Feeling Springy

March is an antsy month. It starts getting tantalizingly warmer in the daytime but it’s still uncomfortably chilly in the wee hours. Maybe I get antsy because it’s the end of a whole winter of too much time cooped up. Maybe the wind gets to me. Probably all of the above. Whatever the reason, I always feel ready for change in March.  Last March I got to start running again for the first time after Rose was born. That was a sufficiently exciting and large change.

Rose is looking for a new jungle gym.

This year, we don’t have a big change happening in March, but we are at least preparing for a big change. The time has come at last: this week we officially started house-hunting! For our very own HOUSE! I’ve always thought it would be so fun to go house-hunting and be able to 1. see a bunch of different houses and then 2. choose one to be my very own. This is yet another Shaina-ideal that has been smooshed. Crunched. Splatted. Maybe it’s just Grandview, but this house-hunting thing has turned out to be hard work, and kind of stressful! I could go on (and on), but I’ll just leave it at that—finding a nice, affordable house in our town is uphill work.

I was telling my dear, patient mother all about my demolished ideal that house-hunting would be a breeze, and she said, “well, here’s one ideal that won’t fail you: Rose is cute!” I can count on that. And that’s where the pictures come in. Some day in the near future I hope to be able to post pictures of our new house, but we haven’t found one of those yet. So I’d better stick to the reliable ideal of child-cuteness for now.

This week we had some lovely warm days around here. Friday afternoon we went to the park together. I had fun playing with my camera settings.

Jeff and Jay played fetch and went exploring by the train tracks.

Rose practiced walking. She’s getting better at it every day! The bumpy grass was a pretty tough challenge for her, but she did pretty well.

This week we also had our first experience with gasping, rasping children late at night. Croup? Congestion? Who knows what it was, but thanks to all my pals who’ve dealt with this before, I knew one remedy: cold air! So one night Rose and I spent half an hour bundled up in the cold. It was amazing. The next night it was Jay’s turn to wake up gasping, so out he went. Amazing again. Tired again. Now my head is stuffy. Maybe that will calm my ansty-ness for a day or two…

Rose can walk!

Rose has really refined her walking techniques over the past week. In about 10 days flat, she went from 2 or 3 stuttery stumbly steps at a time to power-walking down the hallway like a pro. It’s so cute (and slightly startling) to have her come strolling on into a room instead of crawling. We’re still getting used to it.

The narrow hallway in our apartment is the longest stretch of open territory for Rose to practice—she’s not the best at stopping and turning corners or dodging toys on the floor yet.

I love how Rose’s hair is long enough to pinch into a ponytail and clip a bow on now, because she will not keep a headband on atall. I also rather love her little pink diaper. She loves that fuzzy satiny pink bunny blanket.

Do you see that belly? I took this picture after lunch on Sunday. Sunday lunch usually means Jeff’s specialty crepes for us. Yes, we’re spoiled. Jay and Rose eat SO MUCH on crepeday. This past Sunday, Rose and I ate the same amount of crepes for lunch, and Jay ate MORE than us! I guess when you’re learning how to walk, you need the energy.

Rose is exploding with sweetness and new skills—I love this age because there are new developments almost every other day! And I am enjoying this time especially with Rose because I was kind of a pukey-preg0-zombie when Jay was this age, so I missed a lot of his early one year oldness.

It surprises me how much Rose is learning all on her own. With Jay I was trying to teach him things for fun all the time, but Rose just watches Jay and picks up almost everything. She says please (dee) and thank you (deh deh), for goodness sake! I never taught her that. She just watched me drilling some manners into her big brother, and learned some of her own.

Some things aren’t learned—Rose is a natural TEASE! She pokes Jay, hides her face, peeks at him, and then pokes him again, over and over. It is hilarious to see Rose giggle and Jay get annoyed at his little Rose Monster sister. But one night, Jay did say “thankee for the Rose Monster” in his bedtime prayer. They do love each other.

There are definitely plenty of squealy screamy fighty cooped-up moments around here (check out that boo-hooey lower lip in Rose’s shadow), but being Jay’s and Rose’s mom is still mostly totally awesomely FUN.

[kiss]

And last but not least, please enjoy this song. We do.

El Parque

On the day that I was sick, Rose and I stayed home while everyone else bundled up and went to the park. Em took my camera along.

Grama had a cool gun that shoots little helicopter-propellers. Anything with a trigger is a guaranteed success with little boys. The bubble-blowing gun was a hit too.

Braving the big slide.

