Lola had a lot of fun in the snow.  Before it started snowing, I was walking around in the backyard and discovered one of her balls was frozen in the center of the backyard, it’s a big tennis ball, about 5 inches wide or so, and it was about 2″ stuck on the bottom, and had about a half inch of ice coating it all the way around.  I tried to kick it out, but it didn’t budge so I left it there.  And then it snowed.  It snowed so much we lost the ball.  Lola spent several trips in the backyard rooting her nose around for it.  I could tell she mostly remembered where it was supposed to be, but because the entire backyard was white, it was hard to find landmarks for her to find it.  But it was fun to watch her dig her nose in the snow, and then lift her head to sneeze- Anna kept cracking up at Lola’s antics too- I love those moments!  We never did find it until the snow melted away.   And she blended in so well with the snow!  Her black patches on her face really help.

 I hate to admit how terrible of an Owner I’ve been to her the past year.  I gave her a bath usually at least every 2 months- typically once a month.  I bathed her about 2 weeks before Anna was born, and then the next time I got around to it was the following  January when Anna had just learned to sit up on her own (5 months).  I set Anna on the floor in the hallway with some toys and then gave Lola her much needed bath…. And then I bathed Lola again… a few weeks ago!  Wow! I can’t believe I let it go a whole year without bathing her!  Good thing she has short hair, longer-haired dogs can get stinky with those thick coats.  So here’s Lola saying “finally!”  And it was obvious that she wanted one too!  I haven’t said, “Lola, do you want a bath” in over a year, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, Lola bolted for the bathroom and jumped in the tub!  Silly, Lola!

I’ve heard rumors that this is going to be the wettest winter Oklahoma has ever had.  December’s snow storm right before Christmas (I’ll add that it came 2 days after the “official” first day of winter-according to the calendar) was record-breaking in itself.  Followed a month later by an ice storm and snowstorm, and now it’s predicted that we’ll get more rain and snow on Sunday and Monday, followed by more chances of wet weather on Thursday and Saturday!  Will it ever end?!  I have to say, I think the rumors are already true.  This isn’t “Going to be” the wettest winter, it already has been!  Well, at least in the 17 years I’ve lived here. 

I remember school closing for winter weather several times throughout the years.  Maybe even at least once each winter, usually due to ice.  But I can’t remember ever having so many cancellations for schools, churches, activites, etc this many times in one season!  And the storm that the weatherpeople are tracking right now may have “blizzard-like” conditions.  yuck!

Well, enough of the ranting!  Here are the final updates from the last storm I told you I’d track. 
Remember those icecicles that were taller than Anna?  Well the final measurment  for the longest one was 69″.  (And if you don’t want to do the math, that’s 5′ 9″- 2 inches shorter than me.  And taller than each of my past College roomies!)

Since there was so much snow on the roof, it was melting so steadily that most of the icecicles formed large groupings making 5,6,&7 icecicles turn into just 1.  Here’s a reminder of what that funky icecicle looked like after we got all the ice and it was just starting to snow- it was about 8″ long here.   And here’s what it looked like about an hour before it fell it to it’s death on the front step- it measured 52″.  I heard it crash while sitting in the living room playing with Anna- it must have been really heavy!

Icecicles amaze me for some reason.  Maybe it’s the way the water is warm enough to be melting, but still cold enough to freeze, or maybe it’s the way that it doesn’t just pull straight down off the roof- it still rolls and curves enough to make odd shaped formations; or maybe it’s because things like this happen!
It’s an ice flower!  I snapped a few pictures and wish now I had taken the extra time to get my Macro lens (for close-ups) and really studied it with lots of photographs. (But, Anna was starring out the front door at me while I was walking around, and I decided to be a good Mommy and not leave her alone in the house for too long- even though I could see her the whole time).

This was so cool.  You can see in the first picture that the water was dripping off one cicle and landing on a “ledge” on another cicle, creating a nice little splatter that turned into a “flower”.  So cool!
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Since we have a plethera of snow, and since it’s not melting and is nice and powdery, I have made snow icecream!  Yum!  I actually saw a friend on facebook had made it and posted the recipe on her status comments, so I made a batch last night. Only it was WAY too sweet!   So I made another batch this afternoon, decreased the amount of sugar, added some of my yummy homemade hot chocolate mix, and BAM! That stuff is awesome!  I’ve been telling Matt since Thursday I wished I had grabbed a bucket of Ice Cream from the store when I was prepping for the storm, but I was too focused on the predictions of power outages that I didn’t think about stocking up on stuff that I’d want if I just couldn’t leave the house.

