30 November 2009

Also, this weekend, Nut Brown learned how to use "what" and "who". He has a much more effective way of gaining information now, which has exponentially increased the number of questions asked.

We got out the Christmas decorations, including our plastic Nativity set. Rose Pink has been asking about it for weeks now, and she played with it for three and a half hours straight that afternoon. We invited her to other activities, but she declined in favor of the nativity set. For all those people to whom I suggested "figurines of any sort" as a gift idea for her - here is the proof what a great gift that would be!

thanksgiving 2

Our thanksgiving highlights include the easiest Thanksgiving dinner we've ever prepared, and listening to Nut Brown play with blocks in the living room as we made mashed potatoes. He was singing to himself, "Ice ice baby! Ice ice baby!" I don't think Mr. Brown's brothers will ever let us live that down.

I am thankful today for my lack of experience with the terrible twos. Neither of my kids has come anywhere close that temperamental stage, and I am grateful for such sweet, obedient children.

thanksgiving

Tomorrow Mr. Brown and I are going to coordinate Thanksgiving dinner at his brother's house in Iowa City. One of the things that I am grateful for is the fact that his brother and sister-in-law are our friends. Really, I am so lucky to have married into this family, and I'm glad for their friendship and glad to know them so well. Rose Pink insists that her cousins are mean to her, but really, they spoil her in a lot of ways. I am also grateful for the opportunity for her to really know well at least part of her extended family. Last time we were out there, their oldest daughter coordinated this nonsense. They even trucked leaves from the front yard around to the back for this activity. They're burying one of the boys, and then they all run off and hide and shout, "Mummy mummy arise for the dead!" and he climbs out of the leaves and chases them. Nut Brown came out once after the burial but before the resurrection and was he startled to see his cousin climb out of the leaf pile!

And here's a shot of me in their kitchen. (So you don't forget what I look like.) I love the color of the walls. It's so soothing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

oklahoma city zoo

While visiting Gia earlier this month, we spent a morning at the Oklahoma City Zoo. We brought it up at breakfast and Nut Brown made a beeline for his shoes, repeating, "animals. animals." The zoo residents were surprisingly active that day as well, and we got to see all kinds of animals up and moving around and interacting with each other. Mr. Brown's favorite part was the night barn, which they kept dark so that visitors could see nocturnal animals, like bats, skunks, owls and flying squirrels, active. Instead of going to see exotic animals, we ended up in the local Oklahoma section of the zoo, and that was just as interesting. We saw things like raccoons and possums and badgers, as well as bears and buffalo and mountain lions. It was so much fun!

20 November 2009

Nut Brown has learned the magic of Mom's kisses. When he has a minor injury he comes running to me, crying this sad little cry and holding the injury up for me to kiss. When I kiss it, it is like magic- the crying stops and he runs off to play again. (Note: this medicine is less effective for real injuries.) Rose Pink outgrew having her various bumps kissed a year or more ago, and I had forgotten how rewarding it is to be able to instantly heal an ouchy.

Halloween with Pictures

Rose Pink this year for Halloween said that she wanted to be a house. So I made this really awesome fun haunted house costume. The roof ties under your chin (Mr. Brown made it) and the dark outlines and vines are pipe cleaners. The windows are construction paper and with foil ghosties, and there are windows on the back as well. Here's what she would have looked like if she'd worn it: Here we are on October 31st:

Nut Brown is a ghost, so he can haunt her house. But she decided to be a witch instead. If the costume she's wearing in this picture looks familiar, it's because it's the same dress and hat she has worn the last two years. Oh yes, this is her third year of being a witch. And Nut Brown is a ghost made out of a bedsheet with holes cut in it.

Having gone to the trouble of making really good house costume, I wore it to take the kids trick-or-treating.

And since everyone else had tried it on, Nut Brown wanted a turn too.

Rose Pink ended up going around with her friend Macayla's parents (Macayla is the little girl with the red and black dress on) and I took Nut Brown to some houses. He was too slow from the girls. He got cold really quickly, but even though he was shivering and shaking, every time I suggested we go home, he insisted that he wanted to knock on one more door. It was really fun! They were both so satisfied and pleased with themselves.

Thanks to Mr. Brown for uploading the pictures for me!

milky way

Driving back from Oklahoma, the sun went down around 6 pm, when we were somewhere in Kansas, planning on stopping in another half hour or so to find a hotel. It felt like the middle of the night- it was really, really dark outside, because I-35 in Kansas is pretty unpopulated. Mr. Brown agreed to stop on an unlit exit ramp so we could get out and look at the stars. It was beautiful- you could see so many, and you could even see the Milky Way stretching across the sky. When Rose Pink got out of the car, she said that she wanted to be an astronaut so that she could bring me back a star. We showed Rose Pink and Nut Brown the fuzzy white band of our galaxy, and explained about stars being bigger than the earth but so far away that they looked really small. It was so awesome to see how beautiful the sky was away from city lights.

