lovely times

It's been a busy time here on the Levine front. We watched the harbor melt out last week, so we are very glad that we skied on it when we did because who knows if it will freeze again. Brie and I have enjoyed spending time with the people we've met through story time and I have enjoyed my volunteer training for adult literacy.  I completed the training yesterday.  Brie enjoyed her time playing with her friend, Harper, while I was at these trainings.  Thanks to Sarah for being willing to watch Brie for two of those mornings.  It really made it so I could complete the training. 

Over the weekend we had a delightful time with a visitor who was on a road trip of the east coast. Yay!  It was so much fun to have our friend, Leslie, stay with us. We figured out that we hadn't seen each other for about seven years.  So there was a lot of catching up to be done.  On Saturday, we took her to our favorite beautiful spots that are close to us, Wehle State Park and Black Pond.

It also snowed a little bit on Saturday evening, so we got out for beautiful cross-country ski at Barnes corner the next day before she continued on her road trip.  Mat skied with Brie in the backpack and I skied with Maddy on the ski-joring setup.  Maddy did a pretty fantastic job.  She sniffed most of the tracks, but luckily she didn't take me off trail to follow them.  :-)

We love it when it snows here so that we can fully enjoy winter!  I feel so fortunate that we ended up living here.

weekend fun

I am so thankful of where we ended up here in upstate NY.  All the craziness of July really did end up being worth it!  We had a perfect weekend here.  It's been snowing here and cold, so it actually feels like winter.  On Saturday, we went out cross-country skiing with a group of neighborhood friends and then on Sunday we skied behind our house.

Yep, on the harbor.  The harbor had finally been frozen long enough to venture out on the ice. There were lots of people out ice fishing, so we felt safe enough to venture out.  It was kind of a crazy/surreal feeling to be standing out in the middle of the harbor knowing that water is just 5 or 6 inches below!  The harbor is no longer 6 inches of ice, maybe 2 inches with water on top because it's been raining and warm.  So we are very happy we went out when we did.  This weather is crazy!

Love this video of Brie sleeping.  It's amazing to me that she was comfortable and warm enough in her pack to fall asleep.

Ski-joring. The new sport we're going to use to wear Maddy out.

A little love for Brie

Okay, I'd say we have a lot of love for Brie.  She is getting more and more of a personality and cracks herself up on random things.  We have a box that we can't recycle because Brie climbs in it and "reads" to herself for several minutes at a time.  Brie also likes to climb into all the tupperware bins that we have and every so often goes back to climbing in the cupboard.

Brie's current favorite pastime is when Maddy goes outside, she has Mat or myself lift her up so that she can stand at the window and look outside.

Our afternoon at Wehle

It was marvelous to get out and enjoy the blue skies and snow.  I don't think it ever was above 10 degrees, but Brie was toasty all layered up in her stroller with the windshield on.
 
And I'll leave you with this video of Mat and Brie.  We love our BOB stroller.  Seriously.  It's pretty much part of the family and comes with us on a lot of our adventures.

15 Months of Brie

She's in the 75th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height...

Height:  30 inches

Weight:  23 pounds

A video of Brie from 1/3/11

She was so tiny.

And here are a couple more older videos of Brie.

Brie toddling

A short video of Brie.  I love how she's so happy and content to play with the littlest things.  Like a plastic bag (of course, under parent supervision) and an empty box as you've seen on previous videos. 

Brie saying "Da"

Brie is have a grand old time watching Mat fish out on the dock.

As you may have noticed, I have started posting more videos.

1) Because Brie is adorable in action and I want to share it.

and

2) Because I gave in and have made a youtube account so video is easily posted to this blog.

I've had to do this since blogger apparently only like other google things, i.e. not flickr, I am slowly having to transition over to all things google...

A Saturday Walk

Brie, Maddy and I went out to Black Pond for a little walk today.  Mat went out snowshoeing on a group hike, so for our outdoor activity we decided that we'd go somewhere we have not been in a little bit.  Black Pond was a perfect choice and we timed it perfectly.

We had the beach to ourselves.  Yay!

That meant Maddy could run around and burn off some energy.  Brie and I were entertained by Maddy and Brie had a pretty good time walking on the sand.

A very lovely walk indeed!

Brie rocking away

Loving it!

A little Brie

Some live action of Brie playing with items from the cupboard.

Tantrum Central

Our home was tantrum central this morning.

All because I wanted to change Brie's dirty diaper.

It was a 10 minute struggle, but I was finally able to change the diaper.  But the end of the diaper change didn't mean the end of the tantrum this morning.  She continued to flail and fling herself around for about 5 minutes and I was worried that she was going to hurt herself on the toys and chairs around the front room.

So I put her in her crib and left her screaming.

Then I heard a thud.

There was no break in screaming but it sounded louder than her bottle being thrown out so I went and checked.

And, yep, she had thrown herself out the crib and was still hysterically crying and wouldn't let me hold her. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt.  (note to self: see if mattress can go any lower.)

The only thing that finally calmed her down was to go outside in the less than 10 degree weather and watch the ducks and the bald eagle that had flown in to fish.  From start to finish that was a 30 minute screaming/flailing tantrum! 

I'm exhausted and I'm not so certain changing her diaper was worth it.

Asheville Holiday Trip

Sheesh, where to start.  Well, we were happy to arrive in Asheville after 15 hours of travel without any incident...most especially without an oil leak (note previous trip here.)

Photo courtesy of Naomi

We had another Christmas on Christmas morning (see previous post) with the Levine family for Brie.  She received an awesome rocker that has been in their family for many generations...Naomi and her brother had it when they were little and it was passed around the Goldberg family and then Mat and Sara used it when they were wee kiddos and now Brie gets to use it.  And she loves it, she can even get into it herself.  We are still working on having her sit in it and not stand in it.  I think some pain might be in her future from that learning experience, but we are trying to have her just "sit" in it and rock.  Then we had a lovely turkey dinner that Naomi prepared.

Mat was able to get out on a few bike rides and Brie and I visited with bunches of friends.  I wasn't so great at taking photos of all the people we saw, mostly enjoyed the visiting.  But we got out for a walk with her friend, Ava, who was born 2 days before Brie was.  We went on a few walks with friends, it was really nice weather and a great way to visit.  :-)

Photo courtesy of Naomi

Mat also helped his dad install barn doors that would slide on the barn.

Then we celebrated New Year's Eve at Sara's new place high above Asheville.  So we had a terrific view of all the fireworks that went off around Asheville at midnight.  It was amazing!  Wish I had a picture to share, but wasn't thinking about that, we were just enjoying the show.  Brie did not make it to midnight, but she had fun until about 10 or so.  (I didn't make Brie go to bed by 7 while on vacation!  And she only had a few meltdowns for me.  Thankfully, she was a perfect and happy child for everyone else.)

Our last night in town, we had dinner with everyone.  Here's a shot of us after a very lovely flounder and salad dinner.  It was a great visit!