Of bum prints, babies, and brooms

What kind of animal makes a track like this? Anyone, anyone?

A Baby G of course! That would be her complete bum, and full leg print in her puffy snow pants! J can't stop laughing about that picture. Love the tracks as she crawled off as well! For some reason, she was utterly refusing to walk in the snow. Had to get down and crawl :)

And why not? This would actually be Baby G's first time in the snow! Not that its the first time it has snowed in her life. Heavens no. Just the first time that the stars have aligned and there has been fresh snow, warm enough temps, G in her snowgear, Mom in a good enough mood, Dude in a good enough mood, and nothing else that had to be done at that precise moment. She was rather timidly interested in that curious white stuff. She kept touching it daintily, bringing it to her lips and giving me a quizzical look.

And she kept squinting a lot. She hasn't seen much sun lately. Hard to remember what its like frankly. Just so bright! But I think she liked it!

Dude meanwhile was alternating between stomping in the snow and sweeping ... the grass. Gotta keep that grass clear. Forget that the driveway was mostly covered in a fresh blanket... 

Such a cutie. Less cute when I had to wrestle the broom from his hands and drag him, screaming and crying into the house because he was "not done sweepin," but you know.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Of course the girly girlies had to sport a Valentine's Day-do! Now this is how they looked after a long school day of pulling snow gear on and off (a bit fuzzier and more misshapen) but they are still pretty cute!

 And after class parties that filled them with their weight in sugar, they came home to this surprise! Should have seen their eyes. M was in heaven. I mean when does mom let them have a treat THAT big? J was delighted by how pretty her name had been written. Daddy was thrilled that he'd got 4 hearts on his card instead of just 2 like everybody else, which he pointed out to everyone :) And when dude woke up, he didn't waste any time catching up! Does he look happy or what? Hope your day was as sweet as this!

Funnies and cuties

I watched dude work really hard to get daddy dinosaur to hold baby dinosaur (he told me that's what they were). When he succeeded, he let out a big "okay" and sat back to enjoy his work. Course he had to photo bomb his own picture. Never misses a chance!

Awesome benefit of your older kids learning to read! They read to the littles! So cute!

Too tired to even care. Hilarious.

And too cute for words.

And baby G has taken to drawing lately any chance she gets. She always moves the pencil back and forth on the paper, then looks up at me with this huge smile as if to say, "I see you guys do this all the time. Look at me! I can do it too!"

 See, huge smile.

 And sure, she eats the pencil sometimes.

 Or the pencil and the paper.

 Or crumples up the paper while eating the pencil . . . but either way, she would like a round of applause for her accomplishments.

And back to dude wanting to be in every picture. While I took those of baby G drawing, guy was saying the entire time, "I picture too. I picture too." So here the ham is. Texting. Not even sure to whom, so I apologize to whomever received a text from me in Cambodian. My 2 year-old can do things with my phone like you wouldn't believe (example: he was playing some bowling in a Miami nightclub game on my phone the other day. I didn't even know my phone HAD games!). Oh, and one last thing. Yesterday, Coop took Buddy to get some wood and drywall, and when he was loading it into the car next to Dude, he said: "Daddy, that's BIG! I like big!"

Hey, anybody seen Baby G? BABY G!

Happy 100th Day of School!

 For the 100th Day of school, M's class got to dress like they were 100 years old! She was so incredibly excited. We went with curlers in her hair (she was kind of disappointed to find out I didn't have any gray hair spray to make her hair gray. Really? Who has that just lying around the house? I convinced her that her hair is so light it's pretty much white anyway), old-school glasses (which she has continued to wear daily because she thinks they are fancy), pearls, a scarf, and a skirt with it's waist pulled way above her belly button. But the real clincher was the cane. We made it out of a toilet paper roll and a wrapping paper roll and then wrapped it in duct tape to make pretty much the hippest cane ever. It was a hit and made me the best mom in her eyes for at least a day! I win!

And her teacher sent me these pictures from school too:

 I'd say she had fun and looked pretty awesome to boot!

Bibbidi Bobbodi Boo.

So I'm so proud of how this turned out that I have to share! I am far from a great seamstress. In fact, I'm fairly inept, but I did manage to turn this old shirt of Coop's into this darling dress for J without any magic at all! I think it turned out pretty good! Especially because the tutorial I was following was for a 2-3T sized girl, so I had to improvise a bit and completely make up parts like the ruffle on the bottom for added length. And the flower was a great addition as well. The whole thing only took 2 days when it would've taken my mom an hour, but I did it and she looks great! Now back to taking care of the house and other kids...

I messy Mama!

 The funny thing was he was only worried about his hands! And in case you were wondering, yes, he absolutely did take the sandwich apart and shove the jam side up against his face so he could lick it better. Boy.

Sometimes while I need him to stay in one place while I work in the kitchen, I let him play with bubbles in the sink. Sure there's a lot of "oops, Mama, I spill again," as he pours whole cupfulls everywhere but in the sink, but he also does cute things like submerge his hands, bring them up like this and say, "where my hands go?" He's a crack-up. The other night, he randomly said to me, "It's not a dinosaur mama, it's a pig." Hadn't been talking about either so I was a little confused, but did the only thing one could do at a time like that, and made an excellent pig sound. His head was turned, and he whipped it back with a gasp, and said, "Huh? Where da pig?" After a few more strategically timed pig sounds, he got a little scared and scurried up on the back of the couch, quite sure that "da pig is hiding hind the tv. I gotta find dat pig." Daddy came downstairs and it took him about 5 minutes to convince our little guy that it was just, "Mama is da pig sound." In on the game now, he spent the next half hour quacking, looking around dramatically with wide eyes, and exclaiming, "Where is dat duck hiding now?" He doesn't lack imagination!

