Snowflakes

It did actually snow here on Thursday, closing schools (and work for Chris) on Friday, and I have photos of that still in the camera. But how interesting that a couple days earlier, we had made paper snowflakes from coffee filters and taped them up in the windows!

This was one of the craft ideas I'd planned for us to do during the Christmas season... I think I had as much fun with it as Caroline! I hadn't made a paper snowflake in a long, long time.

Caroline helped with a lot of the folding. We just used round coffee filters (I have been working off the same bag of filters since I started college, oh, in 1997!). I found it to be helpful for Caroline when I drew lines on the filter for her to use as a guide while cutting. She tried a few randomly with no pre-drawn lines, but many of those ended up with gaping holes or nearly cut into separate pieces. So, if you are going to do this with preschoolers, draw some basic lines for them to cut along!

Cecilia was interested for about two minutes, and then she went off to the closet and put on Caroline's flip-flops and pretended to go to the beach... you know, for some contrast.

We made quite a mess on the floor... but that just means that I got to use my new vacuum!

Here are the snowflakes in our den windows:

Our friends have snowflakes in their windows, and we see them each time we walk past their house, so I was inspired to do some as well... but we put ours in the den, which faces the backyard, so nobody will walk by and see ours. Our front windows have blinds on them, though, and our den window blinds are almost always up, so we will see the snowflakes more often here.

Big Stuff and the First Sign of Spring

Here's our first sign of spring... the yellow daffodils always bloom first around here, and it seems like they are in everyone's yards. They die off pretty much as soon as they finish blooming, but they are pretty while they last. Caroline picked a few of them so we could bring them in and have a centerpiece on our table. We have been having temperatures in the mid 60s recently... hopefully our blueberry bushes won't get confused gain like they did in 2007, when they began to grow during an early heat wave and then promptly died when the temps went back below freezing (as is normal in March!).

The girls examined these daffodils closely... Cecilia looked and did not try to grab them, surprisingly. This is just one patch we have of them - there are ore that grow around our little pond.

And look at this big girl (disregard the snotty nose, please)! She is not only standing alone - for a long period of time - but she got herself into this position with nothing around her! in other words, she went from sitting to standing position on her own. Now, she is not walking... Caroline walked for months before she could get herself upright without pulling up on something. Cecilia has chosen a different order in which to do things. She did take one small step while standing here, but she still does not seem quite sure of how to move while upright. She is mighty pleased with herself for being so big, though!

She likes to get upright, then squat down, then stand up straight again, over and over. She also will squat so low that she puts both hands on the ground, and then straightens her legs and looks upside-down through her legs.

Here's that teeny little step I mentioned...

I'm big stuff now! Soon I'll be able to keep up with Sister!