New Camera!

After months -- YEARS! -- of admiring Michelle's children through the lens of a decent camera, we have joined ranks! Decent (if not super fancy) cameras have a way of making one's kids look, well, presentable. So, Tina and I -- yes, you've guessed right, I have commandeered the blog -- will do our best, in the name of fantastic grandparents that we love, to post pictures on a more regular basis. Starting now.

big teeth

adjusting to flash settings

happy

restrained, but still happy

some beauty

more beauty

some pre-birthday, post-bath shots.





in-bath times.



guess who turns 8 tomorrow?

wanna know what I've been up to?

check out pics and info here!

what was that?

Jonas has started speech therapy, his first appointment was just a few days ago. (He has trouble with many consonant sounds.) He enjoyed the session and was so so so excited to have homework. "I'll do my homework when Seth does his homework, K mom?!"

His homework consisted of two pages of pictures, one with words beginning with "sp" and the other with words ending in "k". We did some homework on the way home, starting with the "sp" page. He did really well with the first few pictures, then I pointed to the bowl of noodles to which he said "ssssssss...macaroni". He knew as soon as he said it that it was really funny, so he has continued to insert it into conversation all weekend. A little funny man, that one.

We moved on to the next page, words ending in "k". His answers for this page were sssss..fork, sssss..duck, sssss..lock.

He's not quite there yet.

plays nicely with others

I have recently figured out something about Jonas.

He plays really well with girls and not at all with boys.

His siblings are the exceptions- Maryn and Jonas have never gotten along that well, mostly because she doesn't let him play with her or her toys. He loves playing with Seth, but as with most older brother/younger brother relationships, Seth starts getting impatient and annoyed with Jonas after a while.

Girl example #1: Jonas thinks his best friend is Zoe (pictured above as the white queen with her little sister along with Maryn and Jonas) even though Zoe is Maryn's age and her best friend. To Zoe's credit, she balances these two kids vying for her attention with way more poise than you would expect from a five-year-old. Because Maryn is in kindergarten now and Zoe is not, she and Jonas have had a lot more opportunities to play together one-on-one and they both love it. I sometimes think that Zoe prefers to play with Jonas... I'll never tell Maryn though.

Girl example #2: C and her mom came over last week and spent two hours with us one afternoon. C is the youngest of 4 and only about two months younger than Jonas- they're in nursery together at church. Their whole family has been to our house numerous times, so this definitely wasn't the first time they had played together. So this past week, for the entire two hours, they played and played and didn't make one peep. Not one fight or complaint or tattle, nothing. I was shocked and amazed. And this is when my theory started brewing because of the following two examples.

Boy example #1: W moved in next door to us at the end of the summer. He loves to play with "Jona-th" and is always so excited to have Jonas come over to his house or play in our shared backyard together. I think the part of the relationship that Jonas likes the best is being able to play with W's toys which are cool in his basement playroom which is way cleaner than ours. He doesn't ever seem all that interested in actually playing with W.

Boy example #2: I have arranged with a mom of one of Seth's classmates to have weekly playdate swaps with our three-year-olds. L is a pretty easy-going kid. But when he comes over to our house for the playdate, Jonas is upset the whole time- crying, telling L not to touch his toys, refusing to play what L wants to play. This means that I have to spend the whole two hours hovering, trying to make sure that Jonas shares and doesn't cry or say mean things to L.

I don't know that it means anything, really. I think he likes playtime with a structure or creative "purpose" and maybe other three year old boys just don't play that way. I'm cool with that, generally playing with girls is quieter.

they don't know what's coming...

Every year during parent-teacher conferences, I try really hard to keep my face blank as my childrens' teachers gush over how well-behaved my kids are in class and if they could just have a classroom full of my kids, their teaching life would be easier. I'm not kidding, this is exactly what I hear every time. Is this what other parents hear too, is this what the teachers say to everyone? I want to be proud, but my scepticism wins over. I politely say thank you each time and we move on, but I'm still left wondering. These perfect children they talk about, who are they? Why don't they live in my house?

