21 June 2013

Two Saturdays ago,  our day was filled with yardwork.

Bobo helping me mow the lawn

 

Nut Brown helping me mow the lawn (with scissors)

 

Rose Pink also assisted by trimming super long grass with pruning shears.  She said that she was Indiana Jones slashing her way through the jungle.  (I don't think our lawn is THAT bad.)

 

We planted the beds in front.  I got carried away and let the kids get way too many annuals (they picked out a flat each) so the plants are way too close together.  But we had a great time buying them and planting them too.



Then I had to fix my bike (three flats in three weeks, frustrating) and Bobo volunteered to assist. 

He did more than supervise- got his hands dirty as well!

 

Success!  And I haven't had another flat yet!

 

---------------------------



 

Mr. Brown made me steak for dinner too... yum.  And then I got feeling less tired.  Mr. Brown doesn't actually like beef so we don't eat a whole lot of it, or a whole lot of meat in general, so I don't get as much iron as I should and I think that's why I was so tired.  Also Mr. Brown is trying out gluten-free for awhile, and that's messed around with our eating too.  So the steak was nice, and even a bonus because the kids didn't really like theirs so I got to eat theirs the next day.  Double helpings for me.

 

Speaking of iron, Bobo's blood tested low for iron at his one-year checkup, so he had to go back and get it tested again after a month of him getting polyvisol in his applesauce to boost his iron.  It was even lower than it was before, so he had to go to the big hospital and get more blood taken (Mr. Brown says that phlebotomists there were amazing- they double-teamed the baby and had the blood they needed in less than five minutes) for more tests to see why his hemoglobin might be so low.  Updates to follow.

20 June 2013

 On Saturday morning, the Bobes got up at 5:30 am after having gotten up twice that night for a good long stretch.  I was grouchy and decided to take myself out for breakfast.  Nut Brown was up already too, so I bundled the Bobes into a stroller and Nut Brown got on his bike and we went to Tim Horton's for breakfast.  It was a quiet morning and it was early (before eight) so it was a nice ride down there (it's about a half mile from our house).  I had a breakfast sandwich and Nut Brown had a donut and orange juice, and we shared the baby's donut holes.  He was mostly interested in toddling around the restaurant, rather than eating, anyway.  We made friends with the old people having coffee and then we walked home with some more donut holes for Rose Pink.

It was the start of a very nice day.  Mr. Brown went to ARP and the kids and I played in the basement for awhile (I don't often manage to play very well, which is why this is of note) (while it was happening I kept telling myself, don't think about it! don't think about it or you'll screw it up!).  then we rode down to the bank and got some cash out and hit a bunch of garage sales on our way back home.  I can't honestly say that we found treasures, but we did buy some stuff and had a good time.

Then Mr. Brown let me have a three-hour nap after lunch.  He is so NICE to me.

It was really a fun day.

19 June 2013

Yesterday afternoon Nut Brown and Bobo and I went to the library and on our way home we stopped at a park.  Bobo was climbing up some stairs that are made of a material with quarter-sized holes in it, and Nut Brown crouched underneath and was poking his fingers up through for Bobo to grab.  Then he started poking sticks out of the holes and Bobo would grab them and push them back down the holes.  They were both laughing and laughing and Bobo forgot about climbing up the stairs and started playing peek-a-boo with Nut Brown, which just provoked more shrieking and more laughter. 

They were both having so much fun.

18 June 2013

 Mr. Brown lately has been having the kids write sentences wtih their spelling words to practice handwriting.  Drawing the pictures is the reward for writing your sentences (Rose Pink doesn't do it).  Nut Brown has lately been drawing and coloring these fabulous finished pictures: detailed, with backgrounds fully colored in.

 "No Pat No Don't Sit on That!"

17 June 2013

Some things are too funny not to share.  (Nut Brown dressed in pillowcases)

4 June 2013

Rose Pink's drawing style has changed.  She recently completed a series of family portraits.  In age order, here we are:

30 May 2013

Art by Rose Pink.

