the generalization of men with beards

Pearl just saw this photo (of author Mo Willems):

and declared, "Birdie, Jesus, head. Tweet tweet."

Made me pretty happy, thought I'd pass it along :).

Real post coming soon. 

(photo source)

terrifying children's literature

I was going through some of our little family videos yesterday because John had just uploaded them to the computer. When I got to this one from a couple of months ago I just laughed and laughed. I typically don't post videos because I don't think many people are super interested in watching long clips of other peoples' children, but this was so funny to me that I figured at least our families would enjoy it.

I was reading a new book to Pearlie one evening before bed and she was loving all of the pop-up animals on each page. Until I got to the page with a flower that opened up to reveal a cute little bumblebee inside. I have no idea why this was so incredibly alarming to her, but I thought it was so hysterical that I had John come film me torturing her with it for several minutes. In the beginning of the video John's hand is covering the screen at times because he didn't want her to see the camera and be distracted, just so you know why his big hand is blocking the view a little. It is kind of long, but I decided to post the whole thing because the flower torture continues to produce results throughout it. She literally starts running away from the book at one point. It also shows her talking a little bit (this was when she was about 14 months) and just generally being cute.

And lastly, don't mind George screaming in the background that his nose is hurt and us not doing anything about it except asking if it is bleeding. Parenting at its finest, folks.

Oh, and also (I just watched it again), many apologies about Pearl pulling down my shirt a little too much at one point. Sorry.



Funny, huh? :)

spicy sister

This week we returned home from a 4 day collecting trip for John's thesis research to Southwestern Colorado and New Mexico, and trust me, there are plenty of photos and stories coming. And oh my, so many other things to catch up on! I'm working on it, promise. In the meantime, a few photos of our saucy little gal.

She is such delight and joy that there are not adequate adjectives. I find myself literally squealing to John on occasion about the things she does and all of the spice wrapped up in her small body. She makes crazy, expressive faces constantly (really, like at least 4 a minute, mostly because she knows that she will make us giggle), and she holds her own just fine with her big brother. She talks and uses words to let us know what she wants (a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the night she was screaming and I had no clue why-- after holding her, nursing her, rocking her etc. I decided to let her cry for a bit to see what she would do. 10 or so minutes passed and she was still screaming so I went back in to calm her down. As soon as she got into my arms she started sobbing, "Wa wa! Wa wa!" I felt so bad! I got her a drink of water, layed her back down, and tried not to laugh/cry when she immediately rolled over and fell asleep. Poor little thirsty child.), but she also does a great job of screaming and pointing to get her message across if she doesn't know the word. Mostly she yells "Want! Want!" all day long at whatever it is that her brother is holding. She is demanding, to be sure, but I like my girls with a little zing so it is working for us :). I honestly kind of can't get enough of her.

She seriously loves getting into her brother's things, and usually George doesn't mind. Here she is making her way up to his art table to have a look at what kind of trouble she can make.


Of course just sitting at the table was not adequate. She needed to get up on top of it so that she could reach George's little magnetic calendar that is strictly forbidden to her. (Sidenote: I've had several friends that have been shocked when they find out that I really do just leave paints and paintbrushes down at George's table for him to use whenever he wishes, even without supervision. It has worked just fine for us-- George is careful and has only ever painted on paper, and is good about cleaning up when he is done. The only painting mess we have ever had to deal with came at the hands of one certain baby girl who somehow managed to get a lid off and painted the wall and floor with her hands. Perhaps our free-for-all painting access will have to change with this lil' one. I'm mostly hoping we can eventually teach her the rules and let the paints stay :). We will see.)


And to finish off tonight, another diaper-only shot, this time in the dryer.


