Winter

It’s been unusual – there have been rain storms that made for crazy floods. Houses washed into the ocean. Roads and bridges were destroyed. Rivers made their way into buildings. We were witnesses to new records, and it feels like Maine winter will no longer be what it was in my memory. The fishing shacks never made it out. I even saw people fishing for smelts in the open water off of the bridge because there was no ice to stand on.

This picture below is a flooded parking lot. The water washed into the supermarket also, and when we took a walk along a river a few days later, there were packages of produce that lined the high water mark.

It did get cold. Below Hugo got to make a snowman. I think this was the only one that got made this year though. It’s a happy one.

This funny picture below I took after Paxy got his eyes dilated at the eye doctor. I was so proud of him. He is very frightened of visits to any doctor and I had promised him before we went that this one would be easy. I promised with certainty that nothing painful is ever done by the eye doctor.

Right after the doctor had him sit in the chair, she gave him drops to dilate his pupils. The second sentence she said after “Close your eyes and now blink” was, “this stings, hold still”. I felt awful, like I tricked him. But he did such a good job.

I wanted him to love his new glasses that he’s now supposed to wear all the time. Pax was really disappointed with the boring options available for MaineCare kids. He wanted black glasses with big red flames on the sides. It turns out that’s not a very wanted look and I couldn’t find anything even close to that cool on the internet. In a time where choices feel endless, I was very surprised.

He’s very proud of the glow in the dark glasses I was able to find. He shows them off whenever he can, but he still doesn’t wear them.

The picture below is horrible, but it comes with a good story. Paxy’s 2 front teeth had cavities in them. I think it happened because he had a thing for eating limes. He couldn’t get enough of them. I thought that there was something in there that he needed, but didn’t think much about the damage it could do to his teeth. His poor front teeth were getting destroyed by the amount of limes Pax sucked on and I was so glad he had his backup teeth on the way.

Because his front teeth hurt him, he didn’t want to wiggle them. He stopped letting me brush them in the front. They were taking forever to come out with no help.

Then both boys went sledding with Papa and he pushed them down the part of the hill that someone had made a jump on. Paxy’s tooth got knocked out in an epic sledding ride. I was told that he handled it really well despite the blood in the snow and all over his face, and the sadness of not being able to find the tooth on the hill. When he got back to the top, he just said that he was never going to do that again.

The picture below is of Hugo getting eaten by a frog at the zoo in Philly. I have no more to say about that.

Hugo was named after Hugo Caroselli, his great grandfather. This picture below shows the 2 Hugo’s together at the park.

Paxy is often quite colorful. Oil pastels are a favorite, but the pink color underneath is from a marker that was impossible to get off. These colors don’t end at his neck, but are covering his entire body. I love how happy he is with his work.

Below is Pax, Hugo, and their headless friend. (and check out how handsome Paxy is when he wears those awesome glow in the dark glasses)

Below is Hugo and Hercules

I hope you all are doing well and having a happy winter. I’ve enjoyed winter, but am looking forward to getting to post some good springtime pictures with coatless kids and spring flowers.

Till next time!