But it worked out pretty good!  It tastes like Frozen Hot Chocolate!  Since Anna is not quite into the “Let’s play in the Snow!” stage, we haven’t really walked around a whole lot outside.  And since there’s a huge vacant lot next to our house, when we do go outside it’s usually over there where the ground is more level or in the front yard where there are NO surprises under the snow. (I’ll remind you we have a dog… that’s all I’m going to say…).
That to say we found nice clean snow in the front yard, I used a laddle to scoop it into the bowl, took it inside, mixed the ingredients in another bowl and then gradually stirred it together!  It’s that simple!  And if you’re concerned about watching your weight with all the extra snacking that’s being done while cooped up inside: there aren’t that many!  I used plain, regular sugar- so if you use a sugar substitute you’ll have to do the math yourself.   But I calculated that the whole batch had less than 750 calories- and there’s enough in the whole batch to nicely serve 6-8 people.

Want the recipe?  Here’s how I made it:

1 gallon of Snow
1 cup of milk
1/2-3/4 cup of sugar

The original recipe called for 1 cup sugar and a teaspoon of Vanilla- but I am out of vanilla and found it too sweet with a full cup.  I then added 2 tablespoons of my Homemade Hot Chocolate mix which has a vanilla flavor in it anyways.  And again, YUMM!   I just looked at the bottom of my large mixing bowls and found one that said “4 quarts” (which is 1 gallon) and another that said “5 1/2 quarts”.  I used the larger one to mix the other ingredients in and then added the snow into it so I’d have mixing room.

Enjoy!!

I don’t do a lot of online shopping, but occassionally I’ll find a good bargain for something that justifies not shopping locally.  I’ve mentioned multiple times how much I love BabyLegs. They’re so practical.  And the pairs that Anna wore when she was just 2 months old, still fit and look really cute under dresses or with onsies around the house, or under a skirt.  I even put some on under her jeans when we went outside to add an extra layer of warmth in this snowy weather without having to dress her in two pants and make it difficult for her to walk.  So the $12 investment for a pair of leg warmers has been greatly worth while.  Since in the same amount of time I would have purchased at least 4  pairs of pants (3-6, 6-9, 9-12, 12-18months ) that Anna would only have outgrown in 3 month’s time, and most pants packages are 2 packs for $10. Meaning a $24 investment on babylegs beats the $40 I would have spent on things she’d have outgrown, and the BabyLegs still fit well, even on her thighs, so they’ll last a lot longer even!  Plus, when I do end up shopping on BabyLegs’ website, I only get their current sale items, use a promo code, or shop in their OnSale section which are usually just $7 a pair.  (And the offbrand leg warmers by cisco, or Target brands, etc, have all proven to be too tight on her, they leave HUGE red marks on her legs where you can tell they were way too tight.  And BabyLegs have never done that to her.)

Okay, so here’s the reason for the blog. TheMiniSocial is a website that offers boutique style baby items and clothes for half the price that their suppliers sell them for.  The sales usually only last a couple of days (3-4 at the most).  They do ask that you register an email address and have a password on your account, and they do send an email everytime they have a new sale going on (so about 2-3 times a week).  But there’s always intersting things to look at, shoes, clothes, toys, etc- all for about half the price they usually sell for.

The last purchase I made was when they were showcasing BabyLegs about a year ago. I told a few friends they were going to be doing the sale the next day (they have a referral program that gives the referer $10 credit for each friend that makes a purchase and states when they sign up who referred them.)  So since Steph made a purchase and mentioned my email as the referral,  I received $10 credit.  I hadn’t used the credit yet because I hadn’t seen anything that would be something that would last Anna a while like the BabyLegs had, and though a lot of their shirts and dresses are SUPER cute, I just still didn’t find an item I wanted to spend it on.   Until last week.