I love spending my days with this busy little baby and her mild mannered (but recently much more feisty himself) big brother. No where else I'd rather be, nothing else could bring me this joy.

chickens, part two: fuzzy, fluffy, cute

I mentioned in the first post that in addition to hatching 4 chicks from eggs, we also added 7 more babies to our flock so we could have a good variety of breeds. We gave one of our hatched Leghorns to our neighbors (who are embarking on a chicken raising adventure as well), so we ended up with 10 chicks total. We didn't actually want that many (really, what will we do when they are all laying one egg a day?), but John just kept deciding that we needed "one more" when he was buying them. Luckily we are sharing the eggs with a family in our neighborhood, and John's mom might take two chickens to her house at some point. At any rate, we have a whole bunch of little chickies and this was the scene when we first brought them home.

The kids (Anna was over playing with George) were quite intrigued. At first they just looked.


Soon enough George wanted to hold one. I love his little satisfied grin.



Pearl seemed to like the idea of the chickens...




...But the reality of them? Not so much.




She was seriously hysterical. For the first couple of days she wanted to be next to the chickens' box constantly, mainly just so that she could yell and scream at them. It was like she wanted to enjoy them, but she was almost jealous or mad at them at the same time. We made the mistake of referring to them as "babies" at first and I think she may have started to feel a little threatened with all of the attention they were getting. It was pretty funny. Luckily after a couple of days she got over it and now she is just fine with them. I guess it's a good thing that my desire to have another baby right away is not really working out :).

Chicks are seriously cute. I like looking at these pictures because the chickens are totally in their adolescent ugly body stage right now and have lost all cute appeal.


At first we wanted to keep the brand new chicks (that we had hatched) in a little separate container within the box because they were still so fresh. We didn't know how they'd do around the chicks that were several days older. The brand new chicks let us know, however, that they did NOT want to be separated from all of their friends. They immediately started trying to jump/fly out to be with the rest of the flock. It thought it was sweet and funny that they knew exactly what they wanted and they didn't like being away from all of the others.


Hungry chickies.


Roaming around on the floor while we changed their shavings out one day. The best part about baby chicks is that they really like to stay together so they are easy to take care of. They don't need much space and they don't try to run away. They kind of all just huddle together and hang out.


Look at them all sleeping on top of each other.


Some of our neighbors (the same ones who are raising chickens, too) came over to see ours since we got them a day before they got theirs.


They fall asleep in a heap of funny limpness wherever they are when they get tired. It is entertaining.



A few days after we got them a couple of them started jump-flying up to the top of the box to roost. They didn't want to escape (in fact, if they ever ended up outside the box on the floor they would frantically try to get back in), but they just liked chilling up there.


Here is Pearl checking them out after she had decided they were friends and not enemies.

loungewear at its finest

I have been known to coordinate my children's clothes. I have also been known to coordinate their pajamas. Perhaps there is a recovery program I should join-- it's slightly excessive, I know. But really, if you could wake up to this in the morning, wouldn't you do it too?


I mean, seriously.


And since we're posting about pjs, let me throw these in here, too. Just a few cute pictures of my Pea baby one morning fresh out of bed. There are very few things in this world that are more fun (or cute) than babies in the morning.



Let's finish this loungewear post off with photographic evidence of my son's addiction to basketball shorts. Every single time we go to the mall he thinks he needs a new pair. And if we happen to be shopping with my mother and there are basketball shorts on sale, he usually gets some. You might think that this is totally overkill, but you don't know how often my son wears basketball shorts. He happily lets me pick out his clothes for when we leave the house, but as soon as we return home his first order of business is to rush to his room, rip off his pants, and put on some basketball shorts. So he wears at least one pair a day. If we leave the house multiple time he wears multiple pairs. Really. We had fun trying to fit them all on his little body :).


When he tried to walk he tipped over-- that is what the second picture is. (Didn't want anyone thinking I was trying to put my 3 year old in some seductive topless pose :).)

unruly waves: the beach, part one

So there is this weird thing that happens on blogs where people feel like they have to be all apologetic for posting lots of pictures of whatever it is that they are blogging about. You know what I mean, right? I don't really get it. I mean, isn't that kind of the point of blogging (for many of us, anyway)? To document your life in words and photos? I totally get that all of my photos from a vacation may not be all that exciting for most of you to look at, but really, I am mostly just blogging about that vacation so that I can have a record of it for me and my children. The interaction with family, friends, and other bloggers on the blog is a total bonus, but not my main motivation in blogging. So why not post as many as I want, and not even be sorry about it one single bit?! Okay, then, I will!