Nut Brown started to wander away and I grabbed him. He struggled to get away and then stopped and started to asking something- "------ go?" After he repeated himself several times, we realized he was asking, "Where hotel go?" We'd been talking about how the next stop would be the hotel, and he was stumped by the dark space around us when we got out of the car.

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Since we got home, Mr. Brown has been taking Nut Brown's boppy away from him after he wakes up, and only returning it for naptime and bedtime. It's helped Nut Brown be a lot more active- before he would just lay around and chew on it instead of playing. The first day Mr. Brown decided to sneak it away from him and tell him that it had gone somewhere interesting. When Nut Brown asked for it, Mr. Brown said, "It's gone on a trip! Where did it go?" He and Nut Brown discussed various places it might have gone- "Did it go to the zoo? Did it go to the library?" Nut Brown negatived each of them and finally suggested, "Milk Way!" Apparently the boppy had departed for a day among the stars.

Last night, getting ready for bed, he asked, "Milk Way? Milk Way?" to find out if his boppy had come back yet. I had him run up and look on his bed (sometimes it reappears there at bedtime), and Mr. Brown snagged it and had it "knock" on the front door while Nut Brown was upstairs. Nut Brown of course immediately came to the head of the stairs when he heard the knocking, and heard Mr. Brown say, "Oh, welcome back, boppy! Just in time!" Nut Brown ecstatically received his boppy and went back upstairs chanting, "Just time. Just time." I love the games we play.

Our trip to OK

We stopped at Adam Ondi Ahman on our way back. It was beautiful. And very peaceful.

At Going Bonkers in Dallas- best indoor playplace EVER. Books to draw in while driving. Indispensible. Fascination with long hair. The kids playing at a park in Norman that Mr. Brown and I helped build when we were in college here a long time ago. The kids, in Gia's driveway, writing in their journals. Are they not adorable?

pickle pants

Nut Brown loves the Skippyjon Jones books we read at Gia's house. This morning, referencing one of them, he was running back and forth across the living room shouting, "Pickle pants! Pickle pants!" Mr. Brown asked him, "Who's pickle pants? You?" and Nut Brown replied, "No....Daddy!"

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This morning Mr. Brown called me at work.

Me: How many kids are up?

Mr. Brown: How many kids are downstairs with me? One. How many kids are upstairs singing to themselves? One.

Nut Brown (in the background): Three!!

12 November 2009

I unexpectedly was approved for ten days off work at the beginning of November, so we have been out of town enjoying sunshine and warm weather with Gia in Oklahoma. I'd requested the second through the 11th off, and my leave request was approved on October 29, so it was all very last minute. We debated leaving on the 31st, but decided instead to stay home and celebrate Halloween. Mr. Brown started packing Sunday morning before church. We packed til 8:30, then rushed through breakfast and into Sunday clothes and dashed to church, arriving only two minutes late to discover an empty parking lot... daylight savings time. So we went HOME! TO PACK SOME MORE! We finished loading the car and came back exactly an hour later (yes- late again!) but then left from church and spent the afternoon in Iowa City and drove on to Des Moines where we spent the night. We were certainly eager for this vacation.

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I bought a camera the day before trick-or-treating because our kids' costumes were too cute NOT to photograph. We went to Wal-Mart and purchased the hundred-dollar Kodak model, because I HAD TO HAVE PICTURES. I actually like it quite a bit. It's not perfect, but for a hundred bucks, I definitely got my money's worth. Of course, the pictures are still on the camera, waiting politely at home to be downloaded, and the computer is now on the fritz. Sigh. But I do have pictures that I will post eventually. Maybe by Christmas.

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The kids had such fun trick-or-treating. Rose Pink went out with her friend Macayla and another little girl named Ruby, and Nut Brown and I hit a few houses together. He was pretty psyched about the whole thing, and even when he was shaking from the cold bravely maintained that he wanted to keep knocking. We also attended the ward trunk-or-treat and that was EXTREMELY CHILLY, thanks to a freezing wind. It went really well, though, and it was really fun to hand out candy to such sweetly-costumed children.

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Rose Pink had a Halloween party this year on the Wednesday before Halloween- a cakewalk, Halloween stories, bobbing for apples, and a pinata. It was a success. Anything involving a pinata is a success, right? We broke the pinata stick and had to borrow a bat from a neighbor, but everyone had fun and got to wear their costumes one extra time.