In an attempt to get to the bottom of the situation, I asked Maryn yesterday (right after she had smacked Jonas over the head for touching her paper within 10 minutes of being home from school), "Your teacher told me that you are a very good and sweet girl who gets along with everyone in your class, why don't you act that way at home?"

"Because Mommy, at school I have someone (her teacher, I suppose) to focus on and there are rules I follow, so I'm good and I don't get in trouble."

Maybe it's just me, but I think she was asking me to create and enforce more rules in our home.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can make that happen.

Halloween 2010

For the first time, this year the kids actually helped clean out the pumpkin.
Oops, I guess didn't get any pictures of the finished product. It was Jack Skellington's head. It started growing mold the next day and was really spooky-looking by Halloween (complete with ooze).

This year, the only item I made for the kids costumes was Seth's scarf, his Harry Potter look needed something more identifying than the glasses and scar. I bought the Captain Hook costume for Jonas over a year ago when he started wanting to play dress up with Maryn and wear her princess dresses, so happy it still fits and that he wanted to wear it. His favorite part of his costume was his mustache. Maryn wore a sparkly witch dress which we borrowed from a friend. And I love an excuse to doll her up with makeup, so she's wearing sparkly purple eyeshadow, mascara and blush!

Oh look! There's the pumpkin we carved.

This is the only picture I took during actual trick or treating. It got dark pretty quickly after we left home. The kids had lots of fun and we (unfortunately) got tons and tons of candy. For the first time since we moved here, we trick-or-treated in our own little neighborhood. Because it's an older neighborhood with really nice, big homes- I was surprised at how many kids and families we saw on the streets.
Phew...I'm glad that holiday is over. It is my least favorite by a mile. Now the countdown is on for our exciting Christmas vacation! More on this later....so much to do.

For the grandparents.....the rest of the (very few) pictures taken are here.

Halloween 2009

Before I posted pics of Halloween last weekend, I decided to share some pics of last year when I actually made all of my kids' costumes for the first time ever. Meaning I actually sewed everything you see here (except for the fairy wings and almost everything Jonas is wearing- except for the mask and R badge- which I did make...so I guess not everything...)
Not sure why I didn't share any of these last year, you would think I would have been proud of all my hard work. Guess I felt like I didn't need any validation. (That doesn't sound quite right, does it?)

I think the actual reason was because this was my first venture into sewing costumes for my kids and they didn't turn out exactly like the vision I had in my head- meaning they weren't perfect, people!
But in reality, who knows what the heck I was thinking. It was a year ago!

the official "Jon is awesome" post

Yesterday while out in the shopping madness (although not so mad in my small town) I was switching radio channels looking for holiday music- I landed on one playing a country-western type version of a Christmas carol. I listened to it and these thoughts ran through my head "This sounds nice" "I would have totally changed the station 3-4 years ago if something like this came on". You see- Jon has been exploring the western side of music over the past few years and I trust his musical taste and usually listen to whatever he's into at the moment. It wasn't until yesterday that I really realized that Jon decides what music our family listens to- and therefore, likes. And I'm totally okay with that- in fact I really appreciate it. It keeps me from being one of those people who only listens to their favorite albums from high school for the rest of their lives.

And just to show you how lame I am, just calling his new music taste "western-type" I'm sure is totally wrong, maybe it's "alt-country"? We're not talking about Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban here- think more Avett Brothers and Wilco.

He recently secured a position writing reviews of local concerts for an online blog: Muzzle of Bees (click the link for his most recent post, then scroll down to read a few more he's done). His status as music-lover/English- writing studies graduate student makes this the perfect sort of project for him to be involved in. (Plus it means he can get free tickets to most local shows and some out-of-town ones as well- a major plus.)

