We've had snow on the ground for a week now, the longest span I remember in our 10 years here. Today is our 3rd or 4th dumping; we've got a foot of snow at our house. Last night we lost power and are still waiting for it to come back on (online via our generator right now), and we awoke to the house being a cool 58 degrees. Zoe's having a good time following our dog Betsy around in the snow (although Betsy is now pushing 14 years old, her Husky ancestry kicks in everytime we see snow and she scoots around the yard like a puppy), doing some sledding and all the typical snow day fun stuff. Phoebe, on the other hand, is highly unenthusiastic about the snow. She smiles and points outside, exclaiming "snowing!", but when I ask if she wants to go outside, it's always met with a solemn expression and a firm "no", sometimes accompanied by violent head shaking and an accentuated "noooooooooo". I did bundle her up today to play, mostly re-confirming to her that she doesn't like the snow. Each time she trid to take a step, she'd trip and fall forwards or backwards, rolling around like a turtle on its back. The road conditions are leaving us somewhat housebound as the distance between our house and flat roads is a mile of snow-packed hills, so we're really looking forward to some above-freezing temps in the next few days.

 

While we haven't been able to do as much holiday fun stuff as we had planned because of the weather, we're looking forward to Phoebe's first Christmas with us. Although Phoebe didn't earn any points with Zoe earlier this week when she randomly just started opening one of Zoe's presents while I wasn't in the room (which was met with Zoe's typical, "Mom, Phoebe's doing SOMETHING!"), the two of them have been having a great time playing together lately. Phoebe's able to keep up with Zoe a little more, and they'll sit for a long time playing play-dough or "kitchen" with their wooden food. For her part, Zoe's improving in the whole behavior modeling thing and we're seeing more, "Phoebe, do it like this" teaching her little sister new skills...like how to climb out of her crib.