Except...

I am a little bit sorry about it, not because you have to look at so many photos (you don't if you don't want to, I promise I won't mind:)), but because I have to post them all. Holy cow, I have a really crazy amount of pictures from The Beach that I want to write about and share in this space, but finding the time and motivation to do so has been pretty hard. (Perhaps this was evident from the two week absence?) I'm gonna start small, with a couple of series of photos that document two of the funnier memories from our days on The Beach.

George loved the ocean this year. The last time we were at The Beach he wasn't so sure about how cold it was and mostly preferred to play in the sand. This year he really enjoyed the water, and was not timid about it at all. Our first day there I was surprised when he immediately wanted to wade into the water all by himself.

So off he went, with Logan, and their cute make-shift fishing poles fashioned out of sticks and seaweed.

And when a wave would come, the boys would run back in a bit to avoid getting soaked, and then run back out a ways, following the wave as it retreated. So they were doing that. And then this series of events took place.

You can see where this is going, right?

Oh my brave little boy, here he was all excited about the ocean and then this happens?!

I love Logan looking at him like, "Ha ha, Sucker!"

He got up quicker than I could think to stop taking pictures and go rescue him (thankfully, because that enabled me to get these next couple of photos).

Aside from being sort of frightening to suddenly find yourself face down in freezing water, I am sure the salt was burning his eyes and tasted yucky. Poor little sad boy. And Logan is all smiles.

I am pleased to say that after a change of shirt and a quick hug George was ready to hit the water again. But he wanted to hold his daddy's hand :).

See, he is even laughing again :).

And, since we are talking about unfortunate events, we are going to make this a series (get it?) and showcase one of Pearl's finest Beach moments.

So there she was, minding her own business, just doing downward facing dog on a boogie board.

When, unbeknownst to her, her daddy's hands enter the frame to swoop in and rescue her before an unruly wave comes and knocks her down.

And the only way he could grab her quickly enough was to do just that: grab her. And this is what that looked like:

This all happened very fast, and apparently there wasn't time to turn the little Pea right-side up.

And there still wasn't time to turn her before John realized that the boogie board was being swept out into the ocean and he would need to go rescue that, too. And of course it did not occur to me to put the camera down and help out at all.

Oh, I just love those. So funny to see that chubby little body helplessly hanging upside down, wondering what on earth was going on.

Okay, that wasn't so bad. Maybe another post is in the very near future. I'll chip away at these photos one by one!

is this familiar to anyone else?

Setting: Our home, Sunday afternoon at 2:30 PM

Situation: Nap time. Supposedly.

What I shouldn't be hearing: Noises. From both kids' rooms.

What I find when I look in George's room:

Seriously. All by himself. I had absolutely no clue.

What I find when I peek over Pearlie's crib:

Could she look any less sleepy?

But wait! Great news! Someone in our house got a nap!

This really was all happening at the same time and it cracked me up. Though in full disclosure, I must confess that this isn't quite as funny as it seems because John's "nap" really was only like a 15 minute rest (though he did fall asleep) in between his post-church meetings and a home teaching appointment, but still. Babies not napping while husbands nap? Surely I can't be the only wife that this happens to, right? Love those not sleepy babes. And that very sleepy man. Lots and lots.

And since we are talking about Sundays, I'll throw these pictures from a couple of Sundays ago on here. I thought my kiddos looked sweet in their matching blues, so I snapped a few pictures while we were sitting on the couch.

Little Miss Blueberry Eyes. I could eat her.

George was happy to smile for the camera. That is, happy just as long as he could be upside down and look through his legs. Because that is totally normal.

Chubby little fingers that she cannot keep out of her mouth.

Pea is sitting by herself pretty well now. Oh, and if her little dress looks like a piece of vintage heaven, that's because it is. It was worn by her Aunt Lisa 28 years ago. Love little treasures like that. Next time I will try to get some pictures of G in which he is right side up. Or upside up, as he would say.