Look at me, blogging about something the same day it happened. It’s almost like I have a 10-month old now instead of a newborn.

Oh, right. I do have a 10-month-old! As of today, in fact. I do believe she’s going to be walking before she’s another month older.

Anyway. Today we had a fun visit with Carrie and her kids! We were originally planning to meet at a park between our two towns, but it rained last night and we weren’t enthused about the idea of trying to keep two babies entertained at a wet, muddy park. So we scrapped that plan and decided to just meet at Carrie’s house.

Annalie and Erik didn’t care much. When we got there, they immediately headed to the playroom in the basement and must’ve had fun because we didn’t see them again until we told them it was time to go get lunch.

We could walk to the Amish market from Carrie’s house, so that’s what we did. It was a pretty nice day, despite the drizzle we ended up walking through on the way home. The big kids ran ahead of us and got some of their wiggles out, while we pushed the babies in the strollers and enjoyed the mild weather and the fall colors that are just starting to show.

The market itself was quite interesting. There were a bunch of different stalls, selling all kinds of delicious things to eat—cheese, baked goods, produce, preserves and baking supplies like flour and nuts, candy, soft pretzels—as well as a restaurant, a meat counter, and a furniture showcasing a variety of beautiful wood tables, chairs, dressers, beds, and bookcases.

It seemed a little incongruous to me see all these men and women in plain dress (the women in long, modest dresses with their hair parted in the middle and pulled back under crisp white caps; the men in plain pants and button-down shirts with suspenders, most of them with beards and a fringe of hair cut straight across their foreheads), which is usually adopted by those who forsake the modern world and its conveniences, blithely using electronic scales and credit-card readers and cash registers. Carrie said it’s even funnier to see them outside on a break, using their cell phones.

We stopped at the deli counter and bought fried chicken, potato salad, and cucumber salad. We also bought half of a chocolate cake for dessert, then took it all back to Carrie’s house to eat. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it was all completely, utterly delicious. I’m already plotting when I can go back and get more of that fried chicken.

After lunch Annalie and Erik went to the little neighborhood park to play, and Carrie and I hung out in the living room with Elliora and Elsa. It was probably a lot more fun for them that we were in a house full of toys instead of at the park, where Elliora probably wouldn’t have been able to crawl on the wet ground and Elsa would have been continually frustrated at not being able to keep up with the big kids. They are a bit too young to play together yet, but they got along pretty well, considering.

Elliora seemed to look at the living room full of toys she’d never played with and think, Right. I have a lot of work to do before we leave here! Then she set out to play with as many of them as she could.

Well, with as many as she could before Elsa grabbed them out of her hands, that is. I don’t blame Elsa one bit, though. Who was this young upstart coming into HER house and playing with HER toys!? At least Elliora took it good-naturedly. She just moved on to the next toy. By the time we left she was grabbing toys right back out of Elsa’s hands.

Then Elliora did something that kind of startled me: she imitated Elsa. Elsa had put a pillow on the floor and laid down with her head on it. When she got up, Elliora crawled over to the pillow and looked at it, looked over at Elsa, looked back at the pillow, and then laid down in the same position Elsa had just been in, with her head on the pillow. She sat up and grinned at me and Elsa, then laid back down and patted the pillow, just like she pats my chest when she’s snuggling with me, clearly quite pleased with herself. She’s growing up at the speed of light, that one. She’s got a big sister to keep up with!

We left not long after lunch, since it was naptime for the littles, waving good-bye and promising not to wait so long between visits next time. Thanks again for having us over and taking us to the Amish market, Carrie!

Today it’s raining and chilly here. But up till today, this week had been fairly warm with summer-like temps and sunshine. To Annalie, that means one thing: swimming.

She was pretty upset with me when I told her that we weren’t going to get the kiddie pool out just yet. I tried explaining that since it’s only April, there’s no guarantee the weather will stay warm. And besides, we’re going to Omaha in a few days and no one will be here to use the pool. It makes more sense to wait till we get back to clean it out and set it up.

Annalie got all that, but she didn’t care. She wanted to swim. I placated her with running through the sprinkler after a particularly sweaty walk home from the park on Wednesday and told her, No matter how much you beg, we are not taking the pool out till after we get home from Omaha.

