A picture is worth...

I saw this on another blog: http://ourspecialneedslife.blogspot.com/ . It pretty much sums up my feelings about winter right now. After a week of daytime temperatures in the upper 30's and 40's, we're down to about a foot of snow on the ground. Of course, that doesn't count the 10 foot piles still towering at intersections and in medians. Blech. I think I've had pansies planted by Mercy's birthday every year (March 7), but I would need a bulldozer to get to the flower beds this year.

"Coming is Kinky"

Sound like the latest title at the local adult bookstore? Nope. Just my two year old saying "something is stinky." Most of Mercy's speech is clear, and she has a pretty amazing vocabulary, but for some reason, when a word starts with an "s" sound, she substitutes a hard "c" or "k" sound. Snow is "kowe," etc. Makes for some...er...interesting words.

I thought it was about time for another edition of Mercy-isms.

Today, I had an appointment with my midwife, Liz. Mercy LOVES Liz. For the entire month between visits, she talks about seeing Ms. Liz, and asks what Ms. Liz is doing. She even pretends to call her on the phone. Today, we got to Liz's office, and Liz wasn't there. She was at a birth. Mercy was not happy.

M: "Where's Ms Liz?"

Me: "She's catching a baby."

M, with furrowed brow: "Was da baby flying through the air?"

Me, snickering: "Uh...no. She's helping a baby be born, like you and Judah."

That seemed to satisfy her. I wasn't trying to be abstruse. "Catching a baby" is the term Liz herself uses, rather than "deliver" a baby, since it's the mom who delivers the baby. Kids take things so literally.

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M: "Mommy, your belly looks awful!"

Me: "Awful? Why does it look awful?"

M: "Because you need to put lotion on it."

Oh. Right. If putting lotion on it fixed the three-babies-in-three-years look, the plastic surgeons would no longer be driving cars that cost more than my house.

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Mercy was playing with her Leap Frog Leap Pad last night, and Benj showed her how to use the pointer to tap the volume buttons and make it louder (much, much louder...thanks, sweetie) or softer. So Mercy would tap a picture to get the Leap Pad to play music, then would tap-tap-tap until the music was at it's loudest and roar "CRESCENDO!" like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. She did this over and over...and over...and over again. She then informed me that another button was "fortissimo." I told her that fortissimo meant loud, and she said "Yes, and crescendo means louder and LOUDER." No kidding. I see music lessons in the near future.

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Mercy loves to sing and dance and listen to music. Some of Mercy and Judah's favorite music is on the Praise Baby DVD's. I don't normally like praise music. Let me re-phrase that. I hate praise music. But these dvd's use some of the best choruses and set them to gentle music, and sweet vocals, and I don't mind listening to them at all. One of the songs is "God of Wonders." It starts with "God of wonders" and ends the phrases with "You are holy. You are holy." The other day, Mercy was wandering around singing in her sweet, off key voice "God of wonderwear, we are holy, we are holy. God of wonderwear, we are holy." And for good measure, she usually sticks a "hayayuyah" in there somewhere too. She had the IDEA, but clearly, the meaning was rather lost on her. I admit it. I laughed.

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And what is Judah doing these days in the language department? He probably has over 50 words at 18 months. I think that's pretty average, or maybe a little above average, but after Mercy's selective mutism until after her second birthday, we hail each new word Judah lisps as a huge accomplishment. He says "garage" when he know we're going somewhere. Today, we passed a parking lot with excavation equipment, and he said excitedly "digger! digger!" (And he was right. It was a digger.) He is getting interested in stuffed animals, and has a cute way of saying babies "bee-ee-ee-beeths," drawing out the first syllable, and lisping on the "s" just a little bit. He says "excuse me" if he sneezes, and "bless you" if someone else does. Besides independently saying words, he will also make an effort to repeat words we use. So unlike Miss Princess, who would just shake her head when we told her to say something. Yesterday, Mercy was dinging Judah in the head with a soft toy, and Judah said "Quit it! Quit it!" And later, he brought a book to Benj and said "Read it." So we need to work on "please. "

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Mercy's current obsessions:

Playing doctor for her dolls, listening to their heart, putting band-aids all over herself and the dolls, checking their blood pressure, giving them all sorts of medicine.

