Oh, this weather. Today is the third day of spring and we have about a foot of fresh snow on the ground. The only person in all of Erie County who I think is enjoying this spring storm is Max.

He is always bringing me his boots or his hat. Then he goes and stands by the door and cries. He just wants to go out and play. So we go.

He likes to walk around. Eat snow. Throw snow. Look at snow. You know. Stuff you forget to enjoy when you are an adult and more snow just means more shoveling, icy roads and cabin fever.

  He has to wear his sister’s hand-me-downs. He doesn’t mind.

Sometimes he falls down.
But then he pops back up. And he’s off again, to enjoy this winter wonderland. In spring.

Olive joined our family last summer, an adoption from the Humane Society of Northwestern Pennsylvania.  She and Max are best buddies.

 She won’t stay away from him, no matter how many times he pulls her tail, her ears or her paws.

She doesn’t seem to have that same need to be near Zoe.

 Or me and Mark.

No, it’s definitely Max that Olive loves best.

The day I decided never to leave the house again went like this:

We start the process of getting ready to go. That means I start hunting for Zoe’s shoes. I find a lot of single shoes, but no pairs. But finally, under her bed, two of the same shoe. Great. Let’s get them on. I run down the stairs to find my girl, holding the shoes aloft. Triumphant.

Zoe doesn’t share my sense of accomplishment. In fact, she flips out. These aren’t the shoes she wants to wear. I wrestle her onto my lap and get the shoes on. She is wailing. Now she has thrown herself on the floor in a full, stretched-out tantrum, a 3-year-old in all her toddler glory. I try to explain I can’t find the shoes she wants to wear. She’s not listening though, caught in this whirlwind of  shoe angst. Whatever.  I tell her if she wants to, she can go find the shoes she wants to wear while I get Maxie ready. She jumps up and runs off, instantly happy again. “I be right back,” she says.

Maxie’s turn. Amazingly, I know where his shoes are, which is good because he only owns one pair. I get them on with little problem, and decide to go ahead and put on his jacket. I also wrestle on his hat, which he immediately snatches back off and giggles. Knowing I have no prayer since it’s now a game, I shove the hat in my pocket. He toddles off happily as I go to the stairs to yell to his sister to come back down. I hear noises that aren’t consistent with a 3-year-old trying to find her shoes. I clomp up the stairs, hot now, as I have on my jacket and boots already.

Sure enough, I find her sprawled out on my bed listening to Hansel and Gretel on the iPad. There are no shoes on her feet, which she is waving in the air.

I grab her up, turn off Hansel and Gretel, and carry her back downstairs.  Then I remember the shoes and run back up again. By the time I find them — tangled in the sheets on our bed — and start down again, Max is almost to the top of the stairs, a sippy cup swinging from his mouth.

I carry him back down. Zoe is now building a tower with Legos, still with no shoes and no jacket. I nestle her into my lap and put on her shoes. Again. The same ones we started with. This time she has no problem with them. Then her jacket. “Just me Just me!” she yells when I start zipping her up. She’s in the “I do it” phase, which means everything takes an extra half hour. I let her wrestle with the zipper while I load up the car with the diaper bag, snacks, and drinks.

OK. I’m ready to get the kids in the car. Where are they? Max is in the kitchen, his pants covered in water from the dumped dog bowl. Oh Max. I scoop him up and we run back up the stairs, him giggling the whole way. I take off his shoes, change his pants, finding a poopy diaper in the process. I change it, get  a new pair of pants on him, get his shoes back on and take him back down. I carry him straight to the car and strap him in. He’s happy, a graham cracker in one hand and his sippy cup in the other. I put on his hat while his hands are occupied. It stays in place.

Now for Zoe. I come back inside, and yell for her. I hear a response, but no little feet running my way. “I have idea,” she yells, her new favorite saying. I find her up  in her chair at the kitchen counter, demanding lunch. It’s 9:30 in the morning. She refused to eat breakfast, I remind her. “I have idea,” she repeats. “I want spaghetti and chocolate milk.” Um, no. I promise her graham crackers and water. Amazingly she is agreeable to this. I pick up her jacket off the floor, put it on her, leave it unzipped, and carry her to the car. She is happy now, chattering about Maxie and kitty cats. I strap her in  to the car seat give her the promised food and drink.

