One baby's terror is another baby's eight-legged friend.

Remember how Eleanor used to be so terrified of that octopus and then she kind of got over it?

He's been in a drawer since we got to Saskatoon, and today Joel had Eleanor out on the town so I was organizing some things and pulled him out to make space in that drawer, and BOY WAS SHE EXCITED TO SEE HIM when she got home.

Mice to meet you, ockapus!

You come walk over here wif your legs.

This is called a book. It iss for reading.

I love you, ockapus.

We've been out and about.

We had about three weeks where it was too cold to get the mail (our mailbox is literally at our door. You don't even have to step outside. But you have to OPEN the door, so) and now we've had a bit of a thaw. It's been amazing. I like my child so much more as a person when we've been outside for a little bit, even if it's just to go pick up milk. I mean, we're still bundled like

but no one's crying frozen tears because of how badly their hands hurt. Anyway. With our newfound and possibly temporary ability to leave the house, we have been:

Going to the library, where we read books to t-rex.

Or make someone read books to us AND t-rex.

Going to Josie's for a belated birthday brunch.

Eleanor cannot hold her sugar. Her naptime that day involved a lot of high-volume singing, as well as some discovering that she could peek out of her window.

Going to the zoo because it's free in the winter because HAHA it's so cold, like you'd pay.

But all the large predators are out in force, so.

Going to Toddler Gym and having lovely picnics there.

Going to the play place and making friends. (Really, having friends make US because Eleanor can be reallllly socially reticent around kids her own age.)

Building an actual proper snowman because when it's 3 degrees, the snow sticks to itself (but also your mittens. Building a snowman is so much harder than I remember).

When it's 3 degrees, it takes less than 24 hours for your snowman to become an ogre.

Ok but we're not outside all the time (obviously) so we've been inside:

Cleaning stuff.

I need to get a video of Eleanor washing something because she's so officious about it.

Balance-beaming.

Cooking (I got a second peeler so I can just be like, Here spend ten minutes on this parsnip while I do other things, and Eleanor is like, VERY GOOD I WILL PEEL THIS PARSNIP FOR YOU).

I...don't even know.

After a straight week of temperatures around zero, we have some oscillating temps this week (yesterday was -25! Today was -7! Tomorrow will be -27! Thursday should be -1!) which means we get out of the house on alternating days. And if it's warmer than -20 we get out of the house for sure, because you never know when another deep freeze is going to drive us to heavy drinking.

Growth spurt

What IS it?

A pigtail, you call it?

I must look closer.

CLOSER.

*paroxysms of delight*

Joel's birthday

The other day was Joel's birthday. Eleanor made him a card.

Those are triceratopses on the front. Any time she draws a straight line upwards these days, Iss a triceratops! Iss a baby one.

I made homemade blueberry perogies for the first time.

None of them ruptured in the boiling water. The potato and cheese ones I bought from the store were just tough enough to be like, Oh, homemade ones really are better. They're just, I mean, the effort.

Eleanor kept wrapping her fork in her washcloth and giving in to Joel. Iss a present for dad! From Eleanor! Iss a fork.

She is so bad at secrets.

Going around again.

The more things change


the more they stay very much the same.


Also, I had completely forgotten about those jammies in that first video. I am so excited to re-use all of Eleanor's old stuff because

coming soon.

I have whatever the opposite of Buyer's Remorse is.

Our consignment store sells these mittens that go halfway up the arm, and I wasn't buying a pair because they're $16 and I feel like that's absurd.

But then I realized that half of my reason for not taking Eleanor outside to play when it's warm enough is because her mittens fall off, or snow gets in at her wrists, and half of my misery when walking somewhere is because her mittens slip and the thumb gets out of the thumb-hole and she gets all angry about it, and all of these things require ME to take off MY mittens to fix them, and some days it's that cold that freezes your hands INSTANTLY and then you can't feel them for hours.

So I bought the mittens, and I am so damn happy with them. SO HAPPY. The arm-part keeps them securely on her hands so the thumb stays put, and she can roll around in the snow all she wants and don't no snow get in nowhere.

Today it got up to -5 and I thought it might be warm enough to make an Actual Snowman, and even though no dice we still whaled around in the yard for half an hour. Nothing makes -5 feel warm like two weeks of -30.

And the snow is SO DEEP that we kind of just hike through it, and Eleanor has to hold my hand whether she likes it or not.

And then I buried her in it like we were at the beach. WHITE SAND BEACHES.

Wherrrrrre's my feets? Der dey are.

Apparently snow ice cream is a thing you can make, and this string of balmy days is supposed to last at least a week. I know what WE'RE doing tomorrow.

Snowmen in inhospitable conditions.

This is how you build a snowman when it's -30 all the time and the snow is too dry to stick together:

Wait until it's -18. The snow won't get any wetter, but when I lived in Calgary, I thought -20 was cold. Turns out you can still bundle up hard and go outside in -20 IF YOU HAVE TO. But in -30, with a -50 windchill, you don't even want to walk to your car.

Grab three bowls of varying size and a bunch of water conveyances. Fill your largest bowl with snow.

Pat it down.

Squirt water onto the snow.

Use, seriously, so much water. Use all the water you have for the bottom ball, and then go back inside and get more water, which you didn't want to do because this is already taking a while and -18 is still pretty cold. Add more snow, squirt more water until bowl stays full when you squirt it. Unbowl the bowl full of snow-ice (you have to take your mittens off to do this, mittens which are now kind of sodden-frozen because you've been packing down wet snow with them but it's still -18). Unbowl it where you want your snowman to be, preferably where you can see him from inside the house. Stamp down the snow around him, because your biggest bowl is probably Not Big, and the snow is super deep by now, and you don't want him lost in it.

Repeat with the next two bowls, and then burrow a hole into your Iceman's face and stick a carrot in.

You are not going to get any sort of coal or buttons or rocks to stick into the Iceman's face or torso, so he's just going to have to look like this. Good job.

And here's the thing with children, because I was totally like UGH NOT WORTH IT after all that. Eleanor kept falling in the snow (which was hip-deep on her) and not being able to get up, and both our mittens were wet and hers don't stay on and there were tears and I kind of just did the last bit really quickly because let's just get this snowman up and get back inside. But Eleanor is constantly at that window, all like Lookit! DERE he is.

See, Baby? Das our snowman. He have a carrot.

Now he has about a 2-inch snow hat, which Eleanor thinks is just a larf. She's forgotten about the wet mittens and the crying and how Basically Not Fun the experience mostly was, and she's just stoked on this little person we made out of snow.