Anna loves putting things inside of other things, opening and closing things, pretending to be on the phone, playing with “keys” and opening things with them.  And this cute Melissa & Doug purse has lots of cute items in it!  They look babyish kind of, but recommended for 18months +, so I got it.  It was $15, normally $32, and I had the credit (thanks Steph!) So with shipping I paid about $10 for this little toy.  We got it yesterday when I was cycling through toy suggestions for her (again) since we’re stuck at home (and inside due to the lovely weather).  So the new toy was a nice bonus this weekend.  She’s been playing with it off and on, even stuck her arm through the strap and carried it to her CozyCoupe and put it on the seat next to her in the car.  I think it’ll be a good tool to help her imagination and pretending skills kick in more. 

So we’ve been counting coins and putting them in the coin purse, playing with the keys, talking on her little phone, and using the little compact to “powder her nose” and look in the little flexible plastic mirror, and then putting them in the purse and walking around with it.  It’s been fun to encourage her imagination lately!  She’ll be 18 months on Monday, so I’ll have to remember to get on here and post the cute pictures I took of her this morning in the snow.

Oh, and if you want to sign up for the MiniSocial and tell them I sent you, just send me a quick message! I used my gmail account, so if you don’t have that one just let me know and I’ll tell you what it is!

Here are a few more pictures of the snow we got yesterday.  Thursday’s weathermen said we’d receive 4-6 inches of snow on top of the sleet and ice, then Friday morning before the snow started, predictions changed to 1-3″.  Well, we got 4-7 inches in our backyard. Depending on where you put the ruler.  It was all on flat ground away from trees and houses,  but the north side of the backyard got 4 inches, and the southern part of the yard got 7inches! Amazing differences since our backyard is just 65′ wide. 

Remember the icecicles on the house yesterday?  Apparently, even though it’s only 25 degrees out there right now, the snow on the roof is melting a little and forming some really long icecicles! This picture on the left shows what they looked like at 8:00 this morning, There are 2 really long ones hanging at each side of the window, down to the window sill.  And this one on the right is a different one that was only about a foot long this morning, but is now longer than Anna! (This look on her face is: Uh, Mom, this thing’s really cold!)   I’m leaving the first longer ones just to see how long it does actually get.  I’ll try to keep you posted on that one.

This limb caught a nice little cradle of snow… these little bity limbs managed to catch over 5 inches of snow!

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Here are two more fun videos of Anna doing, well, Anna stuff…

She’s playing peek-a-boo with her lunch plate.  Notice when I don’t respond to her peeking out behind the plate like I was before, she says “Oh, there she is!” for me!  Too cute!

Here are some fun animal sounds.  Including, several unusual animals like: Hippo, Camel, Guinea, etc.  (Hippos just open their mouths really wide, Camels chew, and Guineas make a funny squaking sound).  I wish I had her flash cards in front of me and would have remembered more of the other ones she knows that are really cute.  She makes a really funny Bunny impression, and for some reason, I always forget that one.

Anna  knows better than to touch and play with our cell phones, the remotes, etc. And knows not to touch the xBox, DVD player, and other TV equipment.  Just two days after we replaced my phone with an iPhone, Anna picked it up off the couch, pushed the bottom button on it, slide the slider on the screen, and got into the main pages on the phone!  That’s a lot of steps!  I’ve never let her play with my phone before, and Matt doesn’t let her play with his either.  I grabbed the camcorder, and reset the phone just to tape her doing it again before taking it away.  Now if any of the above smaller items are left within her reach, she brings them to us.  She doesn’t play with them, just picks it up, brings it to Matt or I and says “Thank You”- because she knows that’s what we’re going to say before we tell her “Don’t Touch”.  We’re working this actually right now… trying to discourage her from touching it all, but she has quite the stubborn quality in her.

None the less, here’s a video of her starting up the iPhone.  And she uses her pointer finger of one hand while holding it in the other.  When I do these steps I use one hand and my thumb to slide it- since I’m usually holding her or carrying something else in the other arm when I answer the phone or pick it up to check something, so it’s not like she’s just doing the exact thing I do.

