Goodbye, Nanna.
My mother just left after a two week stay in our house. Thanks so much for all the baby sitting, kid-loving and chaotic-house-enduring Mama. You're already missed!
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Does it get cuter?
We had a tasty dinner of rice and dal at Josh and Ashley's over the weekend. Here's Netta and Bailey drinking out of a mug with baby Arthur on it (this photo can be found on the first ever post on this blog.).
Couch snugglage.
Nearly every day some combination of children pile onto the couch to snuggle or wrestle. Here's Arthur and Bailey.
Bowling.
Last night Jessica and I took the boys bowling (Nanna's in town and watched Netta and Bailey). Good fun was had. But man, bowling is expensive! $25 to rent shoes and play one game. A rare treat. We had fun and there are some wonderful photos to prove it. Art celebrating a spare by Jessica. Jessica especially enjoyed watching Lewis take his time lining up the ball. A spare! For the record. And for fun, we entered our names as 'mom' and 'dad'. Even the boys got a chuckle by that. Playing hide-and-seek. I love this photo! And watch the audio-less movie below to see Arthur discovering Lewis. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phMjj9I93_o?rel=0&w=640&h=480]
Aerial photo flight with Josh.
Last night was the finals of Crashed Ice , a made up sport designed as a vehicle to advertise Red Bull, a crappy drink that's bad for you. But more than 100,000 people showed up in downtown St. Paul so we pull out all the coverage stops. Last night Josh came along in a little 4-seater Cessna for some aerial photograph. It was fun and scary! He held a couple lenses and shivered in the back seat (I had to have the window open to take photos). Here were are up high: Here's a gallery of all the aerial photos. I blogged about other videos and stuff for the paper, including some ' cinemagraphs .'
In the living room Lewis observes....
"Momma, did you know that we are standing on the basement ceiling? So that means we are upside down!"
Sharing day.
Today was sharing day for Art and he brought in some SUPER COOL mazes he made last night. Here he is answering questions from folks about his creations.
A sad turning.
Things change so gradually with children that in some ways it's hard to notice anything changing at all. It was easier to see things change this morning as Jessica decided yesterday was the last nursing of her nursing life. She's warned the babies for a while and had slowly begun to wean long ago so it wasn't a surprise to anyone. But it still makes me sad. "Nurse?" said Netta as she stood in the hallway looking up at her mother. "Nurse? Nurse?!" she chanted in a slightly panicky voice. Of the twins it's Netta who has always seemed to truly love nursing. She started to cry as Jessica answered super sympathetically, "no more nurse, nurse all gone." I generally have really bad memory as a parent but I think that's an image image will last, Netta standing there crying, looking up at her mother. A couple days ago I had a dream about this. I don't remember much except I, too, was crying because the girls stopped nursing. I don't know...
Lewis is a show-off.
We have previously shared that Lewis is at times - often times - a f*@!ing angel. Well, today I took the girls and Lewis to music class and asked Lewis to be my helper. I need help juggling the two toddlers, especially since Netta likes to be help for every standing up song. Well, he excelled at his task. He patted them in time, he asked Netta to sit on his lap, he tried to hold Bailey's hand when we walked in circles. All in all he was stellar. So, after class another mother (of twins!) asked, "Is your son always such an angel?!" F*@!ing angel strikes again!
Sunday sundae dance.
We have a new family tradition, sundaes on Sunday. And as seen here by Arthur's spontaneous ice cream dance, it's a big fun deal. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvqnTNMvepg?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
My almost free toddler stove.
A few months ago it became clear that the girls, especially Netta who LOVES to imitate everything grown ups do IMMEDIATELY, needed a place to do some pretend cooking. So I trolled craigslist for a kid's stove and tossed around the idea of getting them one of the nice ones at IKEA. Until one day when I just cut a black circle and put a red splatter shape in the middle for fire. Now the coffee table is their stove and the best part is all the parts fit in the pretend food basket! Then Netta started putting things on the shelf under the coffee table and the oven was born! Netta tastes her soup and deems it "too 'bicey!" Bailey carefully places fruit and vegetables on her spatula to transfer to another dish. Girl has asbestos hands!
You call THAT representation!?
It is not true that all kids like to color and that you just need a box of crayons and some paper and they'll go to town. Crayons at a restaurant were always useless for me since my oldest, despite his name, had no interest in coloring. it was actually kind of stressful for him. He practically begged to not go to his first preschool (before Willow) because the teacher made him do "hard things" like "play with crayons." Anyway, Kindergarten kicked him in the butt with constant fine motor development and writing practice and since then I have been tickled by his drawings of bears, cacti, and our family. Then this year his second grade teaching assistant taught the class about Picasso and Matisse and we got this: A pig seen with his parts "all in the wrong place." Then what's that red thing on his head? His stomach? "His hat," says Art. Naturally. And this... This was his Matisse-style interpretation of the aquarium of guppies at h...
Jokes!
My niece, Charlotte, has been making jokes lately. Read about them here, http://parkernawrocki.blogspot.com/search/label/jokes?m=0 Bailey is our resident toddler comedienne. Today, when asked to sing Ben to sleep she started with a sweet "Nite, nite, baby," then threw her arms back and added, "ROOOOAAAARRRR!"
What Jessica said to Lewis last night during our new year's eve dance party.
"Ow! Do not run into me or I'm leaving the dance floor."