Cheesy puffs

Lately it has been very difficult to get Flora to eat anything except cream of wheat, porridge yoghurt and applesauce. I think we have finally turned a corner with supper however lunch is still a battle. She turned down a yummy peanut butter and jam sandwich (with Grandma Elaine’s homemade jam, crazy kid!), crackers, cheese, grapes and finally decided eating little cheese puffs would do (they are for kids but I can’t really see how they are much better than eating a pack of wotsits). Here she is enjoying her victory....

After a big snowfall last night, Flora and I went out to shovel our driveway. Once the hard work was finished she made a snow angel. Okay, I did have to move her arms and legs for her.

I had a shop teacher once who always stood like this. It was a lot less adorable.

reading time

Here are a couple little videos of Flora enjoying her reading time. I like how she stays standing to do it and all the books need to come off the shelf. This happens at least a couple times a day. Her favourite to be read to her at the moment is a pop-up book called MOO. The book is missing the chicken’s head (it used peck) because she ate it... She is also learning to say book! Glad that we seem to have ourselves a keen reader.

She still isn’t walking. She took her first stumbling steps towards mom at her birthday party (Rich and I both missed it!) and has finally repeated the act this week a couple of times but she is still very reluctant.

.....

We had a chilly walk to the park today and then a long, long walk up our hill (for those of you who have walked it, you can appreciate this!) pushing the two kids in the stroller! Luckily, Tom wasn’t “out of puff” halfway up and he managed the rest on foot. A bit of coloring this afternoon and a chance to try to figure out some different settings on our camera. Sorry about the abundance of Flora pictures! I loved that today Thomas really enjoyed coloring in the sections of a squiggled drawing with different colors. Just like we used to do as kids!

Sunday lunch

Today Mary, James and Thomas came over for Sunday lunch. I meant to take a picture of us tucking into the delicious meal but was too busy getting the lamb, gravy, roast potatoes, carrot and turnip mash, kale and sautéed cabbage on the table...are you hungry yet?! Yummmmmm!

Flora has been a little terror. I assume she must be teething because it isn’t like her to be this whiny and needy. She is off her food, needs to be held ALL DAY and throws herself onto the floor any time we put her down. Here’s hoping this little phase ends soon.

i love thursdays!

 Gunner had sweet cuddles for Flora.

 Boone and Flora raided the pantry. I believe one of them was licking syrup off of a container. I don’t think it was Flora because she had a two hour nap this afternoon!

 The boys both got hooked on the rock wall and I had to go and rescue them.  At one point Tom appeared to have given up on life and lay face down in the snow. We didn’t know why he was there until I got up and realized his coat was stuck in the same place that Pike’s mitten was!

 Flora had lots of love for Nanton. She knows how to say “baba” now!

Gunner slept....for 30 minutes! What a stinker!

A video of Flora saying “kitty kitty”. She is now repeating a lot of words we say, like “light”, “Gunner” and “Boone” but it is hard to get her to do it on a regular basis.

three pirates on an adventure!

Tom is always keen on having “adventures”. This usually means we sit down and draw a list of all the items we need (we have been to the jungle, the desert, to sea etc) and then hop on a plane to take us to our exciting destination (the living room...). Today we drew pirate maps and then went out to find our treasure. Flora got in on the fun and was pretending to be a pirate too. Her pirate noise sounds a lot like a lion, bear, truck, elephant....

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo....

 Two special cousins stop to have their photo taken together.

 First trip to the zoo for Nanton! Amazingly, he was awake for pretty much all of it!

 I asked Flora what an elephant said and she growled...need to work on the trumpeting noise!

 Big smiles for Tara.

Tara rightly pointed out that she is an Aunty elephant. And what a perfect elephant she is!

Dancing machine

We were watching the X Factor tonight when Rihanna’s performance came on and our future clubber went wild bouncing and dancing to the music.

weekend at the farm

In the farm truck to go and check cows!

Flora and Ira Sanchez

We had a very relaxing weekend at the farm with Mom and Ron. Flora had a great time playing with Ira (the kitten), and we think Ira had a great time playing with her! She went out for her first morning of chores with Grampa and survived the -27 weather.

Rich just got back from hunting camp looking a bit worse for wear, thankfully with no blood on his hands. He said it was too cold to leave the tent. I am sure playing cards and drinking made up for the weather!

First drawing!

Yesterday Flora coloured her first picture! I was so proud that I actually got tears in my eyes. She still tried to eat the crayons but mainly used them to color!

I have been up since 7 (Flora’s usual wake up time), have showered and had a cup of tea and that little tinker is still in bed (It is now 8:27)! I tried to stay in bed and take full advantage of a rare lie-in but all I could think about was how this would impact her naps later in the day! Silly mother brain.

We are off to the farm for the weekend so I won’t be posting anything until Sunday night. Rich is heading out to the hunting camp with Milt, James, Jordon etc and I didn’t fancy a weekend on my own!