This storm was predicted to be “Catastrophic”- according to Gary England on News9 up here.  And, yes, a lot of their predictions were correct:  We did get a 1/2″ inch of ice on most of our trees and fences and such, and yes,  the sleet did come in after the ice at approximately the exact time they said it would, and yes, the snow did come in behind it… BUT, there were not near the power outages that they said there would be (a nice BONUS!), and the snow did not start until this morning (giving us only about an inch or so, so far, instead of the 4-6″ with massive snowdrifts and blizzard-like conditions like they originally predicted.)  But I’d say it’s hardly “catastrophic”.

Our power never went out, but the power at my parent’s, grandma’s and brother’s houses was out from about 5ish to 6:30ish last night.  Luckily it came back on soon enough to warm the house back up before they all went to bed.  And the power at my sister’s house in Lexington did go out last night, and looks like it may be out for a couple of days.  But they were predicting MASSIVE outages across the state, and really only got a small area (in comparison) south of the metro.

Here is a small gallery of images from the December IceStorm2007 if you’d like to be reminded what our yard looked like at the end of that one.  You’ll notice in those images: the ice was so thick it even covered all the individual blades of grass. That storm was not followed by any other precipitation.  So we didn’t get the sleet and snow that the storm this weekend gave us.  In 2007, our power went out about 8am and came back on around 6p or 7p, Anna was a six-week fetus- so she snuggled nicely with Lola and I on the couch to stay warm (Matt and I were the only ones who even knew of her existence at that point), Matt got home around 3p that day and the roads were hardly wet- they weren’t freezing at all, so we got out of the house to get warm in the car and found a Church’s Chicken that was the only thing around that somehow still had power.  The limbs were completely covered with ice- all the way around, and our cherry tree in the back still had the majority of it’s leaves which made it even more susceptible to damage.
Well, there’s a nice recap from a few years ago.

Here’s a quick look into this year’s storm.  I recorded a little video so you can see some of the differences.  It’s really not that interesting, so honestly it won’t hurt my feelings at all if you don’t watch it

And here are some pictures I took this morning.   Since the freezing rain came in with some wind, it only covered one side of all of our trees, which is probably why none of them are breaking.  Our honeysuckle bush, however did get completely covered so it’s leaves look like little green peppers under the ice, and the ground had enough sleet fall on top of the ice that it made the ground hollow underneath.  Making it really fun to hear Lola running in the backyard.  Sounds like a horse running out there!  And while I was walking around, I had to stomp the heel of my foot into the ground to maintain traction, otherwise I just slid on top of the ice.  You can click on an image to go into a gallery and see them in the full size, rather than the square crop it shows here, and click it to go to the next one.  There’s a “Close” option at the bottom of the gallery.  You’ll also notice in the pictures that the wind was blowing and made for some fun looking icecicles- sideways ones, and curved ones- so the snow that’s coming in now is landing ontop of some of them, weird!

It’s still snowing, so we don’t have a total yet, but the flakes seem to be getting bigger and bigger, so it may just add up to the new snow total of 3″  that they stated on the news this morning.

This video is long- about 5 minutes or so-  I probably should have broken it down into several short videos. The first part, Anna is helping me encourage Lola to go run in the snow (by tricking her with the “s” word- squirrel),  When Lola finally gets off the porch it sounds like a horse running since the ground underneath is hollow. When she starts running back towards the house you can hear it better, and then in the last part Anna is just being cute helping me encourage Lola to come back inside.  So, again, it’s really not very interesting, just a typical morning with Breedings.

Anna has always been a great napper.  I could wrap her in her blanket and give her a pacifier (we called it “binky”, and Anna in her more recent months has been calling it “Bippy”), since she was a baby we never had any issues with naptime or bedtime unless she was sick. As long as we kept with the routine of putting her in the crip with those 2 items; binky and blanket.
I had heard so many moms saying that quitting the pacifier was one of the hardest things they ever did with their toddlers, so I was really not looking forward to this day.  One book I read while pregnant said to have them weaned by 15 months, but I’d seen so many kids walking around (ages 2 to even 5 year olds!), with pacifiers in their mouth, and Anna only took her’s while sleeping- we never let her walk around with it, even at the house.  So I didn’t heed the book’s advice of weaning early since it was such a good sleep pattern for her and I didn’t have another plan to replace the current one that worked so well.

