The Cook's: Jan 14th

One word for this weather - crap! I though I left northern Wisconsin for this reason years ago. It figures, year we are going to build a house, and are in a 1920's rental with crappy windows, a detached garage, no mudroom and probably two football fields worth of corner lot sidewalk to shovel, Chicago is tracking for one of the worst 5 winters in its 14o years of history...we have already had more snow that we would normally get in a year (most in the past 10 days)...and now its like we are living in Siberia temp wise. What happened to the winters of 2000-2007 where maybe we would get 2 or 3 storms per year??

Anyways - all the shoveling is making up for my inability to run outside...

Connor is doing well - seems to be open to the idea of using the potty now - they have started to sit on the potty at school (everyone apparently does it together) and will do it at home for "candies". His language is rapidly expanding and he has a laser sharp memory. If he or Carter throws something, say a binky, behind the couch on Tuesday, if you ask him on Friday, he will know exactly where that binky is.

Connor, however, is no longer being the nighttime "champ" though - as he is starting to resist bedtime and typically, will wander into our room at 2 or 3 am and crash with us. Hopefully it is a phase - we got him a new nightlight the other day and he stayed in his room to 5:30 - so hopefully it works. However, when we say its bedtime now, his response is usually "i'm done" - as in done sleeping (before he even starts).

Carter is getting a load of teeth in and seems to be forever cranky about it. He says random words here and there - but seems to be much more advanced than Connor was at his age...

Carter, helping redesign the kitchen blueprint...