antics

If you live, as I do, with two newly minted five-year-olds, you might just wake up one morning to a bit of stirring and giggling next to your bed. You might open your sleepy eyes and attempt to focus without your glasses, and see this*:



You might look next to the bed and notice a string leading out of the bedroom...

...into the living room, which just might lead to another sign:

and another....


Until, SURPRISE!!!!!!


It's a party! With streamers! And a balloon!

And if a party wasn't fun enough, you can always bite your pita bread into "underpants".


Or do an extra good job when mama asks you to put a few rolls of toilet paper on the holder:


* that's "follow the line" and "follow the path", in case their phonetic spelling didn't make any sense to you.

just a few pics I never got around to publishing.

Hard to believe that this weather is still possible in MN this time of year, but it is. Thankfully, this was around Christmas, and we're having a lovely early green spring!

love and lentils

for Omie and Opa

The boys talk all the time about when Omie and Opa are coming for their birthday. This year we're going to have a real birthday party for them at our favorite Nature Center. They'll each get to invite a few friends, and a naturalist will take the kids on some games and such, and then there'll be cake. We're having a "Book Party" where, if they want to, people can bring a book for the boys, and also a copy of the same book for the Re*ach Out And Re*ad program at the hospital where I work, which gives a free book to every child at every well-child visit. For many of the kids that receive books, it will be the only books they have in their home. Toys and presents are lovely, of course, but we've just gotten rid of a ton of clutter, and hope to keep it that way for a while, with less sets of tiny parts mixing up everywhere and requiring constant sorting. And, while these toys don't always get the biggest "wow factor" when the presents are opened, what they actually play with for the most part is this: books, blocks, trains, puzzles and games, art supplies, Legos, and stuffed animals. And those things by themselves take up a fair bit of space and organization. Even the boys have remarked that it's easier to clean up since the "purge".



Our bathroom is finally done -this won't be interesting to all of you, I am sure, but here are a couple of pictures.



We bartered for the labor on the tile, and St*ve did the plumbing and electrical. The bathroom has gone from being an unpleasant little room with moldy plastic tile to the nicest room in the house.



I took No*ah to the Minnea*polis Inst*itute of Ar*ts on Friday, and we had a great time. We did set off one alarm when No*ah touched the plexiglass over a decorative object, but after that he was extremely careful! We had a great discussion about what exactly makes something "art", and he was particularly interested in the period rooms. (Omie, the interior decorator and antiques dealer, would be proud!) He said, "A long time ago, everything was much lovelier." I did point out that the lovely rooms we were viewing belonged to very wealthy people, and that not everyone had such well-appointed parlors.


When we got home, No*ah and the boys wanted to make a "museum" in the house, and while I vetoed using the kitchen for this purpose any more than we already do, I helped them put their art in the upstairs hallway. They made "tickets" for Grandma and Grandma, and here they are showing Grandpa the "exhibit". There is talk of sending Opa and O*mie some advanced tickets in the mail.

crafty

The blocks above are a recreation of "Wonderland", the imaginary world the boys talk about all the time, where everything is made of candy. They are very into imaginary worlds, forts, and "pretend friends" at the moment.


We recently had a "guest". Benjamin Bear, who lives at Gra*ce Nursery School, likes to take an overnight visit to each of Miss J*ean's students, and it was No*ah's turn. We even had a special book in which to record Benjamin's "adventures". No*ah introduced him to all his other "stuffies" and had him sleep on a special part of his bed so he wouldn't feel lonely. It was hard to say goodbye.




Isn't this a great plastic knife the boys got for Christmas from Auntie Je*nn and Uncle Da*ve? The boys use it all the time to cut up veggies for dinner, or make a fruit snack for themselves. The other day, I mentioned in the car that I was buying more peanut butter, since the dog got into our giant plastic tub of it. Oli*ver requested celery too, so we could have peanut butter on celery "like grandma makes". Then No*ah said from behind me, "I really love Grandma", and Ollie responded, "me too, No*ah".

Winter is draaaaagging on - this is the time of year when everyone is kind of out of patience and Vitamin D, and spring is still a month off from seeming like a reality. But we're surviving, and trying to get outside when we can. We've managed a lot more sledding and fun new outdoor activities like cross-country skiing this year. Last week we took the boys tubing (going down a snowy hill on an inner tube and back up again on a lift, for anyone who doesn't know what that is). Ollie said,"I think maybe tubing was the funnest thing I've ever done. Except maybe next time I'll crash more." No*ah: "Tubing was pretty fun, even though it was awfully fast and I almost crashed."



No*ah spends hours and hours drawing and crafting, but finally figured out that not everything is permanently archived in our house. He asked me to take some pictures of his art, and I thought maybe you'd like to see them too. Click here to see them (you don't need a Facebook account, because I made the album public). If you click on the first one, you can see the rest of the pictures like a slide show. You may be interested to know that the picture of the fat man behind bars with a bag of money is of "Den*ny H#ec*ker", the recently indicted auto-sales scion. The boys had heard on the radio that he is "probably going to jail for the rest of his life", and that made quite an impression. Whenever they hear his name, Ollie says "he made a lot of problems for himself!"

inside

(I fixed the video on the last post, I think--try again if you couldn't get it to work)


Just a few more of life around the house. The cute little girl above is Au*gust, the boys' 2-year-old cousin.