We’re off. Wait, where’s my car keys? Swearing not-so-silently at myself, I begin the search. They’re not on the hook where they’re supposed to be. They’re not on the bookshelf right inside the door where they usually are. They’re not on the kitchen counter. I run upstairs, starting to get frantic now, as I have two kids in their car seats in a cold garage. There they are. In my jeans I wore yesterday.

I run downstairs, in a full sweat, and jump in the car. Both kids are happy in the backseat. Zoe is singing what sounds like “Happy Birthday” to her graham cracker. I open the garage door and we back out. We drive a few blocks when Zoe says:

“Mama, I have idea. I have to go potty.”

And that is when I decide we will never leave the house again.

My dad made this fun video of Zoe’s birthday party.

We held a princess brunch on New Year’s Day and had eight 3-year-olds, their parents and siblings. It was quite crowded! But very fun — we decided to try to do different “stations” around the house to keep people spread out. It worked pretty well. The older kids next door were nice enough to come over and do face painting for the little ones. We also had crown decorating with stickers and crayons, all the instruments out and ready for drumming, strumming and general noise-making, and a frog – drawn by Mark – for the kids to kiss after being twirled around. The brave ones agreed to lipstick to mark their spots. Of course we had food too, though we bypassed the traditional birthday cake. Instead, parents snacked on bagels and lox (with mimosas or coffee to choose from), while the kids feasted on cake batter pancakes and milk.

We also had four grandparents on site. Thank goodness. We couldn’t have done it without them. All hands were on deck to encourage sharing, take pictures, pour drinks, and keep track of our own two kids.

Zoe did great, up until about the last half hour. It was a two hour party and she was definitely tuckered out by the end of it. So were we, Zoe. So were we. We understood.

Happy 3rd birthday to our sweet girl!

My baby is three.

Yowzer.

She is completely consumed by the ups and downs of toddlerhood. She’s opinionated, charming, stubborn, sweet, loud, loving, emotional, independent, and so smart.

She also, it must be noted, is a princess.

She is a princess at the grocery store.

She is a princess on walks at Presque Isle.

She is a princess at the playground, even when her mean mother makes her wear pants and a jacket because it’s cold out.

She is a princess at home. Even when we are out doing yardwork and she takes on a Cinderella-esque look.

She is sometimes a princess while she sleeps, down to what she  calls her “princess shoes,” which are sparkly white shoes I bought on clearance on a whim at Shoe Carnival and which she has worn so much they are now gray and not very princessy-looking, at least to my mind.

It’s not enough that she looks like a princess, often complete with tiara, wand and necklace. She has to proclaim that she is a princess to one and all. Of course, she’s three and adorable, so people find this cute and funny. I have reached the point that I just smile and move on. Sometimes, I admit, I roll my eyes.

That’s because this has been going on so long now that most times I don’t even think about the fact that my daughter is walking through Wegman’s in a tiara.

So of course, when the time came, we planned a princess-themed birthday party for her. This was the day after her grandparents gave her a beautiful, authentic-looking astronaut costume for Christmas. She wanted nothing to do with it, to the extent that they took it back to Cincinnati with them. But the day of her party Mark and I presented her with a brand new (read: cheap polyester) princess dress, meant to replace the one she’d worn so much it was stained, torn and getting nubs all over it from the times I tried to wash it. Princess dresses, it turns out, are not made for the washing machine.

She loved her new pink princess dress we gave her. Then her friend Jacob gave her another  princess dress — albeit a slightly different shade of pink — as a birthday present. She immediately — in front of the crowd watching her open her presents — stripped down to her pull-ups to put on the new, even pinker, dress.  Oh, my child.

But perhaps an end is in sight. She also opened a really nice pirate costume for Christmas and likes to wear it around the house with her patch in place and brandishing her sword and yelling Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr at her brother. She is sometimes a dog too, following me around on all fours, barking, and licking me when I’m least expecting it.  Perhaps that’s just a cry for attention from a mother focused on the gigantic mountain of laundry that I can’t seem to scale.

I don’t know how long this princess phase will last. I expect one day I’ll tell her the story of walking through Wegman’s in her princess gear and she will think how silly that was. Of course, she’ll probably be wearing  jeggings and tie-dye, or whatever the trendy clothes are for teenage girls are at that point.

And then, I’m sure, she will probably roll her eyes.

We’ve been doing things outside the last few weeks to prepare for the upcoming cold and snowy season.

Ineviteably, whether it’s putting a wrap on the air conditioning unit, raking leaves, or trimming back plants, Zoe is nearby and always wants to know “Whatchya doin’?”

