Snow for Sale

We've had a nice few days of snow here. These pictures are actually from last Wednesday evening.
Egan, Elena, and I tried to get ahead of the shoveling. While I cleared the driveway, Elena tromped around through the snow and Egan filled his truck up.





A little bit later, after I had almost finished the driveway, Elena pushed Egan down the walk on his truck filled with snow. When they arrived at the driveway, Elena said, '7 cents please.' I paid her the imaginary money and she said, 'here is your snow' and Egan dumped the truck out. Paying to have snow delivered to your shoveled driveway? I paid another imaginary 7 cents and told them to get rid of it over the snow banks.

There is now probably about 8-10 inches of snow on the ground. It has been a pleasant day of constant snowing, but right at 32 degrees, so nothing accumulates on the street and the plows aren't out. So everything has that fresh dusted look. We are making pannekoeken for dinner. The only thing missing is a fire place for a fire.

Show n Share

Every Friday is Elena's 'Show-n-Share' day at school. For several months, she has been asking to bring her little brother in for her show-n-share. Her teacher, Mrs. Stump, agreed to it. So on Friday Egan got to visit Elena's classroom. It was a huge event for both of them. Egan arrived and went straight to sit next to sister in the circle. Elena shared that this was her little brother Egan. He was two. They liked to play hide and seek and when she hides on the basement stairs, Egan can't find her.



Then the kids asked questions. Can he count? When you play hide and seek does he count? What other games do you like to play with him? When was he born? For his part, Egan held Elena's hand and sort of cuddled with her while he chattered away about fire trucks and horse and buggies and was generally pleased with himself as the center of attention. All of the kids found it funny that he was talking out of turn the whole time! They couldn't figure out whether to interrupt him or wait. Eventually with Mrs. Stump's rare approval for such things, they were simply allowed to talk over him!



Then her turn was over and Egan had to go home. He managed to make it out of the room, but then threw a tantrum in the main office when he realized that sister got to stay in school and he had to go home. They both talked about it all weekend.

Closet of doom, meet Martha Stewart

Our little cape-style house has lots of closets. But most of them are very awkwardly shaped. One of Elena's close is narrow but has three rows of hanging bars!

The hall closet gets hard use for such a small space, because we don't have a mud room in the house (yet). It is so narrow that I can barely walk straight into it, but it had two rows of bars. The first row has two - high and one at knee level. The top shelf held the mitten/hat basket. And it was nearly impossible to get anything out of the closet without knocking something off the hanger or dumping the mitten basket onto your head. As a result, it looked like our closet was vomiting fleeces and mis-matched mittens.



With winter (ie mitten and boot season) upon us again, we couldn't take it any more. After a little reflection, we decided the only option was to remove all the bars, put in cubbies, and install hooks along the side.

Much better, see.


Now we even have individual mitten/hat bins!


Martha Stewart would be proud.

Bitty boy is 2

Happy Birthday Bitty Boy!



I relish that I can still call Egan my ‘Bitty Boy.’ The year from 1 to 2 is always amazing. Talking, walking, running...play shift to the dramatic exploration of the world around.

Physically, Egan really developed his gross motor skills this year. He is very focused on keeping up with the big kids. So it wasn’t long from his teetering first steps that he moved to running and climbing. Egan has little physical apprehension. He will try to climb almost anything from a ladder in the garage to the tallest (1.5 story!) slide at the play ground. He is on the merry go round, the swings, climbing up the rope net. When he falls, it usually doesn’t slow him down. He’s just up and moving again. He is not apprehensive about things - he will go out in the row boat alone with sister (parents right near of course for safety, but not for his peace of mind! He would row across the lake.) Egan is the child that mocks ‘baby proofing’ and has pried the light socket covers off to try to plug in the vacuum in. He will run away after other kids, or dash off to the other end of the playground. It’s both inspiring to see his exuberance but also frightening to keep him safe!

Egan is still a little guy. I don’t have his official stats, but he’s still wearing some 12 months clothes and when compared to other kids his age, he’s certainly holding steady in the 5% for height and weight. He is working on his 2 year molars and now has a full set of chompers, which, thankfully he uses with less frequency than his sister did at this age. He is less interested in things like coloring or drawing. Though he does like to paint with dot markers. He is very engaged by games and puzzles - even if he can’t play them exactly the way the directions say.