We just had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa, much to the delight of Rose Pink and Nut Brown, and not so much to Bobo's.  Eventually he warmed up to Grandma a bit, but he's still very stranger-suspicious and clingy.  I scared the pants off him by setting him down inside someone's house last night and running back out to the car to get the food we'd brought them (a two-handed maneuver).  He was not happy.  Anyway, we had a great visit with Grandma and Grandpa, and Rose Pink and Nut Brown are already planning their next trip to PA to see them.

They came just after a looooooong weekend for me: I took off a couple days along with Memorial Day and moved dirt around the backyard to fill beds, and planted seeds and so on. I like gardening.  I'm looking forward to finding out what comes up.

21 May 2013

Mermaid and hammerhead shark, by Nut Brown.

We rode our bikes to the library together last week, me and Rose Pink and Nut Brown, with Bobo in the bike trailer.  It was Nut Brown's first time on a long-ish ride (previously the farthest he's been is to the park two blocks away).  He did great (although I wish he'd look for cars before he enters the intersection instead of when he's already off the sidewalk) and took great pleasure in riding faster than Rose Pink.  Her wheels may be bigger but he pedals much faster.  It was a lot of fun to ride together.  Next up, Jim's for ice cream!  I think it may actually be getting warm.

20 May 2013

We're expecting my parents for a visit this weekend.  The kids love to see their grandparents.  When we went to visit them a couple months ago, they started packing as soon as they found out we were going - making neat piles of clothes, with labels, in the Watchtower and asking us for suitcases.  A week before we were supposed to leave, Mr. Brown said to me, I think Nut Brown needs more pants.  I replied, that's because most of his pants are set aside for the upcoming trip!  Tell him to look upstairs for more pants!

When they were here for Rose Pink's baptism in January, the kids made up the bed and drew on the windows for them.  I wish I could have photographed it, but here is what they wrote (along with a lovely drawing of Rose Pink getting baptized):

BAPTISUM

Welcome into owr home!!!
Grandma and Grandpa!!
Love Rose Pink (in cursive)

(PS Gandchiljin made the bed)
(PS Rose Pink and Nut Brown Brown)

17 May 2013

Last night I was working the front yard digging up the lawn for a flowerbed in front of the porch.  Bobo was hanging out helping me- sitting in the dirt, digging with a plastic spade, making piles of dirt on the front porch, investigating suspicious-looking roots.... he does the same sort of companionable hanging out with Mr. Brown in the kitchen when he's making dinner - getting into the cupboards, asking to be picked up so he can see what's cooking.  It's very friendly and I really enjoyed my little helper while we were working together.  He's such a sweet baby.

16 May 2013

The other evening when Mr. Brown took Rose Pink to soccer practice, the boys and I headed for the park up the street.

 

 

ON OUR BIKES. 

Here's Bobo being restrained in the bike stroller.  He was okay with it but not super impressed.

 

We had to cross a major road to get there, but Nut Brown handled it pretty well and no one died or slammed on their brakes.  Michigan drivers are really good about kids on bikes, as I learned when Rose Pink was learning to ride her bike on her own.

 

Nut Brown is crazy about monkey bars at the moment.  He went back and forth across these about thirty-seven times.

Joint sliding.  About two seconds after this photo, Rambo pushed Nut Brown's arm out of the way and pushed off down the slide by himself.  He likes slides.

15 May 2013

Want to know a secret?  Bobo actually prefers Mr. Brown to me.

13 May 2013

 

I forgot to write up when Bobo started walking: it was a couple weeks ago right before his first birthday.  He was pretty excited about it but I wasn't actually ready for him to grow out of crawling yet.  I love how noisy he is when he crawls- he slaps the floor every time he moves his hands and I think it's so funny.  However, he has been avidly practicing walking and is getting quite accomplished.  He can't stand himself up when he falls down but I'm sure he'll learn soon.

