No picture, but definitely a proud and grateful moment tonight with Evelyn. We’ve been having a few missteps with her transitioning to swim classes without us – last week we had to get her after only ten minutes – and tonight was setting itself up as a repeat. She refused to go with her instructors at first, and finally only went once the head instructor was called over. Five minutes later, we saw her instructor flagging the head instructor down again and she was taken out of the pool and they started to walk towards the door. I went down to meet them, only to be told that she said that she needed to pee!

Which is fully plausible except that she’s not really potty trained yet. I fully suspected that she was just playing them, but I dutifully took her to the bathroom and held her over the toilet, only to hear the tinkle of pee! When she was done, I suited her back up, stuck her under the shower for a minute, and then sent her back to the instructor.

And then promptly bought a chocolate bar from the vending machine so that she could have a treat when she was done her class 😉

I’m grateful that I’m not the mom who forgot that it was our turn to make and bring in the play dough for the kindergarten class. The fact that I remembered at 11pm last night and made it at 7am this morning is not important.

I’m grateful that bowling with our kids was a success. Evelyn even had the highest score until almost the end.

We’ve been out of green bin bags for a week. I usually stash a few behind the box where we normally store them, so that when we are “out”, we aren’t really out. But this time I didn’t, and for one reason or another I didn’t get a chance to pick them up.

But we use our green bin quite frequently, so it’s quite a habit to pop things in there. And every single time I lifted the lid … oh, yeah. We’re out of bags. Into the garbage it goes.

But today when I popped the lid … there was the bag.

Lovely.

Just for fun, I tried putting my hair in a ponytail today. And Voila! It can be done! It’s the tiniest little ponytail ever, but it can be done (although I’d need to enlist some bobby pins for the sides if I wanted to wear it for longer than 10 minutes).

But I’m very grateful that I’m almost (hopefully) past the awkward growing in stage. Although now I’m longing for my blonde hair back …

Not a great picture, but a great morning at a local festival, culminating in Abby having a turn on the tumble bus.

Last year we couldn’t even get her to go near the bus but we thought with her friend there she might be persuaded this time. Early on in our visit she got in line but then changed her mind just before it was her turn, so I was surprised when, just before we were going to leave, she said again that she wanted to do it. It was a cold day, by then it was getting near Evelyn’s nap time, and this time she didn’t have her friend to bolster her confidence, but she seemed determined so we waited it out again. And this time she went in.

I’m always happy to see her breaking out of her shell, but it seemed a bit more hard earned this time and therefore a little sweeter.

I’m grateful to be surrounded by so much Love today.

Ever since the cold has settled in, Evelyn has resisted getting her snow stuff on to go pick up Abigail from school. Add in just waking up from a too-short nap after getting up pre-5am for the last three days … well, let’s just say that I wasn’t looking forward to today’s trip.

Until I decided to just wrap her in three blankets and lay her down in the sled. Which she thought was a great compromise. And I’m grateful to have one less fight today 🙂

I’m grateful that Evelyn survived her first class of “big girl” swimming without us. There was a pause as she was walking away from us and a  few tears about halfway through, but she did it.

We’ll see what next week brings!

Evelyn has a bit of an obsession with picking up snowballs, so when she spotted a pile of snow chunks left behind by a plow, it was hard to convince her that we couldn’t bring them home. As you can see, I didn’t actually convince her, she convinced me.

But I’m grateful that something so simple could bring a huge smile to her face.