A Long Overdue Update

Finally some signs of spring... sugaring season!

Our first time at a sugar shack... I never knew sugar on snow came with a pickle and a maple do-nut?

The snow piles were higher than the first story of the house after this mid-March storm that dropped nearly four feet of snow in 36 hours. This was the second time the bucket loader had to come in and reclaim our driveway... after our plow truck got stuck in the driveway and had to be towed out by AAA.

So much snow this year... still falling!

Yes, she does have cowgirl boots to match!

Stewie loves milk! A happy thing... we've been working hard to break his juice habit. The pediatrician says four glasses of milk, water and just two of juice. Mmm. Try no plain water, four to six a day of half juice half water, and one milk at dinner.

Mmm. First Banana Pancakes!

Sad baby.

Happy baby! This one is learning to turn on the water works with the blink of an eye when she doesn't get what she wants.

Standing, pulling up and taking practice steps.

Watching Stewie ice-skate.

Stewie loves skating! I don't know if I want to be a hockey mom...

Can you tell they're siblings or what?

Eliza is such a big girl! At ten months she has four teeth, with her incisors on the way. She's handled it fairly well, though this most recent round has been a little teary. She's maintained a serious army crawl though she now scoots on her butt using one leg to pull herself. Such a little monkey! I can't believe she started pulling and standing up about two weeks ago. She's getting hair; in some lights it looks blond, others light brown, and still some shades of strawberry, especially in her eyebrows. And what eye-lashes! She's clapping, pointing with her index finger, and on occasion will wave. That's been a pretty new development. She's been eating solid food for over a month now. She loves avocados, chicken, and today we learned, banana pancakes. Of course her staple is still Cheerios. She is still happily nursing two or three times a day. Morning is our favorite... especially on the weekends when we can snuggle and sleep in. She bit me once about two weeks ago, hard. I yelped so loud she cried inconsolably for five minutes and she hasn't done it since. Thank goodness, because I'm not ready to ween, and I don't think she is either. She is drinking out of a sippy cup. I've only been giving her water since Stewie is such juice junky. And boy does Eliza love her brother! She watches his every move, and laughs and laughs. Lord help us.

Stewart has had one heck of a winter! As have we. One of the snowiest... one storm was the fifth biggest in VT history. Stewie has been learning how to ice-skate and snowboard. Yesterday was his best day yet. He took ten runs down our hill in six inches of powder, and held himself up almost the whole way, most times only falling once! Next year hopefully he'll weigh enough to learn to stop and turn. His main obsession is still dinosaurs. He had a brief dragon obsession when we made the mistake of letting him watch "How To Train Your Dragon" which was a great movie with a friendly moral; unfortunately my son picked up on the bad guys who killed dragons, instead of the good guys who saved them. We have been trying to curb this... returning to the dinosaur obsession has helped... sort of. As for other triumphs... he's using the potty! And just this week is using it even away from home. He can sometimes get a little punk attitude which is aggravating, but his teacher and other adults say he is very polite! He is still loving school; he's going to be so sad come summer time.