 



At the park the other day, he walked from the bench where we were sitting over to the edge of the playground.  We expected that he'd be stymied by the boards around the edge, but no, he climbed right over and toddled off towards the playground equipment.  Good for him.

10 May 2013

Last Sunday we discovered that Bobo and Nut Brown were dressed alike- blue shirts, black pants.  Mr. Brown joined the fun and we immortalized the moment.

So Rose Pink and I decided that if we couldn't dress like the boys, we could dress like each other, so we both wore teal.  Nut Brown immortalized that moment for us as well.

9 May 2013

Rose Pink tells a joke, and Mr. Brown laughs and says, "You're funny."  She replies, "I get it from my dad."

8 May 2013

The kids' bikes have had some various problems with losing their chains, so two Saturdays ago I got out some tools and we all sat down in the driveway to tinker.  Everyone got involved in their own way- Rose Pink took her chain guard off all by herself to help me, Nut Brown fiddled with the pedals on his bike, and the baby banged on the frame with a crescent wrench.  We fixed the bikes and everyone was just playing with the tools and the upside-down bikes, so I put the new tube and tire back on the other adult bike so hopefully we can get out as a family together at some point this summer.  It was a nice afternoon and fun to be all engaged together.

7 May 2013

It's soccer season again!

 

 

Rose Pink and Nut Brown are both playing.  Going to the games is really fun.  They have both struggled this season for various reasons, and I'm not sure that Nut Brown is going to play again in the fall.  He's not particularly aggressive and gets offended when some of the other players are.  But overall Mr. Brown and I are enjoying it, and they do too.

 

 Even Bobo gets into it.  He knows what soccer balls are for and he kicks them around the sidelines at the games and practices.

3 May 2013

Nut Brown has gotten more and more confident on his bike and ventured his first ride around the block.  It was successful enough that he asked impatiently if he could ride around the block by himself on an afternoon when I couldn't go with him because the baby was napping.

You would think I've learned my lesson about letting my children roam free, but apparently I haven't because I said okay, after we'd discussed what he would do if he fell off and remembered how to watch for cars backing out of driveways.  (He's very good at this while walking, so I wasn't too worried.)

So off he went, and I sat on the front porch and worried until he came around the corner and shouted, Mama!  Now he asks every day if he can ride around the block and says to me, 'Riding my bike is fun, Mama.'  He'll take off and when he comes back around he says, 'one more time?' and I say, 'okay', and off he goes again without even stopping.  He learned on his own to restart when he falls off, first from leaning against a car or a fence, and now he can start flat.  Sometimes he makes it all the way around without having to stop at all.

 

27 April 2013

Bobo is one!

Here are all the reasons that he is the best baby ever:

1. Not  colicky (once we figured out that he was allergic to milk)

2. Chronically constipated, which means no blowout diapers!

3. No earaches.  Not a single one.  Spring babies are the way to go.

4. No rolling over.  We finally taught him to roll over when he was about ten months old.  It meant that he stayed where you left him, and also that he never tried to run away while you were changing his diaper, because he didn't know how to roll over! 

5. He didn't really start putting things in his mouth until recently.  He'd pick them up and look at them and then put them back down.

Thanks to Grandma & Grandpa for the jeans! 
They are awesome knee protectors when crawling around outside!!

 

 

6. He's OUR baby.

 

Bobo has been such a sweet little guy to have around.  He loves to talk and walk and play chase.  He also loves to read books of any sort with you.  Whenever Mr. Brown is cooking, he goes into the kitchen and fusses until Mr. Brown picks him up and tells him what he's making.  Bobo is fascinated with the food in the pans - it's so fun.  He has two words: cracker and 'hot!'  And he finally got his first haircut a couple weeks ago - it was just a trim over the ears.  He has the least hair of any of our babies so far.  He loves loves loves to go outside, and whenever he sees anyone getting on their coat or shoes he immediately scoots over to pester them so that they'll take him outside.  He eats graham crackers and raisins and bananas and potatoes and pasta and anything else we'll let him have.  Also bacon in very little pieces.  For his birthday cake, he got brownies, because we wanted to make him something without milk in it.  (Sleeping- he's not so good at it, so we're still avoiding milk)

 

We love you so much, Bobo!

