Just another CarleSpawn weblog

On Monday, Ezri had her last Early Walker storytime. She’s been attending since she was about ten months old, so it feels like a milestone to graduate from being a storytime Early Walker. Here she is posed with Grandpa Mark and one of her favorite librarians.

It looks to me like these two might be up to something.

Showing Tam the fine art of squishing dough.

I know there will come an age when it isn’t appropriate to take photos of Ezri while she sleeps. But, she’s just so darned appealing all snuggled up and I don’t think we’re there yet.

I let Ezri walk much farther ahead of me on the snowblown path along our block than I usually do. She could neither run out into the road nor run into the neighbors’ yards to play with their trash cans or lawn ornaments. She pretty much had to walk the straight and narrow with 20 inches of snow on either side.

I love how winter makes her cheeks rosy.
I also love that when I pick her up she will say, “shiver, shiver, brrr,” and snuggle in against my chest for warmth. I love it when she’s snuggly.
So, winter has some upside. Driving and shoveling – meh.
Snow stomping and snuggly, rosy-cheeked Ezri – yay.

When Eric went outside to shovel, Ezri wanted to as well.
I said we would need boots.
Ezri got her boots and started to put them on.
I said we need snowpants first and pulled hers out of the closet.

She put them on all by herself pretty quickly. She even zipped them herself. That’s why she looks proud in this photo.

I then got on her boots and her hat and her mittens.
She grabbed Pete the Cat and here is begging to bring him outside with us.
“Pete wants snow, Mama.”

After giving Pete a number of consolation hugs, he remained behind.

Eric had cleared a nice trench for us to walk in. Ezri commented that the neighbor was “Snow mowing” which is her word for using a snowblower.

Once she got bored of running back and forth in the trench Ezri attacked the snowbank.

She also forged a path of her own in the driveway.

When she ran into trouble she said, “Mama, help up.”

She really did want to help Eric with mammoth shoveling job.

She was not much help, but did offer a supportive hug for dad.

She was inside for a whole 20 minutes before grabbing her snowpants and asking to return to the snow. But, I decided we’re waiting to suit up again until after nap.

When it’s too snowy to leave the house, bring out the paint!

She likes the trampoline.
It was going to be a holiday gift, but after assembling her play kitchen Eric ran out of steam. I leave assembly to Eric, because he has the gift.
Anyway, it was assembled during naptime yesterday and this morning felt a little like Christmas again.
It might have been excitement overload to add this one Christmas morning anyhow.

Here is a still photo.

But to get a real sense of the love you need to see it in action.

Ezri loves the large hot dog poster over the checkout at IKEA.
She used to be all about the Big Baby with his bottle of milk on the wall over the Target Grocery, but now GIANT HOT DOG is the thing.
It’s nice that the giant hot dog is over checkout and can be used as an incentive to leave kid’s IKEA which has a slide and head towards the car.

Don’t let that second face fool you. She liked it. That’s her food attack face.

Today Ezri napped on top of me and Sushi cat napped on top of her. It was just like The Napping House. Sadly, due to the napping, no one was available to photo document.

You never know if you don’t try, right?

I enjoy Ezri’s observations. Today she told me, “Cookie monster has no nose.” That one’s just true.

Awhile ago she pointed at a photo of my grandpa and grandma in their youth smiling at each other around a tree and said, “Grandma scratch tree.” She had decided that the way my grandmother’s hand was resting on the tree meant she was using it as a scratching post.

When she and her dad were pretending to peel a plastic orange she brought over her Miss Kitty puppet and used the puppet’s paw against the peel saying, ‘scratch, scratch.”

Ezri watches children’s programs over at the babysitters, but we don’t watch T.V. much at home. Ezri had this to say about that, “Jenny’s house T.V. Ezri’s house just cats. Just cats.”

Ezri likes to announce that she’s “getting bigger.”

She’s still not big enough for my sweatshirt.