A busy school day

Will had a good day at school today and from the photos it looks like it was a busy day!

Will is hard at work with the dump trucks (surprise, surprise) and blocks...
And, here's his creation...
Will took a moment to check in with his friend...
And, finally a moment of rest in the huge (his new favorite word) green chair...

No snow today

There's talk of snow tomorrow so we made the most of today's sunny and 50's and we headed to yet another nearby playground. Will got to run around and blow off steam and Maggie and Stella got to swing and listen to nature. It was a lot of fun for all of us and another sign that we might be over the hump.

Maggie was VOCAL about how much she liked the swing. She open-mouth smiled and shrieked the whole time.

Stella was a little more chill, as always. She was silent as can be but her eyes lit up and her smile was precious.

Will went down both slides a dozen times, and he made the most of his time climbing all over everything. He took a break from driving his jeep to "workin" on the engine.

Fun with five!

Oh, happy day!

Thursday: A challenging day to say the least! But, by late afternoon after nap time for all, we had a fun play date with Sofia and Nele and ended the day well.

Friday: We're not the type of people to follow horoscopes, but our stars and planets must be aligning! The girls took a short morning nap. I managed to get them from the nursing position on the couch to floor...still asleep and cuddling with each other.

After a few errands, the girls fell asleep in the car and continued their nap for 2 hours in their carseats. Will & I got to have lunch, TV time, & nap tuck in all to ourselves while the girls slumbered away.

Then, to top off the day, I got put on-call for work. That meant Patrick & Will got to spend some quality time together, so they decided to paint a train. Despite Will's lingering cold and "sicky" eyes he had a great time.

Oh, what a happy day!!!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Patrick and all three kids have been fighting a cold since the weekend so there's not much joy in the house. But tonight, Stella entertained us with her first foray into walking (with assistance) and then both girls gave Will a ride.

This video is Stella's very successful attempt to push Maggie around the house. It's quite long for those of you with slow internet connections.

This video is much shorter and it shows what might be the light at the end of the tunnel for our hard times. For the first time in too, too long the kids let us know that we're all going to be alright.

Old-school turntable

We ventured up to the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore this morning because they were offering the opportunity to see the old 1884 turntable in action. Will has one in his Thomas set that he thinks is pretty cool so we thought he'd dig the real thing. He did.

They gave it five or six nearly soundless revolutions.

If you look closely in the model, there's a man turning the turntable from below. That's exactly how the B&O one worked today - with a single man manually pushing a 60-foot diameter turntable carrying a tractor, a train and a tender. It was pretty amazing to think of the mechanics.

Weird shot but we like it. See you!

Sleepy heads

Mr. Sandman bit the kids today for some reason. Stella spent some quality time sleeping on Pop this afternoon.

Maggie zonked out on Mimi.

Pop somehow ended up with both girls at some point.

And Will fell asleep at the dinner table after not taking a nap today. It's not as funny as the last time, but he was really out.

She stands alone

Stella is starting to revel in standing by herself. She gets all fired up as she crawls up Daddy or Mommy and then she takes her hands off and stands by herself for up to five seconds before carefully "plopping" down on her bottom.

Will says "hi" from another playground near our house.

He also loves his new cars from Pop and Mimi.

Stella and Maggie enjoyed their first bath together tonight. They splashed and splashed and laughed and laughed. We laughed a lot too, but it's too hard to do because they're still pretty tipsy.

Will at school

Here's some of Will's school photos from this week. They did a group activity of painting hands and started a movement class on Wednesdays. The last picture is on the playground, Will's favorite spot at school! The kids got to enjoy some beautiful weather and lots of outdoor time on Tuesday & Wednesday.