Out with the Old

Happy New Year!  

• Good news!  Scarlett's unpleasant night & nap behaviors seem to have crested with my blog post from last week, and she is happier about sleep again.  
• Bad News. Today is my last day of a loooonnnng vacation- eleven days- and tomorrow I have to go back to work.  It's been fun, and I haven't gotten as much sleep as I wanted but ultimately, I've spent lotsa time with the bearded man and the little blondie that live with me and I'm very pleased about that (not about the beard, just the guy under the beard.)

Beard and Blond

• Yesterday we went to the pool with the cousins- Scarlett and Esther have matching swim shirts and matching hair color so probably everyone thought they were twins.  I carried them around the lazy river, thinking 'this is what Erin will feel like so soon!'  

Cousin love (now with less teeth!)

• Scarlett played many games, including Old Dark Frog (He is a ghost who eats little frog children, courtesy of Arnold Lobel).  She also plays a lot of teddy bears picnic, which takes up most of the free floor space in our house but is really cute.

Old Dark Frog in the house

• I'm making orange cardamom rolls right now, formed like cinnamon rolls.  If you were here, you could have some!  (Unless you are my mom, or Lauren, because these aren't gluten free.)  They smell good though.  They've taken me half a day, off and on, to get into the oven, so they better be good.
• Scarlett recognizes most her letters now, and in addition to her number one favorite word to spell- ARNIE- she can spell mom, and dad, and her name.  We went on a nature walk the other morning, and she was climbing around the Tabor reservoir singing 'M O M and D A D. M O M and D A D."  It was a beautiful song.
• Soon, twin babies will be born that I'm excited to meet.   My dad will have a milestone birthday.  Scarlett will have a birthday (every birthday is a milestone when you're only one-digit old, right?).  Sometime this year, Scarlett will start preschool, and the babies we met last year will start walking, and if we're really lucky (fingers crossed!) Charlie will shave that logger beard that he's growing.  2013 is going to be legendary, maybe.