Leaves

We've finally been getting some beautiful fall days here. When there's no chilling 45 mph wind blowing, the weather's actually quite nice.

Nice enough to play in piles of leaves.


I raked the leaves up, and tossed the girls for awhile. They played on their own for awhile, asking me to rake the leaves back into a pile when needed. Then Daddy came home. He fluffed the leaves into a tall pile with the pitchfork.


Then he started throwing the kids around.

You have to spin them to get a good throw.


He got a good throw.


A really good throw.


I was kind of worried about the little one.


She did fine - he didn't give her as much air.


Though she still had a hard time letting go.


Hannah wanted to go again.


On the third time she didn't let go - she'd tried that trick with me earlier and learned that if you didn't let go of a spinning large human who was trying to throw you that they would fall into the pile. I didn't warn him.


Then she wouldn't let him up.


You'd think a four year old couldn't hold a grown man down, wouldn't you?


When you've got your sister's help, anything's possible. "Dream big" is what I teach my kids.


Though if you leave your little sister there and run, she might need to be saved. Look at her, reaching out, asking for somebody, anybody to come save her.


Oh, good. I teach them that too.


Something I learned - little kids jumping into a pile of leaves for hours at a time will not only strengthen a mother's muscles (from raking the leaves back into a pile for the hundred-and-eleventieth time), but it will shred those leaves pretty dang good. That pile is now about one-third the size it was when we started.

Sometimes still photos need a soundtrack.

For example, these cute snapshots.



Cute, right?



Darling even.



They'd be even cuter with the maniacal toddler giggling playing as you looked at them that I was hearing as I was taking them.

These pockets,

on these aprons have been used for seeds, kittens, and eggs since my mother sent them to the girls.

Today they became doll carriers for tiny dolls.


Tiny dolls that had to be introduced to curious goats.


Tiny dolls that had to be rescued from curious goats. They're like babies. Everything goes in their mouths.

Daddy's Little Girls

Arranging a time to go to work to see him.



All dressed up and ready to go.



Helping him get his boots off when he gets home.



They have him wrapped around their fingers.

Sing, sing out loud.

My girls love singing - almost as much as they love stories. Grayson loves singing more. He turns positively blissful when we sing.

I've found a new tool to help me learn the words to kids songs that I just don't know the words to. It also helps me remember songs that I loved when I was a kid.

http://www.kididdles.com/

We now know all the words to all four verses of "Kookaburra" and "Alice the Camel" has become a favorite.

They also have printable music sheets for many of the songs. I will enjoy that when I get a piano...

Family Tree

For years, I've been wanting to make a huge family tree to put up in our home. While looking for good Samhain/Halloween/end of fall activities, I came across the suggestion to have a Family Tree that you only put up once a year. This seems like a good idea to me. This way it won't become part of the backdrop in the home, taken for granted, never really noticed or appreciated.

As time got shorter and Little Girl's insistence to do this project got louder and more frequent, my fancy plans for it got thrown out the window. The night before Halloween, we grabbed a piece of posterboard and I freehanded a tree with roots. She added the leaves and glued pictures on.



I stuck the children in the leaves, my husband and myself on the trunk, and my children's ancestors in the roots. For a child, this was easier to comprehend than the traditional (at least it's traditional in all the Mormon family trees I've seen) method of putting the grandparents or great-grandparents on the trunk and having the children and children-of-children and on and on branching out in the tree branches. That's too abstract for a four-year-old to understand.

But showing that these people are the ones who sustain us, who support us, literally? She got that and she was very excited about it.

Little One doesn't understand the meaning behind it all, but she loves to climb up where we taped it on the wall and talk about all the people she recognizes or doesn't recognize on the poster.

Next year I'll have more pictures to add to it, more stories to tell my daughters about their predecessors. And I'll get it done earlier than the night before Halloween.

This girl...