Cooking in her kitchen and feeding her babies soup (preferably chocolate soup with pepper in it)

Her birthday. She asks nearly every day if it's her birthday yet. She wants a brown cake with brown frosting and "pinkles" (sprinkles) and birthday toys.

The new baby. So she would stop asking if the new baby was "borned" yet, we told her that the baby would come when there were leaves on the trees, thinking instead of asking, she could look out the window and have her question answered. Now, she just asks if the leaves are on the trees yet.

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Judah's current obsessions:

Books. He loves to be read to, and favors Curious George, the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series, Dr. Seuss, and any books about things with wheels.

Trucks. Diggers, dump trucks, tractors. He loves them all . He can be half-asleep in the car, but if a tractor-trailer goes by, he comes to life. "Truck! Truck! Truck!"

Trains. He LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine. He says "Thomas" and "too-too" when he sees a picture of a train.

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And that's all the news from Lake Woebegone, where the man is tired, the woman is exhausted, the children are wild, and all of them are sick of snow.

10 to 20 MORE inches?

You have GOT to be kidding me.

And that's all I have to say about that.

More snow photos

Are you sick of snow photos yet? Well, at least you can stop looking at them. I'm sick of snow, and there's not a thing I can do about it.

We made snow cream! Chocolate snow cream! I was a little worried we couldn't find enough snow, but we managed.

Benj had to shovel a path to the woodpile. This pic gives some perspective on the height of the snow--it's up to his thighs.

Benj took a walk up through the woods behind the house to the get up to the secondary road.

Here's the road. At least, it's where the road is supposed to be. If you look closely, you can see a mailbox jutting out of the snow, near the center top of the pic.

Another of the road.

View from the road across the valley, looking toward Sleepy Creek Mountain. It's a gorgeous day.

Snow in the trees.

"Oh it doesn't show signs of stopping..."

UPDATE: As of Saturday night, our total storm accumulation was 32 inches! There are 200,000 people without power in our tri-state area. Fortunately, we aren't included in that number. If the power DOES go out, at least we have heat and can eat. We are still securely snowed in. Our lane hasn't been plowed, and Benj said the radio said to expect it to be at least 2 days until secondary roads are plowed. We also saw the weather forecast is calling for more snow on Tuesday, though I haven't seen any speculation on accumulations yet.

ORIGINAL POST: I can't quite capture how much snow we have here. There is around 2 feet of new snow on the ground, and we already had several inches on the ground from a small snowstorm on Tuesday. We are expecting another 8 inches today, plus high winds. It looks like today may be the first time Benj has ever called off work because of snow, but with accumulations nearing 3 feet with blowing and drifting, and no signs of a snowplow, a 4x4 just doesn't cut it.

This is the view out our back garage door. Benj had shoveled a path last night for Mr. Frodo.

The view from our bedroom window.

The view out our front door, alongside the house. The snow is not quite reaching the window sill. We can't open the front door the whole way.

Just Because

Mercy checking Baby Molly's heartbeat

Judah taking his own temperature

Mercy taking the dog's blood pressure. Do you see a trend here?

Milan, here I come

Farm Show Fun

We took the children to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January. This is the second year we've done it, and they love it. It is more fun for Benj and me every year, as they get more interested in everything going on. So far, we usually only manage to look at all the animals and ride the carousel. We've missed things like the rodeo, draft horse pulling, and other things they (and we) would like because the events fall too late in the day, on days Benj is working, or on a weekend. There is no way we would go to the State Farm Show Complex on a weekend. This year, 400,000 people were expected during the week of the show, and though the complex covers acres, the great unwashed masses are packed in the buildings like, well, cattle. We practically had to push through the crowd with the stroller, and that was in the middle of the week. I don't even want to think about a weekend crowd! The day was bitterly cold and windy, and by the time we got there, all the parking lots near the complex were closed, and visitors were being directed to the lots several blocks away. Last year, this wasn't a problem, as Benj and I were each wearing a baby, and carrying a backpack with our food/diapers/stuff, so we just jumped on the shuttle bus and landed right at the front door. This year, as I am rather pregnant, wearing the children wasn't an option, so we piled them and all our junk into the double stroller. There was no way we could get that behemoth on the shuttle, so we either had to walk for blocks in the arctic wind or find a creative solution. Benj elbowed his way into the main parking lot, which was closed with everyone being made to do a u-turn to find another lot, and told the guard that he needed to drop me and the stroller and littles at the door, and then he would go park in the upper lot and ride the bus. The guard told him to hand over the 10 bucks to park, and if we could find a place, we could park. We found a parking spot a few hundred yards from the door. It was perfect. That was a little blessing that made a long day much easier.

