Snowman Shuffle

Today was the Snowman Shuffle, a winter dance at school for the girls. (I don't know how, but I forgot to take pictures, shoot!)

Audrey is still at an easy age. She let me help pick out her outfit, pick out funky socks and boots and put some curls in her hair. Simple, no fuss . . . pre-pre teen.

Zoe is anything but that.

I am beginning to notice just how much Zoe is growing up.

I think that she is changing faster right now, because she is trying to find her place in a new group of friends. I know that she's at a much more difficult age than Audrey.

I have been unpacking boxes of clothing and having the girls try on the majority of it. They've been deciding what is going in their closets, what is too small and what is still too big.

There is suddenly another category that I didn't expect. The pile of clothes that Zoe decided she won't wear.

This is a new thing to me, because she is my garage saler, my deal shopper. Well, she was. Now she's looking at the tags.

Within the last few weeks, I've noticed that I no longer know what she likes.

I am learning a new set of rules. I have been asking Zoe "is this cool?" lately. And this is a new "cool" that I thought I knew, but have been told that I don't.

Cute is for kids. I'm learning not to use the word when referring to her.
Embroidered jeans are only acceptable if they are peace signs, not hearts or flowers.
Neon is the coolest. The brighter the better.
Hair must cover half the face. Which I know I did as a pre-teen, and I now hate it as much as I know my mother did.
Big hair accessories are a must. Bigger the better.

This is only the beginning . . . I know. I'm trying to keep up.

She started getting ready this morning. Took a shower, laid out her outfit, hair accessories, matching nail polish and then proceeded to practice hair styles all afternoon. Before dinnertime she came to me with her DSI in hand. She had taken a series of pictures of ways she was thinking of doing her hair.

This is not my Zoe . . . but it is.

I pointed out my favorite picture, which she agreed on  :) Shocked me that I got that right.

I'm not sure how much I like her growing up. But like all mothers, I don't think I have a choice . . .

But she's not so pre-teen that I can't get her to act like my little girl some of the time : )

One on One

Today is "Ditch New Year's Resolution Day" . . . . . wow, that doesn't put much faith in people's comment to make changes in their lives.

So, if you've had enough, I guess today is the day to stop  :)

But I'm choosing to continue on . . . . .

I've had a very busy few days.

First off, Cameron was assessed for speech. He has difficulty with some of his consonants and double consonants. Some people told me that he'd get it eventually, not to worry. While others told me that he was hard to understand and I should get him checked out before kindergarten.

He was accepted into the program one day a week to work with a speech therapist. The reason was because he changes his "K" and "P" into "T", almost always. I guess that's a hard one to fix. (No wonder the kid has a hard time saying "cupcake") There are more speech related issues that they'll be working on with him, but I was told that that was their main concern.

Because he did so well with the teachers, I told him he could pick something out, we were stopping for a few errands anyways. It was a very cold day, so right away he told me he wanted hot chocolate. So we stopped at the Dunkin Donuts on the way in . . . and of course, he picked out a sprinkled donut too  :)

I forgot how much fun one-on-one time with Cameron is.

Cameron and I used to go everywhere together. Usually alone with the girls in school and KC at work. The twins have really changed his world, along with mine.

We walked around the store with him chatting about everything he saw. We wandered the food, the toys and the Valentine's Day aisles, with him trying to talk me into buying him a 5 foot teddy bear with no success. I wandered Walmart much longer than usual, but it was the most enjoyable trip I've had in a long time.

I have to remember how important one-on-one time is with my children. For both them and me.

I had a similar experience with Emmitt to Urgent Care on New Year's Eve. It shouldn't have been fun in anyway, but oddly, it was. He charmed all the doctors and nurses and other patients. He didn't have to compete for my attention and even though he was in pain, he was happy to be the center of attention.

I need to make time for them all to be themselves around me . . . after all, they are all individuals. They don't always have to be marked to Speich clan  :)

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We had our first real snow!

The twins watched from the patio window in amazement. I worked on teaching them the word "snow", which they both thought I said "nose", so they kept pointing to their noses. I acted out rain falling from the sky with my fingers and said "snow" again.

So now Emmitt points outside, points to his nose and does the rainy fingers to talk about the snow.

Twins always are asking "touch?" because they want to get their hands on it. I've given them a handful a couple times now, which they love.

Cameron was the first to play in it with Daddy.

It was FREEZING out, but he didn't care. I had ramen noodles waiting for him when he came in.

This weekend the older 3 all went out for over an hour.

I called them in a couple times, but they needed to finish their snowman. His name was "Bobbie" and he was only about 3 feet tall, because the snow was not cooperating. They found some wet snow at the edges of the yard that they were able to make into a ball. At one point, I thought they were coming in, but they were only asking for a hat, scarf and mittens to finish him off.

