*Christmas '15

Just documenting Christmas 2015...  It was nice to spend the holiday in our own home this year. My sister spent a week with us and we had fun getting up to Boston a couple times, attending school holiday performances, planning yummy meals, enjoying several Park Street events like the Lessons in Carols, choir performances and Christmas eve service.  It looks like this is our last year in Boston, so I was glad we were able to stay here and enjoy Christmas in the city!

making playdough animals with Aunt Liz

It took about 20 tries to get a decent picture here. Everyone was tired and grumpy...

another few tries for a family picture:

It was something like 68 degrees on Christmas Eve!!  I love a white Christmas and all, but the warmth was pretty amazing.  

The ice skating rink was more like watery slush.

Christmas Eve dinner we came home (after service) to Barefoot Contessa's Winter Minestrone and no-knead bread using the local wheat flour I ordered special. For dessert we had coconut cream pie - SO good.  Edie had a fever and ended up going to bed in the middle of dinner.  Vera took care of leaving the note and cookies for Santa :)

Christmas morning! I'm sure Ben has more pictures on his phone. Here Ben was cooking the bacon and Ruth helping me stir the batter for "David Eyre's lemon pancakes" which I had never made before (recipe from Rosie).  The girls all opened wonderful presents and spent the next 10 hours playing with their Legos, school kits, buses, airplanes, art sets...

We spent Christmas dinner with our friends, the Avalos'.  We've spent a few holidays with them now and really enjoy their company so much.  Anyway, it was a wonderful and memorable Christmas!

*daily Root

We continue to adore little Ruth who has a big, loud and funny personality.  I just wanted to note some of my favorite things about her - like I used to do with Vera and Edie on a more regular basis!  

 [on the chairs in harvard yard]

 [first pigtails the other day!]

[she wanted the phone, I wanted the picture of her green sweater]

[I think Edie took this one telling Ruth to smile]

At about 20something months...

When I put her down for bed we read a book, I hold+snuggle her a minute like a baby and then tell her that, "Mommy loves you and Jesus loves you" and then lay her down, tuck her in, tell Lion goodnight etc. She often gets really sad and puts out the cutest little pouty lip and but doesn't shed tears, just tells me in a shaky voice, "bye." If I tell her during the day that "Mommy loves you and Jesus loves you," she immediately gets her little sad face. It's so stinking cute.

She yells "HEY!!!" a lot. Like if people are playing at the playground which is usually vacant. If someone brushes by and touches her arm. If someone steals from her plate. For any reason, really.  I am always telling her to be nice and that it's ok if they do that.  

She has begun to say "ooooh yeaya!!" a lot. Like this morning she wanted her bread right away and I said, "see? We have to put it in the toaster. "OOoohhh YEAYA!"

She is really really loud and always yelling, screeching, hollering etc. Our poor neighbor dog is so scared of her!  If someone or something else is loud she puts her hands over her ears.  When she yells that she wants something I tell her to say it nicely and she knows to lower her voice and make it sound sweet (even if her words don't make sense), it's so cute.

She has made up signs for a few words on her own - dark (she made this one up on the way home from CA in August), digger (she loves cars and construction machinery!) and spoon (she raises her arm and says "poop" and then we all crack up).  I'll have to get a video of her signs.

 

I'll add to this as I think of things I want to remember....

*back to school

We are several weeks back at school and everything is going well. In fact, Vera and Edie are geting along so much better now that they aren't together all day!  Vera started 3rd grade (!) and Edie is doing two full days of Pre-K. She turns five in October and so will go to kindergarten next year.

Here they are riding bike and scooter to Edie's first day. She is really into riding her bike lately! Not sure I documented it yet, but she's been riding without training wheels since last fall!  It's so freaking cute to watch her pedal along.

I love to see the outfits they choose for themselves :)  Vera's top I actually hid under a pile of laundry because it's not my favorite, but she found it! haha.  She got glasses the week before school started. She was soo excited about them and couldn't wait to show her friends.

*Ruth at 18 mos

Little Ruth is one and a half today!!  I look back at baby pictures and hardly recognize her. What an amazing little firecracker and sweetheart she is.  Everyone tries to decipher who she looks like, and I'm still at a loss. Sometimes a glimmer of Vera or Edie... I sometimes see my older sister and brother when they were babies. Ben thinks she looks like his grandfather, Hoyt (husband of the original Ruth Cater). Anyway, she is a little beauty and just adorable in every way (to me anyway :).

She still doesn't have a ton of words but communicates really well. Her newest words are BOP which she says very seriously and emphatically when she wants you to stop doing something (tickling, changing her diaper, taking an iphone away..), NO (which she learned pretty quickly after meeting her cousin Zuzu), shio - cheerio/cereal, Siiii - outside,  I love how she says "oh" after a comment you make (she's done this forever). Like, "mom's at work" - R: "oh". "This isn't for babies" - R: "oh". Like she knows and understands what we are saying when obviously she doesn't.  She also says "ummm" when you ask her a question, usually followed by gibberish.

