The other day, when visiting her Yinski, Abigail cuddled up in his lap under a blanket. Larry described them as "2 Peas In A Pod" but Abigail thought he was talking about 2 pees, so she got giggly. After we explained what the phrase meant, she wanted to make a pea pod for her grandfather. I cut some felt, and did 3 stitches to teach her how to sew it together (with real needle and thread, not a kid's toy or anything) and she did the rest, found to puff balls in our craft desk, glued them in and we sent the pea pod to the Big Pea.
(I still can't believe at age 4 she sewed this!!)
Abigail had her first Tae Kwon Do class today. It went much better than her whole first month of ballet classes. (Plus, there was no pink, no body glitter and no "princess walking" and Asian kids look way cuter in a dobok anyhow!) Her teacher said that she is a good listener, is a calm and not easily excitable student, and is flexible. (One point for Abigail being a wonderful kid!) Abigail's favorite part? Breaking a board with her hand! (One point to the karate studio for knowing how to get the kids hooked on day 1!!)
Last Friday, after a harrowing and terrifying drive in a snowstorm that began abruptly with an unrelenting ferocity that this northern girl has never before seen, we arrived at my parents' farm for a long weekend. (Little did we know, we could have stayed at least 3 more days, as the snow has arrived in northern Virginia and we have not had school all week!)
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Although the temps were in the low teens with wind chills even lower, we had several 30-60 minute sled riding sessions on The Hill at the farm. The Hill was fast, like skeleton-sled fast, with the added fun of frozen horse droppings that we would hit and make us fly off of our sled, into the air. It was like hitting rocks. Larry broke a sled. We all have bruises. But it was fun.
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We have allowed Abigail to retain her only two vices from babyhood. One is Blankie. Sometimes, when stressed or tired, she just says "I need to sniff my Blankie" and within a few minutes, Happy Child returns. Besides, 4 is not too old to have a Blankie. But the other vice is her sippy cup. Sure, she drinks water and juice and lemonade out of regular cups and glasses. But when waking up, going to bed, or decompressing, she relies on hot milk in a sippy cup. Abigail loves hot milk, but she REFUSES to drink it out of anything except a sippy cup. When presented with the choices (A) hot milk in another type of cup and (B) no milk at all, she always picks (B). Since we forgot her sippy cup on this trip, Abigail didn't have any hot milk, but she did try something new: hot chocolate (made from milk) in a mug!! This is a HUGE step for her and a treat that she loved after sledding.
My parents also took her to see Frozen for the second time. She is OBSESSED with the movie, in a good way I guess, not in a Disney-princess way. She is singing (even more than usual), talking about eternal concepts like family, love, protecting people from getting hurt and friendship. She is picking up and using new vocabulary, such as "isolation" and "sophisticated." Abigail made my mother role play Elsa and Anna for hours. During one break for dinner, my mom was relaxing with adults for a few minutes when Abigail (ready to return to playing) said "Grandma, you be Abigail and I'll be Grandma." My mom said okay and said some vague thing. Abigail corrected her, "No, you say 'Let's go play' and then I'll say 'yes' and we'll go do that right now!!" We got a real kick out of how Abigail tricked my mom into playing more.
It is true. When it is 7 degrees Fahrenheit, bubbles do freeze!!
Abigail also had fun throwing frozen things at the frozen pool.
Stay warm, everyone!
Christmas came and went so quickly this year. And it didn't feel as Christmas-y as I had hoped. As much as we don't over-plan our lives, we had very few free nights to hang out in the evening with our tree, a fire, and (after Abigail's bedtime, a glass of wine for Larry and me). Out of the 22 nights before my parents arrived, Abigail had us busy on 4 nights and Larry was busy on 10 nights. (Why can't chorus performers give a WINTER concert instead of a CHRISTMAS concert in an already over-packed, over-done month? 20 hours in the week before Christmas went into Larry's choral performance. That is too much.)
The absence of my mother-in-law was felt by me this year. I enjoyed having her visit us last December. She was a constant, calm, Christmas-y presence in front of a fire every evening for the latter half of the month, but she was unable to make the trip from Florida this year. We were lucky enough, though, to have my parents for most of the entire week of Christmas. They took Abigail out to breakfast on Christmas Eve and they entertained her for every waking minute of every day.
(In retrospect, I have no idea how we could have survived Christmas break without their presence and help!)
After 12 days off, Abigail was ready to go back to school yesterday. She had a blast.
Then the snow started. But it was beautiful snow. Big, fat, wet, gentle, beautiful snowflakes began falling right after Abigail put on her pajamas. She ran to the back door. She ran to the front door. She excitedly declared "It is snowing in all directions!!!! It must be snowing at everyone's house!!!! Can I call Grandma Judy and Yinski and tell them about this snow and see if they have it?!?!?!" After an excited conversation, she hung up. It was already past her bedtime, but the snow had covered the grass and, given the forecast of temps in the single digits for today, I knew that this would be her only chance to play in "packing snow." So I put her coat over her pjs, slipped on boots, and we had a snowball fight. We fought the back fence (a target she could hit with her mittens on).
Today was a snow day, with with wind-chill in the negatives and the stickiness gone from the snow, we only went sled-riding, and not for very long. But Abigail still LOVED it.
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