tawbubby

We’re building lots of skills here.

Amelia has been talking about monkey bread since they made it at her summer camp.  Last weekend, I made the dough, and she got to roll all the balls of dough, dip them in butter, and roll them in cinnamon and sugar.

Here is the yummy bread!  We ate all but three or four balls, which she took for her snack and lunch-treat at school the next day.

This weekend, Daphne and I made peanut butter and jelly muffins.  That recipe has been printed on the Pillsbury flour bag for years, and Daphne would eat PB&J every meal if we let her.  Sounded perfect!

And her delicious muffins:

I started with “young sewers”, but that didn’t work!

If you remember from October, Grannie and Grampy sent Amelia our old sewing machine and a whole kit of supplies for her birthday.  The kit included a quilt patch for each girl to sew.  We finished them up with Grannie while they were visiting last weekend.

Daphne requested purple and Amelia requested light blue and dark blue (I think?) for their next patches.

Both girls have been practicing gliding down the neighbors’ driveways (ours is stones, not paved) to learn how to balance on a bike.  Particularly Amelia has watched two neighbors get rid of training wheels this fall, and watched them practice riding these driveways over and over.  She is following the same patterns.

Daphne got this bike for her 4th birthday- no pedals.  It’s supposed to help kids go directly to a bike without training wheels.  She got the knack of it recently, and ‘skuuts’ all over the cul de sac.  We actually used that concept to tell her sister what to do to get ready to drop the training wheels.

This morning, Amelia came to me, and said “Mama, today is the day.  Can you take my training wheels off my bike?”  We’d already taken them off several times, for 15 minutes for her to get used to scooting around without them.  She made up her mind today.  They practiced for almost an hour before leaving to meet Ethan for lunch.

After lunch, we went to Amelia’s elementary school to ride on a large flat area.  First sit on the bike was successful, and off she went!  Hang on till the end of that video, it’s cute.

While riding through the picture below, she said “I want to ride across the country!”.

She is so proud of herself.  We came home, and she rode all afternoon until it got dark.  At one point she went inside, everyone else was outside, and I heard her yell “I did it!” to herself.

Daphne isn’t far behind…will be interesting to watch.  She rides her Skuut so well maybe she will easily transition to the pedals.

Here’s the celebratory icecream shot

And some cute pics of Daphne from the school playground.  Crazy stripe combination in her tights + socks + legwarmers:

And very static-y hair!

Aunt Cheri gave the girls glasses-straws.  One end goes in your drink, the other goes in your mouth.  They are having a lot of fun with them.

Amelia tried a Shirley Temple (surprise, she loved it), which was  a great bubble effect for the glasses.  See the video here.  You know it.  You want some too.

The girls were very impressed by our clothes for Ethan’s company party, and kept asking for a fancy dinner.  So, over the break we had fancy dinner at home.  These girls know how to do it up!  Some boys are going to be in trouble in 10 or 15 years.

2012 started gorgeous with a day in the 60s.  We went bike riding in the neighborhood.  The girls had some good races.

A rest.

Daph had fun trying to run over her shadow.

Amelia scrambled all the way across this log.  I went to the other side to try to clear some briar vines for her…I think resulting in some poison ivy on my leg.

Amelia and I attached the Stomp Rocket to the front of her bike basket today.  She can press the air pillow with her knee to launch the rocket while riding.  Awesome!