15 Months

It's official! Cally is a walking and talking toddler. I guess they say 15 months is one of those "milestones". Whatever is the case, Cally is more and more fun everyday.


I know, I know, we are probably pushing it, but she is the one who regularly points at her skis and gets all excited to "try them on". So when we were at Mad River for a lovely day of spring skiing on Saturday, she gladly paraded around the base area with her sun hat and a big smile:

Impromptu Daddy Daycare

One of the downfalls of having Cally in a small inhome daycare situations is that when Meike or either of her kids is sick, we have to keep Cally home. So far, this has only happened twice this year. Today being one of those days. I, unfortunately, needed to be be at school today (I hadn't seen one of my classes since last week and didn't have time to deal with sub plans for the other group before realizing Meike couldn't take Cally). So the "burden" of spending the day with Cally was placed upon John. Having just gotten back from a week in Idaho, this wasn't ideal, but we worked it out so that I could take tomorrow off (which is usually John's day with Cal). That way he could get caught up on work.

So Meike called at about 7:30am to cancel and I had to head out the door 15 minutes later. Just as I headed out the door, John exclaimed, "I have a dental cleaning at 9:15am, what am I going to do with Cally?".

"Bring, her," I said as I walked out the door, "she should be fine". What I was really thinking to myself was how the heck is he going to keep a 15 month old occupied while his teeth get hacked at?

Well, apparently, she did just fine:


Cally sat on John's lap on the dentist's chair for 45 minutes, eating an apple and making some calls on her toy phone.

Next stop, was ECHO, the local Lake Champlain Basin Museum. I thought I had read that there was some sort of parent meetup thing going on there, so I mentioned to John that he could swing by there. Apparently I was wrong, but that didn't matter. Cally had a ball. She got to touch her first starfish, see a milk snake, go down a slide for the first time, and took a long "hiking tour" on the balcony of the museum.

Apparently, she fell asleep between ECHO and John's office (which is about a mile away) and this is how she remained for the next 1/2 hour (notice the green Mardi Gras beads, she's obsessed with them and prides herself on being able to put them on and take them off):


I guess the museum wore her out.

Alas, I was released from my duties as a teacher a little early b/c of a power outage (and when you have a classroom without windows and the power is out, it's hard to do much of anything). So we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous March afternoon and do a mini-ski tour to Underhill State Park. While we love the chariot, the backpack works great to motor around too.



Don't worry, John really wasn't going all that fast in the following picture. I think the road is about a 3% grade, even so, Cally loved it:


And it turns out, Cally really is a true Vermonter. She loves Mud! She stomps in it, sits in it, puts her fingers in it, and just doesn't seem phased.


While it can be inconvenient to deal with impromptu daycare cancellations, it can also enable working parents to grab a little more unanticipated quality time with an incredibly amazing little person. Every extra moment that we get to spend with her is a good thing (most of the time)!

The Winter We've Been Waiting For.....

We've waited and we've waited......... patiently listening to friends and family talk and even complain about the gobs of snow that have fallen upon them. This year, the snow seems to have fallen in all the wrong places. My sister, who lives in Baltimore missed school for seven days because of the snow that fell in the Mid-Atlantic, but the Olympics were delayed because there wasn't enough snow........ And up here in Vermont, we hadn't even had enough snow to build a snowman for Cally.


Alas, the snow arrived at an ideal time. Just as school got out for winter break, the snow began to fall. Between Friday February 19th and Friday February 26th, the mountains got almost 60 inches of snow! And we were on our "staycation" so we got to enjoy every last bit of it. Months ago, John set the week aside from work in case we decided to go away. Instead of going away, we stuck around and got to ski together as a couple and expose Cally to a few days of ski culture (watching her parents go up on the ski lift, wearing her skis in the base area of Mad River, and walking around the Basebox at Mad River). It was the best of both worlds....... skiing as a couple during the anniversary of our wedding and honeymoon and seeing Cally so fired up about snow. Afterall, her favorite book is "Snow, Snow, Hello Snow". Really, she points at it and has us read it to her every time she's in her room.