Laura, Jeff & Ada

ada has been enjoying the toddler room, it seems that she comes home with artwork all the time.  i try to keep up by scanning it in and then recycling most of them.  last year i made a book out of her art. anyway, this year, one of the art options is bingo dotters.  these look the coolest to me:

they also do all sorts of things where they get very messy, such as playing in bins of flour and cornmeal, or this favorite, “oobleck”:

and there are new videos:

counting animals
saying animal names and counting

ada has a tent in our basement family room that she recently discovered is very easy to move around.  she likes to lean against the sides and flip it around all over the room.  this has been the latest thing for the past week or more.  today she discovered that she could lean/peak out the window in the back… though i’m sure she didn’t realize the affect it was having:

and, of  course, lots of static in the winter:

4 new videos here

we finally made it to the aquarium in boston during our week off.  there is a giant tank in there with a spiral ramp around it.  we all had fun seeing turtles, sharks and tons of fish.  we also saw seals and tons of penguins.  jeff and ada peering into the giant tank:

ada checking out the tank where you can touch things.  we touched some mussels and a starfish!

umbrella jellyfish that are the size of dimes:

jellyfish tank shot with the sign in the background:

jeff’s new best friend:

here you go bickmeiers: cinnamon rolls for new year’s eve… and yes, there was chili (and frosting) too!

ada and daddy picking out the ones they want:

a box arrived today with a lot of styrofoam peanuts.  ada had a ton of fun playing with them all!  mom had a little less fun cleaning it all up, but it was worth it!

mom took ada to the children’s museum this morning.  we went with one of ada’s classmates and got in free due to their connections!

classic shot in front of the milk jug:

a big surprise for both of us was an entire “peep” room.  “peep and the big wide world” is a PBS show that ada watches almost every day and she loves it.   there was water play, shadow play, light drawing and lots of fun stuff inside.  she also got to “meet” peep:

and chirp.  the quack pic didn’t come out so good.

there was a giant chess board and ada ran in, knocked down all the pieces and then ran away.  HA!!!

ada really had fun this xmas, she got into opening the gifts, even if it was just to help someone else.  she also enjoyed climbing all over them xmas morning in her xmas pjs:

we stayed at laura’s parents’ and ada found a few singing animal toys.   she never tired of lining them up on the kitchen stools and trying to get them all going at the same time!

her big present from “gra-gra” and “pa” is a kind of zoo with 26 animals, one for each letter.  today she took to lining them around the edge of the coffee table and then knocking them all down.  repeat.  this pic also shows her new smile that she’ll give if you ask her to smile for you.  the fake camera smiling starts young!

not really the best shot, but i think you can mostly see the results of ada’s game this afternoon… basically stack all the cats’ toys onto bean.  as you can tell, bean wasn’t bothered enough to move.

on friday, ada got her first letter from santa!  as some of you may know, ada’s nana and papa live down the street from santa, something that mommy and daddy are sure to use as good behavior incentive in the future… 

on saturday night into sunday we had a small snow storm.  out under the deck underneath the downspout were a few blades of grass that got totally encased in ice and i thought it looked pretty cool.