Hair update

‘Cause I know you all want the news on Eve’s hair progress :) She saw me pull my hair back into a ponytail today and asked me to make one in her hair too. We tried. She has enough hair for it now, kind of, but my hair ties are too big for her. I need to get her some tiny ones for her tiny ponytail.

Ponytail

Then she decided the barrettes would be better. She doesn’t normally like them, so I was happy to play along when she wanted to try again. They are tiny and cute in her hair :) She wore them for almost an hour!

Barrettes

Swimming!

We went swimming today, for the first time in a long time. The kids LOVED it. I did too :) We met some friends there that we haven’t seen in a long time too. Eve still has no fear and Lex still clings to me like his life depends on it (it kind of does!) in the deep water, and they both laughed and laughed. And fell asleep easily! Every few months I contemplate swimming lessons again. The pros and cons. The costs. The fitting it into the schedule. All of that and then some. The rates doubled since we took lessons last year. That made me sad. But they do love swimming. I am, once again, debating :)

I wish I had brought my camera with me. Though I couldn’t have taken the pictures I wanted to because I was in the water with the kids at the time. Right at the end of the evening Eve was wearing swim goggles and bobbing along in a floaty thing (awesome devices!). So adorable! So happy. So tired!

Off to a good start!

Lex making cards

He woke up this morning eager to make Valentine’s Day cards. Sadly we had no time this morning (because they both slept late, yay!) but this afternoon he came down and went right to work. Happily and all on his own. I helped cut out more shapes and find markers that write well. He made 5 or 6 cards today. Not bad for one afternoon!

Prelude to Valentine’s Day

Tray of hearts

Valentine’s Day is coming up, did you know? I’m pretty bad at explaining these “lesser” holidays to the kids. Maybe I’m too cynical… or boring… or something. But I’ve been trying with this one because Lex is supposed to make Valentine’s Day cards for his class. So far he’s pretty uninterested, even going so far as to say “But Mom, I don’t love my classmates!” Hard to argue with that. I’ve learned in these four short years with him to choose my battles carefully, and this will not be one of them. However, I still have two weeks to discuss it with him :)

This afternoon we talked about Valentine’s Day and while the kids colored with their “new” crayons I got out construction paper and scissors and made some hearts. He was happy. Then I made him a Valentine and he was VERY happy! I told him that the kids in his class would also be very happy if he made them Valentines. We talked about a few different ways to make cards and whether or not he had to write “Happy Valentine’s Day” on each of them. That’s a lot of writing for a kid! I left a tray of hearts on the table next to his list of classmates and told him that he could do what he wanted with them, offering to help if he wanted help. We’ll see how it goes.

Valentine

My Valentine to Lex. He liked it so much he glued it to paper and added his own orange touches.

Art wall

Have you seen our new art wall?

Baked crayons

We had a crafty afternoon today. Thankfully, because yesterday we had a crappy afternoon!! I finally got around to a project we’ve been talking about for months (years?!) Not sure why it takes me so long to get to such things, especially easy things like this, but it does. For awhile now we have been collecting old and broken crayons is a special “to be melted” box. Not sure the kids knew what that meant, but they were eager to help. Today we actually melted them and made little crayon cakes. It was a very easy project. Put muffin liners in the pan, sort the crayons by color (or not) into the liners, filling about half full. Bake in the oven at 250 for awhile. The instructions I read said 5 minutes, but ours took almost 20 minutes. Not sure why. The instructions also said to watch carefully because crayons are flammable?!?!?? We watched VERY carefully. The last thing I want in my oven is burnt crayon smell! But after about 20 minutes they were nicely melted and we took them out to cool. An hour or so later the kids had a blast coloring with their “new” crayons. I kept thinking how much they look like Reece’s Peanut Butter cups. Yum :)

Melting crayons

So pretty

Crayon cakes

Crayon cakes

Coloring with crayon cakes

Eve makes pretty swirls with her crayons

Eve

Eve

We had Eve’s daycare teacher babysit on Sunday night and the kids were super excited. She walked in the door and Eve came running into the kitchen and dropped to her knees to do a fake fall. Eve is normally pretty good at fake falls, but this time she managed to do a face plant right into the floor. Mouth first. Ouch! She got a fat lip with two tooth marks on the inside. She cried for awhile, but she’s ok now, of course. Just silly.

Eve's fat lip

Crystal blocks

Lex came home from school yesterday and told me that his favorite toy that day was the crystal building blocks. I asked why they were crystal and he he said, “I don’t know. They look like our blocks except they are lots of colors and you can see through them.” Hmmm… ok. I asked what he built with them and he said a house, a dog, and a person. This intrigued me because he normally builds cars and structures like towers and bridges. He’s built a house once or twice, but I’ve never seen him build a block dog or person. I was impressed.

This morning at school drop-off his teacher started telling me how great he is a copying things. A good skill, I hope! As an example, she showed be a bucket of blocks (called “Crystal Building Blocks,” of course) and said he was playing with them yesterday. She said she was admiring the house he built and then noticed that it was identical to the picture on the bucket. She showed me the picture and sure enough, there was a house, a dog and a person. He had just sat down and built everything he saw in the picture. She was super impressed :) I’ve seen him copy like that before, but I was impressed that he made a dog and a person :) He never fails to impress!

He is also getting really good at building his own ideas (without copying). His Lego vehicles are getting more advanced and yesterday afternoon he built a cool train layout. I think it’s cool anyway.

Train tracks

Train tracks

Block bridge

A block bridge. The top part is a covered bridge for cars to drive on (fitted for his largest matchbox car), but he is still thinking about how to get a road up there. I love the creative process.

Happy Birthday Alan!

Today is Alan’s birthday and we celebrated in style. At home! Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, lots of family games, balloons, pure silliness, odd (but yummy!) cake, date night, and a James Bond DVD. What more could you want for your birthday! :) Happy Birthday Alan! We love you!

Birthday cake

I hope he still loves me after this cake! (chocolate jello poke cake with strawberry/raspberry jello and raspberry cream cheese frosting). It tastes good, but definitely not my finest work. The chocolate chips on top were Eve's idea :)

The birthday boy

The birthday boy!


We had A LOT of fun playing balloon volleyball. The kids didn’t quite get it, which just added to the fun! After things settled down I grabbed the camera, so this is just the tail end of the playing. The balloons entertained everyone for much of the day :)