Life With Ida : 4 Years

 

Since Ida's birthday last year, she has grown so much. It is so fun to watch her personality grow. She is always surprising me with how silly or fun or sweet or fierce she is.

Ida is always up for an adventure with Mom and/or Dad. Wherever we are, she is there too. She loves to go on walks, to the park, go swimming, or just go on a ride in the car with us.  When big sister isn't at school, Ida loves to play Barbies, be read to, or just follow her sister around and be with her. Ida is so sweet and randomly throughout the day she'll say "I just love you!" and give big hugs.  

Ida is my little nature girl. She is always by my side when I'm working in the garden... and sometimes she even asks to just go out and sit near the garden. It is fun to watch her interest in plants. She likes to dig and find worms, collect rocks, help spot new vegetables, and water the plants. 

Ida has been missing school a lot. She cannot wait to get back to school and play with her friends.  She has asked 2-5 times a week (every week since March) when she will get to go back to school again. While she is missing school, she still enjoys each day. I love her enthusiasm for all things.

Happy Birthday Sweet Ida!  We are so lucky to have you.  xxoo

Check out previous Life with Ida posts: 3 year, 2 year, 1 year, and her birth story

Life With Ida : 3 Years

Ida Rue is turning 3 yesterday! It feels like time has been flying, but when I look back on her 1 year and 2 year updates it seems like it was so long ago. Even just the last month was so full of new things.

Ida started preschool a last week. She can be clingy sometimes, so I wasn't sure if she would love it or cry when we left... turns out she loves it! When we dropped her off on her first day of school, she ran off to do some activities without even looking back. When I picked her up, she gushed about all her new friends and told me "I love my school!"

She is my little magnet and always loves to be by my side. Since I've been spending more time at home lately, we get to spend lots of time together. Ida loves to help out and chat or just sit there and cuddle. Sometimes when we're eating next to each other, she will reach her arm out and just rest her hand on my arm because she wants to cuddle at all times. ... and just when I think she is a momma's girl, she sees her dad and is all over him cuddling and playing. Ida gets to spend a lot of time with Ben during the day and they love to play and listen to music.

My little Ida loves to be outside. She jumps at any chance to get outside and run around. She likes to go on walks, help with the garden, run around with Clovey, picnic near the garden, and observe nature.

We spent a good amount of time this summer at the pool and Ida was quite the fishy. She was timid at first, but soon became excited for our weekly trips. We had play dates most weeks and she loved to run around with Cora's friends and their siblings.

Ida is really into reading. She will bring us books throughout the day and loves to cuddle up and read whenever she can. 

Happy birthday Ida Rue! You are such a light in our lives and a joy to watch grow.

Cincinnati Art Museum - No Spectators

We like to make a trip to the Cincinnati Art Museum every couple of months to check out new exhibits. When we saw pictures of the Burning Man exhibit, going to the museum moved to the top of our list.

The girls and I got there right when it opened (maybe a couple minutes before) and headed straight to the mushroom room. There weren't that many people there yet, so the girls and I had the room mostly to ourselves for 10-15 minutes. When the ring turns green, you can step on it and activate the movement of the mushroom top. After the initial scare of the movement, Cora really got into going around the room and activating each pad... and Ida held tight and was very cautious about enjoying the display. We went back to this room on our way out and it was pretty crowded.. I recommend going early so you can get this space to yourself for a bit.

All of the No Spectators pieces were scattered throughout the museum so we zipped around the entire place to make sure we wouldn't miss anything.  We passed the Rosenthal Education Center, which previously we either didn't have time to check it out or Cora wasn't very interested, but the girls beelined in there as soon as they saw it. They had a blast trying out some crafts and playing dress up. This place had so many great activities... and its all FREE!

Cora was most excited to see what she called the "Ice Princess". She asked about 100x times to go upstairs so she could look at it.

There were a bunch of other great pieces and it was neat to interact with them. The girls and I had a lot of fun and we definitely plan go go back for phase 2 (starting June 7th).