I always tell her  ”Winter’s coming,” or “we’re getting ready for winter,” or some such thing. It never occurred to me how confusing that concept might be for a toddler until one day while I was tugging yellowed hastas out of the ground. She asked her question, and I explained to her — for the umpteenth time — that I was working on the yard because winter is almost here. That’s when her gaze turned to the street.

“Is that Winter?” she asked, as a jogger raised a hand in greeting as she puffed by.

I laughed. “Nope,” I said. “Winter is a season…” I launched into some explanation about the four seasons, which she clearly was quickly bored by as she interrupted to ask “Will Winter come in a car?” and then “Is Winter a boy?”

I haven’t been able to find a way to convey to her yet that winter is not, in fact, a boy person or a girl person. I’ll try to explain it’ll be winter when it snows, and she’ll say “is he coming on an airplane?”

“No.” I try again, while stifling a laugh. “Winter — he’s not a person…he’s not a he…he’s a season…there’s four of them…” I stumble along until she interrupts.

“Is he a dog?” she asks.

What this girl can do amazes me. She recognizes her letters, knows her numbers and sings more than a dozen songs by heart. She can tell me in paragraphs about her morning at school, knows when to pull her brother away from danger, and can concentrate on a drawing for long minutes at a time.

But it was this talk of good ol’ Winter that made me think about how hard it must be to comprehend this world around her, and understand what an amazing job she does at figuring it all out.  When you see a child day in and day out you can take for granted the milestones and growth. But this time in her life is so incredible because her knowledge base and comprehension is growing so quickly. It’s funny that it took trying to explain something she doesn’t quite understand to get a glimpse of how smart my little girl is.

Our “playroom” is actually part of our divided living room. I can see it from the kitchen and the living room, so can keep an eye on the kiddos while they play/fight over toys. The picture above is about a year old and was taken following the madness of a playdate with five 2-year-olds, but still. You get the idea. Since it’s out in the open, we try to keep stuff put away when they’re not playing — we have two leather ottomans against the windows with storage inside, and lots of baskets we can throw things into. I also had picked up a Lego table for $5 off of Craigslist and my dad and Sallie had given us an old easel that had been my brother’s more than 20 years ago.

They were big enough that I couldn’t put them away, and I didn’t like how they looked in the space. But the kids used them a lot, so I wanted to keep them out. So our solution? We bought four cans of Valspar spray paint meant for plastic furniture and painted them black. They look great, and it was an inexpensive fix.

It was easy-peasy too: We just took the pieces apart as much as possible, scrubbed years of dust and dirt buildup off of them, and then spray painted them in the garage.

Zoe helping to clean the easel.

The Lego table ready for its paint.

Here’s our after photos:

So don’t throw that old stuff away! Just a coat of paint can give new life to old toys!

We had a lovely birthday with Maxie Friday. Mark took the day off work, and we had French toast (a Max favorite), followed by a visit to the Experience Children’s Museum, followed by naptime, followed by dinner with his grandma and grandpa Murphy at Skippereno’s (Max and Zoe’s favorite).

We decided not to have a traditional party, but we still went all out for the little guy:

I loved my banner. I got the letters from here. They’re free, in case you want to do your own.

Zoe and I made this awesome cake. I was so impressed with myself. I sometimes call Maxie my “Very Hungry Caterpillar” because he eats so much and eats EVERYTHING, which made this a perfect cake.

Another highlight: Our visit to the museum.

Where’s Zoe? She is pathetic at hide and seek. But funny.

After a break in the fun for afternoon naps (for all four of us) Grandma and Grandpa Murphy came to visit in time for dinner at Skippereno’s. Maxie had as much fun as we hoped.

Then, of course, home for caterpillar cake!

(awesome birthday plate from my Auntie Annie. Both kids have one. We love them so much we leave them out all year round!)

We were all concentrating on Max and no one was paying attention to Zoe. She took advantage of that situation by chowing down.

Happy, happy birthday to our baby boy. He had such a great birthday that he needed a sponge bath at the end to clean up. He still had orange eyebrows when I put him to bed. 

Note to Mark: Orange eyebrows equal a successful birthday in my book any year.

Happy Halloween!

Max, throwing down gang signs.

 Zoe, so impatient with mommy’s pictures because she wanted to get to the “dance party,” aka ZooBoo.

From our princess and frog to yours, have a safe and happy holiday today!