Preschool blues

First day of preschool for Elliot. We were a little nervous because she is just not a morning person.





I don't know. I think it went pretty well.

Moving down the block.

The end of July saw us move down a few blocks. A bit rushed and under planned. I found it too hard to pack with any sense of organization with 2 littles underfoot... And with Izaak out of town up until we moved.

To streamline and simplify our lives, we tore out the kitchen, bedroom closets and most of downstairs the day before getting a uhaul. Ha ha.




Really. We moved into a rental that had been treated very roughly by the last couple of tenants. It is a work in progress. Needs some tlc before going back on the rental market.

It is nearly impossible to tell. Yet, the pic in the upperleft corner is showing you the bottom of the ugliest fan ever, and seafoam colored sponge-painted walls. Terrible. The two pics on the right are of the kitchen. Dreamy, right?

Solid chaos for the first week or two. (right, Maia?) We lived with our stuff in two rooms upstairs while Izaak added flooring. A bit like camping. Camping without smores is nearly totally without appeal.


Henry is a climber and our stuff was stacked in towering towers of climbable fun. I spent hours corraling and pulling him off of shelves.

We transitioned from a tidy and tiny place...doubled our square footage (or more) but nearly all of it needed some work done.

Needless to say the kids were a little disoriented with the change of space and routine -but all is good now :)

Happy Birthday, Sister!

See you soon in Boise!

Yee Haw. Henry is 1.

Cupcakes for breakfast, served with a bib from Grandma. Day is off to a lovely start. Happy birthday, darling boy.



Nothing like a old western theme party to get the creative juices going. Saddles, lassos and chaps. Oh my!



So nice to have a handy hubby around. When I say tepee, he says how big. Perfect. Elliot got a chance to wear her dad's hand-me-down chaps. Henry wears baby Izaak's little ol'vest.
































Asking Izaak to take pictures results in a lot of him...with guests. That's just fine, honey. But none of the cute cake I made. Not a one.






























And way late into the night. The sun itself already asleep for hours. Another son has set for the night.

Congratulations o Husband of mine.

Sure, I am a couple of weeks belated.  BUT the sentiment has not faded. 

CONGRATULATIONS TO IZAAK!!!

He did the nearly impossible (or at least fairly complex task) and completed his college degree.  Yah!  go graduate! 

For those that didn't know....Izaak started back at BSU in January 2009  as a nearly 29 year old college freshmen. He went full-time year-round and as of May 2011 he finished!!!  Yippee. 

And Yippee to me. (huh?) You know that iconic image of a poor college student surviving on top raman, coffee, and cheez whiz?  Right?  Now add a wife (me) and two children.  Yippee that this phase of life is past (until grad school, but that is another story).  Note: being a college student is much easier when done at 18 with no independents (my version) rather than at 30 with a family (Izaak's version).   However, we have had fun on this ride and are the better for it

AND the end is the same.  HE is oh so educated now!!

That is so my Elliot

Here is a video that Izaak took of sneaking into Elliot's bedroom in the middle of the night.  Seriously it was after midnight.  four and a half hours after she had gone to bed. 

Unbeknownst to us (at least until the sneaking into her room with a video happened) she was awake 'doing her lessons' in bed with a notebook, a crayon, and a flashlight.  She is three.  She doesn' t have any lessons.

anyone keeping a tally?

law school
1 more waitlist.
1 no
1 invitation to summer semester to compete for a seat.

2 schools still quiet.

and 1 family in minor crisis over the decisions looming:
 to move to Florida. Wait, do we even want to leave Boise? We do like it here, oddly enough.  and Florida is a 52 hour drive away. 

to change grad programs?  Oh, my lands, that the LSATs were for naught.

to buy an airstream and forgo all notions of stability and adulthood...just tooling around the open road in search of contentment.

Ahh.  decisions to decide.

When an army crawling hunter spies a treasure for himself

I think Henry's internal monologue was saying something like:

Oh lookie papa's water bottle just. out. of. my. reach. No wait.  I think I can get it.  And triumph  Yum Yum Yum. 

Suddenly his vision scans to the right

whoosh.  what is this? Knitting basket.  just. out. of .my reach.  No wait.  I think I can get it.  And disaster.  