Ainsley runs giggling past me, Hannah chasing her, saying in a pleading voice: "Ainser, princesses get their hair done! Ainser, just let me finish! Ains, princesses are patient! Don't you want to have pretty hair? Don't you want to be a princess? Please be patient. Let me finish your hair. FINE!!! You're out of the family and you're no princess at all!"

------

Showing me a doll she's playing with: "This is my new baby. He's got an optical cord. See? Right there on his belly button. The optical cord will fall off soon, but it's on there right now 'cause I just gave birth to him. He's a him because he has a tiny penis? See his tiny penis? That means he's a him."

------

While helping me move all of the pantry items from our old pantry area to the new pantry area: "We work like a team, huh? Nothing can beat us when we work like a team. Not even tomato sauce!"

Today we....

Today *I* came face to face with the reality that I am outdated, old, out of touch. I took the kids to see their dad at work and since the girls wanted to drive home with him, I got to listen to 'real' music on the way home. I flipped through the stations trying to find a country music station. I haven't listened to country radio for four years. It ain't what it used to be.

I finally settled on a song playing that seemed to have a storyline, so I figured it was probably country. I listened to four songs in a row and had to come home and scrub my brain with some George Strait and Trace Adkins.

When did male country singers get so wussy? And boy-band-ish? Damn. It's disheartening. Distressing. Disgusting. (That's all the alliteration I got in me.)

George Strait, Johnny Cash, Trace Adkins, John Anderson, Willie Nelson, Chris LeDoux, George Jones - these men don't have boy voices. And now, since this happens to coincide with a more emotional time of the month, I've been sitting here bawling my eyes out to "Mendocino County Line", "Goodbye Time", "Missing You", "Today My World Slipped Away", "Look at You Girl" and so many more. I just need to step away from my (old, out of touch, outdated) CDs.

I *have* been just plain enjoyin' "Pickin' Wildflowers". I think I'll stop on that one. And not listen to country radio for another four years.

I don't.....

I don't know what to say.



I got nothin'.

Two year old chatter

It's not clear yet whether Ains will have the same verbal .... idiosyncracies as her sister. She's certainly as chatty as her sister at the same age, but she isn't yet picking up on unusual or interesting words the way Hannah always has.

Her most common words right now are "SELF!" and " 'elp? You?" (a request so darling - and so worth accommodating - that no matter what I'm doing, I find a way to have her help) A frantic "POOOOO POOOOOTTT!!!" also figures into her most frequently used words. She chats constantly, talking about her favorite stories, singing her songs, talking and giggling with her sister, and teasing her momma, da, and 'gay-gay' (her way of saying Grayson's name gives her father fits). She has the most endearing way of saying "Peasssss????" that pretty much guarantees her whatever she's asking for. She won't be spoiled. Don't say that.

She's moved from only saying one syllable in each word to saying whole words. She now uses sentences, though her unique inflection style leads you to believe that a three word sentence is in fact three sentences - most often interrogative sentences. "You? Kiss? ME?" or "Mone? Mash. Tatoes?"

She calls me "Momma" instead of Hannah's preferred "Mother" and she's cementing her Daddy's place wrapped around her finger by saying "Kiss. You?", taking his face between her pudgy little toddler hands and kissing him.

This unique chatter won't last long - it's such a short phase in their language learning - but I do believe it's one of the "attachment behaviors" that little human babies have to tie us to them. It's too cute for, well, words.

"Are we meat?"

Asks my daughter.

"Yes we are. When we eat meat, we're eating the muscles of other animals. Since we have muscles, we could be meat, yes."

...

...

... "Just out of curiosity, why do you ask?"

"I wanted to know if I should be afraid of dinosaurs."

Fair enough.

Jack-o-lanterns.

A few days before Halloween, we went to visit some family and carve pumpkins.

Hannah partnered with her Aunt J'in. Her job? Draw her desired face on the pumpkin.