Mercy was fascinated by the sheep and cows getting haircuts (yeah, they cut cows hair...who knew?), and got tickled at other cows and sheep getting showers and blow dried. We looked at hundreds of chickens, roosters, and turkeys, admired the peacocks, visited the alpacas, laughed at the goats and piglets, and petted the rabbits. Mercy has since asked to go back to visit the "eemals" at the farm show, so I think she had fun.

Petting the longsuffering rabbits

This sheep cracked Benj and me up. It curled its lip at us as we were walking past.

The end of the day and two tired, grumpy kiddos.

Our final stop: the carousel. Poor Benj was so dizzy when he got off he was almost sick. This is the fastest carousel I have ever seen. I wasn't sure what Judah would think, but he perched right up there. Neither of them was very animated...way past naptime. Judah had the 1000-yard stare by this point, but he didn't cry at least.

In other news, another 1-2 feet of snow is forecast for us this weekend. Bleh. Snow, snow, go away. Come on spring!

Only a month late

It's only taken me a month to upload Christmas photos. I am not the best historian. I mean, I TAKE the pictures, but I don't DO anything with them. I do make sure the date stamp is on them so my biographer can make sense of everything. I know. I'm generous and thoughtful like that. We won't even talk about baby books. When it comes to "hmmm, do I feed my whining, hungry children or write in this baby scrapbook?" or "let's see, do I wash laundry so Benj doesn't have to go to work naked in the morning, or paste these pictures in the baby book (with acid-free glue, of course)?" or "wow, I can't decide whether to fall into bed before I pass out on my feet, or carefully decorate this baby book page with die-cuts," there is just no contest. I'll give you a clue...the baby book doesn't win. I'm sure there are mothers out there who are able to keep their children fed, clean, and happy while keeping their houses immaculate AND are STILL able to record every minutiae of their darling's lives in pretty blue and pink books. And I salute them, though I suspect these are the same moms who had babies who slept 12 hours a night at 6 weeks old, instead of 45 minutes at a time, like mine did. I don't write down dates either, as I never seem to have a pen handy in the interest of keeping my children from eating them, poking out their own, or a sibling's eyes, or decorating my furniture. I know roughly when important events occurred, but that's about it. And really, are they going to need exact dates for college applications or curriculum vitae (says she, trying to make herself feel less guilty for her egregious shortcomings)?

But I digress. Here are the crazy pictures:

These two are Judah playing with his new stacker. As you can see, he was more interested in seeing if he could stack it on daddy's head without it rolling off.

Mercy and Judah unwrapping and inspecting their new Radio Flyer scooter from Nana and Papa. The scooter is in time out right now. Let's just say we should have included helmets with this gift.

And finally, here is a short video of Judah opening gifts...pause the music on my playlist, turn up the volume, and enjoy!

You're a mom...

My kids love music. They love happenin' music, as a matter of fact. So the standard scintillating Children's Bible Hour music **shudder** and Wee Sing just don't cut it for them. I'm always scouring for music for them. They listen to a lot of classical, folk, easy (kennyG), and whatever Benj and I are listening to. Someone recently suggested Go Fish, a Christian group of three dads who advertise their music as "music for toddlers that won't drive their parents bonkers." Mercy and Judah go nuts when I put on this music. They dance, laugh, jump around, and run in circles. Their favorite is the "Jammies Song," but I love this tribute to moms. It isn't rose-colored or sentimental, which I love since, I'm finding that motherhood is 99% hard work, and 1% rosy and sentimental. Pause the music on my playlist and enjoy!