Snow Day!

You get two posts in a month! I'm on a roll! ;) 

Here we are at the end of February and we've gotten two back to back snow storms. The first one shut down school for the entire week last week. This one, I would imagine, will keep schools closed today and tomorrow. Since Brad was home today, we decided to take the girls outside this morning and build a snowman. The snow was perfect snowman snow! Brad made the snowman while the girls wandered around taking it all in. This picture just cracks me up. I don't know why, it just does!

Eleanor seemed to love the snow! She didn't really want to touch it but she kept making happy sounds and laughing, so something about it sure was amusing. She's really building her vocabulary and every couple of days she has a new word to say. We are working on it! I think she said "Mama" a few times. Her absolute favorite word is "Uh-oh!". Every time she sneezes, falls, or drops something she says it. It's super cute.

Some days Amelia and Eleanor have dropped the morning nap too. Other days they still want two naps. It makes it a bit of a challenge to plan the day sometimes because I never know if I'm going to get one long nap or two shorter naps. Usually, though, I aim for one nap and if two happens great! One nap days mean I have more time to do all those "fun toddler activities" Pinterest is all about.

Unfortunately, we are all (still) sick. It's been a source of major discontentment for me. It started with Eleanor and pink eye/cold that I talked about in my last post. Amelia eventually got both the pink eye and the cold. Then I got the cold. It's a bizarre respiratory virus, that's for sure. The girls had runny noses, but I never got that part. I felt a little stuffy and had some post nasal drip, but ultimately we all ended up with ear infections. Who gets an ear infection as an adult? I never felt that sick, but I also got a nasty dry cough. I was excited when it went away for like three days and then it came back the other night! Same with the girls. GO AWAY SICKNESS. It's just lingering and lingering and driving me crazy. Between the weather and this stupid cold, my race training is not going super well. Last weekend I wasn't able to do my 10 mile long run because everything was frozen solid. This weekend doesn't look too promising either. Guess I'm just going to have to suck it up and do 10 miles on the treadmill (gross).

Amelia was a little more apprehensive about the snow, but she did crawl around in it for awhile!  She's still not saying words much, but she's signing a lot more. I found out the other day that she's been holding out on us and totally knows the sign for "please". I didn't even ask her to do it and she just did it! We've only been able to go to speech therapy twice because of all the snow and illnesses (today's appointments were canceled) but I'm really happy with the direction things are going there. I think it will be good for Amelia and I think once we can be more consistent we will see a lot of success. Other than working on signs, Amelia is also working on climbing everything. She also started crawling around really fast with her forehead on the floor. She thinks it's hilarious but the rug burn she gets from it looks pretty bad. Oh well, it doesn't seem to bother her!

I thought I would do a quick update on my New Year's Goals to close out this post:
- I've lost 6 lbs since January, bringing my total weight loss to 40lbs. I'm proud of my progress but it's been discouraging not being able to workout and train as much as I would like due to illness and weather.
- I've read 4 books since January. Including "Cuckoo's Calling". Which was an awesome book.
- Some weeks it's a challenge to spend much time on the New City Catechism. I need to do better at this, but I've at least looked at each week's question and answer.
- I've been trying to read to the girls a couple times a week and I think I'm doing it at least 3 times a week. I don't keep track of this much though. I probably should.
- Brad and I have had a couple date nights already! We've also instituted "No Tech Tuesday"-- which means on Tuesday evenings we don't pick up our phones or get on the internet in the evenings so we have more meaningful conversations and play with the girls more. It's been pretty fun. :)