Antics and semantics

This is what happens when a love for Laura Ingalls morphs to all things Pioneer and then to cowboys.  And then when let's play cowboy-pioneer becomes let's play cowboy and hunt pirates.  An obvious evolution. 
 

swinging her lasso

And when a parent tries to de-violence-ify cowboys & pirates it is not very easy

Elliot:  Let's play cowboys and kill all the pirates (poised with toy 6-shooter, thanks Maia)
Izaak:  Well, let's not kill them, we can just disarm them. 
Elliot:  Okay we will hunt pirates and chop off their arms. 
(get it arm/disarm.  ha ha)

Words with Friends. Do I need to say more? But I will anyway.

Dear Izaak... I feel somewhat relieved that you are not the only words junkie out there.  But still.  It is a wee bit pathetic that you have talked to me about #2, #7 and #10. That I (an avid NONplayer) could read this list with complete understanding. That "QI is a real word" was a recent dinner conversation starter (though not a real word according to spellcheck btw).   That there is a group of people like you out there?!  Shocking.  I find it all very shocking.   

With much ado I link you to:

Eleven signs you might be addicted to Words With Friends

 

happy birthday Grandma DebDeb!!!

Elliot wants to know where you are having your party...

Discourse on food, robots, and ballet.

In my new series titled Kristen lured me here with pictures of her children and then assaulted me with her opinions about stuff. (what? you fell for that?)  Well.  I now bring you FOOD.
 
Firstly.  May I start this off by saying.  If eating is so primal and instinctual why is it so confusing?  And, oh vey.  The vasts quantities of books on the subject.  The bookstore has major sections for recipe books, another for nutrition and diet, and in parenting we find a subsection on weaning/nursing.  There are best sellers on whole foods, or the obesity epidemic.  Now in addition to deciding whether you want to ascribe to whole foods, raw foods, ovo-lacto-pesco foods.  NOW my pseudo-hippy creds are challenged by the locavore and slow foods.  ( as a side note: the slow foods tagline is "good, clean and fair food" and my brain brought up images of funnel cakes).  Time OUT.  Can't we just eat FOOD?

And here is the part where I pepper in photos to keep you entertained. 

Elliot and a gaggle of small girls (old friends of 5 minutes) excitedly waiting for her FIRST BALLET CLASS.  Giddiness in the air...10 minutes class begins.

Elliot in the middle- smaller than her peers.  But already well studied.  She got a ballet lessons on dvd from the library and watched in 700 times.  She is an expert on plee-ins and first position and all the warm up stretches.  Ready to start on advanced choreography.  Hope she wasn't disappointed.  (2 minutes until class begins)

Sometimes when I hear food-talk it sounds like people are programmed robots...with our scientific robot programs that mathematically redact our bodies until all we are is metabolism, thyroids, proportions, ratios, and scenarios.  On further insult our food is distastefully reduced to scientific units of calorie, carbohydrate, and fat with corresponding charts, tables and trends (Malibu, Adkins, Hollywood juice). 

Anyone think that perhaps we are oversimplifying in the wrong direction?  Maybe.  Throwing out the proverbial baby and not the bathwater?


Stay with me.  This may not be profound enough for some of you.  BUT there are more photos to come. 

Why not just real food for real humans?  Pop Tarts (brown sugar flavored) be damned but if you can't garden it or raise it...or if you can't go out and hunt, fish or forage it...may you shouldn't eat it?  Just saying.  Maybe it isn't food?  Or, maybe (at the very least) it warrants a second thought before mindlessly partaking.
Thinking that we could measure our food in steps removed from nature.  Like carrot sticks = 0 and pop tarts are at 1000.  With everything else somewhere else on the spectrum.  And then we seek to eat as close to 0 as possible...with a few funnel cakes now and again.
 

That is Elliot mid-plie.  Teacher asked them to just stand there...but when you know stuff you should show off stuff. 

Otherwise , doesn't food get redacted to scientific units and numbers...it's almost enough to make me loose my appetite. 

We went to a paint your own pottery place.  Elliot spent an hour and a half getting the switch cover just right...then I stamped on her initials. 

Hey.  Aunt Jennie.  This picture is for you.  See that brass tiger?  I've tried to make it disappear about 6 times already but it keeps magically appearing on this shelf. 

Elliot's ballet class starts tomorrow. 

It is her second obsession.  The first being all things Laura Ingalls. 

Elliot has talked about going Bah-ay school since she was two.  None of the local schools started until 3 1/2.  So, as she is 3 1/2 and ready to go...tomorrow...in her bah-ay shoes, and bah-ay skirt she got for Christmas. 

