When 25 degrees is a heat wave!

Well we've had a good new year so far. After working crazy hours over New Years to make up for having Christmas off, life has settled down now that I'm on a month without any call nights. I'm on developmental and behavioral pediatrics this month and I'm learning plenty of useful things for my future in general pediatrics practice. I've also had a fair amount of time off scattered here and there and weekends off to spend with my boys.

Last weekend, it was around 30 degrees out, so we took advantage of the nice weather to take Austin sledding in his great new sled from Nanny and Grandpa. We started out on the hill in the neighbor's backyard across the street. However, he got going a little faster than daddy expected and when he tried to stop the sled (aka, stuck his foot out and stopped it quickly), Austin went flying and got a face full of snow, a head bonk into daddy's shins, and some little cuts on his face from the ice crystals in the snow. He sobbed, but after I calmed him down and we tried it a little slower with me holding on the back of the sled and acting as kind of a rudder, we decided to find a better hill. We headed down to the park a few blocks away. It has a large flat area (soccer field) and then a little hill up to the road. He had a blast going down the hill and gliding to a stop on the flat part. Mommy and Daddy got quite a workout pushing him up the hill after each run down the hill.

After that, the weather got progressively colder and colder all week long until it was so cold that schools got cancelled for both Thursday and Friday when the temperature was -23 degrees, with wind chills of -50 degrees! Since I was scheduled for site visits those mornings to Montessori School and the Autism Center, I got those mornings off too.

Austin has recently been very interested in his potty! We are still a way from potty training, but he enjoys sitting on his potty for a while each day while we read his "potty book."

We've been having fun playing a lot and Austin is talking like crazy. One of his favorite new phrases is "pretty cool!" He was actually very good at church today too. Here he is excitedly wearing his backpack before we headed out to church this morning.
When I was growing up, we never brought toys, books, or snacks to church. When Austin started getting bigger and started being loud, fussy, and busy in church, I called my mom for advice on how she got us to be so good in church. The secret? Well, there was no secret. We just would always fall asleep on dad's shoulder and sleep through Mass when we were little, and then we got big enough that we could tolerate sitting for long periods of time. Well....we're not exactly in that situation. I have a whole new understanding of other parents that brought books, snacks, etc to church. We don't dare go to church without the Thomas the Train backpack full of books, coloring books and crayons, Cheerios and bunny graham crackers, and a sippy cup of water. He did pretty well today in church, but that was with a nearly constant stream of graham cracker bunnies for the beginning and steady coloring books for the second half. He was very excited about the piano and exclaimed "pretty cool!" when it played, and asked for "more piano" every time the piano music stopped.

We got a few cute videos lately too.

Here is Austin dancing to the Zaccheus song on VeggieTales.



And here is Austin saying our dinner time prayers. If we forget to say our prayers before dinner, he reminds us by forcefully requesting "dinner time prayer!" We say "bless us our Lord..." and then we do the "rub a dub dub..." We taped this especially for GiGi (greatgrandma, my nanny) because she always took such delight in watching the little kids raise their hands in the air and exclaim "Yay God!" at the end of the prayer.



I hope you all are staying nice and warm in the cold weather. We are back up to temperatures in the 20s! Woohoo! It's a heat wave!