Death discussions continue to occur around our household since we told the girls about our beloved “senior” kitty Rory going up to heaven. It happened immediately after the girls’ birthday party a couple weeks ago and during our Monday Seward day holiday. He was likely deteriorating for a few days prior to us noticing, since the birthday hubbub kept us all pretty busy over that weekend. The random questions crack me up when I focus on how they are funny and not sad. For example: How does Rory get to heaven? What happened to his head? We need to bring a hair drier outside and melt the snow so ..read more

As amateurs to the concept of spring break, we jumped in full force this year to keep our first one with kids interesting. Thinking back to this time last year, I remember telling myself to enjoy my last spring break with childcare for the foreseeable future, and it’s crazy to think that was already a year ago. Grandma Sue was happy to come up early to help me with birthday preparations and child watch while Craig and I got a few (or more!) hours of work in over the two week span, and of course that comes with all the Grandma Sue benefits of toy sorting, house re-organization, and fun birthda ..read more

Another small life shift for our everyday household, that really only impacts me and Craig at this point, is the new and improved bedtime routine. Since the girls were getting out of cribs and into toddler beds, for more than three years, every single night either Craig or I have sat in the comfy sofa chair in their bedroom after lights out and until everyone fell asleep. We both had different music playlists and rotated through song requests until the snoozing began; sometimes when they were smaller it involved quiet singing as well. For at least two of those years, every time I sat we listen ..read more

Last week Craig inspired me to do a fun visit to the girls’ school for an educational work demonstration, to show off my office’s new Boston Dynamic robot dog. The dog’s name is Aurora, named after her custom northern lights inspired skin, and will be testing out airfield wildlife mitigation in Fairbanks under a research and development project. For folks my age, the creep factor is real when you are up close and personal with such a “creature;” and at the same time it is really cool what technology can do these days. At least ten parents have asked me questions the past few days about the vis ..read more

Life over the past month continues to stay very busy! I started writing small notes to myself of the latest with the girls, knowing I will forget what lovely life tidbits to include as I muse about our daily life. Since I last wrote a blog, 10 new Bluey episodes were released in the United States. This is clearly a worthy milestone to mention, since we marathoned them like an adult would for a new season of their own show, and within a few days the girls were already asking for episodes by name. No, we don’t watch television allll the time and yes, we love that the episodes are only a few minu ..read more

The past month everyone discovered the fun of loose and wiggly teeth. Since classmates began to see new holes in their smiles, specifically one of their besties, everyone continues to ask when theirs will start falling out. The enthusiasm for this life event is strong! We are also receiving questions why teeth brushing remains important, because the threat “your teeth will fall out if you don’t brush them” is exactly the opposite of this situation. Similarly to when their teeth came in as babies, I’m really interested to see the order of loss, with the girls’ identical attributes showing in so ..read more

While on Christmas break the girls eased into the usual winter cold and corresponding cough, meaning we spent a lot of time at home. With the sub-zero temperatures outside, not being out and about was welcomed (at least in my opinion!), but also meant a lot of energy was present in the household, and not from the adults. One morning at home we patched all three kids, covering everyone’s right eyes in an attempt to show Reagan and Harper what Emerie goes through every day at school, and five days a week since she was fourteen months old. Unsurprisingly, Harper was instantly asking to take it of ..read more

Another year down, another successful Christmas weekend with family and first half of Christmas break. Overall things were pretty quiet on activities- not quiet on sound mind you, obviously- and it’s now very evident the girls can entertainment themselves much more than in years past. Other than the massive amount of effort it takes to open toys from their insane packaging; the girls overall enjoyed playing with their new gifts and even let the parents enjoy some down time on the couch. The next sinus cold and cough hit the house a couple days before the big day; luckily it happened after thei ..read more

Somehow we are already creeping toward the end of December and fully into Christmas season. After a nice Thanksgiving dinner at cousins house in November- where the kids mildly grazed and pretty much ate cucumbers and carrots for dinner- the girls were thrilled to put the Christmas tree up on Black Friday and even more excited to hang ornaments on the tree. Quite a few ornament accidents occurred over the first weekend; mostly random bulbs that somehow walked themselves into their bedroom, became dollhouse ornaments, or managed to become decorations in a variety of less than amenable location ..read more

After five years, we finally made it to our first Nutcracker performance. I thought long and hard about taking them last year, but the winter sickness and RSV ultimately solved that question for me. I am unsure we would have made it through this type of performance when they were four and glad we waited. It helps that the kindergarten class has attended a similar staged show and we’ve recently gone to a few movies. This year a friend suggested a more kid friendly Nutcracker show in December, as opposed to the fancier Eugene Ballet performance that happens over Thanksgiving weekend, and we wen ..read more