Sunny Solstice at the Playscape

This Winter Solstice was quite a departure from the typical first day of winter in Cincinnati. It was sunny, over 60 degrees and absolutely lovely.

We had a wonderful time celebrating the "official" coming of winter with friends from school at the very cool, add-it-to-your-to-do-list-immediately Nature Playscape at the Cincinnati Nature Center.   

What's a playscape, you ask?  Almost 2 acres of "intentionally designed to provide children with opportunities for unstructured play in a resilient version of local natural habitats. Native plants, fallen logs, boulders, rocks, water and soil create forest and field habitats for children to explore. CNC’s Nature PlayScape contains very few man-made structures, (swings, slides, etc) and strives to re-create the kind of childhood experience many parents and grandparents had in nature when they were young."   

Put simply, a playscape is AWESOME!  It's the yard we all wish we had. And it is a blast to explore (even in the winter).  

On this day there were the typical natural structures to manipulate and explore with the added bonus of lots of muddy puddles. We can't wait to get back to the playscape and play some more!  

Here are some photos of Josie and her friends. We love this crew!

Josie & Lucia discuss sight words on a rock. LOL!

Happy Winter Everyone! 

Holi-daze!

Excuse the overuse of Holiday word-play, but this December has been a huge blur.  I had several out-of-town work trips in December and at least one of the four Schneiders has been sick with something every day this month.  We also had some massive neighborhood & home repair action that left us with a totally destroyed front yard in the name of a new gas line and some pretty significant roof and brick work done to stop the flood of water into my office and the girls' room.  Yea, so it wasn't until about December 20th that I realized it was actually December.  As hard as it was to leave so many things on my To Do list undone, I stepped away in the middle of some work projects and took a couple of extra days off this week to try to get into the holiday spirit. (I hope those of you with paid holidays & vacations don't take them for granted!)

We put up a lot fewer decorations and our tree is still not actually "finished" but the house still rings with holiday cheer.  (And I can't tell you how awesome it is to be putting that FOURTH stocking up this year when I went round and round with myself at the time about whether or not I should buy it - so glad I did).


Anyhow  - that's about enough Bah Humbug! Now onto the Ho, Ho, Ho!


So, in the name of getting December 1st through 22nd off of my camera and onto our blog, enjoy!

Josie's favorite vintage Rudolph from Little Louie's Christmas days taking a nap under our tree - where Josie put "her" after literally jumping for joy when she found it in a box of decorations.

Asking if she could get pictures posing with Christmas things. The results -

Beads

Tree

Angel

Little Drummer Girl -

Josie climbs the ladder to help with the felt garland on the first of five or six nights it took to trim the tree.

Bea is impressed -

And adorable -

This next series is 100% Josie at its finest.

Notice first - her outfit - she dresses herself and has some hilarious ideas about what works. We go with it.

Now this is what she was working on - building stairs to lead her up to her stool so she could then jump on the chair. We went with it.

But like so many good ideas, the plan grew and the stairs transformed and form replaced function.  (See that tongue? That means she's serious.)

 Art emerges :)

Look closely - some coasters, toys, baby monitor, remote control - silly, sweet Josie!

Here are a couple more from our "fancy pants" photo shoot. Josie wanted to pose in pictures with us because we looked so fancy!

And one random day in December, Lou fashioned mouse ears for Beatrice out of an egg carton and piece of string - just because.

This is truly Venus' favorite time of year -

Back to decorating the tree again - we added a little bit more each night over a couple of weeks- 

Have you all noticed Bea's mohawk? Because it is rad.

My attempt at a photo of all three of them.

Mobile funky-haired Bea:

Lou captures Bea's inner glow-worm :)

 Our pedicures -

First Christmas gifts of the year (Thanks Mariah) !

Just last night - adding a couple more ornaments -

And I will leave you with a little collage of Josie before she left last weekend to go for the annual Cookies & Santa trip to Grandma and DD's.  She wanted to dress fancy and this is what she came up with. Then she wanted to "pose for lots of pictures making all different faces" (I fear I've created a monster my friends).

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ONE AND ALL!  

MAY YOUR DAYS BE MERRY AND BRIGHT!

Baby Beatrice at 9 months

Bea hit the nine month mark recently (and oh heck we are knocking on 10 months already) so a good overview of what's new is definitely long over-due.

At nine months...

She now has four teeth!  Two toppies popping through to join the two bottom ones - and she knows how to use them (ouch).

She is crawling like it's her job. She can also get from lying down to sitting easily.

As if the new crawling isn't enough to keep us on our toes, she moved from "crawling" to "crawling-as-a-means-to-getting-to-furniture-to-pull-herself-up-to-standing-and-cruising" in a matter of hours.  She keeps trying to stand unsupported, but that still ends with a pretty big boom these days.  

She has discovered the stairs...and the cabinets...and the cat food...and every morsel of food or dust-bunny or itty bitty Josie toy. Seriously, do babies have some kind of sixth sense for this kind of thing? Akin to this insane skill, she also has the ninja-like ability to find paper and eat it in exactly the amount of time it takes an adult to blink. 

Food is pretty low on Bea's list of priorities. She'd rather do lots of other things than eat - including sleep. She still nurses but it's all business. And it requires a fortress of solitude in most instances. She's on to finger foods now and her favorites are steamed peas, steamed carrots, crackers, yogurt, soft cheeses and cheerios.  And she'll never turn down a mum-mum.

Bea & Josie sleep in the same room, and up until the last month, Bea was a through-the-night-without-a-peep sleeper in her crib.  She was sick with the stomach bug for a week and now has an upper respiratory infection so has spent much of the last month next to me in our bed nursing (and coughing and throwing up) around the clock.  We co-slept with Josie, so it's actually quite nice to have Bea in the bed with me because, especially since I am working full-time, it feels really important to get that extra cuddle time in with her.  (And in case you're wondering, that means Lou sleeps most nights with Josie, which neither of them would change either.)  

Bea has lots of "words" and regularly uses mama, dada and an emphatic BAA that we think may be her trying to verbalize her own name. We've gotten a couple of DOs out of her which is likely what Josie will be for awhile.  She's starting to point and things (like Venus) with AAA and is picking up on some signs. She isn't signing anything herself yet, but if you sign to her she recognizes what you are "saying." 

Bea continues to be a totally mellow, super-sweet little one. Her favorite toys are her drum, music table and kazoo.  She *loves* water and baths.  She spends at least part of every day in the ErgoBaby carrier with either Lou or me. 

Josie & Bea are playing more and more together. The biggest problem they have is that Josie wants to always hug and squeeze and smooch her, so we are trying to teach Josie to give Bea some space. 

We've given up on getting back to any sort of predictable routine until 2012.  We had to get a new nanny after it became clear in many ways that the person we hired was not a good fit for us and we were not a good fit for her. It was a very unfortunate situation and threw things into a tailspin for awhile. We found someone new who is absolutely wonderful and things are starting to feel at peace around here again.  All in all, life is pretty good these days!

Twinkly toes

Yesterday on a whim, Josie and I decided to get pedicures after doing some holiday errands. It was her first "real" pedicure, although we have fun with our Piggy Paint at home often.
Those of you who know Josie personally won't be surprised that she just sat and chatted away with the pedi guy the whole time. She told him all about school, her cousins, her best friends and her plans for Christmas. I was cracking up, because she jumped right into it - kicked back in the massage chair and chatted away.
This extra (slower) time together makes me realize how much I miss her now that she's in school & I am working full-time. Three cheers for mama/daughter time (and for purple glittery toes with a confetti topcoat)!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4