A couple of my favorite things lately are when we first met her little cousin and she spontaneously started playing duck duck goose with the group, ducking everyone's heads and saying gooo then running (out of the room sometimes). I didn't even know she'd played it before and thought it was pretty sophisticated! :)  At mealtimes, she loves to initiate saying grace - holding everyone's hands and saying "meh!" when we say amen.  After I fed her once using the spoon airplane method, she will now make airplane noises and fly her own spoon to her mouth - it's pretty cute. I love how she gives good hard hugs and kisses, loves her Lion, says hi and charms everyone in the grocery store, airport, airplane, etc.

She is quite the firecracker though - emphatically saying UH-UH! if you ask for some of her popsicle - unless you catch her in a sweet mood. She screams so loud sometimes that her little fists shake. Usually she is good about grounding herself enough to quiet down and say/sign please or whatever the better option was.  I have to be very vigilant when she's around other babies because she tends to hit them in the face, pull them to the ground, etc. It's so disconcerting!!  At least she'll usually sign/say sorry afterwards if I make her.  I seriously think she just loves the reaction and look on their poor little faces :(  She fought like a little cat with her cousin in CA, but I think that was more rivalry than looking for a reaction. Wish we'd got a video of it! Anyway, hoping it's all a quick phase.

Anyway... I'm sure I'll add things as I think of them.  Basically we all adore our little Root.

*Spring!

After such an intense and snowy winter, Spring was especially wonderful this year.  It took weeks to get used to how much space there was with all the snow gone!  

The girls played outside constantly and just had so much fun in our backyard.  For several weeks, they played 'house' out there, cooking and baking with flower petals, living in the fort, etc. They each had their own little role and were very engrossed in their little story line. I love love love it. 

This was their pretend oven - "banana bread" and something else. It made me so happy :)

Family bike ride at the Arboretum. Edie learned to pedal/balance on her bike last Fall, but couldn't get started on her own until this day. She actually isn't super excited about it and would rather use her scooter for now.

A day at the zoo with Elaine over Spring break I think - perfect coolish/warmish weather with hardly any crowds.

Another perfect coolish/warm day at Drumlin Farm with friends. I could have sat with the baby lambs all day!!   I'd never been there before and was really impressed. So incredibly clean - even the chicken coops and the goat barn didn't smell.  Reminded me of Wheeler Farm days and how much fun we had there with Sam and Mimi and all our Utah friends.

The Spring blooms are so incredible. A beautiful Spring makes the long winter totally worth it in my opinion!

Ruth met the ducklings at the Public Garden for the first time. Really, she is seeing everything again for the first time since she was so small last summer! It's so fun to see her experience it all. Still so excited every time we see a bird or a duck or even an ant :)

We've had a few hot days as Summer approaches, but for the most part the weather has been just perfect still - so grateful!

*little miracles

"The truth is, raising a child is like watching a continuously unfolding miracle."

About a year ago, I came across this quote that I had written down from some Montessori book that I read when Vera was small.  It's come to mind so many times as I watch Ruth grow and wake up to the world around her.  I have always loved looking back on the blog here, remembering all the little moments I'd post here of both Vera and Edie and am sad that I just don't have the time or the motivation [or the computer space to store photos!] to keep it up anymore.  It truly is a miracle watching a child grow, to see where they started and what they become.  I especially love this age Ruth is at now - between like 10 months and 2 years. I could sit and watch her for hours.

I took these pictures several weeks ago when I noticed that she would go up to the little handle here on the cupboard and either pretend to wash her hands from it or fill up a cup and drink from it - among her first "pretend" play.  I love it.

*La Pascua 2015

We have really loved our (3!) Easters here in Boston.  Park Street is such a wonderful church and Easter Sunday is just glorious.  Beautiful orchestra, choir and hymns, gorgeous flowers, special treats passed around after the service. It's not a 'show' though in any way - it's a genuine and heartfelt celebration of the resurrection of Christ and what that means for us.  It looks sunny in the pictures, but it was freezing and so after church we headed home to decorate and quickly hunt for eggs. We later had a nice dinner with our small Bible study group.

Ruth was so enthralled by the music and singing - at one point she looked like a little composer with her arms in the air.

This was the little coat and bonnet I wore when I was about 18 months old.  See pictures of of both me and Vera wearing the coat here.

The wool coat I'm wearing here was my mom's from the 60s!

love this one:

she was so cute - a little young to get it, but super fun to watch.

I took about 60 pictures to get a decent one. Ben was making faces behind me here:

other attempts to get a picture in their sweet matching dresses:

Percy was an Easter addition this year. He and Trixie are so cute and close already!  Their first meeting was pretty hilarious.  Ben and I awkwardly missed an opportunity to explain where baby bunnies come from.  [Percy came to us fixed btw though I kind of wish we could have babies!!]