A fun play day ...

I regret hugely the fact that I have never successfully taken a video with my camera, because Nathan walked into our house today absolutely FULL of singing and dancing ~ and he put on quite a performance for us. He sang "If you're happy and you know it" (all three verses, complete with motions), "Deep and Wide", and an assortment of other songs we had never even heard of. He is a very entertaining little soul!

Grandpa Jones entertained Queen Nia for a little while with our finger puppets, but she was comfortable enough with grandpa and I and our house today (finally) that she wanted to wander around and play. She also takes our finger by the hand and leads us around the house to whichever room she wants to play in ...

She seemed to enjoy all of our toys, preferring the soft squishy ones ... but she rarely let go of her bunny.

Nathan wore a fire hat over to our house today and announced that he was a fireman. We tried his hat on all of the animals, including Boo, but Nathan told us "Boo was NOT a fireman. He is Boo."

Paco the Pig got to wear the Thomas the Train hat for just a little while. We tried to get Nia to wear it, but she's not much for hats.

We had played for awhile with Nathan and Nia in the same room together, but found that it was difficult to keep one or the other of them happy. Nia is at the unfortunate stage where she sabotages most anything Nathan has going, and it does get frustrating. Fortunately, since there are only two children and two grandparents, one of us could take Nia and the other could take Nathan, and just play separately. We had a much happier and more productive later part of the morning that way. Nathan and I played downstairs in the playroom with the blocks and the cars while Nia and grandpa stayed upstairs. Nathan and I got out all of the Matchbox cars and made a huge traffic jam, complete with helicopter rescue and jet airplane landings.

After our lunch, Nia took a really good 3-hour nap! Nathan played for awhile with grandpa, and I was able to get some stuff done around the house.

This foam alphabet/number puzzle is the newest addition to our toy collection. I love the colors and shapes and all the cool ways you can put it together.
It is SO cold at our house! Thankfully, I remembered I still had one of those little fleece vests from years ago when Emma used to come over and play. It fit Nia just fine.

Here is Fireman Nathan pretending to pull the rope that makes the train whistle blow. Isn't he such a cutie? There isn't really anything unusual to tell you about our day ~ we colored, we ate snacks, we read books, we danced and sang to tons of children's music ... we had a very fun day playing with Nathan and Nia today!