I didn't get a picture, and he has already toppled over  :(

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I made myself a project this week too.

Have you heard of "upcycled clothing"?

I decided to give it a try. KC and I had a Christmas Costume Party to go to and we chose to go as Jack and Sally from "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Sally's outfit is a patchwork of a bunch of materials, so I decided to get out the sewing machine and make it. I went to Goodwill and came home with one shirt and skirt that would fit me, the rest were just picked because of color.

I just started cutting and sewing . . . this is what we ended up looking like  :)

The party was a lot of fun! Thanks John and Risa for getting us out of the house for a night. That's another thing that we need to get better at . . . Date Night! There is always so much going on, but we need to make time for ourselves too.

And thanks to Grandpa and Grandma for watching 6 of the grandchildren! (The one in pink isn't mine, it's my niece, Ella)

That picture makes me a little sad.

As you can see, we were all ready for the Packer Game. What a bummer . . . can't win it every year.

Sad the season's over. We couldn't even watch the end, so we switch over and watched Wisconsin beat Nebraska . . . 

I also wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! LOVE YOU  : )

A Place to Play

My boys have been playing amongst boxes for a few weeks now.

I designated an area in the basement that would eventually become the playroom and purchased a carpet remnant at Home Depot for a great deal.

This is what our basement looked liked this morning.

A couple of hours later . . . . .

It proved itself worth the effort when the girls got home from school and five minutes later the boys all woke up. I sent them downstairs to check it out . . . and then had to call them up for dinner at 5:30  :)

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After dinner, Zoe had planned to make dessert for tomorrow. She announced that all the ingredients were in the kitchen, so I okayed it without many questions. She wanted to do it all herself, which I love. I love that she's found something she enjoys.

So she's in the kitchen, and I realize she's at the stove melting chocolate, I ask if she needs any help . . "nope". She had 4 mixing bowls with different portions of the recipe, I asked again . . . "nope". Then she's scraping it all together into a pan and asking if a butter knife would work for a "round tipped knife", I asked again if everything was okay, need me . . . "nope".

Then she proudly showed me the pattern she did to create a marble pattern.

That's when I noticed the magazine on the table! GL, a girlie teen magazine, that she received from Aunt Tracy & Uncle Mike for Christmas. Yes, my Zoe found a recipe in it  :)  She is definitely one in a million.

I remember getting teenie bopper magazines at her age, and I can honestly say that I never noticed any recipes in them.

I'll have to let you know how it turned out. It's basically a frozen cheesecake  :)

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One more thing.

This has started happening this week.

It may mean nothing to you, but it adds more stress to my day.

The boys are now drinking from "big boy" cups, which means that the chance of a cup spilling has nearly doubled.

Castiel has proven himself better at the cup. Emmitt still is trying to put his whole mouth in the cup, but we've seen big improvement in the last couple days. First meal I calmly wiped milk off the floor three times . . . but tonight we had zero spills :)

Dealing with so many changes with the twins . . . they are happy to take on the new challenges :)

A Meal with No Fuss

Sometimes simple is better.

Especially when mommy has a headache. I think I have a head cold.

It's on days like these I realize that the volume of our home is . . . loud.

Dinner is usually the noisiest time of the day. I think it's a combination of the girls coming home from school and the boys waking up from their naps.

All that energy colliding at the same time is deafening.

So because of the headache, today was a good day for a meal that I knew everyone would eat without a fuss.

PINTEREST #4 hot dogs poked with spaghetti noodles & macaroni and cheese on the side.

I know the noodles are redundant but my kids don't understand hot dogs without macaroni and cheese. And the spaghetti noodles in the hot dogs, well that's just fun.

Dinner went as planned. No fuss, happy kids, full stomachs :)

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Other big news of the house. I am attempting to potty train Emmitt.

For a couple days, I was trying to potty train both twins. Then realized they both want to go at the same time and I don't have two toilets close enough together in my house for that. I think potty seats are icky, so I don't use them.

Emmitt shows much more interest in the toilet. He is starting to tell me that he wants to go.

I have a jar of jelly beans on top of the refrigerator. I call them pee-pee candy.

I know gross right? but I've done this three times before and candy works the best. Especially to a 2 year-old that doesn't get candy very often.

We had three successful trips to the potty today. One of the times I wasn't paying attention fully, and he made a "pissss, pissss" noise that I quickly understood what he needed to do.

My favorite part is when he's sitting on the toilet and he yells "I peeped, I peeped!"

My goal is to have the house diaper free by the end of April.