Finding it hard to finish

So I haven't got to paint much lately, mostly because Cooper was suffering through finals and the girls and I were suffering from lack of Cooper, and our house was all out of sync, but hooray Coop for finishing the term! Hip hip hooray! And when I have painted, I've been totally unable to finish anything or feel successful at it. Here's some of the works in progress.

Attempt #1:

Attempt #2:

I like some things about both but think it'll probably take at least attempt #3 to get it right.

New subject.
Attempt #1 when I liked it:

Attempt #1 after I ruined it with the nasty background that I didn't want to add but went for anyway and regretted it so much afterwards that I didn't paint for days:

Sad.

Attempt #2:

Sweet but missing something - not a nasty background, but something. I can't figure out what else to do with it and I'm too scared of ruining it again to touch it for now.

Attempt #3 on bigger paper (requires more courage and commitment) in the line-drawing stage, which I was really happy with:

Attempt #3 in the I'm getting nervous about ruining it phase and so it's time to go to bed instead:

Time to go to bed and dream about being an accomplished, confident artist who knows what she's doing and doesn't care about messing up, because it so rarely happens and even if it does, it doesn't matter because she has endless amounts of patience, painting time, and money - so she can start over anytime and never worry about wasting money she doesn't have on watercolor paper.

P.S. I posted two at once. Don't miss the cute entry of the girls sleeping below.

Is this what they mean by "sleeping like a baby?"

These are my cuties sleeping like normal people:

And this is an example of a child unsuccessfully faking it:
And this position looks incredibly awkward and utterly unsleepable to me:
How does this even happen? Did she fall over asleep and happened to land on the bed?:
Let's play who can find the baby?:
And mom and dad probably should have checked on me sooner. Again though, did she just fall asleep mid-playing with toes and konk, her head's face down in the carpet? Isn't she uncomfortable????:
And my final million-dollar question: If they can fall asleep ANYWHERE, as evidenced by the pictures above, WHY is convincing them to sleep such torture?

Horses are big

On Friday we took advantage of the sunny day and thought we'd check out the horsies down at the Hunt club. Turns out they're really big, especially to mini-people. Check out Meri eyeing a horse:
Basically, we don't have to worry about them asking for a real horse anytime soon. There might have been some tears. They really did not like it when the horses begged. Some of the horses would see that we had carrots, and proceed to beg - which consisted of them kicking their stall as loudly as they could until we fed them. For some reason, this was a little unnerving to the kids.
I promise I'm not a mean mom. I didn't force her to feed the horse. She begged me to let her feed the horse with the ponytails and then when we got close and the horse leaned in, lips back, and teeth out, she freaked. Nevertheless, she did brag about her accomplishment to anyone that would listen the rest of the day.
Despite their fear, they were still very interested in the horses and enjoyed seeing them from a comfortable distance, especially when they were riding around and jumping. The pet store might be more our cup of tea, but it's good to get out and see new things! And the girls talked about how cool the horses were for days afterwards, so I think we might even go back sometime when we're feeling brave.

How does this happen?

This is the result of "No, I do!"
I don't think those words are very helpful.

Gotta be movin!

We got some moves

Yee-haw

Always spinning

And flying like a rocket-ship is fun times too!

I'm not sure the inside of my house can take too many more rainy days with the sort of constant energy going on over here, so thank heavens for beautiful sunny days like today - no matter how cold!