Peepaw's snow!!

Redmond and I have been hoping all winter that it would snow, as Sadie has seemed inordinately interested in winter precipitation. Any time she sees snow in books or on tv, she announces "SNOW!" with great enthusiasm. She also finds snowmen intriguing. Last year, about this time, we had a decent snow event. However, she was too young to really make much of it. But this year, we have been hoping that she would have the chance to actually get out in play in snow.

So, we were thrilled when the forecast this weekend called for a possible 2-4 inches. Dad, however, probably was a bit less than thrilled, as he had planned to visit this weekend and didn't really want to travel in winter weather. What we actually got was a bit more than a dusting- I'm sure our New England blog visitors will giggle at the amount of excitement generated by this tiny bit of snow. But, I was very happy to see it, as was Sadie.

Sadie is continuing to warm up to Peepaw. This may be partially due to the fact that he bribes her with Thomas engines and Barney dolls. This visit, she proudly proclaimed "Peepaw bring TRAIN!" after Dad brought her a little Rosie engine. And after he left, she stated "Peepaw SNOW!", as if he somehow was responsible for our winter precipitation...

Here, Dad reads Sadie a book.






And here are a various assortment of pictures of Sadie playing in the snow...







This is our front driveway, looking from our house to the road.


I'm carrying Sadie in our wagon...


The local pond...



Our house and yard, and the paltry bit of snow that clings to the roof and ground...


Redmond snapped this pic of our whirligig covered with snow...

I love aluminum lawn furniture... This is a glider we rescued and painted lime green...


I WAS wearing a hat, but Sadie decided to snatch it off my head and wear it herself...

A few new pics...

Not much new going on this week... Sadie's first potty visit has not yet been repeated. I guess we need to procure better reading material for the bathroom... ;-)

This weekend, I took Sadie to Griffin's second birthday party at My Gym in North Raleigh. Redmond was under the weather yesterday, so he stayed behind to rest. He needed the rest, because as I was on my way out the door, I realized that I could not find my keys anywhere. We both looked frantically, high and low, and after almost an hour of panicked searching, we found that our dear daughter had opened a rarely used drawer in the kitchen and stuck them in the back of the drawer. So, needless to say, we arrived late. As usual, the vast majority of my pictures were unusable, due to lighting and fast moving children. So, here are the few that are salvageable, along with a couple of videos...

Sadie, jumping on the trampoline...



Sadie in the ballpit with Philip and Twyla...



Here's the proud birthday boy! He doesn't realize this, but he's going to be a big brother any day now...


The ballpit was a source of great excitement for the kids. I was reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer and Marge put Maggie in a ballpit, where she and hundreds of other babies just sunk to the bottom for all of eternity. Robena and Philip sit with Twyla, who tries to decide how she feels about this strange proliferation of brightly colored round objects.

And Sadie contemplated the ball pit for all of, about, 2 seconds. Then, she dove in, head first.

Another dark picture of Sadie in some kind of a tunnel.

I can't believe little Reilly is already 13 months old!

Taking a two second breather...


And back we go to the ball pit...

The birthday boy in the ball pit...

It's potty time! Wheee!

Only parents can understand our fascination with the bathroom habits of our children... Sadie used the potty for the first time this week! You would have thought she'd discovered a cure for cancer by my ecstatic, fawning praise. She has no interest in the little potties; she just climbed up on the big potty when her bath was running, said "I go potty", and there she went.

Now, some parents will yawn over a 26 month old child using the potty for her first time. I admit that Redmond and I have been on the non-pushing side of the spectrum. We both decided that changing diapers is less work than cleaning the floor over and over. I think we figured that when we'd often, with no pressure, offer the opportunity to use the potty, but just let her take the lead on being ready. So, she did this two days ago and hasn't since, but I'll just try to leave the door.. or shall I say lid, open for future ventures on the big people's potty.

We have absolutely no pictures to post this week. Our weekend was pretty busy. On Saturday, we attended Dana and Finley's baby shower. We didn't get any pictures because the party was at one of their friend's space age bachelor pad, and we spent our time racing after Sadie from room to room, trying to keep her from toppling over glass tables, knocking over lamps and expensive looking breakable figurines... That night, we visited our friends Robena and Philip and their two year old, Twyla. There was another little girl there; Paula and Mary Alicia's daughter Katy Bren. I think I forgot my camera that night. On Sunday, my friend Anne and I got our kids together to play in a retro sort of park in Cary. I miss the old-time parks with metal or wood playground equipment, merry-go-rounds and teeter totters and the like. As cool as they are, though, the vintage parks were considerably riskier than the modern parks, and she almost bonked her head on the merry-go-round and fell right off the teeter totter. So, there were no pictures on Sunday either. I'm lame.

This weekend we are attending Griffin's second birthday party, so hopefully, we can get some decent pics of all the cute little kiddies.

Home stretch! Whew!

Here's the last entry from our holidays...

We visited Aviation Park at the RDU Airport. This was Sadie's second visit to the park, and what a difference six months or so makes. The last time we came here, her interests were pretty much confined to animals, and she was more interested in playing in the playground than in watching planes land and take off. She's now very plane-centric, and spent most of the time saying "airplane gone" as the planes took off, "Hi, airplane" to the planes landing, and "baby airplane" to planes that were small or high up in the sky. She's been talking about airplanes ever since.

Some baby airplanes.

Daddy gives Sadie a bird's eye view.