After a while, the little boys brought their runny noses, frozen fingers, and rosy red cheeks back inside, along with wafts of fresh wintry air.

Story time with Grama

My Mom has a beautiful collection of all the best kids books ever. She’ s so good at reading them. I have loved story time with my Mom my whole life. Her 3 grandsons love it too.

Mom keeps all of her favorite books up in her little alcove library-office. The 3 freshly-bathed boys gathered under the balcony one night and loudly requested STORY TIME!

Poor Dan was sick one day. Rose started it (with 2 barfs in the car on the way to visit everyone. eeek). Then Mel caught it and then Dan did. Then it was my turn. Luckily, no one else got it.

Steve’s favorite book was Toestomper and the Caterpillars. Jay’s favorite was Doodle Bites. My favorite was The Giant’s Toe.

Splash!

Last week we went to this awesome indoor kids pool that my Mom discovered for us. The water was warm and shallow, and there were floaty toys  everywhere. There were fountains and ramps and steps and waterfalls to play in. Even we moms had a little fun, although we felt a tad crumpled up at the end after crouching in the 2 foot water for nearly 2 hours. Mom sat on the side and took pictures of the waterworks. As usual with active kids indoors, the best pictures are kind of blurry. But you can still get the idea.

Rose is a waterbaby. I just snapped on her pink cloth diaper cover—she needs a bikini top to match!  [Side note: I thought this place would be more like a splash pad than a pool, so I wore some running clothes instead of my bathing suit. Wet clothes cling and float in weird ways. Ah well].

They had this great baby floaty thing. Rose and I both loved it! In the shallower parts, she could just walk along through the water. It prevented her from doing the faceplant-water-inhale-gasp-blink-shudder-repeat thing. I kind of want one.

Four tired little swimmers (and one big one). Rose and Dan have blue lips. I’ve got to say, some (MOST) women have no…shame in a public shower. At all. We actually accidentally went into the men’s locker room first, but thankfully we left before anything too embarrassing happened. Whew!

Booty Scooty

Since it was pretty cold and wet outside during our sistertime last week, we went to the church gym twice so the cousins could run rampant for a little while. It’s amazing how much energy 3 little boys can have.

Everyone took turns on the scooters:

Jay actually never quite mastered scootering. He mostly just waddled along straddling the scooter. It was fun for him, though, so that’s good enough for me!

3 boys sharing 1 scooter required some creative refereeing.

Sometimes you just can’t referee everything.

Em gave scooter rides!

Dan hugged Rose.

The booty scooters took some getting used to.

Even Rose got a turn! We drifted around together—I held onto her and towed her around the gym a few times. Her fluffy baby hair blew in the breeze, and she loved it.  I decided that I’m a lot taller now than I was in elementary school when my gym teacher let us ride booty scooters like these. It took a while to unfold my body and get the kinks out when I stood up.

We took a few blurry face photos, and Em and Mel hated all of them except one. I hope this is the one…

Sisters are the best

We Brown girls had a last minute get-together last week. When I say last minute, I mean last minute:

Em [oldest sister] and her 2 little boys (Steve and Dan) got their plane ticket from St. Louis to Seattle a mere week before we all converged on the Brown house in Bellevue.

Dani [sis-in-law] got her plane ticket even later!

Jay, Rose, and I simply had to watch the Snoqualmie Pass reports and start driving when the pass was clearest. This was more of a challenge than I would have liked. But we managed to squeak through the icy snowy slush with only minimal delays.

Since we Browns live all over the place, family time is usually planned out for months in advance. It was awesome to suddenly have a whole week with my dear sisters. We took over 100 pictures, and my kids and I just can’t face doing one long post right now, so how about 3 or 4 short ones?
[Warning: Shaina-short isn’t necessarily actually SHORT]

This was our first sistertime since Dani joined the family, so hoorah for FOUR sisters in our sister picture!

We balanced my camera on the mantel and hoped for the best. I took our picture with the face-detect feature on my beloved camera. You push the button, and it starts taking pictures when a new face enters the scene. Well, Steve beat me to it and set off the camera here…

…and then it took a little time to get one with all of us smiling.

We messed with poses. I couldn’t quite figure out where to stand.

Mel, Shaina, Em, and Dani. I wish I had a cool short nickname like all of my sisters do. I guess I compensated by getting short hair instead. I was worried that a week with my lushiously long haired sisters would make me miss my own long lush locks, and I did reminisce a bit, but on the whole, all of their hair actually made me like my short hair more—it’s just so light and free. And not static!

We never got around to doing an “official” goofy picture, but this one counts in my book.

I love my sisters.