October 2011
21 posts
2 tags
Happy Halloween, Friends!
To get you in that spooky Halloween mood, here are some pictures from the school Halloween carnival held last Friday!
If you distract her with a juice box, she doesn’t notice you putting on the wings.
Further proof that it is impossible to get a good shot of both kids at once.
Gabe and his buddy L the Pirate
Thirty full minutes have elapsed, wings still attached
Anakin...
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Scenes from School
Gabe shows off his rockets from Mad Science. (Mad Science is his favorite class ever ever ever, by the way. He loves it.)
Tess puts on some goggles in preparation for heavy-duty construction work. That’s my girl!
The school Halloween Celebration is today, friends! It is one of my favorite school activities of the year; all the teachers dress in costume and the entire school is...
Thursday Morning
This guy would not let me brush his hair this morning. I think he’s going for some kind of scarecrow look, perhaps in a nod to Halloween.
Will you put that camera down, Mommy, and let me go back to playing? I am barely tolerating your early-morning picture taking.
This gal is very fond of her big brother’s old Buzz Lightyear jammies. Note the matching Toy Story sippy cup;...
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WatchShe’s such a delicate flower.
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Determination
Right before it was time to leave for school this morning, Tessa decided she wanted to be nakedy. When Matt and I told her no, she could not take her clothes off, she took matters into her own hands.
The pouty face is impressive, don’t you think?
She looks like an extra from Flashdance.
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Halloween Test-Drive
We took the kids to a pumpkin patch yesterday to: (i) actually purchase a pumpkin for carving purposes, and (ii) test-drive the Halloween costumes. A certain Jedi thought this was a great idea and was happy to costume up and then attack various giant pumpkins with his light sabre. A certain fairy, on the other hand, cheerfully consented to wear her dress and sparkly shoes but thought the rest of...
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Say Cheese!
Tess photographs the photographer. Nakedy, of course.
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Bad Mommy
We sent Tess to school without a jacket today, because (a) the weather report called for 78 degrees, and (b) she has had some kind of crazy growth spurt over the past few weeks and the only jacket that fits properly is in her dirty laundry basket. Then the weather turned out to be 68 degrees and hazy. That is some grade-A parenting right there.
Anyhow, her teacher messaged me to ask me to...
WatchMy mom is spending the week visiting her college roommates. Let’s just stop for a minute and think about how cool that is. These women have been friends since they were nineteen years old, and they still love each other and support each other today. When they are all together in the same room, they laugh like they did when they were college kids. They have seen each other through some...
King of the Castle
After bath and before bed every night, Gabe gets to watch a little television. (Technically Tess gets to watch TV too, but she is not really that interested and prefers to practice her jumping or kick around a soccer ball or play with her baby dolls.) Ideally Gabe enjoys his television viewing from the comfort of his Mickey Mouse chair, his evening snack within easy reach.
Charlie Brown on...
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In which I feel sorry for myself.
Advance notice: this post is not about the kiddos. We are deviating from our usual format for some brief wallowing and self-pity.
Four out of four doctors agree: my neck is kind of a mess. I’ve been having pain in my shoulder for a really long time now, and at my husband’s prodding I finally succumbed to an MRI a couple of months ago. (Did you know MRIs cost $1,800.00??!? For the...
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Home again
We are just back from a destination wedding on Mackinac Island, Michigan. In the course of a long weekend I had tea at the Grand Hotel, traveled by horse-drawn buggy half a dozen times, and ate my body weight in fried food and fudge (the island specialty). Excellent. The trip home yesterday took just a bit longer than anticipated, and as a result I am exhausted today, but I will leave you with...
I just realized
Today Tess is the exact age that Gabe was on the day Tess was born. That is utterly crazy to me. She’s a baby! What were Matt and I thinking, having another baby when our original model baby was so young? Crazy.
Luckily it all seems to be working out pretty well.
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Gloves and Negotiation
You may have noticed that Gabe is wearing black gloves in the photo I posted a few days ago. In case you are curious, those are his batting gloves. Why does he have batting gloves, considering he is only three years old and doesn’t play baseball? That is a valid question, friends.
In the grand tradition of children everywhere, Gabe has batting gloves because his good buddy B started...
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The (Not So Great) Pumpkins
My parents very ambitiously planted vegetables in a corner of their backyard this summer. Unlike me, who managed to kill the “it’s so easy even a child could do it Topsy-Turvy” tomato plant that I attempted in my backyard, my parents seem to be good at keeping plants alive, and their vegetable garden turned out beautifully.
They have avocados, beans, strawberries, artichokes,...
WatchDuring our Saturday morning outing to the bagel store, the kids discovered the reverse functionality feature on Matt’s cell phone camera, so they could see themselves on the screen while he recorded. Let’s just say they very much enjoyed this feature. Not that they’re vain or anything. (THEY ARE SO VAIN.)
Edited to add: I have no idea why this is displaying upside down. You...
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Dinos!
Remember how when Tess was in the infant room, I could never take her over to Gabe’s classroom because she’d go crazy for all the big-kid toys? That has not really changed. When Tess and I ventured over to the Lions classroom recently, the Lions had buckets of dinosaur toys scattered all over the play yard. Tess saw them, and despite the fact that her classroom has almost identical...
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Neutrality
Tessa has a set of seven Disney princess figurines. Their clothes are sparkly. The sparkles tend to come off all over everything with which they come into contact, although that detail is not really relevant to this story. (PRINCESS DUST EVERYWHERE EVEN ON THE CAT ARGH.)
Yesterday morning Gabe grabbed all the princesses and lined them up in an orderly row on our coffee table, counting as he...
Yo Ho, Mateys, Away!
Gabe spends the evening with his new (old) friend Jake, from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, of course.
Apropos of none of the above, Tess stormed in on Matt while he was taking a shower this morning. (A little-known fact about parenting a toddler is that you are entitled to zero privacy at any time.) She said, “Shower! Hi, Daddy!” Then she turned to leave, waved goodbye and...
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So
This is what I’m working on this week.
I am going to be kind…kind to my family, to my coworkers, to my friends, and to myself. This is a good goal, don’t you think?
Not to get too cheezy on this early Monday morning, but I’ve discovered that if I approach the day with a goal such as kindness, there are many amusing things I will notice to help me on my way. For...
