I went to upload my pictures for the week and there were only these two? This is the lightest photo week I've had in months. Probably for the best. I definitely take more pictures than anyone needs of their childhood. Not too much to say this week. It's still rainy and dreary most days, but the temperatures are headed in an upward trajectory.
Alice is still sticking with one nap. I spent a lot of the week discouraged that her one nap hasn't gotten any longer. She used to take 2 naps each day, each one being about an hour and a half. Now her one nap lasts just over an hour, and I've really been feeling that loss of half of my productive/restful time each day. However, I just did a quick google and it looks like it's normal for the nap to take 2-4 weeks to lengthen after the 2-1 nap transition. I'm feeling some inklings of hope for the future of my free time.
In other Alice news, she has gained a lot of confidence in her walking this week. She's toddling all around the house all day. It's very cute, but with this new ability has a come a frustration with being confined to a grocery cart, front pack, or church pew. She would just rather be walking around on her own everywhere now. Toddlerhood, we meet again. It's go time.
Hello! I'll do a family update this week. Alice is hesitantly enjoying her newfound walking ability. She always wants to be walking around the house, but mostly only if she can hold onto one of my fingers while she does it. She's constantly reaching for my finger to get me to take her on a walk around the house. As long as I can listen to a podcast, I am enjoying this baby-walker stage of my career.
Alice is officially down to one nap a day--full stop. When Jack was a baby he toggled between one and two naps for several weeks before the one-nap schedule stuck, but Alice really landed on one nap last week and isn't going back. This is inconvenient timing since our church is now at 10:30 and she usually goes down for her nap around then. She is extremely wiggly and grumpy by the time primary comes around if we skip that morning nap (making it extra challenging for us to teach). So yesterday we put her down for a 30-minute catnap before church, hoping she would take an additional nap after church. Nope. Couldn't do the second nap and it was a rough afternoon. So for future Sundays we'll just keep her up until after church. We only need to make it through two more months until nursery.
Jack had many days of cancelled school last week. Monday was MLK day, Tuesday was a snow day, Wednesday was a half school day, and Thursday there was a burst pipe and school was cancelled. Combined with Alice abandoning her second nap, I felt like I was really white-knuckling my way through the week. I'd better have a good plan in place for getting through summer. I wish we lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids around Jack's age for him to run outside and play with. I'm seriously considering driving to Utah for a month of summer so he can play with the good neighborhood kids and cousins there. My other plan for surviving summer is going into it with lowwwww expectations. I'm going to do my best to abandon all hopes of productivity, and instead focus on fun PNW summer adventures--enjoying time with the kids instead of pining after my to-do list that I'll realistically never get to sink my teeth into over the summer.
Jared has been practicing his oil painting. I'm proud of him--he's wanted to pursue this for a decade and now is his time. I love watching him jump into something he enjoys in the evenings. After he gets better I'd love for him to teach me some basics, but for now I'm enjoying diving into my own interests while he's painting. I've learned over the past decade that I am my happiest self when I'm learning something new and doing something creatively fulfilling (which is why I'm so excited to watch Jared take up a creative hobby!).
For now my "thing" is listening to the Dear Alice design podcast and jotting down notes while I do little home projects like putting up a gallery wall of family pictures. You'd think that would be a one-day project, but it's been tricky. I started out with a wall of thrifted frames I've collected over the past few years. It took me hours and hours to arrange and put it up, but unfortunately it still came out looking off. I like the idea of a gallery wall of all different frames, but something's just not working. I'm leaning toward trying simple black frames and cardstock mats that I'll wrap in bits of linen cut from a fitted linen sheet I recently wore a hole through. I've already redone one frame this way and I love it. It feels very "me" and unique with the linen mats, but I like the uniformity of all black frames. It'll probably take several more weeks to decide on or thrift more black frames and then make the mats. Good thing I like a creative project. For now I'm leaving the gallery wall up so we can enjoy the pictures.
It has been a bit of a slow, cold week here in Washington. I have been going through pictures to choose some to print out for a wall in our home, and it occurred to me that I've never shared the family pictures we had taken in November. They turned out really nice, so I'll share them now. Let this be your nudge to hire someone to take your family pictures if you haven't before. This was our first time hiring someone, and coming from two cheapskates who usually use their own DSLR camera, it was 1000% worth it. We got soooo many more good ones than I'd ever be able to capture using my tripod. And it honestly doesn't have to be expensive. The PNW is an expensive place for pretty much everything, but we were able to find a photographer to do these for $150. She's a pretty new photographer and I don't think the quality/editing are substantially better than what I do, but there's no way I could get everyone posing this well and juggle the tripod game. Anyway, there are a lot of pictures (and I only included my favorites), but enjoy!
(Photographed by Captured by Kim in Arlington, WA)
Happy New Year! Jared and Jack kicked off the new year with something none of us has ever done: a Polar Plunge. I would absolutely have joined them, but somebody had to stay warm and dry with Alice so I volunteered for that job this year. Here they are after plunging quickly into Lake Stevens. It hasn't snowed at all this year so it could have been worse, but they assured me that it was QUITE cold in the lake. They ran in, dunked, and got out as quickly as possible to be first in line to receive a free Polar Plunge Lake Stevens sweatshirt. Jack was the youngest kid I saw doing this. I'm not sure he dunked his whole body, but he did dunk his face all the way in and most of his hair was wet so he gets 5-year-old polar plunge credit. Here's Jack, and Jared to his left, running back to the beach:
^^New Years' Eve playing Left-Right-Center with the Lamberts.
^^Alice on her first day of a pretty rough sickness this past week. She was very into listening to music on these headphones.