That didn’t stop her from pleading with me yesterday to set up the pool, however. She WANTED TO SWIM. I told her that wasn’t happening, and asked what else she wanted to do.

“I only want to swim! That’s what I most want to do.”

“Well, what’s the second thing you want to do most of all? Maybe we can do that.”

Annalie crossed her arms and lowered her eyebrows. “Fly a kite.”

I’m pretty sure she said that to be difficult, because this has come up before, and she knows there are too many trees and power lines in our neighborhood to fly a kite. But instead of reminding her of that fact, I said, “We could probably make a little kite, it just wouldn’t be able to go up high. You’d have to run to make your own wind. Wanna do that?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah! Let’s do that!”

I did a quick online search and found exactly the kind of kite I wanted to make. Annalie chose a piece of paper (the directions call for printer/copier paper; we used IKEA craft paper which worked perfectly) and decorated it with her markers while I found clear packing tape, a straw, yarn, scissors, and a plastic bag.

In five minutes we’d followed the instructions on how to fold and tape the paper into a kite shape and tape a straw across the top for stability. I cut an eight-foot long spiral out of a plastic grocery bag and Annalie taped it to the bottom for a tail. I punched a hole in the fin and tied the yarn on. Annalie wound the other end of the yarn around a piece of cardboard she’d cut off a box in the basement, and voila! She had a kite.

And she was happy.

Want to make a kite? Video and step-by-step illustrated instructions:
20 kids * 20 kites * 20 minutes.

Of course we had a much better day today. That’s the way it usually seems to go. Storms are swept away by sunshine. Literally, in this case, since we had gorgeous sunny weather today. It will be followed with rainstorms tonight and tomorrow, but that’s okay. We like rain too.

I somehow didn’t manage to take any photos of Annalie playing outside in her tent or painting all over the driveway with homemade sidewalk paint. But I did snap the above photo for posterity, since Annalie had just helped deliver a kitten. After bustling around, gathering a laundry basket and some of my winter gloves (“It’s important to wear gloves so we don’t pass on harmful germs to the babies!”) and an old baby-bath pillow, while telling me how she needed to go to the animal hospital to help a mama cat deliver her first kitten. A little while later she called me to the bedroom to proudly present the mama (her stuffed Siamese cat Fluffy) and her kitten (her white kitty Sparkle) to me.

Sometimes I wish I could have had Annalie for a playmate when I was a kid.

Also, today we tried out Time4Learning. When I told Annalie about the site and how she could do lessons on it, she said, “Oh, cool! So if you’re busy with Elliora, I could still do school stuff on my own, right?” The site isn’t the prettiest, the navigation isn’t the most elegant, but the lessons seem fun and easy for Annalie to do with minimal help from me, and I love the way I can set up minimum lesson times and log in to check on which lessons Annalie’s completed and print out progress reports. I think she’ll find some of the first-grade lessons a bit on the easy side at first, but that’s okay. I think it’s going to be a helpful addition to our homeschool right now. (If anyone out there decides to subscribe to Time4Learning on the basis of my recommendation, feel free to tell them I sent you—it would mean a credit to my account.)

It wasn’t a spectacular day, but it was a good day. A calm, quiet, no-one-lost-their-temper, the-baby-got-good-naps, we-even-managed-to-clean-Annalie’s-room day. I say that’s a big improvement.

P.S. Thank you for all your supportive comments and emails! At the suggestion of several of you, we’ve decided that from now on we’re going to leave it up to Annalie whether or not she needs something covering her legs, as long as it’s above freezing. We reserve the right to tell her she has to bring a coat, but we’re not going to fight with her about clothes anymore. We were kind of on the verge of that anyway. I remember my mom used to have to fight with my brother about similar weather/clothing issues, and when he was about Annalie’s age she said, FINE, wear what you want, but don’t complain to me about being cold. And you know what, he’s 34 years old and he still never wears long sleeves and rarely wears a coat heavier than a sweatshirt. Yet another way my older daughter is so much like her Unky Ben it’s a little scary.

P.P.S. New banner, this one appropriately Eastery. Thanks, Brenda!