Camera Unloaded

Here are a few picts from this week. More shadows, snow day, Robert's couch cave, and a longish video of James trying cereal for the first time (i.e. Robert asking again and again, "Do he likes it?"):

Robert's shadow on the lazy-Susan cupboardy thingy. He's got a serious rooster tail there. Time for a haircut.

Inside the couch cave, with my finger over the flash. All that red comes from the flash shining through my blood vessels. Dang cool.

A Blog Post by Alice

Yesterday, on Monday, February 25th, I had a substitute teacher. It was kind of boring.

I had a great day today on the 26th. I had chocolate covered raisins, a whole banana, and five or four crackers for snack today.

I read a lot of a very hard book called How Does it Feel to Live Next Door to a Giraffe?. I want to read some to you:

"Everybody has a next door neighbor. You do and your friends do. Even the animals at the zoo have neighbors. They live very close to each other. Do you think you'd like that? How do you think the animals feel? Let's find out. Let's ask the giraffe how he feels about living next door to the Yak."

(now it's the next page)

"The giraffe? Don't make me laugh. I call him The Neck. He's always sticking his big neck in here to steal my food. If I turn my head my lunch is gone. If I take a little nap, there goes my dinner! I get skinnier and skinnier every day while The Neck gets fatter and fatter."

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been a long one.  It started out with me getting sick with the same thing that has sickened everyone else in the family except Susan.  Sunday I came home from church and went to bed.  I had a horrible sinus headache.  Monday was not much better (but I had the day off work).  Tuesday I worked from home because my sinuses were even worse.  The rest of the week has been slowly getting better.

This week we also got some snow.  It wasn't a ton of snow but it was enough that the kids got to play in it and have a lot of fun.  Sorry I didn't get any pictures of that, I was to busy shoveling the driveway so I could get to work.

I did, however get some pictures of Robert and Alice as Super Heros, after a new costume was somehow acquired.

You have to be very fast to catch Super Man attaching. 

Contemplation

Do I really want to do this by car? Really?!

So many brave (and crazy) souls have done it before me...with more kids than I have. Can I keep my cool for 20+ hours in the car with three little crazies?

The Girls Are Back!

Ever since Thanksgiving, the chickens have been laying fewer and fewer eggs. It's a biological safeguard against raising a brood in the middle of winter with no food. I wondered when and how their egg-laying would resume its normal vigor. We've been gathering one dozen eggs a month (one egg every 2-3 days). Well...

13 eggs in 4 days = SPRING IS HERE!

In the middle of February, without any other inkling of new life around me, the chickens' instincts/metabolisms have suddenly decided that it's good laying weather. Time to raise a family. In the natural world, fertilized chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch. Just 21 days from now, a whole brood of new chicks would be hatching into a promise of warmer weather, green grass, and fat, juicy bugs to feast on. What a delightful prospect!

Time to get going in the garden :)

Parent-Teacher Conference

I asked Ms. Howrey how she would describe Alice to her future first-grade teacher. She said, "I wish I could have a whole classroom of her. Think of what you could accomplish with a whole room of Alices!"


I'm all conflicted. This is my sixth parent-teacher conference EVER (preschool and kindergarten combined) and I'm officially calling it a pattern. I get all tangled up inside about how much to push Alice and how much to simply let be. It has everything to do with my hopes and dreams for her and very little to do with what she really "needs". *sigh*

She's doing great. She's in the top 5 of her classroom for reading, writing, and math. I crave more quantitative comparison data (*sigh*)...tell me where she stands in her class, in her grade, and nationwide. What would I do with this data? Just feel good about her (and myself, because of course I love to take credit for my child's accomplishments *sigh*). Why must I compare her performance to other kids in order to feel good about this whole thing? *sigh*

She could do so much more! If I pushed a little more, what more could she achieve? Should I be pushing? Do I want to push?  How much and in what way does pushing help? What's my goal in all of this? And am I doing it for her or for me? Argh! *sigh*

What I honestly liked most about the visit: Alice showing Buddy all the cool things in her classroom. They bounced around from station to station, chatting quietly and sharing. Buddy showed proper respect/awe for all the new toys. Alice loved playing tour guide.

Um...

Heard from Buddy's room at the end of quiet time:

"Mooooom, see my new trick on the slide!"

"Okay, Buddy, here I come...*gasp*"

("Modesty duck" saves the day)

"Take a picture fast 'cuz it kinda hurts like this."

"I bet."

