Monthly Archives: October 2010

More about Lex

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Here are two more quick thoughts about Lex. Have I mentioned him lately? He amazes me and amuses me daily.

This morning Eve, as she often does, was being stubborn and refusing to get herself dressed. Sometimes I do it for her and sometimes I leave her alone in the bathroom for hours (ok, more like tens of minutes) until she gets unstubborn and gets herself dressed. This morning, however, Lex offered to get her dressed. She loved the idea. He’s such a fun big brother!

dressing eve

She chose the skirt over pants, and laughed at how high he pulled it up :)

socks on

Socks on. (PS. My bathroom looks awful in pictures. I fear these bathroom photos will come back to haunt me in the future.)

Also, his class photos came in today. Yay! I love the class photo and am excited to now be able to put faces with names. Although, I realized that I could name about half of the class and those were the kids he always talks about. When he told me the rest of the names they were all kids he has rarely mentioned. So I guess I’m doing ok on knowing his friends :) Anyway, I ordered the smallest package this year, mostly because I just wanted that class picture, but for some reason they gave me two packets. Slightly different poses. I stopped in at the office on my way out and told them I got two. The lady said “Lucky you!” I asked if I was supposed to choose one and return the other or something and she said, “Nope. If they sent you two, you get to keep two.” Sweet! Both poses are kind of goofy, but that’s Lex. I love him!

school pictures

School pictures

Time to clean the bathrooms

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While making idle conversation with the kids in the tub tonight I said, “Eve, I think tomorrow you and I will be cleaning bathrooms!” She looked shocked and said, “AGAIN?!?!” Hahaha… this is funny because (a) it has been awhile (a long while!) since we last cleaned bathrooms and (b) that’s just how I feel! Again!?!? Didn’t we just do that last month?! I often have similar feelings around meals (didn’t I just feed you last night?!) and dishes.

My current favorite apple treat

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I came across a recipe for Baked Apple “Donut” Muffins the other day and despite my hesitation to bake these days… well, I had to make these!  They are sooo delicious!!

muffins

Pure yumminess!

This recipe is based on the one I found at Frugality and Crunchiness with Christy.  I made some modifications below.

Baked Apple “Donut” Muffins
(makes about 24)

Muffins
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs – beaten
1 cup milk
2 cups cored and finely diced apples

Topping
1/2 cup (1 stick of butter) – I used about 3/4 of the stick
1 cup sugar – I used about 3/4 c
2 tsp ground cinnamon – I just threw a bunch in! Tired of measuring by this point :)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 12 cup muffin tin. (I made mini muffins and ended up with 48 of them, plus 6 regular sized muffins)
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg using a fork. Add the oil and work into the mixture using a fork or pastry blender until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.
3. Combine eggs, milk, and apples. Add to the flour mixture, stir just until blended.
4. Spoon batter into the muffin cups (The KAF cookie scoop is super handy here!)
5. While the donuts are baking, melt the butter in a small bowl. Mix the cinnamon/sugar combo into another bowl.
6. Let the muffins cool slightly then dunk them first in the melted butter and then in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

So yummy! Lex requested some without topping (he doesn’t generally like toppings, even if it’s just cinnamon and sugar!) so we have some topped and some plain. Both are yummy, but of course the cinnamon sugar adds a nice sweetness :)

A beautiful day!

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Today was a beautiful day. Perfect fall weather, busy but not stressed, an outdoor afternoon. Just perfect.

I spent the morning running around, dropping kids at school, awesome workout at the gym, back to pick up Eve, shower and back to the gym (for a session on goal setting!), a little shopping and home in time to meet Lex at the bus stop. That was hectic, but Eve was in great spirits so it went well. After a quick snack we headed outside. The sun was beautiful, the leaves were abundant and I couldn’t put the camera down! (you can click on these images to see them bigger)

A quiet day at home

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We had another busy weekend. Rosy came to visit (yay!) and we went apple picking and had dinner with Grandma and other fun stuff. I have photos, but I’m going to post them another time. Right now I want to talk about today.

This morning was different. Our usual waking time, 6am, came and went. I got up at 6:15 (internal alarm, I guess) and Eve got up at 6:30 and joined me for breakfast. Shortly after 7:00 I went upstairs to wake up Lex. I opened the door, turned off the fan, took of his blankets… he kept sleeping. I rubbed his back for a minute (ok, mostly checking to make sure he was still breathing!) and told him it was time to wake up. Then I left. Ten minutes later I went back up and tried to pick him up. He was out hard! I told him it was time to wake up for school. He shook his head a bit and kept sleeping. I gave up. If he was that tired I figured he must need the sleep! I turned the fan back on, closed the door, and left him alone. At 8:30 he got up to use the bathroom, but insisted he was still tired and needed more sleep. At 9:00 he came downstairs and said he was hungry but wanted to go back to bed after breakfast. Weird. As we talked he told me that he didn’t want to go to gym class today (not the first time I’ve heard this!) and therefore wanted to just sleep all day and wake up tomorrow. Of course this didn’t really happen, but I did let him stay home today instead of bringing him to school late.

