Happy day of love and treats

The thing about kids is that they spur your holiday-celebrating efforts. I'm not going to make heart-shaped French-toasted Nutella sandwiches for myself, as much as I'm behind the sort of mentality that says I'm worth it. But I will make them for my kid, and I will invite my Brunch Partner over with her two kids, because that somehow justifies the effort.

So Josie and her kids came over and we made brunch together and ate it off of festive plates

and it was one of those perfect mornings where the children are everywhere and someone is always on the stepstool to see what's happening on the counter and maybe taste whatever is going on, but no one fights over being on the stool, and no one overturns the bowl of strawberries, and everyone is very reasonable about the amount of French toast they are told they're allowed to have.

Josie brought cookies and icing and we decorated them 'for the dads'

and Eleanor and Tyler got really into spreading the icing

and sprinkling the sprinkles

and everyone ate, like, two (or three) cookies and no one threw fits about wanting to eat ALLLLLL OF THEM, which...if I were only just two or nearly four...(Logan spent literally all his spare time trying to get onto a chair to reach the cookies, but when you'd grab him down he'd just laugh at you like HA HA HA you caught me. Better luck next time, self.)

And then, after we'd fed them a Not Insignificant Amount of refined flours and sugars, they all sat quietly and read books for twenty minutes. It was boggling.

I've always loved Holidays And Other Fun Things, but Eleanor just makes them for me. She gets REALLY REALLY EXUBERANT about anything special and out of the ordinary (and also any delightful ritual, like when it's TIME FOR LIBRARY TIME YAY HURRAYYYYY or YAY WE GOING TO TODDLER GYM YAY WE CATCH A BUS HURRAYYYYY). Basically she is just super stoked on her life all the time. Which I enjoy.

Like a book library, only with fewer books.

We found a toy library today. Well, we found it last week, but it wasn't open, so we RE-found it this week. It's, like, a 15-minute walk from our house but it was also -37 with the windchill today and Joel had the morning off so we took the car.

It's amazing. Eleanor played with literally everything that wasn't in a bag (so, all the baby toys and large riding toys, because all the toys with parts come in bags) while I chose which three things we would bring home.

Last week, the janitor had let us in to look around, even though it was closed, and Eleanor fell in love with a pink rubber elephant about as tall as her waist. All week she talked about that elephant and how we were going to bring it to our house, but when we got back the sheer AMOUNT of things available overwhelmed her, and I couldn't get her to do more than pat the elephant on the head.

So we picked up an alphabet flip board and a train track instead, both of which she's pretty in to. The real winner, though, is a castle with turrets, and a king and queen and a horse and a throne.

And a dragon! He lives in there.

When you press the flag on the top, two trumpets shoot up and fanfare a bit and the drawbridge drops open. We were both QUITE STARTLED when we figured that one out. Eleanor spent an hour walking the queen up and down the stairs, shuffling her and the king between the horse, the throne, and the balcony, and having her change the dragon's diaper.

Our membership was $20, and for that price, none of these toys are going to clutter up my house after Eleanor is tired of them. I don't have to store them anywhere while I'm waiting for them to become exciting to her again. I'm not shelling out dollars for a toy she ends up not liking, and I can take risks on things that are outside her comfort zone.

In sum: toy libraries. Look them up.

No one in this family has an immune system.

We took a family sick day on Tuesday.

Sunday we had been at a Super Bowl party with a dozen other couples and what seemed like THOUSANDS of children under the age of seven, and on Monday Josie texted me to let me know that four of those children had been throwing up.

Whatever it was, it must have been in the not-booze, because no one got sick but the kids and the pregnant woman. After Josie's texts I started to feel nauseated, but you know how it is with Nausea of Suggestion, but then I woke up at midnight and spent the next six hours alternately throwing up and burrowing into a nest of quilts and pillows and towels I built on the bathroom floor, since I am too pregnant to just spread myself across the tiles like a regular sick person.

Joel had just come down with a cold and hadn't slept all night because our bathroom is hard by our bedroom, but he went out at six to pick up ginger ale and crackers, and then came back and went straight back to bed. I got Eleanor up and made her some toast and let her eat it on the couch because I couldn't stand the thought of sitting at the table while she ate her oatmeal.

Then *I* went back to bed, and Eleanor ran around the house doing Eleanor Things. I've never been so grateful that she's not mischievous. At one point, we were all wedged in the bed, Joel watching tv on his computer and sleeping, Eleanor watching The Jungle Book on my computer and occasionally marching the length of the bed, and me sandwiched between them, not sleeping because of the marching, but not NOT sleeping, either.

Eventually I staggered out and lay on the floor in the living room, and Eleanor (who has had a weirdness about me laying on the floor, or across the entire couch, or basically doing Anything Out Of The Ordinary in the past) let me be sick and rest my body while she sat on the couch and chatted with me, or read, or ate the hunk of cheese and bowl of peanuts I gave her for her lunch.

I kept an eye on her from down here, in case of choking.

I slept during her nap, and in the afternoon Joel emerged from the blankets and then I don't know what happened, but I was asleep on the couch. And I kept waking up and Eleanor would be reading and Joel would be paying bills and I'd feel like I should get up, and then I'd be asleep again.

I slept from when I put Eleanor down at seven until six the next morning, and now I am fine. Joel wasn't AS sick so he's been sick for LONGER, and there's a lot of this going on.

We're coming to BC again soon, so I'm hoping this is the sickness we were meant to have then. I'm hoping neither of us catches Joel's cold, I'm hoping no West-Coast-Specific cooties catch us when we get there. We have paid our sick dues.

Ways you can tell she is big now.

The pigtail, obviously.

The octopus, obviously.

She uses scissors (inexpertly but with concentration).

She drinks from a cup now, like a person.

She sits at the table (on a booster seat), like a person.

'Eleanor not have a tray!' she says, pleased.

She has pink grown-up-lady nails.

(Joel and I are unanimous in not liking the grown-up-lady nails. I thought two would be old enough but it looks ridiculous on her so I will 'lose' the bottle of non-toxic Piggie Paint and bring it out again next year. Or maybe this summer, for her toeses.)

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.