A Few Words From Alice

I haven't written much about Alice recently. I feel like I hardly get to spend any time with her, and the time I do spend with her is rush-rush-rush after school to get through homework, chores, and dinner. Her schoolwork gives me a peek into her personality and interests, though. Here are a few samples in REVERSE chronological order. I'm just too lazy to switch them around for ya' :)

The assignment was to draw a picture of something that had happened in a book about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Alice drew his tombstone with the description,"He died because someone shot him."

"Dinusores are digr then pepl. This binosore is hug. This binosore is nameb droceusoris. I love binosores."

"Elephants are cool beekus thy Makes foode for us." I asked her about this and she said, "Some people eat elephants."

I like FlaWR, KAK, PIE

"Der Em, I no vat I sed vat u wot the prnses."

Dapper Dudes

Robert at 6 months, wearing an outfit his Grandma Evans had originally made for his cousin Will. I love hand-me-downs of this quality!

James at 4 months wearing that same nifty outfit (he still has room to grow, granted, but it fits well) and the two Roberts hamming it up in their Sunday best (Robert felt the tie made him "EXTRA fancy" that day)

Shadow Swinging

I hung a hammock in our front room. The kids like it, but they like the bar by itself even more for all its swinging, leaping, twisting, and hanging potential. We were playing there this afternoon as the sun was setting and I caught a few fun shadow picts:

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was mostly normal, except for Friday and Saturday.  My mom has also been in town this week, but we haven't seen much of her because she is here to help out my brother and sister in law with a new baby.  If only the baby would actually come she could start doing that instead of just waiting around.

Friday and Saturday were crazy.  Friday we had a lunar new years party.  It really was just us and some neighbors sitting around and eating takeout chinese food.  But it was fun.  Sorry to my brother and his family, and my mother.  We thought a lot about inviting you but with the uncertainty about the new baby and all we thought it would be best to just wait on that and we will have you over for takeout some other time. Some friends had some activities for the kids.  It was fun and some of the guests had some activities.  Including this dragon dance.

The on Saturday we all slept in, then Buddy went to his gym class, we then cleaned, and went to a friend's house for a birthday party, and then had a church activity for dinner.  It was a crazy day.

Tree Walk

I looked out my window this morning and saw a silhouette that I liked very much:

I've been toying with the idea of painting a silhouette on one wall in my front room. A tree in winter, I think. It's such a dramatic and vibrant image...pure umami to my gardening hunger. I asked Robert if he'd like to come with me to take pictures of more trees. Just for inspiration, y'know?

"You mean go outside? Yeah!"

"Take a picture of this one, Mommy! It's SOOOOOO big!"

"Wait a minute. Can I climb this one?"

It was awesome being outside. Love it. I hate painting, so this project may be put away for a few years. But for now, I like mulling it over.

A New Habit (and 4 month checkup)

James has a new habit. He's been putting his hands in his mouth for some time, but yesterday, he finally found a finger configuration that was suckable. Three, actually: pointer finger alone, pointer plus index, and pointer plus index plus ring. Suckable! I heard his gleeful slurps from across the room and promptly pulled out the camera :) The camera didn't pick up the squeaky sounds as well as I would have liked, so you guys just get still images. The flash causes a deer-in-the-headlights kind of stare, unfortunately:

Three-fingered slurp

Two-fingered suck

I grew up a thumb sucker. So while I eagerly watched each of my kids for signs of finger sucking, hoping they would kinda follow in my footsteps, I was also quick to try and break them of the habit. That sounds silly when I put it down in writing. Hm. Well, I'm leaning that way with James, too. I'm thrilled to see him develop a new skill and yet anxious to replace it with a pacifier addiction. I prefer pacifiers for two reasons: 1) easier to keep clean, and 2) easier to wean from as desired :)

James' 4-month checkup went really well. He's big. He's mellow. He's healthy. He weighed in at 18 lbs 15 oz, and measured at 26.5 inches (97th percentile for both). He's half an inch away from outgrowing his infant carrier car seat. The nurse gushed over his rolling thighs. Robert sat up on the exam table and watched the whole process, even the shots. James recovered from the insult pretty quickly and slept the rest of the afternoon. Sweet, sweet boy.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has mostly been a normal week.  Or perhaps a new normal.  Susan had a lot of meetings this week so I got to put the kids in bed 3 times this week.  But the kids did better then they normal do when I put them in bed and Susan is in the living room so it was not really that different.  It was a very odd week weather wise.  The beginning of the week was warm, we got over 60, but the end of the week was bitter cold.  I actually didn't ride my bike to work on Friday because it was only 4 outside and -10 with the windchill.  It still is rather cold but not too bad.  We even got a little over an inch of snow.