A Fantabulous Day For Playing Outside

Wow - we started out with rain this morning, but then the skies cleared, the sun came out, and we had a very lovely 80 degree afternoon. So, we played outside!

Bree loves her bike rides, and here's why:


We got this seat from The Sports Authority, and she just loves it. I do need to put a helmet on her - and we have one, it just didn't fit her little head last summer. We'll try again this summer.

The position of the baby seat makes it so that it's very difficult for me to get on without the help of the car's side mirror. So it's a very tricky deal for mouting and dismounting. So far we've only tipped over once.

This morning we went to the mall play area (because of the rain) and Bree got involved in a game of "Duck, Duck, Goose." She didn't really understand that only the "goose" was supposed to get up and run - she was on her feet and running any time the "goose" got picked. She didn't really understand the difference between the "duck" and the "goose" because when she was tapped as the "goose" she just sat there. The older kids had to tell her to run - it was so funny. But she had a great time. The running around at the mall plus this afternoon running around outside made her a very tired girl. She started her "nap" at 5:30 this afternoon.

Bree likes to play "fast food server" at the small picnic table attached to her swing set. I like to order a hot dog, fries, a cookie and a kiss. Lucky for me, the kisses come first, then the pretend food.

Then there are the times when I ask for a kiss and get presented with her cheek - as in, "okay, go ahead and give me a kiss on the cheek, Mommy." Of course I never turn it down!

Hope your afternoon was just as fantabulous!

The Littlest YouTube Addict

I have created a monster. I was bored of the "usual" Barney (aka "Arney") videos and decided to give Bree a little variety by looking at YouTube videos.

Now all she wants to do is watch YouTube.




We go between Arney, Elmo, and some god-awful children's video where English is not the first language.

Here she is clapping along with a video called "Clap Your Hands." This video has a very scary cartoon man with two children "Rhyma" and "Rhymi." Clever.



Bree doesn't care about the weird videos - in fact, the weirder, the better!

Although I will admit that there are some very awesome children's videos on YouTube. If you've watched YouTube, you know that YouTube will offer you more choices of videos to watch based on the one you just watched. Bree loves that she gets to "choose" what she gets to watch next. So she points to the one she wants to watch, saying "That one, Mamma!"

I have not yet let her watch Cookie Monster sing "Chocolate Rain." I think we can both do without that one.

Viva La YouTube!

Snow Day (more pictures)!

Since I don't know when we'll have snow again here, I took plenty of pictures.

For our first trip outside, I was able to convince Bree to leave Beary in the house. But for the second trip, Bree would not hear of leaving Beary behind. There was TOO MUCH FUN to be had and Beary had to be there for it! So we tucked Beary into the coat again so that we wouldn't get Beary all wet & dirty.


This next one is probably my most favorite picture of the set. You can just tell how much FUN Bree is having.

You can't tell in this next photo, but it's actually snowing quite hard. Bree had a blast running around in it.

I can't remember exactly what it is that Bree is doing in this next photo, but she's probably telling me how important it is for her to eat the snow off her mitten. Because there was a fair amount of that going on.

Here's a nice fistful of leaf/snow combo - pretty telling about how little snow we got, and how many leaves are still on the ground.

Let's hope that March really does go out like a lamb, becuase it sure came in like a lion!

Snow Day!

So, yeah. It's been a while. I've been a little busy catering to the every whim and desire of a very demanding 2 year old. Well, something like that, anyway.

Picture this: Friday, beautiful blue skies, 70 degrees. I hear the 7 day forecast calling for snow on Sunday, a mere two days later. No way! I think to myself. Never gonna happen here. Every time snow has been mentioned in the forecast, it never happens. Not even a flake. So I was skeptical.

It rained cats and dogs all weekend long. And then on Monday morning, WHAMMO! SNOW!

The local schools were on a two hour delay, so I thought that was reasonable, and I put us on our own two hour delay. After all, the snow had stopped for the most part, and I thought that the roads would be well treated by the time we started our trek to our destination.

I could not have been more wrong. Let me repeat that - I could not have been more wrong. VDOT did NOTHING in this area to treat the roads after the snow stopped. Maybe they missed the weather report that the temperatures were dropping. By the time I started out, the roads were nice and icey, and there were 200 (yes, TWO HUNDRED) reported accidents in the Hampton Roads area. (Which I heard reported today on the radio.)

I couldn't even get out of our area of town to get to an interstate. After 20 minutes I had only gone 5 miles (Okay 10 becuase of all the turning around) I called it a day and went home. We were back home and outside playing by 9:30.


Bree has seen snow on tv, there's snow on an Elmo video she has, and there's a Peppa Pig episode where Peppa & George throw snowballs and make a snowman. So she's not unfamiliar with the concept of snow. But I don't think she expected it to be quite so cold. Or wet.

Bree spent most of the time throwing snow at me. So I spent most of the time running away from her. And if there's anything she loves more than throwing snow at Mommy, it's chasing Mommy to throw snow at her.

Because it was so cold out (for here, anyway. It was in the low 20s) we only stayed outside for about 30 minutes at a time. Then we put hats, mittens & pants in the dryer until the next trip outside.

I have mentioned previously here how much Bree loves snowmen. "NOMAN!" While we didn't have enough snow on the ground to really build an ambitious snowman, Bree took great delight in making her own snowman. Which actually was a very large snowball, but hey - it was HER snowman. She carried it around with her the whole time she was outside. It was very sweet. We made a "home" for it for when we had to go in at night. (And it lasted today, but I have my doubts as to whether or not it will be there after tomorrow.)

We had so much fun that it's a shame that our first (and only, I suspect) snow day for 2009 came on March 2nd.