My baby is three

 Linden turned three! It is wonderful and sad. I love that she is getting bigger, and also get to be sad that she is getting bigger. But her birthday was all fun:

Happy birthday kiddo 🎂❤️🥳

Big girl

 Over the past week Linden has decided to become a big girl. She started sleeping in her big girl bed instead of her crib. She is insisting on eating off of big plates instead of toddler plates. And then something happened that I was entirely unprepared for.

About four days ago she was playing with letter magnets on the dishwasher and she started sounding out the nonsense words she was making. I was impressed and curious, so I wrote the word “cat” and asked her to read it. She sounded it out and read it. We pulled out some cards that we had made for Maren when she was learning to read, and with a little bit of help Linden is legitimately reading:

Linden’s third birthday is on Tuesday. I am not really ready for her to be so grown up 😢

Snow hill

 Almost all of my conversations with colleagues and strangers start with a discussion about the weather. We always start our day by checking the weather. It helps us organize our lives. Our lives more or less revolve around the weather here, which is why I find that I am so often talking about weather on this blog. 

This past week we had one nice day (temperatures right around freezing), and the kiddos wanted to spend some time climbing a snow hill a couple of blocks away. 

It struck me that this hill is much bigger than it was about a month ago: 

And I was also struck by how much smaller the kids’ snowsuits look than they did two months ago:

This is how the passage of time is measured in a Saskatchewan winter 😂

Cake

Thursday was my birthday. Jeff made me a chocolate cake with (vegan) whipped cream frosting. Maren and Linden decorated.

 

It was delectable 😊

The weather has been varied lately, with some days being great for outdoor play.

 

And other days being stuck indoors having to figure out how to have fun in the house.

 

I’m glad my kiddos have started to think outside the box 🤣

Samesies

 Maren and Linden like to dress like twins these days. It’s pretty cute. 

They like to do a lot of the same things too. 

Our cats are pretty cute too. 

Which is lucky for them because they are constantly terrorizing us - there are so many things we can’t keep out, or they will be lost or destroyed. The list keeps growing, and this week we added toilet paper. 

These are two completely separate incidents, separated by five days of hiding the toilet paper in a drawer. It’s like they were lying in wait, ready for us to let our guard down. I guess at least they keep us on our toes 😂