In the past month or so, Egan’s language has exploded. He didn’t say very much until this summer, when single words become more common. Now, he strings three words together ‘Daddy play now.’ ‘Read story Egan.’ He likes books, his favorite stories are Biscuit, Duck in a Truck, and anything with trains.

Socially, Egan is an extrovert. He loves people, he feels comfortable in groups, either playing with the big kids or off playing by himself. He has little apprehension of different situations/groups and warms up very quickly. If he sees a group of kids, he will run to be a part of that group. We are lucky to have a tribe of older kids that welcomes Egan into their games and accomodates his younger age. He is starting to copy cat - from cooking, to sisters dress up, to social laughing. Egan likes to do what you are doing so that we can be together. Egan remains an extremely loving child. He wants to cuddle, have hugs, be near you. He wants to push his head against yours and press his forehead to yours and smile. He wants to pet your face, he wants to get under the covers and snuggle in his PJ’s. We cherish these moments of rocking him after nap or cuddling in the morning. We know they are brief in the span of a lifetime. He wants to climb up on sisters bed and snuggle and read books with her. Unlike Elena, he doesn’t have a ‘lovey’ (like her trusted Bunny). He’ll play with stuffed animals, books, toys, dolls, trucks, but hasn’t ‘bonded’ with one. He also doesn’t make up imaginary friends - I guess he doesn’t need to. He has sister.

A few of Egan’s favorite things: Egan loves trucks - fire trucks, trash trucks, tow trucks. He hears a truck on the street and drops everything to go running to climb the chair to look out the window. The garbage truck comes early across the street (5:30 am) if he happens to hear it, he will wake up and chirp from his crib ‘Trash truck!!!! Egan up!!!’ This is of course just what parents love at 5:30 am. Egan loves dogs. He likes to pet dogs and watch dogs. He doesn’t mind licking and a little rough housing. He likes to play with stuffed dogs, feeding them and walking them. Egan loves cooking. He loves his play kitchen with pots and pans. He likes to cook all the board game pieces (so much for that play food!). Egan also love to help in the kitchen. Like Elena, he has a kitchen chair to stand on and always want to help stir, cut (with his plastic play knife), and taste. He likes to help with the dishes, even if they need a secret wash after he is done. He also loves his paci...though his is sort of starting to lose interest during the day (hopefully?!) Egan also loves his sister. He likes to have her read to him. He likes to play with her. He is also starting to be more independent in play and will entertain himself. Like the time he snatched the garlic salt off the kitchen counter and started to use it in his kitchen! See how angry he was when I took it away

(and vacuumed it - mom’s are SO mean sometimes).

Egan’s biggest source of frustration is basically being two! He cannot always express what he wants as we play a round robin family guessing game at his words. When the big kids are doing something and he cannot, he gets mad. When he sets his mind to doing something and it doesn’t, he gets upset. He is pretty good at handling transitions, as long as he wants them to happen!

This year has been so much fun. The fall was filled with discovering our new town. Egan settled in with his nanny, Brittany, and spent most of the winter reading books and playing kitchen while the snow fell. Then it was off for his first international adventure, to Scotland, where he proved to be a wonderful traveler, just like his sister. Summer including trips to Mexico and Maine and lots of time at the pool and playing in the yard. Now fall has arrived again and he begins another year. Who knows if he will get much bigger this year, but we know he will do some amazing things. We’ll keep snuggling you bitty boy as long as you will let us.

Elena is 6

6 Years Old



One year ago, Elena sat perched on another year of change. This is not uncommon for her....3rd birthday preparing for the move back to the US, 4th birthday preparing for the birth of her sibling, 5th birthday packing for a move to Kutztown. Each birthday we seem to be anticipating something major happening in life; this year is however different. We have no major news to announce. And I think this is a good thing for our little girl.

Elena is now 6 years old. And for some reason her 6th birthday seems harder than usual. Second only to her first birthday, which following the cake and presents involved us drinking wine and crying over the videos of her first year. Some how this year she seems older. She is reading - I mean really reading. Like she read all of her birthday cards (a few errors, but none the less). When she reads, it still astounds me. I'm amazed that she can do this. I know that we've been reading to her for years and that she's been talking in paragraphs since age 18 months. Sure she has been learning her letters and writing the names of friends....but still it seems like a miracle when she reads books! I'm quite certain that I didn't read in kindergarten. I know Jake didn't because he was blind as a bat, his vision undiagnosed until 1st grade when he was amazed to learn that for all those months the teacher had been writing on the board during class. Elena reads books to Egan. She reads cereal boxes. And sadly now she can also piece together our parental trick of S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G things. In fact we have taken to spelling things to her so we don't have to say them in front of Egan. How did she get so smart? And she does math, too. She likes to sit up stairs and do math problems for fun 'so her brain will grow.' Now I know that Jake and I are dorks of amazing proportion - but I do not recall doing math for fun so early in life. She'll sit at her dry erase board making up math problems for hours.

