Busy

Oh, life has been busy lately.  Good, but busy.  Lena is 11 months old and into everything.  I feel like I am always chasing her and removing her from mischief-making.

The bathroom is one of her favorite places: she tries to climb in the tub, pulls toys from the bath toys bin, and throws hair clips and brushes on the floor.  If the toilet lid is open, she's there swishing her little arms back and forth in the water.  Yuck.  We've taken to keeping the bathroom door closed.

Lena can make a toy out of anything, like this milk jug she pulled from recycling.  It was very entertaining: she blew into it and it puffed out, she pushed on the sides and it made a crackling noise. What fun.

Molly has put up with all the kids as babies and the babies just love her.

This girl loves making noise and music.  One of her favorite things to do is turn on the sound machine in her room and smack it to change the sound: from white noise to thunderstorms to songbirds to running streams.   At least when I hear it turn on I know where she is.

Nora adores her little sister.

Lena didn't have a stuffed animal of her own so I took her to a locally owned, really neat toy store. Amazon had Jellycat sheep and cows and chickens - "farm animals" - but I thought I'd see what our local store had.  They were cleaned out after Christmas so the only Jellycat animal I liked was a gray donkey.  I debated, because part of me wanted that adorable sheep on Amazon, but then I decided to show it to her.  Look at that grin!

I bought it and had the employee cut the tags off right away. She was so excited.

What else have we been up to?  Many, many things but here are just a few.

Playing Leappad with her dolly.  Nora loves this little dolly that used to be Clare's.  She's our first girl to be really "into" dollies.

Playing outside.  We've had some great weather for snow creature building.  The kids aren't really into snowmen.

Riding her two hump wump.  (From Dr. Suess's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish)

Eating snow.  A favorite winter past time for all our kids.

A week ago I got out snowshoeing by myself for the first time on our property.  That sounds crazy but last year being pregnant I had no energy.  And, well, life is just busy with four little people and some days I'm too tired from not having slept well (read: interrupted multiple times by little people with bad dreams, etc.) to want to get outdoors.  Yet it felt so, so good to be out in the winter woods again!

Standing on the frozen pond looking back at the house.  

The next day Matt took the big kids snowshoeing (Clare and Karl).

Karl, proud of himself for showshoeing the whole way on his own.

My egg collector, Clare.  Not her favorite job (she hates bundling up in the winter) but she's the only kid who can reach the nest boxes on her own.  She earns a small amount (really small amount) of money each week for delivering eggs to her former first grade teacher, who buys 2 dozen every Wednesday.  Right now we have 29 laying hens and we're selling about 6 dozen eggs a week, which pays for their feed.  Our eggs are essentially free plus we have the added benefit of great chicken manure and the other services chickens provide, like garden tilling and compost turning.