4 1/2 weeks in Cincinnati

Four weeks in, and I finally found something that I am truly excited about in Cincinnati.....two things actually.......Kids First AND the Cincinnati Children's Museum! It was a HUGE weekend. If Northern Virginia has anything like these, I don't want to know because I'm really excited about my "find."

During Sophia's nap on Saturday, Emily and I went to the Kids First Open House. Emily wore her ballet leotard, tutu, ballet socks AND slippers (very chic).....she was pumped! She tried a 15 minute ballet class, and was a natural! She absolutely loved it and beamed the entire time. She watched everything that Miss Laura did, and she copied it. I laughed the entire 15 minutes, and snapped a ton of pictures because it was the cutest thing that I had seen in a long time.

After the 15 minute ballet sampler class, Emily tried TumbleBees and Cheer(ios). She was extremely cautious about them, but with enough 1-on-1 attention, she made it over a balance beam, tumbling obstacle course and did a pom pom routine! Too cute! The facility was awe-inspiring. It was like watching the Olympics in person -- it was an enormous building with an Olympic Gymnastics program of at least 30 gymnastics stations set up (vault, uneven bars, balance beam, parallel bars, rings), and students performing on each one. I sent in my registration and am waiting to hear back as to whether Em got the ballet time slot that I requested and whether both Em and Sophia got the TumbleBees timeslots I requested for them.

On Sunday, the four of us went to the Cincinnati Children's Museum, and were truly impressed. We spent at least an hour exploring all of the great hands-on things to do, and had barely covered 1/3 of the children's portion of the museum. I'm looking forward to giving our membership a work-out. We all had a great time.

The prettiest area that I have found so far is the Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout, Ault Park area. There's a picture of Emily standing in the middle of the gardens at Ault Park. We went there to look at the flowers and have a picnic with our next door neighbors, Deanna, Victoria (6 months older than Emily), Ally (3 months older than Sophia), and Joshua (1 month old). They have been a God-send, literally. I don't know what we'd do without next-door neighbors who have girls that are compatible with my two girls. All 4 girls peacefully coexist and enjoy playing with each other -- it feels like a miracle to have them next door.

I have enrolled Emily in W,F preschool , and Sophia in a Music class while Em is in preschool on Friday. Yes, we'll definitely stay busy enough, which is the key to me not getting depressed.

The house is fairly unpacked. We still need to organize the basement better, get rid of all of the empty boxes in the garage, and have a garage sale for all the stuff that I've been piling in the garage before Matt's car will fit in the garage. We have our projects -- I'm still working on the bulletin boards, art wall and ABC wall in the playroom. Matt needs to hang chairrail in Emily's bedroom. I need to figure out window treatments, find a corner cabinet for the kitchen, find a narrow table for the foyer, and get the rest of the pictures hung up. We still need dining room chairs, a new kitchen table and a rug for the kitchen.

Cosmo is fairing the worst of us. He has been in 3 fights in 3 weeks. I can tell that he's depressed, and he doesn't want to go outside. Poor guy. I really feel for him.