Kindergarden has been quite the adventure. Mrs. Patton (known informally by Jake and I as General P due to her uncanny ability to keep quiet control of a room of 5 & 6 year olds - I'm pretty sure that if I was a kindergarten teacher there would be screaming, crying, probably some sort of explosion or flood and you'd find me drinking in my car in the teachers lot) has inspired much of Elena's academic growth. For the most part, Elena really likes school. She loves her journals and projects. She likes her science centers, art, music, fitness...and of course recess and lunch! It was hard to 'sit so much' when she first arrived, but she seems to have settled in. We feel very lucky to have such a hands on, inspiring teacher as Mrs. Patton.

In addition to 'real school' there is also 'play school' (as Elena calls it). The Alley Cats (as we call the neighbor kids) play school several times a week for HOURS. The oldest kid (usually Kaylin) is the teacher and then Elena, Zeb, and Kelly are the students. They have fitness, art, spelling and math tests, worksheets...the whole nine yeards. When not playing school they are using the gas power golf cart as an ambulance and taking turns being the injured person, nurse, doctor, and driver (well, not the kindergarteners yet).

Her growth has been amazing. It's like she is in her spring, new growth everywhere. But, to keep the analogy, it has been a hard winter for Elena. This has been a tough year for her. I guess that with everything that we've thrown at her, the move away from Blacksburg was just a little too much. Some how it seemed to hit at a tender time. She grieved the loss of her two best friends, Mia and Xander (and by that I mean cried herself to sleep clutching photos - talk about parental heart break.) The fall was spent mostly just wanting to go back to the place she was. No doubt that the stress of being a 'kindergarten' added to the effect. We all felt the loss of the Maroon room and going to kindergarten in a new town was sort of like learning to swim by running through your sprinkler for practice before jumping into the deep end. We were all better prepared by Alexa, Jen, and Amanda than we thought, but it was still a shock to the system. Over the fall we came to realize that this move caused some true anxiety in our little girl and we are all working hard to help develop new coping techniques for the stress that she feels (and puts on herself).

Elena and Egan maintain a very special relationship. They don't fight nearly as much as I recall fighting with my brother! And so far no one has been stabbed with a pencil or backed over with by a car (events from the Sewall side). Elena loves to read to Egan and they will play games together. She maintains an uncanny ability to translate his needs and select things that he needs and wants. And sometimes she does use this against him by teasing, but mostly she is a very loving, connected, and special big sister. He clearly adores her and pretty much wants to be like her.

Over the last part of this year, Elena has become much more out going in larger groups and with kids. She enjoyed meeting new people and playing at the playground with other kids now. Elena has also been taking swimming classes (we got behind in the Netherlands and never caught up) and she is starting to enjoy the pool (heated and covered for the winter!) and wearing her goggles. She is getting physically braver and taking more risks as she gets older.

Usually these updates end with a hint of what it is to come....the next big stepping stone on the path of life is ready for her to leap on to. This year, kiddo, it's all up to you. What adventures does the next year hold? What big challenge will you tackle? How will you grow? It's all up to you and we know you will do amazing things. We love you so much.

What can I say, we've been busy

Obviously, for the last year keeping up with the blog has been hard for us. We've been so busy with our jobs and spending more and more time and the kids. The nights seem to just be prep time for the morning and weekends are triage for the weeks. It's hard to find time to 'keep up' with stuff like photos, blogs, friends, family. I wish it wasn't the case. But a new year. A new start.

In fact, I'll start by posting the 'traditional' birthday blog posts to Elena (now just a few months away from her next birthday) and Egan (ready for his 2.5 year appointment!). I always write a 'letter' to my kids on their birthday that tells everyone about their year. This year was no exception. Except I just didn't get around to post it on here. So I'll share those and you can start to catch up with us.