J'in's job? To decipher those scribblings and translate them into an acceptable jack-o-lantern. She is a very patient woman. And she did a fantastic job.


Ainsley was partnered with her daddy. She kept a close eye on the proceedings.


She did the honors of 'lidding the jack-o-lantern' when it was done.


Their cousin partnered with her daddy - isn't she the most photogenic child?


It was a fun, fun night.

Today we...

Dancing.
Coloring, writing notes. Getting up to dance, going back to coloring.
Bath.
Grayson is cueing well with pottying! Very happy.
Care bear videos online.
Playing with kittens. Squishing toes in mud.
Doing animal chores, collecting eggs.
Playing with ice, feeding pumpkins to goats.
Visiting Uncle Don and Aunt Renee, playing with Chunk, their puppy.
Visiting cemetery, wondering about dead people, trying to read words off of headstones.
Using magnifying glass to investigate clues and trying to solve a mystery.
Setting up a party picnic.
Cleaning.

Listening to Grandpa read books.
Playing with ponies.
Reading books.
Fixing hair. Learning about hair spray.
Helping grate cheese. Eating lots of cheese.
Running to Daddy's truck. Helping him chore.
Running back in the house and putting cold hands on Mother's face to hear her scream.
Helping Gray walk. Even if he doesn't want to.
Eating dinner, taking a bath.
Kids dropping one by one - the last one is still holding out, taping paper to the wall and then washing the paper with a washcloth for reasons only two year olds know.

Good day. Sometimes you don't realize how much is done in a day until you write it all down as it happens.

My day included helping my children with any of the above that they needed help with, laundry, dishes, feeding, rendering lard, and drying buckwheat.

Cookin' Cookies

We found a fun game called Cookin' Cookies for only a few dollars locally and got it to see if the kids would enjoy it. They did.

It's a very easy game for three year olds on up, but younger ones enjoy it too, because of the cool spoons.



Everyone gets a recipe card listing the ingredients for a certain type of cookie. All of the ingredients are on the cookie cards on the table. You have to smack the cookie cards with your suction cup spoon and collect the correct ingredients.



There are no turns, everyone just moves as fast as they can.



You don't want a rotten egg.



It's gross.

Today we..

... exercised our right to vote.

We live in a very rural area, hence the very non-private voting booths. Last year we had booths with curtains - I wonder what happened to those.

After we got our punch cards and went to our booths, my husband leaned over and asked me a question about a candidate he hadn't heard of. One of the ladies signing voters up yelled "no conversing!" at us. After that he started whispering "What did you get for #5?" and "What did you get for #7? I put Gettysburg Address." She was very aggravated with him.


So we got done and I asked him to get a picture of me with the girls at the polling place. This is, unfortunately, the best he got, but I had to include it. Look at Gray's face! Excited to be voting, that one.

Well, it's over.

One more year, one more night dressing up as whatever you can imagine for yourself.

Ains was Little Red Riding Hood.


Her little brother was The Big Bad Wolf. He looks more scared of her. Don't know why she looks like she was crying - she was as happy as they come that night.


All three together.


Hannah, my 'princess girl', did not go as a princess. She was a 'Dancing Queen'. 'Tis what you get when you have a royalty obsessed child who adores ABBA.


When anyone would say "Oh, you're a princess!", she'd correct them. And then show off her moves.


And look at those moves. Too fast for the camera moves. It's a silly source of pride for me that she doesn't know the name 'Disney' and the word 'princess' does not correlate directly to Disney princesses (TM) in her mind.


So much fun that Little Red Riding Hood had to join in.


Capes twirl amazingly well.


Off to get candy.



1 year ago:

All about princesses.





2 years ago:

Pink and orange dalmatian. Costume change the day of the party. Her ears look like the Flying Nun to me.



3 years ago:

A cop and a convict.





4 years ago:

Kangaroo and her joey. My sister made this costume for her first baby and passed it on to me.