Leading up to my next topic- Jon asked me to post a link to his music site many weeks ago and like a very sweet and attentive wife- I completely forgot about it. I feel really badly that I didn't follow through with this at the time. He requests your assistance in listening to and voting up your favorite song(s) written by his good friend Jon Thwaits and presented in the current post.

http://www.onlyanything.com/

You can read about the details of the current archival project they are working on here. If you like what you hear, pass the word along to your friends too!

Please help me feel better by showing some love and participating in their project.

And be sure to scroll down to the video of the song Jon wrote while we were on vacation in Utah in August. It's totally beautiful and because it's about my family and my kids- makes me a little emotional. Heck, I'll just include the video here.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is a video of Maryn singing a few of the songs she sang in her preschool fall recital.

I'd actually forgotten that I recorded this video last week, but we noticed tonight that it has been viewed over 200 times- and that's without us sharing it with any family. How does that happen? I guess having cute kids doing cute things is how some people become YouTube famous.

what did your husband do today?

naughty and nice

Maryn is a budding artist, loves to draw and color. She calls this piece "a cowgirl". The medium is blue crayon on laundry room wall.

It still hasn't come off, I need to get one of those magic erasers.

In constrast, Jonas continues to be my sweet baby. Although lately, he has taken the initiative with Maryn and hit her first during their constant altercations. I'm not sure whether to be sad or proud that he's defending himself against her.

I captured one of his sweeter moments on this film.

not much explanation needed...enjoy

BEST night in TV!

I look forward to Thursday evenings all week! I get all my evening household chores done as quick as possible, throw the kids in bed (not literally), grab a project and settle in for three hours of my favorite shows back-to-back: Survivor, Office, 30 Rock and Project Runway.

It's pure reality show/sit-com bliss!

Is that weird?

Please excuse the bad pics with bad lighting. It was late. I just wanted to show some of what I've been up to. A picked out and sent the fabric, cute huh? I hope R likes them! :)


Now I need to "put down the duckie" (as Jon would say) and start working on other, more pressing matters- like planning Seth's class Halloween party and making his Batman costume. (Yes, I'm the head room parent again. Seriously, I am not doing this again- too much work!)
Happy Fall!

Beatlemania continues

A few weeks ago I picked up an old VHS of Yellow Submarine from a thrift store. The kids have been watching it and love it. I've watched a few minutes here and there- it's weird. But the music is obviously awesome and the kids love that too. Here's my Dad singing one of the hits from the movie (notice he doesn't need to read along with the karaoke, he knows all the words):

We were listening to this song in the car recently, and Maryn was singing along. After the chorus "will you still need me, will you still feed me" Maryn said "I think he can feed himself, can't he?" Let's hope so.

Jonas loves to sing along to the Beatles too. His favorite song is Hello, Goodbye, but he can't sing all the words as quickly as they do in the song. So he still sings "you say goodbye and I say hello" but he's about a whole phrase behind.

In other funny-things-kids-say news lately: we were eating at a 50s diner type restaurant last weekend and ordered the usual burgers fries and shake for every one. When they brought out the shakes first before everything else, Seth looked at me wide-eyed and said "Do we get dessert first?" Some sort of alternate universe, the 50s. On that same occasion, the two couples dining next to us were very elderly. I said to Jon "they were probably our age in the actual 50s", kind of a funny realization. Where will we be sitting in 50 years?

Fat lip Jonas

Last Monday, I had awesome intentions to take Jonas and go on a walk/run. I was getting the stroller out of the car, Jonas was walking down the concrete steps playing the Leapster. I heard the Leapster hit the concrete and turned around to get mad at Jonas for dropping it to find him also on the ground with blood gushing from his mouth. My attempts to exercise were foiled as I put him in the car and drove straight to urgent care. After a few comical attempts at taking x-rays, it was determined that he didn't break his nose but the doctor still wanted to stitch up his lip. The numbing stuff they put on worked really well because he sat still like a champ while she put in two stitches.