We had no plans for the day and at one point it occurred to me that it was just like the slower days, just the three of us home, playing all day. They played super well together. I played with them off and on, also getting some exercise and chores done. Lex was very lovey and made love notes to people. Very sweet. I have to figure out what’s going on with gym class, but to be perfectly honest it was really nice having him home today.

Tomorrow is library day and he’s excited for a new book, so I think he’ll be up bright and early :)

lunch

Doing a Hidden Pictures together at lunch time.

a love note to Eve

A love note to Eve

a love note to Eve - v2

Another love note to Eve

Rich and Poor

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There are moments in life I wish I had a photographic memory. Tonight it was a video camera memory. Or the ability to blog directly from my brain. Ears -> brain -> blog. That would probably be dangerous.

“Let’s play a game I made up called Rich and Poor,” said Lex in the tub tonight. “The person with the most toys is rich and the person with less toys is poor.” They both agreed to the game and quietly divided up all the toys floating in the bathtub. When there was a clear divide between them Lex counted up the toys. “I have nine toys,” he announced, “and you have four. That means I’m rich.” Eve agreed and declared herself poor. I waited for a moment to see where this was going, noticing that they didn’t seem phased to be rich or poor. Nor did they assign a goodness or badness to either word. Just words. After a moment Lex said, “Ok, now the person who is poor gets more toys,” and began handing over his toys to her. :) They took turns handing toys back and forth to each other, stopping to count each time and decide who was rich and who was poor. After a few turns Lex noticed that each time he added up his toys and her toys he came up with the number 13, so it must be a math game. He likes math games. They continued playing the math game for a few more minutes and then got out of the tub.

I asked him where he heard about rich and poor and he said he just made them up. Doubtful, but it’s fascinating to see and hear the things he comes up with. I never know if it’s from school, classmates, books, etc. Definitely one of the more interesting parts of parenting. :)

6am photo shoot

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Instead of taking off diapers and PJs, Eve decided to dress up at 6am to do some baking…

eve 1

I took photos of Eve...

eve 2

What a smile for 6am!

tessa

Then Eve wanted to take a photo of me. That's as good as I get at 6am.

eve 3

Then Lex wanted in on the action. Here's his picture of Eve.

me and lex

Final shot, by Eve.

What were you doing at 6am?! :)

You are my sunshine

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You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping.
I thought I felt you by my side.
But when I woke dear, I was mistaken,
So I hung my head and cried.

You know this song? I think these are the right words. They’re the ones I sing anyway, to Eve almost every nap and bedtime. She loves it. Tonight I started singing it while the kids were in the tub and it made Lex cry! I couldn’t believe it. The poor boy was really, truly crying. He told me he doesn’t like the song because the second verse is too sad. I wrapped him in a towel and cuddled him for a bit while he got himself pulled together. I’m not sure what to make of that. He’s so sweet and so… I don’t, just sweet, I guess.

My love/hate relationship with leaves

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I have a love/hate relationship with leaves. Yes, funny I know, but true. The leaves fall, the kids are thrilled, we have fun… but then someone has to actually remove them! Lex was worried yesterday that if we didn’t rake all the leaves in one afternoon then there wouldn’t be any more. I promised him that we have many, many more weeks of leaves! Many! Our 12yr old neighbor came over yesterday and said, “You are so lucky! You have the biggest leaf pile EVER!” Yay me! Sadly that “biggest leaf pile every” came from raking about a third of the leaves that have fallen from just one (of three) trees in the yard.

eve in the leaves

lex in the leaves

kids in the leaves

I’m forever trying to figure out a good solution for them. One that involves not too much work or money. Last year, mid November, I gave up and hired a crew to remove them. This year I’m trying to do the mulching thing again, but wondering if maybe we would all be happier (me and the kids anyway!) if I just played in the leaves with them and hired the crew again. Tempting!

A few pics from today

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eve reading

Eve picked up a book and snuggled in with Snoopy Dog to read for awhile. She's so sweet. I posted Lex's comment on the Quotes page.

birthday party

They were so sweet this morning! They had a birthday party for Eve's doggie. They brought all this stuff up, sang to doggie, played music, etc. It was soooo sweet!

raking

Let the raking begin! Lex was sad we couldn't get all the raking done today, but I promised him we would have a good 6-8 more weeks of raking! He thinks that's a good thing :)