Blizzard

At the beginning of February, we had an official blizzard that dumped 18+ inches of snow on us!  I've never in my life seen that much snow.  (See Justin's blog coverage of the event here and here.)  Elias was fairly oblivious to most of it, although we all got pretty tired of being stuck in the house after a few days!  We did try to go out and play in the snow on the fourth day after it fell, but Elias didn't like it so much.  The snow was too powdery to build a snowman, which disappointed him gravely.  Then he couldn't throw snowballs either, so when he threw it in the air, the wind just blew all that powdery snow back into his face!  Combine that with the fact that it was too deep for him to walk in, and it just wasn't much fun.

In this video, you can see the progression.  Fun the first few minutes, then he discovered he couldn't walk because he kept falling down and landing on his face.  So at the end you'll hear him start to cry and say "In the snow, please!"  I think he meant, "Out of the snow, please!"

It turns out that Elias would rather be standing NEXT TO the snow and just playing in it with his hands rather than standing IN the snow.  Lesson learned.  All future snow romps have been on the shoveled driveway and were great successes!

First Snow

This winter has been absolutely insane when it comes to snow and weather!  We are truly blessed, however, that God has kept us safe and warm, and provided us with some sweet family time together when the weather outside is frightful!  Our first big snow hit mid-January, and it was accompanied by sub-zero temperatures.  Sooo, I waited to take Elias out in it until like the 4th day after it hit, when the sun came back out and it was warm enough to stand being out there!  (Note: Remember this is the girl who was comfortable living in the West African DESERT for 2 years - I'm not a big fan of cold.)  Elias REALLY enjoyed playing in the snow, though, and Daddy had fun throwing snowballs with him!

 

It may look here like Elias and Daddy are building a snowman together.  But what is really happening is Daddy is building a snowman and Elias is crushing it as soon as Daddy gets anything built.  Ah well.  The point is to have fun together, and that was definitely achieved!

Kitty Cat Love

After Christmas, I wrote about the toy cat named Mrs. B that Elias received as a gift and loved so much.  Well, seriously, his affection deepens every day!  We continue to be amazed at how much he love, love, loves this cat!  I said in that previous post that we weren't going to let him sleep with her.  Well, at that point, he really didn't mind telling her goodnight and leaving her behind.  However, it began to cause him serious emotional distress to let her go at night, so we decided that battle wasn't worth fighting.  So he sleeps with his kitty, both at naptime and at night.  You can see her cuddled in his arm in this picture:

In fact, he's pretty much inseparable from her all the time.  She goes with us to the store, to the library, everywhere.  We don't let him take her into church because we know the other kids in childcare might want to touch her, and that would pretty much be the end of the world.  Not going to subject a poor volunteer worker to that!!!

He's really getting into imaginative play these days, and so he "speaks" for her often.  He meows pretty much nonstop, and sometimes he translates (or wants us to translate) what he thinks she's saying.  Tonight we were playing with his plastic bowling pins, and he set her up so she could watch him bowl.  Then, when he got a strike, he would say in a high-pitched voice "Meow!  Good bowling, Elias!"  HA HA HA!

He'll also have her participate in dancing or jumping or whatever activity is going on.  At the library this week, she came in with us, and she participated by clapping and dancing at appropriate times during the songs.  Then today we were watching Diego, and he had Mrs. B jump along with Baby Jaguar.

So he grows deeper and deeper in love with his kitty every day - Justin and I just crack up at the stuff he comes up with!  I think we'll definitely have to invest in a backup kitty, though, in case anything ever happens to the love of his life!