

Can you believe we let this happen?  Makes us absolutely sick inside!

And this is of the girl carrying Eliza back.  (Yes, when Eliza's curls get wet, she has long, very mullet-like hair.)

These pictures are so scary.  It's hard to describe the full range of emotions we have experienced, but guilt and immense gratitude are at the top of the list.  We are so so grateful that little girl was at the right place at the right time to save our little girl.  We wish we could go back and thank her a thousand times over. 

In sharing this experience, Alvin's co-worker shared a similar experience where he was videotaping one child when his second had his flotation device flip him over such that he was stuck upside-down, but he was fortunate enough to see it in time.  We have a dear friend at church (who wasn't taking pictures) but lost a 2 year old in a pool full of people and with lifeguards on duty.  We feel so blessed and know that she was truly being watched over by a more Heavenly parent than us.  We have hugged our kids a little more this week and tried to appreciate all the precious moments we have with them each day. 

We add our warning to the common sense knowledge we're sure you already have - ALWAYS keep an eye on your little ones at the pool.

We can't imagine if we had lost Eliza.  She's such a gem.  Here's a glimpse at some of the cute things she's doing, saying, and singing these days.  (you can read the words better if you make the video full screen, but the video quality goes down some.)

We love you Eliza!

Wrapping Up Christmas

We're almost ready to say goodbye to 2012.  These clips are from our house in MD, the Indianapolis Children's Museum, Christmas in IL, and a bit in NC.  It's not exactly representative of how we spent our time, but you work with what you have.  We only wish we could give you the Alvin and the Chipmunks surprise in 3D.