Second winter

I have no idea what all we've been up to recently, everything just kind of runs together into a sleepless haze.  I don't particularly enjoy the newborn stage... I much prefer when my brain works. 😝

 Miriel needed Perrin to try his new John Deere shirt. :) 

So his first Sunday in church I just put him in a sleeper because real buttons and pants seemed overwhelming.  Emmy was not happy, she wanted him to wear this outfit he wore the second Sunday.  :)  The bow tie is pretty adorable.

I bottled the syrup- it looks so cool in bottles and jars.  Unfortunately, we did get some sugar crystals in some so it's not quite as pretty as it could be. 

Cadence spent two days home sick from school and Miriel was under the weather for a few days too.  

We finally did a mosaic craft we got from the library a long time ago.

Even Miri joined in the fun. 

I stayed home on Sunday with the two recovering girls... they wanted to wear their Sunday dresses anyway.

The following week was spring break.  It was a week.  ugh.  Haha, so for starters it was just generally cold and grey all week.  And then I made the bad decision to try potty training.  It seemed like a good idea at the time- she's plenty old enough, isn't afraid to sit on the toilet, we were going to be home for long stretches of time, Bob's here and can help.... and then it pretty much crashed and burned.  

I put her in underwear just so she could figure out what accidents felt like.  Turns out, she HATES accidents.  She stood there and sobbed and sobbed. And then she wanted to sit on the toilet all.day.long. so it wouldn't happen again.  Except she never actually consciously went in the toilet. Just sat there. And when I would take her off and make her go play, she'd be back again a few minutes later sobbing to sit down again.  And apparently this is not a normal potty training problem because Dr. Google had no suggestions. 

So awful. She was just so sad and withdrawn.  We made a trip to the library to try and distract her but she walked around with at least one hand on her pull-up the entire time.  So. We gave up. Except it took a few days for her to de-potty train and we had to listen to her sobbing in the bathroom and I was stressing that we'd given her a complex...  

I was also feeling guilty for not having any fun places to go or things to do for the girls, even though I know it's completely unrealistic with a newborn.  Somehow they survived.  

Emmy made cookies. :)  Ok, random pet peeve: I hate recipes where they don't list ingredients in the order of use.  I never use two bowls for cookies, I cream the butter and sugar, wet ingredients, etc., and then add the dry- modern mixers are perfectly capable of combining ingredients evenly without sifting the dry together separately.  Plus it's just cookies, not a wedding cake or something.  So when they put flour, etc. first and the instructions are in a different order and I'm busy with Perrin and getting Miriel off of the toilet, everything gets added all at once and the texture is a bit... interesting.  :P 

Cadence wanted to play with Orbeez with her Paw Patrol toys.  There were Orbeez everywhere.

I don't know who made the "no trust-pass" sign for the bathroom door, but poor Miri looks so miserable.  :(  Woe is us.  Who ever heard of NOT letting your kid use the toilet.  😜

Bob's birthday was Friday and the girls made him all sorts of cards and paper gifts.

We headed uptown on Saturday to visit Grandma Lydiann and Aunt Pearline.  They hadn't met Perrin yet, so it was high time.  Oh these two...

The girls made themselves at home, though Miriel pretty much stayed safely behind the ottoman.

Grandma let us look at her goodwill pile and of course the girls brought home "treasures."  And Grandma just had to feed me something,  so we got homemade ice cream sandwiches.  :)  I told Emmy that when I was a little girl, Grandma would give us graham crackers and milk for a snack and we would eat it on the kitchen rug in front of the sink.  :) 

They are the best. :)

Then we went to the farm for a bit... Grandma is nice and reads books in the bathroom to poor traumatized children. 

Mom was also cleaning out closets and the girls claimed more treasure.  Woot.  Poor Bob, we came home with so much stuff. (Some of it will slowly trickle out again when they aren't looking...) This was Grandma's cut glass pitcher that she fell in love with.

There's a nest of owls in a neighbors tree!  We were out owl watching with Mr. F. 

Hehe.

And we had to get out all of our bird books to try and identify what kind of owls.  :)

Perrin got a onesie from the midwives.... he cost twice as much, but hey, he got a free t-shirt out of the deal.

One of the baby owls fell out of the nest!  The neighbor called a wildlife rehab place so it will probably survive, but it was cool to see it up close! 

It's recorder season- "we who are about to die salute you!"   (How are they so annoying???  she reads music so she's playing tunes well enough, it's just. so. grating.  We didn't get to bring ours home from good old EMS... our parents were spared so much. ha.)

I'm not sure what else has happened in the last few weeks that I'm forgetting.  Oh well. This weekend and next are going to be busy... woot.  Perrin doesn't believe in hours long chunks of sleep. And I'm counting down until school is out because he likes to be awake right when the girls need to be getting ready for school.   
Blessings.