25 April 2013

 It's 'Take Your Kids To Work Day'!

 

 

 There were a bunch of activities going on at the Arsenal, including vehicles available for climbing on.

 

 

In the morning, my office sponsored an activity where the kids were split into teams and had to run an acquisition program that built/procured a lego vehicle.  I thought the activity was pretty cool, but I think it was a little over the heads of my kids.  Nut Brown didn't understand why he couldn't just play with the legos but had to 'buy' pieces with money, and why no one would let him spend all the money he had buying pieces.

 

 

Mr. Brown took the kids out for lunch while I went to a retirement luncheon for a friend, and then in the afternoon I showed them off to my colleagues at work.  General consensus: I have awesome kids.  I couldn't agree more. 

They hung out at my desk all afternoon and played with my office supplies.  Lots of drawing and cutting and stapling.  Also telling stories with some random stuff I had laying around.  My calculator became the remote for a weapon.

 

Rose Pink called Mr. Brown from my phone.

 

 

Initially when I invited them, they didn't want to come ('you have a boring job, mom - you sit at a computer all day').  But when it was time to go home, they kept asking for five more minutes.  Rose Pink is excited to come back next year.  I'm glad they had a good time.  It was really fun to have them with me!

16 April 2013

Bobo has his first word: cracker.  Mr. Brown started giving him graham crackers and now he will ask for them and repeat after you when you say, want a cracker? he says, kakaeh, kakaeh.

Feeding him his jarred baby food the other day (we just discovered that he also will eat raisins!) I fed him sweet potatoes and found that the next jar in line was squash.  Nut Brown wrinkled his nose and said, 'Baby, you've been veg-tacked!'

Bobo LOVES to help you cook.  He always wants to know what's in the pots on the stove, and what's going on in the mixer.  He tries to grab the hot pots, and we make the sign for 'hot' and say, no, baby, it's HOT! hot! and he waves his hand like ours and says, 'hah' and looks very pleased with himself.

15 April 2013

I wish I had a photo for this post.  Bobo has started taking toddling walking steps- just a few.  I told Mr. Brown that I didn't want to encourage him because I like having a crawly baby underfoot, but I forgot how much fun it is to help your baby learn to walk and how excited they get, so Bobo has been getting more practice than he actually wants.  He still regards himself as a crawler, although he also cruises much more than he used to along the walls and furniture, and will take a single step to help bridge a gap.  At this point he's also pretty much mastered stairs, even to the point of knowing he has to turn around to go down them.

One of my favorite things about Bobo is how he pedals his legs like mad when he's excited.  When I come home and he scoots across the floor to me and asks to be picked up, when I pick him up his little legs are just going and going and going.  I say, "Go little feets go!" because it makes me laugh.  When he's excited about something, it's a whole-body explosion.  He loves it when anyone will play peek-a-boo with him around corners or around my shoulders when I hold him.  He is SO much fun.

It was warm and sunny today and Mr. Brown let him go outside and crawl around and play, and Bobo thought he'd died and gone to heaven.  Although crawling is sure hard on your clothes when you're outside, so hopefully he'll get better at walking and save us a few bucks.

He's still waking up in the middle of the night, usually about 5 am, and he has a bottle and then snuggles into my elbow and goes immediately back to sleep.  I have to admit, as long as it's 5 am, I don't mind the middle of the night cuddles too too much.  Sometimes he wakes up at 1 am or 2 am, and those make me a lot grumpier.  We've tried a couple things to get him to sleep all twelve hours, but without much success, so we're just waiting it out.  At 5 am, it's like having most of a night's sleep and then immediately taking a 2 hr nap without getting dressed in between.

