Snow and Siblings

February . . . what a month! We started with snow, ended with snow, and sandwiched stomach viruses (or "throwing up virus" as the Wrenster calls them) and sleepless night in between. The sleepless nights were due mostly to Nicholas' teething. I'd forgotten how long it took for molars to come in. Really hard for me to believe that it was the shortest month of the year! Here are a few of our snow pictures:


This is the snow just starting in our back yard . . .


And here's a shot the next morning when it was all over. That's a lot of snow for Memphis!

This is what I came home to after work on Saturday:


Drinking hot chocolate and watching it snow out the back window! Me: "Why aren't you outside playing in this?" Girls: "Are you kidding? It's cold out there! Don't you see we're dressed like princesses?" Nice.

The church was so pretty that Sunday morning, too. And by 10:00 a.m. it was all starting to melt. Didn't even get a snow day out of the experience!



We'll take the rest of the month kid by kid . . .

Nicholas

What a great kid! Ignore the outfit. I didn't dress him or take the picture. I've ended up with a lot of red and blue in his wardrobe somehow. I'm just now starting to really appreciate the differences in girls and boys. Michael's pretty sure that he's got a killer pitching arm, and we're working on the "only throw balls" thing. Woefully unsuccessful. Quite a little temper, too. Didn't see that one coming.



Interestingly, though, Nicholas likes to be read to even more than the girls did, and I love that Mary Wren is willing to "read" to him while Lydia is at school.

Lydia
Lydia has really blossomed with her reading, too. All of a sudden she is going through "chapter books" so quickly that we're making frequent trips to the library in order to curb her appetite.


It's a good thing she didn't inherit my propensity for motion sickness, because she reads non-stop in the car as well. This came in handy on our recent trip to Dallas for her yearly check-up with our surgeon. Unfortunately, we were down a portable DVD player due to unnecessary roughness by the girls. In order to drive home the lesson of taking care of your possessions (especially when you didn't pay for them), we refused to have it repaired prior to our trip. It goes without saying that this punished Michael and me much more than the girls. Overall, it was a great trip. We left Nicholas with Michael's parents - the first time for me to leave him, and yes, it was tough. But it made for a nice time with the girls. We ate at a little restaurant called The Purple Cow (chosen purely by the name), and the girls thought it was great!



As usual, we stayed at the O'Brien's home. For those of you who don't know, the O'Briens are the parents of friends of ours here in Memphis. When they found out we'd decided to go to The International Craniofacial Institue in Dallas for their cleft lip & palate team, they opened up their home to us. Understand, they'd never met us. Just heard about us through their son and daughter-in-law. My children now consider them a 3rd set of grandparents. We love the O'Briens! And to think, we considered politely turning them down initially. I mean, how awkward would that be, right? Staying with a couple that we didn't know - sometimes for up to a week at a time with a small child just out of surgery. We knew that we would be traveling to Dallas at least once a year until Lydia was about 17 or 18 years old. Now we actually look forward to these trips because we get to see our friends! It was, without a doubt, part of a Divine plan. The O'Briens live less than 10 minutes from our hospital there, and less than 10 minutes from the Orthodox church we attend while there. Here are a few pictures of last year's trip (when they met Nicholas for the first time). Unfortunately, the O'Briens were out of town when we were there in February, so we missed them terribly!


Meeting Ed


Meeting Sandy


Girls playing in the O'Brien's back yard

Lydia got a great report. She's started her orthodontic work. I hate tightening the appliance, but she's a trooper. Her next (and biggest) surgery will be sometime in the next year, depending on when certain teeth come in. Here are a few pictures from February's trip. There's a park close to the O'Brien's that we like to visit:







And, finally, The Wrenster:



This is a picture from a Little Gym birthday party she went to recently. She knows no fear. She has, however, been demonstrating some OCD tendencies that are quite interesting.


This is a picture of her watching a movie during one of the "throwing up virus" times. Notice the careful placement of every stuffed animal she can fit on the couch. It takes her a good 15 or 20 minutes of prep time before she's ready to watch a movie. And she becomes quite undone if anything is moved from it's place. Nicholas has quickly learned how to get a really good reaction out of her. I dug up a picture of Lydia from a few years ago - lining things up in our hallway:



The two of them actually play a game they call "The Line-Up Game." They simply line up every small toy they can find around the perimeter of their room, down the hall, and then down the stairs. The clean-up from this game is not an enjoyable process, but I've learned it's not a battle that I choose to fight. It usually involves Mary Wren throwing herself down on the floor (dramatically) and , with hand to forehead, crying "It would take forever to clean this mess up!" Yes, it would. And, if I can talk Lydia out of doing all the work herself, it may stay there a day or two. Until Mary Wren finds the energy to tackle her share!