Gabi & Bella

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Gabi's letters

Posted by Lissa at 8:06 PM

Gabi loves to write notes to her loved ones. We each get many letters daily, folded and wrapped in a doll blanket or baby burp cloth as a present. We love it! I had a very difficult time selecting which ones to post here.

Notes from December 2009:

January 2010 pictures from Gabi:

Gabi's favorite color is light blue.
She colored/glitter-painted this especially for her Daddy.

A portrait of Daddy

January letters from Gabi:

Colors for Lolo & Lola
(The butterfly is stenciled; the other drawings are free-hand.)

Do we pick up Bella and take her to the store

Gabi is learning about punctuation in school,
so she wanted to write me a question.

Do we pick up Bella and take her home and wrap a present

Gabi was excited to use the ? stamp
from "Uncle" George for Christmas.

Gratification for Daddy's taking her to school before work
(even though it required that she wake up extra-early and go to before care)

A sympathy card after Daddy got hurt while playing with her
Gabi doesn't want to leave anyone out! She even includes her not-yet-born sister.

A painted note to Bella, "from" Katya
(with a Tinkerbell stencil)

Gabi traced Sleeping Beauty all by herself
and then colored her drawing and embellished it with glitter paint.

Gabi sounded out Wuffel Bear (Daddy's childhood teddy)
and wrote her sister's name in bubble-letters.

February 2010 drawings:

Gabi's drawing of Rintoo,
Kai-Lan's tiger friend

Gabi used a stamp for this person's shirt decoration.

Books by Gabi
At school, Gabi's PreK class has started working on "wordless books" in which the children write a story to go along with the illustrations. Here are a few examples of Gabi's work. (Gabi sounds out the words on her own, then her teacher writes in the correct spelling.) I'd really like to post every page of these books, but I'll limit myself.

The next ball and the arms.

These are the eyes.
(I love her spelling "izs")

The baby chick hatched.

The monkey jumped in the car.

The monkey laughed.
At home during afternoon quiet time, Gabi made her own Alphabet Book with a page for each letter. I scanned the entire alphabet (4 pages at a time), but I decided to post only one.

E is for elephant
F is for fish
G is for Gabi
H is for helicopter

Monday, February 15, 2010

Winter Comes to the South

Posted by Lissa at 7:43 PM

The second week in February, it snowed about 6 inches on Sunday night and Monday morning, plus perhaps another 2 inches overnight on Monday, canceling school Monday and Tuesday. Even with a delayed opening of school on Wednesday, driving conditions were still icy in the neighborhoods (especially on residential hills where the snowplows or salting trucks had not ventured). Here in the South, we aren't used to snow sticking on the ground past 10 AM the morning after it has fallen!

Watching the snow
Gabi had no interest in going outside on Monday to play in the snow. It looked too cold! She only got dressed after I promised her that I would not make her go outside. Bella wanted to put shoes on and run outside in her pajamas; however, she refused to get dressed, so we ended up just playing inside. The kids did carry small chairs over to the window and stare out at the snow a la The Cat in the Hat.

The girls' window view
On Tuesday, I coaxed the children outside. Monday afternoon had brought freezing rain/snow mix before the overnight dusting, so the previous day's snow had frozen into an almost-solid crunchy layer. Unlike our Little Rock friends who played in the fresh snow on Monday, we were unable to build a snowman taller than the kids. That didn't stop the kids from having fun, though!

Gabi drawing in the snow

Gabi's snow drawing

Gabi's snowball toss

Bella making tracks

Bella happily declared this chunk of icy snow to be diamond-shaped

Gabi sinking into the snow
Sunday night's snow was still covering the ground on Wednesday evening! (Although, as you can see in the next picture, the sidewalks were more covered in slippery ice.)

Bella showing me the snow
A full week later, we still have patches of snow in shady spots and along the sides of the street where the snowplows piled it up. The roads and skies are clear, though, and we've had nice sunny (albeit still freezing) days.

Gabi and Bella's play picnic
Michael just returned from touring Vanderbilt, and it snowed the entire time he was in Nashville. We're glad he made it home safely driving through snow in the dark!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Snow Day(s) 2010

Posted by Mikey at 8:15 PM

So, it would seem we've almost run out of January. As always, we apologize for the delay between new posts, but Mommy has been devoting her extra oxygen to growing a new baby. Daddy is just being lazy. We will get to the rest of the best of January later, but we wanted to first show some pictures of our snow days. For all you yankees out there, yes, this is as much snow as we get down here.

Snow Day #1
Earlier this month, we got maybe half an inch of snow. We thought this would be it for the year, so we made sure to take the girls out and let them play before it disappeared. As you can see, there wasn't much, but the girls sure enjoyed it.

Mommy, look! You can barely see what appears to be snow behind me!

The snow behind Gabi is missing because she used it all to make the snowball.
(No, not really.)

Snow Day #2
Then, out of nowhere, we had another cold snap last week. Daddy managed to make it home safely post-call (post-call driving is hazardous enough without the freezing rain). The girls had school cancelled, so when Daddy got home, Mommy took them out to investigate what looked like snow on the back deck.

Bella thinks that white stuff certainly looks like snow...

...but Gabi discovers that she can't actually pick any of it up.

This turned out to be a fine layer of ice cleverly disguised as snow. Fortunately for the girls, we had some actual snowfall later that day, which turned out to be just enough to try out some sledding with our neighbors. After all, what else are you supposed to do when it's snowy and you live on a hill?

You would think that adventurous little Bella would enjoy the toboggan.
You would think that, but you would be wrong.

Surprisingly, Gabi (after initially protesting the ride) loved it.

Ooh, Mommy! I picked up some of this white stuff!

This is fun, but I'm not sure about the way it sticks to my glove.
(Our little kitten lost a mitten between the first snow day and the second.)

The next day, Daddy was conscious and ready to play in the snow too.

This puffy red jacket used to be Daddy's when he was little.

Two years ago, we built a similar tiny snowman.

You'll note that Gabi has grown into her blue vest since then.

Daddy created some artificial snowfall for Bella to dance in.

Gabi's new favorite activity is to write us little notes.
Here, she makes use of an icicle to write her name on the snow-covered railing.

Jumping in the snow with Daddy. Mommy and Katya were discouraged from doing this.

Time to go inside for something warm (which turned out to be a warm donut).

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Lissa at 8:24 PM

We enjoyed many holiday preparations here in Little Rock. Then we drove to Texas for four days, where we saw real snow on Christmas Eve which stuck around for Christmas morning. At church, the priest mentioned that in his 77 Christmases in DFW, this was the first one that brought snow on the ground Christmas morning! Poor Bella had a stomach bug on the day we drove down there and Christmas Eve, so she was still a bit under-the-weather on Christmas but recovered that weekend before we returned home. Afterwards, we had another mini-Christmas back in Little Rock with Michael's parents and sister.