This was the first thing we crossed off on our 2019 Summer To Do list and we're looking forward to all the other activities.

Snow Days

There has been quite a bit of snow over the last couple of days and we're loving all of the extra outdoor time. Saturday, the girls were at my parent's house for most of the morning so I had lots of extra time to shovel the steps, walkway, and driveway. When we got home from my parent's house, we played on the patio for a bit before having friends over for hot chocolate. We leaned into that hibernation feeling and spent the evening hanging around and watching movies.

Sunday morning, we woke up and found a whole lot more snow. We had a couple things to do in the morning and we could hardly wait to get outside to play. The walks to and from the car were very slow and involved a lot of snow stomping. After lunchtime, we bundled up and headed outside. Cora got a snowball maker from my parents, so we spent a lot of time throwing snowballs at the fence. The girls spent most of the time just stomping around the backyard making as many footprints as possible. Ben and I had a heated snowball fight and it was hilarious to watch the girls cheer us on and try to help.

Monday was a long day at work and I wanted nothing more than to get outside for a walk. We walked a little bit down the street, but the girls just wanted to stomp through everybody's yards. We headed to our backyard to throw snowballs and watch the sunset. Playing in the snow is always best when followed by hot chocolate and pizza picnics in front of a movie... so that's exactly what we did.

Thanksgiving Break

I unintentionally took a little blogging break for the last couple of weeks. I have experienced a lot of loss in the last year and a half (more on that another time) and the last couple of weeks have been surprisingly overwhelming with approaching anniversaries, some firsts, and the colder weather/shorter days... so I have some posts to catch up on, but first Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving, we always do a large family gathering. We ate an early dinner and hung out for most of the afternoon/evening then had another meal of turkey sandwiches and leftovers. Cora ran around with her cousins all day so I barely even saw her. Ida was a little bit clingier, but managed to get in a good nap/cuddle and has been warming up a lot to family. We loved getting to spend the day relaxing with family.

I made skyline dip and my cucumber bacon bites, which I had to check my blog for my recipe because I couldn't remember how to make them. I let Cora taste test the bites earlier in the morning and was begging for them all day long. Luckily, I had some extra dip and cucumbers so we could have it the following day.

Friday and the following weekend was spent mostly around the house. Since we bought our house, I've found that I really love being a homebody... especially in the winter. My aunt gave me the turkey carcass and I spent most of Friday making turkey broth and turkey noodle bean soup. This was my first attempt and now I can't believe I've been throwing away all the vegetable clippings and leftover bones. 

During most of my soup making, I had Ida napping on in the ergobaby. Cora was a little jealous so she kept asking if I could carry her around on my back when Ida was finished. While the limit of our ergobaby is around 45lbs (she is about 50lbs), I was still able to comfortably carry Cora around for a bit. It was so funny because she is soo tall and her legs were all over the place, but I was definitely feeling nostalgic about carrying her around when she was a little babe.

Over the weekend, our Elf on the Shelf made an appearance. The last couple of years we've just hung him on our tree and haven't really been into it, but I decided I would see how the girls liked it and so far they have been wowed by the magical elf. One of the days, our elf was sitting on the beaded garland and fell over into a lying position while Cora was in the room. She was in awe and couldn't believe that he laid down while she was in the room. So far, our elf has just moved around each night (except I forgot last night) and will hopefully be bringing some cool treats or craftivities for us over the weekends.

On Saturday, the girls and I took a trip to Hobby Lobby with my aunt and she got me started with some embroidery. We spent a lot of time walking around the store looking at basically every single thing including all of the Christmas stuff.

We also did some gingerbread cookie decorating later in the break, but most of the weekend was spent being lazy around the house. Ida is really into having hot chocolate lately, so we had lots of that through the weekend. I love our sweet little hot chocolate dates where she'll drink and chat the whole time.

We had a great lazy Thanksgiving break. I'm thankful for so many things in my life, but family is for sure the top of my list. I loved getting to spend all the extra time over break with them and it is getting me really excited for December and Christmas break.>