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.

Dec 26

On December 25th, we had a present opening frenzy, but no power for most of the day. Thankfully our house had been transformed into an entertainment bonanza palace and with the help of a few lanterns we played the day away.

To give you a bit of flavor, this is our floor this morning after the paper was picked up and things were "straightened up" a little bit. Any time you tried to give a toy a home, one boy or the other would run over and demand it from you.

 

Dec 21 and 22

On the twenty-first day of christmas my true love gave to me: one bushy Santa Claus, one brown acorn, a green wreath, a chipper squirrel, a chilly snowman, a mischievous cat, a minty candy cane, one pale pink ornament, one russet bird, a bunch of juicy grapes,  a swimmy goldfish, one lovely blue ornament, a golden bell, one shimmering snowflake, one glowing candle, one bluebird of happiness, a slow tortoise, a run run run as fast as you can gingerbread man, Batman, one green Christmas tree, and a beautiful B.

 On the twenty-second day of christmas my true love gave to me: one bushy Santa Claus, one brown acorn, a green wreath, a chipper squirrel, a chilly snowman, a mischievous cat, a minty candy cane, one pale pink ornament, one russet bird, a bunch of juicy grapes,  a swimmy goldfish, one lovely blue ornament, a golden bell, one shimmering snowflake, one glowing candle, one bluebird of happiness, a slow tortoise, a run run run as fast as you can gingerbread man, Batman, one green Christmas tree, a beautiful B, and a Charlie Brown ornament. 

For their present, we got the boys a membership at a kid's gym. They'll have one class a week, and then one day with a free play period. I took them there today to see how things went and Dash loved wallowing in the ball pit. Liam rolled huge balls around the floor and they both ran about like maniacs.  I think this is going to work out well. 

Dec 20

On the twentieth day of christmas my true love gave to me: one bushy Santa Claus, one brown acorn, a green wreath, a chipper squirrel, a chilly snowman, a mischievous cat, a minty candy cane, one pale pink ornament, one russet bird, a bunch of juicy grapes,  a swimmy goldfish, one lovely blue ornament, a golden bell, one shimmering snowflake, one glowing candle, one bluebird of happiness, a slow tortoise, a run run run as fast as you can gingerbread man, Batman, and a green Christmas tree. 

The lights progress apace. Today's visitor was the drywall guy. I had the singular pleasure of listening to his holiday negotiations. He took a break for lunch, and after came back with his brother and nephew, who were in the neighborhood doing another job and offered to help him finish up the rest of ours more quickly. His brother has much land and many horses (and also two! sets of twins). Our drywall guy has a teenage daughter who is horse crazy. I bore witness to the conversation that will lead to a girl actually asking for a pony and getting one . They are going to put a huge red bow on it and the whole nine yards. I was almost giddy with excitement. 

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Dash today thought that the ravioli he was eating for lunch would make an effective hair product. He was right.

Dec 11

On the eleventhday of christmas my true love gave to me: one bushy Santa Claus, one brown acorn, a green wreath, a chipper squirrel, a chilly snowman, a mischievous cat, a minty candy cane, one pale pink ornament, one russet bird, a bunch of juicy grapes, and a swimmy goldfish. 

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Humorous point of the day: both boys wearing button-down shirts and no pants, running around the kitchen. They looked like they were doing a Risky Business revival. 

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Second humorous bit: when they start flinging around the contents of the dishtowel drawer, I usually try to cram the tea cozy on someone's head. Typically it gets pulled off immediately but today Liam kind of forgot he was wearing it and kept playing. 

Dec 6

On the sixth day of christmas my true love gave to me one bushy Santa Claus, one brown acorn, a green wreath, a chipper squirrel, a chilly snowman, and a mischievous cat.

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The boys discovered the tree when they woke up this morning. There was a lot of staring and some reaching, and then they happily played around it. Hopefully it will be a little longer before they figure out how to climb up into chairs, onto the windowseat, and then up onto the table. 

Dec 1

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me one bushy santa claus.

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And two completely crazy boys.

Curtains

I was trying to get a picture of the boys for a holiday card, and between the gloom and wiggly boys it just wasn't going to happen. So I give you a "holiday season's opener," if you will. Two boys giggling in the curtains.

Piano Skills

The boys have been fascinated with the piano since they could stand up. Now that there's a bit more whole body dexterity going on, dancing and piano playing are starting to occur a the same time. And if you dance yourself onto the floor, well, you just get up and keep playing. Liam's over in the corner playing with finger cymbals.

snippet

What is that sound you hear? It is the sound of Liam shrieking any time I am touching a computer.So this will be brief!

 liam regarding you from within the circle of entertainment

liam declaring he is done with breakfast, thank you.

 dash driving the box

mayhem

helping Charlie cook

Trappin

I was getting sorely tired of doling out individual O's of cereal, so enter the Snack Traps. They are my attempt to free-feed boys without getting treats strewn absolutely all over the house.

