Bowling

We took Ellie bowling for the first time this past weekend. It was quite an adventure... with plenty of laughs. I enjoyed the fact that we have someone in the group who bowled worse than me. Ellie recorded mostly 1 mph rolls down the alley (the equipment at the site told us the speed of the ball), and the ball stopped all together on one roll (getting stuck in the gutter and requiring a call to the front desk guy). At least when he came out he also set up the gutter bumpers we had previously requested.... so that allowed Ellie to actually strike a few pins. I think she had a good time trying bowling, but when the lights dimmed and music started playing (for the Saturday evening teen event), we lost Ellie to the rhythm. She is a major dancing fan, so from then on she only wanted to spin and kick her feet (a fairly dangerous venture on the slippery bowling floor)... but she survived. Katie enjoyed the people watching and general exploring, too. Even though we only made it through one game of bowling before calling it a night, I think we'll give it another go sometime.

 

Pig parade

 I took Ellie to her first Cub Club class at the nearby zoo. They do a class every month and feature a different animal. This one was called Parade of Pigs, and we had so much fun! It's about an hour program and they spent most of it learn about different aspects of pigs, then we visited the zoo's barn and met Samson (seen above), and then it was craft time. Ellie made this very cute piggy planter (seen below). A very fun Saturday morning. Hope we get to do more of these!

Bear hunt!

If you're feeling brave enough join Ellie on this bear hunt...

Nashville trip

I'm behind in posting (...again) but here are some shots from the trip we took in February down to Nashville to help celebrate Grandma Schneider's 90th birthday. We enjoyed some of the warmer Tennessee temps and hit the park near my aunt and uncle's house.

So many questions

Ellie's curiosity is boundless these days. I am constantly fielding "why" questions from our 3 1/2 year old.
In some ways, I love it. I want her to be excited about learning and understanding everything around her... but it's also daunting and time-consuming.

Just yesterday Ellie hit me with this one while we were driving to school:
Ellie: Oh no, mom! The car is filling with yucky smoke!
Me: What? (then, after looking in rear-view mirror) Oh, that's just your breath showing up because it's so cold.
Ellie: Oh. Why?
Me: Well, the stuff from your breath is freezing as you breathe out, and that makes it show up looking like that.
Ellie: Why?
Me: How bout some music...

I need to brush up on my elementary school science so I can better explain these phenomenons to Ellie.

Love our curious little one, though!

Katie at 1

Katie started in a new room at daycare this week. She's now in with 1-2 year olds... and all those mobile kids (many closer to 2 than 1) look like giants compared to our little one!
I'm trying to keep my cool and remember that Ellie survived this same transition, but it's hard when I see Katie getting swarmed by the older kids. She's definitely nervous about the new arrangement so far. She cries pretty hard at drop-off and the teachers yesterday reported that she was very clingy most of the day. But, again, I'm sure she'll be fine... right?

I should share some of the amazing things Katie is doing these days, too. She says more words: like "ball" and "baby," in addition to the ma-ma, da-da that she's done for awhile now. She can roll a ball to us. She's cruising around like a champ and SO close to walking on her own. Here's some video I caught of her driving the alphabet train around our house. (Note: As you see from Ellie's involvement in the video, Katie does have some amount of training in surviving bigger kids...)

Katie is also an eating champ and no longer has restrictions on food (like nuts or fish). She's switched entirely to whole milk and drinks only from sippy cups. Basically, our baby seems to be fading away (much faster than mom would like...) I'm so proud of this big girl.

Super twirls

While Ellie and Olivia probably watched just 30 seconds total of the Super Bowl yesterday, they did put on an impromptu half-time show for the adults.