She got a pretty yucky cold in late November to early December, and due to the pacifier ritual at night, she would suck on her paci while still breathing through her mouth, resulting in very chapped cheeks underneath the area of her face that was covered by the pacifier.  I tried ointments and lotion to help heal her little mouth, and at times it got extremely red and I could tell it was bothering her, but nothing seemed to work.  She only had her pacifier at nights and during naptime, and I’d always sneak in and take it out of her mouth before I went to bed at night too; however, her cheeks just wouldn’t heal. 

So we decided to quit cold-turkey.  The Sunday after Christmas we removed the binkies from her room, and didn’t mention them before putting her in her bed.  Anna sat straight up as I was walking out the door and said “Binky?”, I stopped at the door, and then decided to just ignore the request and go on out and shut the door.  Anna was Livid! She through a royal tantrum for 45 minutes,  screaming, and crying, and asking for the Binky…  Matt finally went in and scooped her up, calmed her down,  And then when she wasn’t crying anymore and wasn’t requesting the pacifier, we gave it to her and she went right to sleep.   We decided we weren’t ready to face that battle just yet…

The following week, the day before New Year’s Eve, Anna got another nasty runny nose, and we knew if her little mouth was going to heal, we’d have to bite the bullet and endure the torture of getting rid of that pacifier.  So that evening I talked about it with her.  About 15 minutes before bedtime, I started talking about the “Binky being All Gone”.  I knew that term was one she understood- it means: No more, can’t have it, etc.  So it was the one I selected at that moment. I told her it was all gone, and we wouldn’t have it anymore, but she could go nite-nite with her bear!  And excitedly talked about how fun it was going to be to sleep with Bear AND Lambie.   And when I laid her down in the bed, she asked for it and I explained again that it was “all gone”…”no more binky”.  I let her cry for about 5 minutes before going back in to snuggle her a minute and explain again that the binky was all gone, but she could have Bear instead.  And this time, she accepted it!  She laid down without a fuss, and played with her bear while she fell asleep.  It took another 45 minutes for her to actually fall asleep, but she did it by herself!  Crisis averted!

I have to say, she’s been the best child I could ever have asked for.  She’s so easy-going as long as you let her know the game-plan so she knows what to expect.  Which is actually how I am too.  I like to know the schedule, to plan things, organize routines, etc.  I hate not knowing what to expect.  And looking back on the first attempt, I really think her issue that day was not the fact that she couldn’t have the pacifier, so much as: I ignored her request and she knew I had heard her ask for it.

There’s one for the lesson book… Anna likes to know what’s going on, and a simple explanation is all she needs.

She’d still request it before naps and bedtime for a few days, but as long as I stuck to the story of binky being all gone and the bear was it’s replacement, she’d go right to sleep.  I knew the real test would be the following Tuesday when she went back to JoyfulNoise and had naptime there.  So I explained to Ms. Tracy the gameplan we had been working on with her and tucked the bear in her bag with her blanket.   When I picked Anna up at 2pm, Tracy said Anna requested the binky, but she gave Anna the bear and explained the binky was gone, and Anna layed down and took a nap with out it!  Wow! So much for dreading the pacifier weaning experience!  This one worked out perfectly!

This little guy is super fun.  He provides a lot of entertainment for Anna.  She’ll pick him up and bring him to me and say “On?” to request that I turn it on.  I use to leave him on, or rather, would forget to turn it off to conserve the battery life of him.  However, I have recently started making a point to turn it off at night before bedtime.  You see, Most people don’t like to wake up to the sound of things going off and making noise in the middle of the night.  This little Dog said “It’s Learning Time!”, “Bye, Bye!”, “It’s Learning Time!”, “Bye, Bye!”,”It’s Learning Time!”, “Bye, Bye!”, over and over with a short few second pause between phrases in the middle of the night until I finally found it to turn it off!  Luckily, when Anna woke up to me moving around and searching under things to find it, I changed her diaper and put her back to bed and she fell asleep quickly.
And then, the following night, it said “Peek-A-Boo! I see you!” Over and over till I found it!  Agh!  that’ll give you chills!  It’s like a character off of ToyStory… only he probably came from Sid’s house….