The air traffic controller's tower. On the observation deck, there are speakers that broadcast the radio channels of the air traffic controllers, so you can hear them talking to the pilots. It's pretty cool, though God forbid some small child is present when there is trouble. That would probably be traumatic.

Sadie takes a bench break.

Climbing on the spider structure in the playground area.

Sadie munches a Fig Newman with great gusto.


Later that afternoon, we strolled to our neighborhood ponds to see if the recent rains have made any dent into our severe drought situation. The ponds were almost non-existent the last time we saw them- now there is definitely water there, but we have a long way to go, and we are forecasted to have a dry winter and spring.

Sadie and Obi.


Sadie loves to play with the canoe at the pond. Luckily, the land owner is very cool about letting people on his land and doesn't mind people using the boat. It's kind of there for all of us.







Mr. Obi-Wan is quite the distinguished gentleman. He's probably about 10 or 11 years old now, but he is still quite the puppy at times. It's hard to watch your beloved pooch slow down with age, though.


Sadie and Daddy traded hats. What silly Griggs they are...

Holiday pictures, round 2

Whew! This is a massive entry! I'll have one more to post, most likely tomorrow...

This is our cabin in First Landing State Park. Pretty rustic, eh? No phone, tv or internet connection. We enjoyed being "off the grid", so to speak, for almost a week. Thankfully, we did have power, water and heat.

On the evening we arrived, "Pee-Paw" came to visit, bringing Sadie a Barney doll. Sigh. Sadie loves her some Barney. She also was happy to see "Pee-Paw". She's been walking around saying "Pee-Paw" for the past few days. She's said "Pee-Paw GONE", "Pee-Paw play", and something about Pee-Paw and a helicopter and an airplane, which I'm still trying to decipher.

Dad feeds Sadie a fortune cookie. We got Chinese take-out. Yes, it's rustic there, but as soon as you leave the park, you're in Virginia Beach. One of our fortunes said "Enjoy your meal? Order one to take home!" I was saddened.


Sadie poses in front of the fireplace, which we dared not use. See the cinder block walls?

The next day, we met Marsha, Robert, Lily and Lucas at the Portsmouth Children's Museum. I feel like the grand patron of children's museums everywhere. This one has been around for years and is quite impressive.

Here's one of the "grocery stores" you find in these museums. Special on Aisle three on eggs and Sadies!

Sadie and Lily climb into a bus. They both look somewhat bemused.

Daddy and Sadie, inside a real vintage Portsmouth fire truck.

Sadie, motorcycle mama, atop a police chopper.

This is really cool. You stand inside this circle, lift the ring, and are inside a bubble. For some reason, the bubble didn't show up.

Sadie contemplates yet another slide experience.

Yay! Train tables! This room had several of them and was like a kind of Shangri-La for the kids. Sadie, Lucas and Lily have fun playing with trains.


Next, we wandered down the road to a building that hosted the old Coleman's Nursery animatronic figures. When I was a child, it was a Tidewater tradition to visit Coleman's Nursery every Christmas and wander through their Christmas land. They've been around at least since the early sixties. There were swaying elves, Santae that bobbed, and nodding penguins. As a child, the display was grand and magical. When Coleman's Nursery closed, the displays were orphaned, so the Courthouse Galleries downtown took on the collection. I so wish more of these pictures came out- most were blurry. The elves, particularly, were Kafka-esque. So many of these displays are almost kind of creepy now.

A waxy Santa peruses a Christmas list while bobbing back and forth.

Please blow up this picture. These carolers look positively maniacal. They look like lost dead souls screaming in agony.

This is supposed to be a boy who has slipped on his ice skates, falling down, but it looks rather gruesome to me.


Penguins with igloo and a rather wee seal. Sadie kept saying "BABY penguin". She's fascinated with babies. Anything smaller than another similar object is a baby. Therefore, we see "baby" sticks, "baby" boats and "baby" airplanes.

We did quite a bit of hiking in the park. Here are a few pictures of our first hike on the Bald Cypress Trail. First Landing State Park is the northernmost location for Bald Cypress swamps.





We stopped for an outing at a playground in Virginia Beach. Our girl has to have a regular dose of swings and slides and things to climb.


Meanwhile, back in the cabin, Sadie kept climbing into this cabinet, closing the door and saying "Bye Bye!"

We had Robert, Marsha, the twins, and Redmond's best friend Donald over for a cookout. Here, the three kids are amused as Daddy and Robert make faces at them...

Sadie rode quite a bit in her new Radio Flyer wagon.


We visited the Virginia Beach Aquarium, where we promptly forgot to take pictures inside. However, we walked along their nature trail and captured a few images there.

Sadie by the water.


This is the back of the aquarium. We've been going to it since the early 1990's, when we attended training to become part of their stranding team. Unfortunately, we moved to Montana before we could complete our training. The stranding team rescues beached whales, injured or orphaned wildlife, and oil slicked birds and sea animals.
Pretty view of the river.
We hiked with Dad and Sadie on a trail in First Landing that replicated a Powhatan village from the 14th-16th century. I was amazed at the tiny living quarters. Here is what would be the chief's residence. It's supposed to be an "executive home".

Here is a typical fishing camp.

We also strolled on the beach.
Here's the Virginia Beach boardwalk. I've always preferred more natural, less inhabited beaches, but there's something compelling about Virginia Beach in the winter. All the buildings seem empty and stark; somewhat lonely, and there are few visitors.
Okay- one more entry tomorrow! Whew!