Today's Tea

The one thing we've done really well at keeping up this school year is teatime on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Miss M is learning how to drink from a cup (she uses a Fisher Price plastic teacup and saucer) and she's starting to really eat. When we started, I would put a couple of things on her little plastic saucer just for her to play with, but now she gets a real plate and she eats more than she plays with, and she drinks three half-cups before she gets bored and pours the rest on the table or sticks her fingers in it. Progress! Just a few weeks ago, I'd only put a half teaspoon at the bottom of her cup.

We found a tea that's become our favorite - Bigelow's Vanilla Caramel. I've had a hard time finding it in my area, so I actually bought a couple boxes of it on ebay! I use one teabag of that, and a French vanilla teabag (I can find that anywhere, so I'm adding it to stretch the vanilla caramel) in a pot of tea. Everyone loves it, the boys like it with half soy milk. I haven't exhausted my search for a place that sells the Vanilla Caramel in my area, so I still have hopes of finding a local source.

Being Feb 2, we watched Groundhog Day with Daddy last night. We have an edited version, and we've watched it every year. It's one of the few family traditions we have. First it was just the adults, this is the first year the boys saw it. So teatime today was spent with the boys re-playing dialog from the movie.

I found a way to get Miss M outside for a little while every day - I pay her big brothers a quarter every ten minutes to take her in the backyard. I know, it's terrible, but they like the opportunity, and they're young and can handle more chasing! In the spring, she'll be a little more settled and it'll be warmer. I hope to be able to sit out with her a lot more. I'm not really much of an outdoor person. I remember my parents telling me as a kid to get my nose out of a book and go outside and play. Miss M loves to be outside. She's never ready to come back in, and cries when her brothers bring her in the house. But she's a real handful! We have no fence and she wants to go everywhere, and she's not very easy to interest in anything that might keep her in one place. She really needs a fenced-in area.