We left quickly and drove to pick up Maryn from preschool. I noticed when looking in the rear view mirror that he was picking at his lip. I told him repeatedly to stop but in usual two-year-old fashion, he kept picking. After the 10 minute drive, he had pulled out one of the stitches. With Maryn, we drove straight back to the dr only to have her tell us that she wasn't going to replace it. A good thing probably because in the 5 minutes it took to drive home, he had the other one out too.

Thankfully, 10 days later his lip is totally healed.

the sewing bug has bit

I've been frequenting my fabric stores lately (there are only 2 in my town) scouring the remnant bins mostly and coming away with bits and pieces that I love. (The blue and yellow floral prints on the bottom row actually came from a thrift store.)
This picture doesn't even include the 7 yards of HB fabric I bought to make a quilt for Maryn's bed. I need to get that stuff out and photograph it, talk about pretty. Later, I promise.

So what to do with all these pieces? Well my wonderful SIL and buddy Michelle got me interested in a skirt/dress with three ruffled tiers. I bought some cute fabric when we were in Utah together and finally made a skirt for Maryn out of it a few weeks ago.
I didn't really use a pattern (just verbal instructions from M) so I didn't actually make it correctly and it's a bit too big. But she loves it and it does look really cute if you don't know what I did wrong (no, I'm not going to tell). The sweater vest was a thrift store find and just happens to match the skirt perfectly. (I'm hoping the vest makes the skirt look more "fall-y").

In trying not to just make her a whole slew of three tiered skirts- I bought some patterns yesterday (from hobby lobby- 99 cents each people!) and am going to try to follow them and make other cute things for her.

I also wanted to show another awesome thrift store find, 6 of these chairs painted light turquoise blue (my new favorite color). We've been needing a 6 chair set for a while now and I stumbled on these last week. Also pictured is a blanket I made for a friend who had a baby boy last Friday.
In other non-sewing news: Seth got a pedometer at school last week and is supposed to record his steps each day (too bad it's lost at the moment). So he decided that he was going to run laps around our house (outdoors). He ran 20 laps- 4100 steps! It was really cute. The trend didn't continue today though because he refused to run until I found his pedometer. Poor kid may never run again!

For some reason this week, Jonas has decided the enter the terrible twos, complete with screaming tantrums and refusal to eat most foods or go to bed. I really don't know where my sweet baby went. Jon keeps saying "Since when does Jonas have an opinion?" Um, since now apparently.
He has said some cute things lately though. Every afternoon and evening when I'm trying to convince him to go to bed, I tell him "you need to close your eyes just like during the prayer". And pretty much every time I go in to get him after he wakes up, the first thing he says is "Mommy, I closed my eyes!" I think he's amazed that it actually works!
And finally, on Sunday we talked webcam with my family and saw the new baby. Jonas was really excited about it. On Monday morning while I was getting him dressed for the day, I asked him what he wanted to do today and he said "go visit my baby tousin". Me too, dude.

new baby cousin!!

Meet the newest member of our family- Aaron Jordan born earlier this afternoon weighing it at a whopping 8 lbs 9 ozs 19.5 inches. (Entering the world one week early.) Seriously- he looks like a linebacker.

Beatles 4 Sale

I was talking to a good friend today and she said "you haven't blogged in forever, I have no idea what's going on with you!" It's true. Let me explain- yes I've been really busy, blah, blah. But that isn't the real reason. See I have this problem (which I was discussing with a different good friend today)- I suffer from perfectionism. I know exactly how I want things in my life to be in my head- but my execution is so sub par for the most part that I shy away from doing things because I know they won't turn out perfect. For example- this blog. I knew as days and weeks went by I was getting behind and so much was happening so instead of just blogging and trying to catch up- I did nothing. And now it's been almost 2 months. Sigh. So instead of trying to catch up- I'm just going to start from where I am now (and hopefully go back and share info about what we did the past two months eventually).