No*ah on his "stuffie boat". He loves his stuffed animals more than any other toy, and has a very specific way he organizes them on his bed. Don't mess with them! Ollie doesn't even go near them for fear of getting the business from his brother.


Oliv*er gets a little carried away with the peeling...


We have a couple of maze books, and the boys have decided that it makes more sense to trace the mazes with fingers so you don't "mess them up".



Thank goodness for painting and crafting, or we'd go completely stir-crazy.



Because this is the minimum required for our family of four to take a simple walk outdoors in the Minnesota winter:



But, if you pay attention, there are some signs of spring. Watching the many birds at our feeders helps me wait - a cardinal pair, a downy woodpecker, juncos, a big flock of goldfinches, chickadees, purple finches, pine siskins, and of course those noisy sparrows. The robins are coming back, the cardinal is singing its "what-cheer-cheer-cheer" spring song, the days are getting longer and the skies bluer, and the buds are swelling on the trees and bushes. We want the days to be warmer, of course, but a lot happens before the first real flush of green.

birds of a feather:

read the Reader's Digest Do-It-Yourself Manual together...

dancing and drawing

No*ah at dance class. He really enjoys it, and he's very precise, expressive and joyful.






The boys would craft half the day if they could. Sometimes it seems they do. I have no idea what to do with the volume, and am forever discreetly stuffing drawings into the recycling bag... Masking tape is a big favorite.



No*ah was perturbed that we'd run out of toilet paper tubes for crafting with, and decided to make his own version.








Ollie is still rather insistent that his drawings be anatomically correct....



And clearly pleased with the result...



And I hope you're just as easily amused, because life is more fun that way!

almost five

A belated Happy New Year to you all. A few pictures of our life lately.


Christmas was lovely and relaxed, and we dodged the worst of some very bad weather. We certainly had a white Christmas.


The boys were very into this year's tree, and by the time we took it out, it had many homemade "ornaments" involving tape, string, household objects and hair ties. Their favorite activities are anything to do with tape, scissors, glue, paper or string, along with books, Lego, and puzzles. I sometimes have to snip my way through spiderwebs of string just to get through a room. As annoying as this sort of thing can get, it is a long, long winter in Minnesota, and we all do what we have to do...



M*ark came home from Boston for Christmas, and he and Jo'el's parents got in a couple of games of Acquire. I went to bed hours before they were done!


We're in the middle of a bathroom remodel. We had pretty major problems with the plastic"tile" that we had in there, and in the process of removing it, discovered not only a lot of electrical idiocy, but that our bathroom vent was sending about 50% of the moist air it sucked out directly into the wall. We're showering at the Y or at Ste*ve and Kat*hy's. It should be nice when it's done, and Ollie and Noah have been having a blast watching everything.



I love those lashes.




We also put together a time capsule, now behind the bathroom wall. We put in 2 matchbox cars, some pictures of the house and of us, a couple of kid drawings, and a 5-page letter to the future with a lot of info about the house and a bit about our family and the neighborhood circa 2010.


I'm looking forward to taking (waist-up) photos of the boys in the tub without having to crop out the nasty grout. I let the boys marker all over the old plastic tile before it was taken down, and he promptly wrote "poop". Inside the actual wall, though, he only wrote his name.




Granola bar construction site. They asked for permission to "play with this food just this time". I was so impressed that they at least asked that I didn't object. My boys were not born as neat eaters. I hear rumors of such children, but all I can say is that we try. Oh, do we try...


The boys are doing very well. They really enjoy school, and are enjoying different activities for the first time. Ollie is doing swimming at the YWCA, and making good progress. Last week he was very proud that he floated on his back. Noa*h asked to take a dance class, so we were lucky to find him a very boy-friendly dance school close to us. A couple of places said "must wear pink tights and a black leotard", which was a pretty good tip-off that they only expect and cater to little girls! There are two other boys in his class, and the kids do all kinds of dance. He loves it, and it was interesting to see him ask to do something. He enjoys a lot of things, but he's pretty resistant to change and novelty, so this was a first. It's been nice to have some built in time to hang out with just one boy while we wait for the other.

I don't have pictures, but after a looooong deep freeze, the weather warmed up a couple of weeks ago, and the boys tried cross-country skiing. They also tried snow-shoeing recently, and enjoyed both. This week, we fill out our "school choice cards" for kindergarten in the fall. We hope they'll get into a school where a lot of people we know are sending their kids, a loose Montessori school 2 blocks from where Jo*el and I lived right after we got married. It has a good reputation and a ton of parent support and involvement. We're a little less sure about our second choice, but we know people that are very happy with that school too. I'll be glad when April comes and we find out where they end up. Our first choice starts at 7:30 AM, which will be a very big adjustment. There are seven kids in their Sunday School who are starting kindergarten in the fall, and it's been great to talk it over with their parents and compare notes.

Now I'm off to scrub glue off of the kitchen table and vacuum up the tiny slivers of colored paper that are all over my kitchen floor and living room.

Oh, and sorry, Vikings fans. That was by far the closest I've ever been to watching a game.