Little baby bird leaves the nest a bit at a time.

Spring is here and the ABC tree is in bloom. Or so says the bad mom.

okay.  fat lie. Spring is not here.  It is cold and, aside from a couple sunny days this week, it has been dull and gray.  We are ready for the good weather....only a couple more months.  

At the risk of sounding like a bad mom.  I am starting to cringe at sentences that begin with why.  Which is every sentence that Elliot speaks.  It is not a rhetorical why.  She is tenacious enough that if we don't answer (from exhaustion) she keeps asking.  We are suffering from an overload of curiosity.  Why did Toad crash his car again?  Why did  you sit on the couch and not the red chair?  Why did Henry just spit up again?  Why did you do it that way? Why is that girl wearing boots?  Why is that man's hair long like a girl?  Why is the little red hen red?  Why WHY?!  I don't know WHY!!!

and don't get this bad mom started on how I don't like playing pretend for 8 hours straight.  I just don't enjoy it.  Elliot can inexhaustibly play Laura Ingalls and Farmer Boy ALL-DAY-EVERY-DAY.
Elliot:  you be Mary
Us: let's play another game.
Elliot:  ok let's play school.  You be the teacher and I will be Laura.

Seems suspiciously like the same game to me.  humph.

Well.  That was cathartic.  So, back to the title of this post.  The ABC tree.  We are finding letters everywhere.  She has never seemed too driven to draw pictures.  Try as we might to show her smiley faces and stick people.  And she doesn't color.  she takes tests, does her lessons, and  gets information.  She asks questions (what is your name?  What is your city?  What is your husband's name?) and then scribbles the answer down.  She doesn't show much interest in drawing but is desperate to write.  And when her favorite game of spelling bee evolved into spelling test - she really did begin writing letters.  In her beautiful 3 year old hand.  Letters have been showing up everywhere.  A lot of E's, but an important letter for an Elliot. 

E. L. C.

E.

F.A.

E.L.C.

Someone's proud mama took a lot of photos.  Who did that?

well.  For all of our listeners out there in blogland...
Izaak's law school tally is 2 acceptances, 1 waitlist...and a few pending reviews.

The acceptances/waitlists are in 3 different states/regions/climates.  How does one prepare when one is facing so many unknowns? (with children)

Beyond that we are tired.  There is a reason that 18 year olds are poor college students.  The body does not take it so well in subsequent decades. 
Izaak went back to school 24 months ago and has gone straight through...no summer breaks.  Phase one of  Great and Crazy Plan (GCP) wraps up this May.  The 1/2 way point.  Phase two of GCP scheduled to begin this September.

We both admitted to each other this week that we have let our brains wander and daydream about moving back into a big-people-house.  We could just give someone 30-day notice...and move in...with a garage, and a family room, and a real backyard, and a dishwasher....but I digress.

nothing particular

WELL. of all the things I could share today...I think I will indulge in a stream of nothing important.  A wildly active stream of information -gurgling, churning, spilling over rocks.  Yet, still I think I can manage to say only non-earth shattering things.  It will be difficult perhaps.  My life is a rare fount of headline news stories.  (ummm.  humoring myself)

Elliot and I dressed for Christmas service.  Her Christmas dress is completed by boots.

Izaak's new Sony camcorder/camera/toy came in the mail today.  He's not here so I am playing with it. He got it for free.  It is a deep violet color to match the white 32g iPod he got for free last Spring.  The colors don't match.  It is the free part that matches.  Did you notice that?  People just give him expensive items when he does lame stuff like fill out surveys at expos.

When you send a 3 year old in to put on her shoes SOMETIMES they put socks all the way up and put on broken ballet shoes.  Next time I will be more clear about the knicker/ballet combo.

I learned this week that you can't effectively shush 3 year olds.  They just talk louder over the shhh sound to make doubly sure that you heard them.  I learned that lesson when Elliot pointed at a black man and said innocently enough that that wasn't her favorite color for skin.  Too dark, she thought.  It was a grocery store, he was standing about 1/2 aisle down from us.  It is the same Elliot who is very clear about not liking short hair, and blond hair. She alternates between liking Indians and not (as per the Little House books).  And, she cried once when she found out that she was an American (she just wanted to be a girl, as it turned out)

Elliot is modeling a jacket her dad wore as a little boy

Sure, it is okay to not like blonds and prefer lush long hair.  BUT how do you draw a line on what is okay without drawing a line between an imaginary us/them.  The man was black, obviously.  I don't want to teach her to ignore that fact because that is disrespectful to who he is. 

