Kid Conversations

I've been stock-piling notes about kid conversations and other cutenesses in my email for months and I'm starting to look over them and now I can't remember what I meant for a lot of them :(  I'm going to try and get out the ones I can still appreciate over the next few days before I forget!

Both kids often put on their filled-with-randomness-backpacks at say "bye, mom!  I'm going to ____".  Sometimes the doctor, sometimes preschool (Peach), grandmas... all kinds of places.  Well this particular day...
The Frog: "Bye, mom! I'm going to babysit!" (to himself) "oh, I need to bring my axe."

I can't decide if I should be more worried about his current babysitters, or his future babysitting career....

Rainy Day Play

Sharing

Most of our house is basically put back together, except my craft room- which has become the "I'm not sure whether or not we should keep this or we haven't been able to re-organize the home of these objects yet so i'll just put it in here" room. It's a mess!! As a result, I have done no sewing, and I REALLY want to get my kitchen bench covers recovered soon, so I've slowly been finding homes/throwing things away/selling things on ksl.com classifieds, and I'm starting to see surfaces again. I stumbled upon a nearly finished project I started months ago, but it got buried amid the flood rubble until now. It seriously took my 5 minutes to finish these baby legs:They were SOOO easy to make! I just bought some women's knee-high socks on clearance at Target, and cut off the toe and heel. (I also cut a bit more off the tall sock portion because I had intended these to be a bit smaller for my smaller baby- all her other baby legs are suuuuper long. Unfortunately, it took me so long to finish them, they're nearly too short now.) I made the little "cuff" at the bottom by taking the part of the sock that goes around the arch of the foot, folding it in half, and then just seemed it to the bottom of the unfinished edge from the tall part of the sock. (now I know why tutorials usually include a billion pictures. That probably made it sound really complicated.) If I had a surger, I wouldn't need to finish that edge, but something needs to happen to keep it from unravelling. Anyway, I think they turned out way cute! And they were less than $2!

I recently realized that I don't take as many pictures of the kiddos lately because when I'm behind the camera, I can't do damage control (which means Peach will end up with red marks, usually on her face, and crying). However, every so often, the nap/eating schedules coincide just so, so that both are happy and content at the same time, and The Frog is unbearably cute to his baby sister.

Warning: the rest of this post has waay too many photos.

This is The Frog happily playing with his Ikea trains (I LOVE these. oh yeah, and he does too...) when he noticed me taking pictures of Peach's new baby leg warmers. Wanting an excuse to be in on the action, he decides that it is high time she learn how to play the harmonica. (I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but The Frog is quite the accomplished harmonica player.)
He started out by demonstrating its use, but I was too slow with the camera. Notice her undivided attention to her harmonica tutor. Now it's her turn.
Unfortunately, she can't quite reach it. I'm surprised she didn't just attack it with her mouth, which is habit she has.
Both are getting a bit frustrated, so The Frog tries a different approach.
Quickly realizing his efforts are futile, he decides to move on to something else. He continues to inform me of all the toys we have that Peach likes, and doesn't like. (He seems to know a lot about what everyone likes/needs/wants/doesn't want these days. Luckily, Peach never seems to want anything The Frog wants, even when she seems to be contentedly playing with it...) So he brings her some toys to play with.
Thinking she might want a few more options, he starts to empty our toy shelves so she can have everything at her fingertips.
Peach finally settles on an old favorite:

Old pics

I just realized I put these photos on my desktop a long time ago, waiting to put them up here. They're pretty old- from before Christmas! It was snowing and we had excellent snowman making snow, so I had to teach The Frog how it's done :)

Kid Conversation

A conversation with family reminded me of something The Frog did quite awhile ago that I want to remember.

Setting: The Frog is playing by himself with two dinosaurs, a big one and a small one, which in his mind means there's a baby and a mommy. The Frog turns a basket upside-down and puts the small dinosaur (baby) on top of it.

Baby Small Dinosaur: Mommy, look at me!

Mommy Dinosaur: Be careful!

October Rain

We had a heckuva rainstorm yesterday. I promised The Frog he could play outside after I ran some errands and of course it started raining on our way home. The Frog remembered my promise and so I had to oblige. He loved it!

Backyard Water Fun!

My ward has a play group that meets every Friday at a different park, and the last Friday of the month is hosted by someone. I only got a couple of pictures when the others were here (us moms like to chat, you know...) but it was really fun to see the kiddos playing in the slip-n-slide and the kiddie pool.

The Frog's buddy, O. really liked to drink the water. He also had a big spoon that he would scoop it up with and drink from. it was so cute.

The Frog wanted to go back out after his nap, so I had time for a lot more pictures. (too many...)

blowing bubbles

The Frog prefers to slide on his belly, and at the bottom, he would blow some more bubbles.

Practicing his kicks!

being cute and wet

swimmin'

trying to slip 'n slide.

The Frog had a lot of fun moving the balls and other objects from pool to slip 'n slide and back.

lookin' cute in my hat.

When I decided it was time to clean up, The Frog decided he had enough of his swimsuit...

but not his sunglasses :D

First Summer Swim!

We are going to visit Jay's family for a couple weeks this summer, and most of our time spent out there will probably be at the family lakehouse in MA. We've been gearing up for it for months with The Frog by teaching him to blow bubbles and kick his legs when he takes a bath. This week, my buddy, Melissa, was kind enough to invite us up to swim in her pool, and we took her up on the offer! Despite my distaste at wearing a swimsuit 7 mo pregnant, I thought this was an offer I couldn't refuse. You can't tell, but The Frog is actually kicking in this picture, and you can see how pleased he is about it! He wouldn't blow bubbles just yet (though he didn't mind drinking the water) but I'm hopeful that he'll have a blast swimming around with the fish and his dad at the lake.

