Still a prisoner

While I think it's been four days since we've seen the white flaky stuff fall from the sky (with more on the horizon for tomorrow night) we've still had the pleasure of experiencing temperatures in the negative and single digits.  I refuse to dress the kids up and take them out. Especially if there's no where we have to be. They canceled school on Tuesday due to extreme temps (-30's with wind chill) so the kids haven't been out of the house since Saturday. It's Wednesday night.

We are leaving tomorrow. It's supposed to be 20 degrees. We might only dress in one layer. Probably not. It's a free day for IL residents at the Museum of Science and Industry. It's a massive building and unlike the aquarium you can see almost everything without needing to pay additional money.  Thus the only out of pocket expense. I am going to be really disappointed if our credit card bill is not below average this month since we've just been staying home. I haven't even been doing much online shopping.

Miss M has been continuing her exploration of kitchen creations. She loves to make "pink juice" which is crystal light. There comes a point each day where I can not in good conscience give her another glass of orange/apple juice so she either has to drink water or crystal light.  She loves to make it and recently she's learned she can play in it. She ladles it out into everyone's cups. She does a pretty good job of not making a mess. There also comes a point each day when I don't care if she makes a mess as long as she's not asking me to play with her.

Mr. Man hasn't been feeling well. His nose is a mess which then just gets smeared all over his face. It's hard to get him cleaned up b/c he just thrashes his head and screams at me. He's been very needy and clingy. He hasn't wanted to be put down. He just wants to be held all day. It's exhausting especially when Miss M is bossing me to do something or get her something. I also put him on the scale recently and learned he weighs in at a healthy 24 pounds.

I realized today that he has a few more teeth cutting in. Whoops. I missed that. I probably should have given him more medicine to make him feel better but with all his cold stuff I just thought he didn't feel well.

 Craig. This is for you. From me. I love you.

Miss M is notorious for climbing on the counters. She's like a cat. She gets into her learning tower then walks along the counters to get what she wants out of the cabinets. Usually she's not getting anything that is a problem but lately she's been getting glitter and tacky glue out. Not ideal. I was telling her to put the glitter away or at least not open it until I could help her. You can see how well she listened. There was piles of glitter everywhere, but to my point above, sometimes I don't care as long as she's entertaining herself. She isn't great at entertaining herself (she's actually terrible at it).

Today Mr. Man's new car seat arrived. He's getting a bit big for the infant car seat and the combined weight of the car seat and him make it nearly impossible to carry him in it anywhere. Miss M was elated we got a package. She was determined to get his car seat out and use the box as her new pantry/fridge. She loaded it up with her "ingredients" aka play-dough and then cooked some soups with her "ingredients". She made soups for Grandma Delores and Daddy. Daddy always gets whatever she's making/creating. Always.

We make a lot of ranch around this house. It's a way for all of us to eat more veggies. It might be unhealthy to dunk them in ranch but who cares since we're eating our veggies and all. The recipe for ranch is the ranch packet, a cup of buttermilk and a cup of mayonnaise. Miss M's favorite ingredient when cooking is buttermilk. She's probably one of the few 2 year olds (almost 3!) who willingly cook with buttermilk in her pretend play.

She has been getting more into pretend play. She finds a book and makes up a story. Today she found a sleep book or infants and made up a long story about how it was Stuffy's birthday and his birthday party. She's a funny one though. There are so many ridiculous/funny/insane things that come out of her mouth that I can't remember them all. Today she made a card for Mimi (which she will not receive in the mail b/c she destroyed the envelope) and told me that Mimi said that it was annoying. I was confused at first until I remembered "annoying" was one of the lovely words she taught Miss M. At least she remembers it wasn't me who taught her such nonsense. It was just me who taught her to call me a lunatic.

And then there's days when I am tired and don't want to think of things for Miss M to do and I feel defeated by the weather and so we watch so many shows it's embarrassing to tell you about it.