So, I faced the teachable moment where I had the chance to explain that some people are black and some have short hair and these are just adjectives but that's not who we are but that is who he is because of heritage and culture and short hair is just fashion and its okay to not like some one's fashion but you should acknowledge how people are born without judgement because while that defines us it doesn't limit or separate us (but then neither does some one's fashion choices) but it is not a big deal but why am I making this moment a big deal? It's like...In the 1 second I had to say something deep even the voice in my head was confused about what the lesson should be or why the lesson should be.  I just shrugged my shoulders and said that I thought it was a nice shade for skin but that I agreed with her about the orangyblond hair.
Her awareness of otherness is outgrowing her awareness of other's feelings. where angels fear to tread 

Henry is already 4 months old and smells inexplicably of babyness.  You know that smell?  How do they manage to smell like that?

Love, baby, Love.

What words can I use to express how I (we) feel?  Our two babies LOVE each other!

 Henry thinks (so far as we can tell) that Elliot can do no wrong.

Elliot is fairly sure that she wants to marry Henry when she gets bigger.

Doesn't Henry rock that Santa bib?  He's teething and drooling everywhere!!

To the North Pole and back, in 4 hours.

Grandma Deb-Deb just left Boise after a whirlwind of holiday fun!  We went on the North Pole Express train ride.  Elliot has spent the last month looking forward to this trip.  She was not disappointed. 
HOWEVER.  I would like to take a minute of your time to complain about fake bearded Santas. (if anyone else wants to pipe in on this one, I'd love to hear it) Even a three year old is not fooled by this farce.  It's going to kill the Christmas magic before she is four.  The first f-b-s had to adjust his beard to drink water.  Elliot saw and noted.  The second f-b-s had a beard such that you could not see his mouth very well.  Elliot thought that Santa's beard looked like a mask.  Thank goodness that the mall Santa is a real bearded one.   Elliot is sure that he is legit.

Here we are, loading onto the train...getting cozy.  Do you like Izaak's Christmas moustache?  Personally, I can't wait until the 26th when it gets shaved.  But then that is just me.

And here are my beautiful babies with Mr and Mrs Claus.  Do you think that Santa's beard looks like a mask?  Can you tell that Elliot is not buying it?  Nope, she is a trifle weirded out that she can't see his mouth when he is talking to her.  I am not even sure if Henry is impressed, or maybe he is.  Can't tell.

And here we all are at the North Pole.  The North Pole is just over an hour from Boise by train.  Apparently.  And, yes.  I agree. The blow up snowmen look a bit cheesy.  But you know what?  Elliot loved it.  She ate up that North Pole, devouring it for the fun thing that it was.  She hasn't stopped mentioning that she got to really see Santa's house and workshop.   Somethings are magical.

when suddenly it dawned on the mother, this would not be a good year to send Christmas cards.

Well, I am sorry to say that on the 20th of December I am giving up and acknowledging that this is not a good year for Christmas cards, photo cards, letters or anything of the sort. 

My reasons number as many as the stars...shall I count them? 

1. Law school applications/paperwork/form chaos is just cleaned up and both of our hands have prema-cramp. 
2. Henry themed birth announcements are still eeking thier way out of our mailbox at a snail's pace. (Elliot's were much easier to send because there was no 3 year old trying to help me:) 
3. We're a wee bit tired after this last semester
4. The Christmas spirit is trying hard to raly through the bah-humbug crappy stuff that keeps happening...a tenant skipped out mid-lease on Dec 1st, It was brought to my attention (Kristen) that the bit of discomfort I have been having may require surgery (test results pending).  If the rule of three's applies we don't want to know what else could happen. 
5. Has anyone tried to snap a picture of small children that was worthy of a photocard?  Sit still?  Henry can't at all, Elliot won't even bother.  The lurching, the falling, the sheer boredom after 1 minute. 

I thought about just sending out new year's cards, so that I could have a few more weeks.  But you know what?  I think we're just going to call it good for this year and scrub the whole thing.

Izaak in the kitchen

Izaak makes the pizza.

and applesauce- lots of applesauce. (in a sad tiny food processor)

with apples from the neighbor's tree.  Here is what was left AFTER a day of making cannable/freezable apple stuffs. 

Izaak also does the biscuits and the pancakes.  He's the family kneader. Very useful person to have around for breakfast time.