Water Fun!

I discovered the most blessed outdoor toy ever- the water-filled squirt bottle! The Frog spends minutes on end, even tens of minutes, walking around the yard, sucking out the water and spraying things, including himself. In the face.
Good thing he has a sense of humor!
Why didn't I think of giving him one of these sooner? Perhaps I will be able to get yard-work done, after all! The only downside is that the dirt he used to play in now readily becomes mud. Good thing I bought all his summer clothes 60% off! :)

I also decided to try having him run through the sprinklers, but he completely didn't see what was so fun about it. So then, my genius mind tried to engineer a makeshift water slide, and he spent the whole time fiddling with the hose.

le sigh.

Memorial Day!

I had so much fun on Memorial Day. We tend to be kind of a humbug family, in that holidays to us (Jay and I) mean resting up and we rarely try to plan any excursions. (Plus, we justify, The Frog is too young to remember anyway, right?) Well, the weather was too good to pass up, and so Jay suggested going to a nearby park after lunch. On our way to the park, we passed the elementary school, and decided the playground looked reputable enough to stop here. I was finally able to take some good pictures of The Frog enjoying himself (without having to worry about his safety) and I think Jay had fun being a kid again too. Here are some of my favorites!

Here's to a memorable Memorial Day!

Hat, Sock, Mitten, Cracks.

The Frog has recently developed a few new interests. The first being cracks. He likes to look in cracks in sidewalks, notice what's near the crack in the book, and the other day I heard him saying to himself from a different room, "stack. crack. book." over and over to himself. Later, I discovered this.

Which is a perfect segue into another new interest: using books as blocks instead of reading material. He most enjoys making "doors" and "houses" as he calls them. The main difference between the two is a house has a pointy top, whereas a door not need have any roof at all. (though it is allowed)

He also suddenly decided that he likes to wear hats on his head and socks or mittens on his hands. One morning he wanted to wear a pair of socks on his hands, but the sock he chose has no mate. (It's the one with the star. That's why he likes it.) So I suggested he wear a mitten on the other hand instead. This reminded him of his winter hats, so he picked out one of those and commenced stacking his books, however difficult, with mittened hands. Rest assured, his head didn't get cold, during this arduous task.

He didn't wear them all day (I think he got too hot) but the next morning, first thing, he wanted to put his garb back on.

Another Nice Day!

The setup:

The results:

Fun in the Sun

Before I commence with the intended post, I found this jewel on my desktop, forgotten and waiting to be added to a blog post. It's been awhile since I took this shot, so I can no longer recall why The Frog is naked, but I'm pretty sure he requested his shoes to be put on after the clothes were removed. He's become more particular about his shoes (and my shoes, for that matter), and has been seen wearing snow boots and shorts on more than one occasion.
We're finally starting to see some spring-like weather and today The Frog decided to experiment with water and sidewalk chalk. I wish this picture could more accurately depict his "wet waddle", but I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. After deciding that he prefers drawing in puddles to dry sidewalk, he concluded that the best place for his chalk was inside his full watering can. Here he is toting them both:
From a distance, it looks like he has blue, mad-scientist eyebrows.

DC Trip!

The Frog and I flew to visit my little sister's family for a quick trip last week. My camera was checked in our bag (which didn't make it onto our flight during our Chicago layover) so I didn't get any airplane shots, or any pictures until our bag showed up the next afternoon. (Thank goodness she had maternity clothes for me to wear!) We nearly cancelled the trip because The Frog got REALLY sick the Friday before we were supposed to leave, and I was worried about getting little cousin A sick. After much discussion, and noticing how quickly The Frog revived, we decided to go ahead with it anyway. Sadly, The Frog's virus took hold of me the morning of our flight, and it put a bit of a damper on our sightseeing. Luckily, The Frog didn't know what he was missing, and in the end, I think it ended up making the trip more relaxing.
Here's The Frog and little A, hanging out together in the bathroom. Cousin A has now mastered the art of the army crawl, and he's so good at it, I wonder if he'll ever attempt crawling any other way. He followed The Frog around, incessantly, despite The Frog's often brutal treatment. Little A was a good sport though, and seemed to hold no grudges.
When I pulled out the camera, Cousin A just perked right up and looked right at the lense, ready for his closeup!
Here we can see Cousin A chasing the broom The Frog was dragging around. It was so funny! Things like this make me excited to watch baby #2 and The Frog play together in the future :)
Despite my feeling fairly awful and a crazy car ride, we did get to the DC zoo, and I think both of our little men enjoyed it. A lot of the animals were pretty shy, but the meercats looked like they couldn't be happier posing for us.
The Frog was really excited to see a "pha" in person.
And here is one of The Frog's favorite animals- the mighty "Lie". Too bad it was so warm, I think they were too hot to move. Even so, I can see why he's been deemed the king of the jungle. He looked so majestic, even just lying around.
The zoo took a lot out of me, and so the next day, instead of heading off to the Smithsonian, we opted for playing on the playground at the apartment complex. I think the kiddos probably had more fun anyway :) Here's a great shot of Cousin A's two little in-mouth additions.
The Frog loves being able to get up on chairs by himself.
This was The Frogs favorite way to get up on top. I couldn't believe how easily he climbed up! Sadly, my camera battery died at the playground, so we managed a whole trip with no sister shots! Probably just as well... I think I looked as bad as I felt ;)

All in all, we had a great time, sickness and all. Hopefully my obsessive hand sanitizing saved the Fowles from getting sick too! Thanks for letting us crash there!