Elapsed time to learning how to use snack trap: 5 minutes, with me showing them how and then pulling pieces of cereal to the top so they reached down for it.

Time to deciding that whatever is in your brother's trap is much tastier than what is in yours: 6 minutes. 

Sanity was restored.  

 Liam appears blameless.

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Images from Italy:

We visited many churches, the most interesting being this one made by Massimilano Fuksas, the Church San Paolo. It was completely still and quiet, and the clear sunshine of the day was I think exactly what he had in mind when he designed it. Floating shapes within shapes.

 

 

rosy cheeked

I am trying to enjoy these days where the boys are relatively adventurous about trying new foods, since I know the days of only-toast and nothing-but-bananas are ahead of us. I've managed to get them to love kale, and we kept getting these luscious bunches of beets in our CSA box. My dirty secret? I really don't want to clean up the aftermath of eating beets. As an adult I can barely make it through a salad that has beets in it without getting stained fingers and possibly something on my shirt. I was not looking forward to people thinking I was some freaky Twilight fan who tried to get her babies to look like vampires.

So...I got creative. I roasted a big mess (literally) of beets and pureed them. Then when Charlie made a batch of waffles I had him reserve half of the batter and add a bunch of beets to it. The result was something that looked like it could be crowned with the title "Martha Stewart's Red Velvet Waffles." These things were gorgeous! Intense purple red. And the boys saw waffles and they hoovered them up. They actually tasted quite good, just not the sort of waffles you'd have with butter and syrup. There will be some experimentation in the future with adult Red Velvet Waffles, perhaps with some poached eggs on top and goat cheese.

But for now, mission accomplished. The boys ate a bunch of beets and the only thing left in the end were smiles.

To illustrate, here is Liam displaying his free-form sign language. He does one thing: when he wants more of something, he uses his right hand to whap-whap-whap against the table top. It is usually rather gentle but if I'm not paying enough attention it turns into slams. Dash, on the other hand, signals his desire by raising both hands in the air and opening and closing his fists like an eager crab.




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Images from Italy:
As with many trips, Charlie and I spent our free time playing cribbage. Bliss!

One year cocktail party

It's been a year and the boys are bigger and all of those predictable wonderful things. I'm jet-lagged from a trip to Italy so I'll just leave you with this for now: no nap, just a cocktail party.

Hot Chicks

We have one extraordinarily well-fed bobcat in our neighborhood. When I brokered a deal with my friend a few months ago to raise some chicks to teen-age size, we still had five hens. As of this morning we were down to three.  Enter: The New Girls.

Six new hens. Two blue andalusians, two rose comb brown leghorns, a black sex link, and a silver laced wyandotte. Unfortunately the coyote found my americanas especially tasty so I only have one blue egger left. These girls are going to spend the next month in the coop with no outside time, and then I'll start to let them out and see what happens. 

It's now that I'm very happy that I built a coop big enough for them to fly around in so I don't have to feel too bad about locking them in. They will just have to survive on a steady diet of layer pellets, scratch mix, and all of the delicious greens from our garden and leftover produce. Poor things!

The boys enjoyed some time in the sunshine while I got the new chicks settled in.

play time

For Gabriel, who had a very long day:




Dash is the one constantly blowing raspberries. Liam is more of a waw waw waw hummer kind of guy. They both are gigglers. And as with all movies, this one ends with Liam demanding access to the electronic device.

sleep is for suckers, but cameras are cool

Liam decided to reject napping so I put him in a carrier on my back hoping that would do the trick. After fifteen minutes of silence I assumed he had conked out.


I walked over to the fridge to get something to drink and opened the right side door. Then, as if by magic, the left door opened as well. I looked down and saw a chubby hand wrapped around the handle.

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Dash notices I have the camera

He makes his way over

closer

sits up on his knees to assess the situation

scales my body

closer

give it to me, mother

everything is exciting when you are small

I was cutting up some cardboard today to make some shapes for the boys to chew/throw/sit on/bang on things. Liam decided that the roll of duct tape was infinitely more exciting.

Liam has learned how to play the piano all on his own

and this year's "summer" is one where in the middle of July Dash is wearing a sweater vest.

greeny

They don't like avocados. Or mangoes. Or watermelon.


But they adore kale.