How to clean the kitchen floor in 1 hour or less

Well, it could be worse. They could be terrified of the vacuum. They are excellent helpers.

Sun protection

On the rare days the sun is out, it shines right in Dash's eyes while we sit at the kitchen table. Solution: use one of my precious Marimekko panels that I never want to cut up. Success!

Reasons why

This is one of the reasons I wanted children so very badly: so they would hide matchbox cars in my freezer and make me laugh.

the end of Dash's rainbow

What you see:

 What Dash sees:

I have gotten pretty adept at dressing him while he holds a car in each hand. Getting the sleeves over can be a bit tough but we make it work.

Galosh

I take back what I said about Crocs being horrific. Little toddler Croc galoshes are pretty damn cute.

Between

Somewhere between taking off your day clothes and putting on pajamas, there are The Crazies.

Happy Snow Day

I've had a blog entry percolating for a week or so now, about how I have been working to turn my boys who are terrified of playing outside into little nature fiends. I had been doing pretty well, but let's just skip ahead to yesterday and the first of The Great Snowfall.

I don't really want to think about how we may get 15 inches of snow on Wednesday and have already been snowed in since Saturday afternoon. We have enough milk to make it to Thursday, and I am just going to attempt to listen to Charlie and channel my calm. It's not quite time for me to freak out and go all Little House On The Prairie We Are Out Of Food wringing my hands. We have enough food to last for a good long while.

 Dash deciding that standing on the snow is going to be ok after all

confident enough to forge his own trail!

 ok, enough with the standing in the snow thing. Carry me.

Liam had one hell of a good time

So, to the snow! We carried the boys up to the road and watched one of the neighbor kids careening around on his 3-wheeler. Once he sped off down the dirt road to make louder and bumpier skid marks, we walked down the street and checked out the pretty trees. Then the boys took a try at walking in snow for the first time. Most of the pictures are of Charlie and Dash, since I was carrying Liam.

Perhaps tomorrow we will go out and play in some fresh powder!

heavy readings

Liam loves books. He loves big, enormous, weighty tomes. The bigger the better. If he can barely pick it up then great!

Award for most pretentious author pose: National Geographic retrospective

I've asked a few friends to contribute obsolete items from their libraries, and went to Half Price Books today to see what they had. I picked up a trilogy of awesome old Jaques Cousteau picture books and a history of National Geographic's first 100 years. The prize, however, goes to a gift from the manager in their book buying department. He overheard me asking an employee where their sale section was with the heaviest books (and my explanation as to why) and as I was leaving he hurried over with perhaps the biggest textbook I have ever seen. I seriously don't know how people were supposed to use this thing casually. It begs for a podium to hold it up. On the surface it is just another Oracle text, but to Liam it is so much more.

delectable cookbooks

We noticed his fascination when he kept bringing me the same board book over and over. Excellent, another Charlie Harper! I thought...but he was choosing it because it's the biggest board book we have.  Then he branched into pulling all of the cookbooks from the bookshelves in the dining room. A ten pound tome on French cooking? Sure! This enthusiasm was not exactly healthy for Charlie's prized cookbook library though.

Enter: Liam's bookshelf. I had to move the piano bench in front of the fireplace to keep them from pulling the screen out and climbing inside, and it makes a dandy platform for some heavy reading. Liam's endeavor of the afternoon: figuring out how to remove the books in a stack and carry them all around at once. Perhaps he has a future in the circus.