The champ

M has decided to become the family's champion prayer-giver based on length alone. This honestly keeps her from being called on whenever we don't have 20 minutes to spare. Which, knowing her, could be her sneaky little point all along. On the other hand, she could just get joy out of keeping us all on our knees for as long as possible. Or perhaps she just takes pride in being so incredibly good at it. With her you never know! A couple of things she mentioned tonight:
Thank thee that Mommy painted our nails tonight.
Thank thee for the months of the year and the days of the week.
Thank thee for all the people whose birthdays are in February (I'll give you three guesses which month her birthday is in...but I'm pretty sure you'll only need one).
Thank thee that my birthday is on my favorite day.
Thank thee that it's almost my birthday.
Please bless me to love my birthday.
Please bless the President who our school is named after, President Abraham Lincoln.
Please bless me not to forget to mark my reading chart.
Of course, these are just the funny ones mentioned tonight alone. On top of that, she always mentions every family member by name, along with all sorts of other goodies. We had a few family home evenings awhile back on the importance of saying thank you's in our prayers. I think she got it.

She likes oranges

And I like her chubby little wrists, her tiny button nose, and her dimples for knuckles. I like the way she devours an orange like she hasn't eaten in days, the crazed way in which she continuously yells if she sees an orange that she's not yet eating, and the mysterious way in which she gets orange pulp on top of her eyelids when eating. 

 Not to mention the bright eyes and sweet smile she turns my way whenever I come near.

 Or how she tries to do two at once if given the chance...

Or how she shoves kiwis in like they're trying to escape and she's gotta be quick. Sure do love her.

Fiesta Bowl 2013 - GO DUCKS!

My morning

Here are the texts I sent Coop this morning:
8:51 AM   Miss you. Dude cried quite a bit when you left today
8:54 AM   Then he wasn't too happy about the girls leaving.Wouldn't get in the car to take them. Just kept trying to get them to go downstairs and play with him on the playset.
8:54 AM   So to "help" J told him we were going to school where there's a big playset!
8:55 AM   Didn't go well (when I told him we weren't going to play on it because it's covered in snow and way too cold). But now he's happily singing O-O-O O'Reilly in the bath.
8:56 AM   And saying Fhat-do-fee again and again and again like it means something. Any idea?
8:59 AM   And he absolutely DOES scream like a girl.
9:00 AM   Now he's playing chubby bunny with foam bath letters.
9:15 AM   End of fun. Baby G bent down, grunted, stood up and there were 2 little poops floating on the number 3. Then I yelled at dude when he drank the water while I was fishing them out. He cried bc I hurt his feelings. Baby G screamed when I took her out and made her wait in her room so I could get dude out, who screamed bloody murder when I turned the shower on to more effectively rinse him down with clean water...and all this when I was trying to be nice and let them have a fun bath.


Time for naps!

Gotta Dance!

So this is crazy long, but I've been promising Nana video of them dancing for forever and just couldn't cut it down because they crack me up so much! M can seriously shake that little tushie. J really focuses, although that's easier to do when her pants stay up. And I can't get enough of dude dancing along. He jumps like 10 seconds late but rocks back-and-forth like a pro. Hope you enjoy it Nana:

Mr. Cute

His little voice just cracks me up these days. Love pretty much everything he says. No, that's not true. But I certainly do love him singing! Here's a fun little clip (love how Baby G thinks he's funny too):


On top of being my in-house musical entertainment, some days he's my miniature personal trainer. I was doing a Yoga workout today at home. Whenever I bent over to stretch, he'd jump on my back. Deeper stretch anyone? When I would lift my leg and hold it, he push them down with all his weight. And laugh his head off. He crawled in and out of my legs anytime I did downward-facing dog. When I stood up to breathe before the next pose (as instructed), he'd shout, "Down! Down!" And best of all, when I finished the workout, he ran and grabbed another exercise DVD and tried to shove it in the computer, saying, "Do dis exercise mama!" I told him I was done and he then chased me around saying "I wanna do more! I wanna exercise more!" Easy for him to say! He hardly lifted an arm.

Dashing through the snow

This is how I feel whenever they convince me to play outside - "Ooooh, it's cold."

New world record!

This is M's strategy to go farther - the streamlined bullet method.

The worst part of sledding is always the hike back up! If I recall correctly, it was non-stop snowing and a high of 9 degrees that day. That bites a little.

The next day, dude was awake and ready to join the fun. He even went down the hill by himself for the first time! And then sat in the sled at the bottom waiting for some soft-hearted sucker to come pull him all the way back up :) Thankfully Papa took over Mama's usual role.

M enjoyed writing messages in the snow. Little late for Christmas lists dear (to which she responds, she's already starting her birthday list).

And as always, Dude enjoys the ride back up perhaps as much as he enjoys the one down! He is usually saying, "whoooaaa, whoaaaaa" the whole way up as the sled tips higher and threatens to tip him out (and often does).

Watch out poor Mr. Postman! Here comes Mr. I!

The girls decided it is easier to climb the tree when there aren't leaves to contend with. I would think that having feeling in your hands would help however. And looking at the picture reminds me I should probably go cut the tags off their coats. Tee hee.

"No I not told! I mate-in trats!" Translation = No, I'm not cold. I'm making tracks!

And even after days of all that fun, our backyard is hardly even touched. Wish you could see how our Christmas snow sparkled. It was crazy beautiful. Looked like it had snowed glitter (which I've very much enjoyed looking at ... from inside)!