Last night Rose Pink was sitting on my lap, playing with my hands and started making them into a completed electrical circuit that she used to "fix the flickering lamps".  My wedding ring was the on/off switch for the circuit. 

I teach the 8 year olds Sunday School class at church (two boys and two girls).  It's an interesting class because three of the four kids are homeschooled.  Yesterday we had some extra time at the end of class so I let the the boys make the magic markers into swords and they started a sword fight.  Rose Pink watched them for a minute and then inserted herself into it by directing one of them to be the attacker and the other the defender of the princess (herself).  She tried to get the other girl (the public school student) to participate as well but the other girl said somewhat disdainfully, I'm not a princess, and declined to play.  Rose Pink looked at her for a moment as if thinking, then what's the purpose of life?  I'm so glad imagination lives at our house.  Fortunately, the other girl's opinion didn't stop her from playing.

7 April 2013

Rambo likes to dance.  He's been a ready and willing participant in our family dance parties from a very early age, and whenever he hears things that trigger his sense of rhythm, he bounces up and down and grins.  It's so cute to watch him bob around enjoying the music.  Favorite dance songs: Dynamite by Taio Cruz, Gangnam Style Chipmunks, Gold Digger by the cast of Glee.  Bounce bounce bounce.  We turn it up loud and dance on our lovely wood living room floor.

6 April 2013

Nut Brown was balancing on the exercise ball the other night.  Mr. Brown said, wow, Nut Brown, that's amazing! Good job balancing! and Nut Brown said, and I can do it while wiggling my ears!

He came into the kitchen the other day holding a rolling pin and the ice cream scoop and said to Mr. Brown, I know how both of these work! Then he explained to Mr. Brown how they go together and how they work.  It does sound like we have a budding engineer.  His favorite toy at the moment is the snap circuit board Uncle BJ sent for Christmas.

5 April 2013

So yesterday the Child Protective Services lady came by our house to do a 'home visit' and she interviewed all of us separately and at the end told us that she didn't see any reason to open a case file on us.  Phew.

Nut Brown and Rose Pink helped us make the point, however inadvertently.  When she asked Nut Brown how he was punished when he was bad, he said, 'I'm never bad.'  Never? she asked, surprised.  'No,' said Nut Brown.  'Sometimes I need to be corrected, but I'm never bad.'  Kudos to Mr. Brown, who's constantly told the kids that a bad decision does not make them a bad person.

When the doorbell rang, Mr. Brown left his farina (hot cereal) cooking on the stove because he was expecting it to be the neighbor girl at the door.  He got into a discussion with the case worker on the doorstep, and when he finally agreed that she could come in, he thought for sure the farina would have burned in his absence.  But Rose Pink had stirred it, finished cooking it, and turned off the stove, so it was done and edible instead.  Mr. Brown pointed this out to the case worker as an illustration of why we trust our eight-year-old to walk around the block with the baby.

We are so relieved that it sounds like all this is over and through.  Hopefully.

2 April 2013

Rose Pink is fascinated with orange huskies at the moment.  Here is a self-portrait with husky.  Her own personal husky is named Goldy and has copper fur just like Rose Pink's hair.  You can tell that this is Rose Pink by the teeth (still missing her two upper front teeth!).

 

She's been making lots of drawings of huskies to decorate her bed (top bunk) because we are about to move the kids back into the echo chamber with the baby.  She hung all her drawings up so I couldn't get any to show you.  The huskies that she drew are all wearing collars that say 'SARCH', which stands for 'Search and Rescue Crime Huskies'.

 

To celebrate moving back into her bed, she's throwing a party (note the husky at the top of the invite):

We had a tea party in the kitchen, and then we went into the echo chamber and welcomed both Rose Pink and Nut Brown back to their beds.