SNOWING LIKE CRAZY!

This morning we barely had any snow on the ground...just a patch or pile here or there. WELL...NOW we have a ton! Claire started asking to play in the snow ALL day. I told we would wait until Daddy came home. Well, so we finally went out about 5 and BRR! It was really really wet, heavy, sticky snow. PLUS it was windy, so it was blowing sideways. I started freezing my face/eyes off after about 5 minutes. And she didn't want to come in! But I told her we could go out again tomorrow. So hopefully it will stop coming down. It's not so fun to play in when it's falling because then it melts on your face and makes your face all cold and wet and freezing. Maybe I should invest in some ski masks and goggles? :)

And I figured out why her boots get full of snow. Her snowpants are only a 2T. Yeah...they were a tad big on her last year, but this year, too small. I could barely get them zipped on her today. Her jammies that she sleeps in, you know the footed ones...they are a 5t and a 6T...insane. This girl is freaking tall...like me I guess. I'm just glad she's slender enough to still fit into the 2T snowpants, even if they are like floodpants. :)

Today I did a "deep clean" vacuum of our bedroom which involved pulling out furniture and cleaning under things...something I've never done since we've moved in. AND YIKES!!! Well, in my defense, we've never lived in once place as long as we have here! In May it will be 5 years. That's a lot of dust, let me tell you! And Claire had a blast, too. For Christmas, she got a gift card from her Glama Lynn and Grandpa Jason, so I ordered her among other things, a toy vacuum, which finally arrived. Who knew toy vacuums would get back-ordered?!!? But our neighbor Christopher has one that she loves to play with so I thought she'd enjoy it.

It's really cute watching her pretend to vacuum. I watched Christopher all day yesterday, and boy, I don't think he put that vacuum down for more than 10 minutes!!!

She also has recent fascination with this Strawberry Shortcake puzzle. It's 15 pieces and says ages 4-7 on it. She LOVES it. She seriously will sit and do it 10 times in a row and still want to do it some more. It was actually one of my puzzles when I was little so it's extra cute! I think I want to shoot myself in the foot if she wants me to "help" her with it again. I guess she just wants me to "play" with her because she can do it by herself! Today I had to laugh when I saw her doing it UPSIDE DOWN! Like, she flipped all the pieces over so they were the brown cardboard and put it together that way, with no help from the picture! I was actually really impressed!

While cleaning up our bedroom she wanted to get in the pack-and-play. I plan on setting up the bassinet feature for the new baby. Yeah...gotta find all the parts! But Claire climbed in and can't even lay down sideways in it anymore! She still said "MY PACK-AND-PLAY!" I told her we were cleaning it up for her brother. I also shoved her bed (aka mattress) on the OTHER side of ours. I had it by Josh's side. But then she kept rolling off. So I put her mattress against the far wall today. Hopefully that will keep her in it better. I wedged the Pack-and-Play against it since it has soft mesh sides. I think it will work and we won't have to buy another baby-gate-fence thingy for the bed.

I need to make a to-do list of things I need to do before the new baby comes. I feel like we are down to crunch time. And like I said before, I am feeling exceptionally huge. So I think I'll try to get all the big moving and stuff done. Then if I have time, I really need to get scrapbooking and organizing print pictures!!!

There is just so much to do. It seems like just normal daily things take longer. I want to have Claire help me with daily routines instead of parking in front of the TV. And she loves it. The other night I made red potatoes. She helped me wash potatoes! She'll go get her footstool anytime that she gets to help. She basically had a blast "scrubbing" the potatoes and playing in water for awhile. Then she wanted to help me cut them. This is where helping is bad sometimes because, um, she so cannot use a sharp knife yet.

So I got out her playdough and told her to cut up "playdough" potatoes, which she was really pleased with since I gave her a real butter knife to use. She was begging me though, "PLEASE MOMMY! PLEASE LET ME CUT A REAL POTATO!" She'll also get really mad if I start the dryer. She wants to press the button! Luckily that's an easy fix!

So while it's snowing like crazy out there, we're trying to get a lot done in here because, well, once the new one comes along, there will be like, oh, say a year of slacking again. ;)