Right now, this moment- I am loving the Beatles. Did you know that they just re-released all their albums in stereo!! Stereo people! I'm actually joking about the stereo excitement. I totally understand the difference between mono and stereo recordings- I just don't really hear the difference as far as music quality- only that some sounds come out the right speaker and some come out the left. So the stereo thing is not what I'm actually excited about- I'm excited about the music! I've only ever owned one Beatles album (Revolver) and therefore have never listened to any of the other albums in their entirety before now. I went and bought them all last week and have been listening to one every couple of days (to prolong the enjoyment).

A side note about why I own Revolver. I asked my Dad to get me a Beatles album for Christmas one year (I was probably 16 or something like that). He asked me which one I wanted and I told him I didn't know and that he should choose. So I got Revolver, listened to it, loved it.

A side note about buying all the albums last week. You may or may not know that they came out on 9-9-09. You also may or may not know that usually new albums are released on Tuesdays. So I went to Target last week on Tuesday, didn't see the new albums on display, asked a worker dude who said "we got a whole cart full of them in the back", took the 6 he fished out for me (there are 14) up to the checkout only to be denied because last Tuesday was 9-8 not 9-9. But don't worry- I went back the next day picked them all up and walked by the same dude who probably felt pretty dumb. (FYI- for those of you who are dying to have your very own Beatles collection- Target is running a deal until 10-10 where you get a $5 giftcard for every 2 Beatles CDs you buy. So I bought two at a time and rolled the giftcards- making the entire purchase way cheaper than buying the box-set.)

So back to the music- I haven't been listening to the albums in order or anything- just picking at random. And each new album I listen to I think- this one is my favorite, including the most recent one I'm listening to right now- Help. It's hard to describe the excitement I feel listening to these albums- hearing songs I know really well and have heard a million times mixed in with songs I've heard less or not at all. It's like seeing a finished puzzle- all the pieces fit together. I don't like every song I've heard so far, but I am in love with the entire package. I feel happy when I listen to this music. Partly because it reminds me of my dad and partly because the songs are so great and partly because I feel the excitement of discovering something awesome for the first time.

And now for some pictures: We saw Dan Zanes last week. THE BEST concert I have EVER been to. And I've been to some good ones. There was something about the fun folk music, dancing with my kids, not being hot and sweaty, and not smelling pot that made it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. He is an awesome artist, seriously check him out.
Maryn's first day of preschool. She goes 5 (!) days per week for 2.5 hours per day. She LOVES it.
Seth's first day of first grade. He is really liking it, he has an awesome teacher. She is so patient and attentive to the kids and their feelings but is very stern and doesn't let them get away with anything. Kind of like how I wish I was.
Wendy came to visit last week and we had a great time. For the past few days, Jonas has asked me continually "Are we going to pick up Wendy?"

And finally- we're getting a new member of the family on Monday! Carlie's going to have a little baby boy (one week early- lucky!).

Happiness all around, seriously- re-discover the Beatles.

swim team

We signed Seth up for swim team this summer- eight weeks of one hour practices five days per week. Technically, he was on the "pre-swim" team. This meant that practices were basically large group lessons and we didn't have to go to swim meets if we didn't want to.

My hope was that having Seth in the pool for 5 hours per week would turn him into this totally awesome swimmer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that all those hours in the pool actually helped to improve his strokes. The time that Jon spent with him one-on-one was way more beneficial. But he really liked being on the swim team and he now has a sweet tan.

After hearing about swim meets from other swimmers, he asked me when he was going to get to swim in one. So we all went to the last home meet of the season a few weeks ago. He swam in two events, one relay and one race- both 25m freestyle. Below is a video of the second race, he swam against the only other 6 year old boy at the meet. You can see at the end of the video the guy who was timing him was motioning him to hurry up (I think he got tired towards the end of the race). His official time was 48.67 seconds.

The meet eventually got rained out, which we were kind of glad about (who knew swim meets were so long!).