What I was doing a year ago today.

Falling in love. Again. How many loves can a woman fit in her heart?































Today my baby is still a baby and I'm not rushing him to grow up. Lordy, how I love him.

Snapshot Sunday

This weekend we were out of town for a family party and didn't get back in until late last night. So I took my snapshots this morning which is why they all seem to be focused on messes.

My hot spot - the kitchen counter.


The living room floor rug, rolled up to clear the floor for yoga. After the yoga happened I didn't get the rug rolled back out right away, then I couldn't roll it back out. You don't get a picture of the floor.


Dinner table (which has been a sewing table for about a week now).


Needs no label.


Stack of stuff waiting to be eBayed/Craigslisted/freecycled.



How it began.

Sunnymama this week and last week.

How do you know Daddy doesn't do laundry often?

The answer to that is the same answer to "Why is there a basket of children's underwear and socks that Daddy has to sort through and put away?"

Because he thought that getting two girls, size 3T and 4T, the same exact underwear would be a good idea.

24 princess and butterfly underwear, one size apart, ready to be sorted. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Artists are fancy.

Wow, Hannah, that's a fancy horse you've got there.

H: (matter-of-factly) Well, yes. He's an artist.

Oh. Are artists fancy?

H: (very patiently) I don't know, Mother. I've never met an artist. (after a pause) But I'm fancy, and I'm an artist, so I think artists are fancy. And he's a very good artist so he's very fancy.

The library...

One of my favorite places.



Since we have to travel a ways to get to the library we have cards at, it's an exciting trip for the girls also.



And if we're really lucky, we can meet cousins there and the kids can hide under the table and read to each other while the moms chat.

No Snapshot Sunday.

Sorry 'bout that. Between computer issues and camera issues, it didn't happen. On to happier subjects --- Dumping Daddy.

This game wouldn't have been possible if Mother hadn't pulled out the hide-a-bed to look for A Very Small Thing that she needed. Or if Father hadn't said "Just leave it out. The girls are having fun on it. We'll lay a blanket on it to eat dinner."

It also wouldn't have been possible if Father had chosen anywhere but right up against the couch to lay on the hide-a-bed while his daughters sat on the edge to better watch their movie.

Nobody even realized this game was a possibility until Hannah and Ainsley both saw something that each one of them absolutely had to have and jumped off the bed at the same time to go get it. I didn't hear their screams at each other because they were drowned out by their father yelling as he got dumped right back into the couch and all of their dinner (spaghetti and white sauce, no less) landed on top of him. I didn't laugh. Much.

After we got him cleaned up, the girls wanted to play this fun game again. So they dumped him.


Then climbed to the top to 'save him'.

After their weight had pulled him back up, they climbed to the top again.


It was a treacherous climb at times.


But you learn the most from your mistakes, don't you find? She learned that it was more fun for her to climb to the top and slide down.


They played for a long time.


Their father was exhausted. Even better, they were exhausted.


Tired enough that a game of dominoes was appealing.

H: Look, Ains, I stuck my stickers on the board like this.
A: Oh, aMAZing, Hannah!

H: Ains, don't stick your stickers on like that.
A: Yes, boss.
H: I'm not your boss.
A: OK, boss.

Valentines and potatoes.

Having trouble keeping up online these days, but I wanted to share these.

Almost two weeks ago now (gulp) we made valentines. I cut out hundreds of valentines (my scissors had to be sharpened) and set out glue sticks. It was a mad house and the two girls created the cutest valentines.

At first Ainsley's had more glue than hearts, but then she realized that it wouldn't stick to her if she covered the glue completely with hearts. And you wondered why I needed to cut out hundreds. (Or, if you're a mom, you didn't wonder for even a second.)


Then labeling the hearts.




After I made a heart flower for Hannah, both girls tried it out. Hannah made one and Ainsley went crazy making them. We have at least ten taped on our bedroom walls.


This one didn't make it to the wall.


A few days after that, we went to a library story time where they let the girls make foam hearts. Hannah made hers "extra bumpy because I'm going to give this one to Grandpa Rex and he needs to feel how much I love him". Grandpa Rex can't see very well.

It was an extra bumpy heart, so it needed a special envelope. She wrote his name on it herself and even wrote "I love you I love you" above his name. She'd just learned that "I (heart) you" means "I love you", so she wrote that. In a manner of speaking writing.


A few days later when I had scrap pieces of rope from making a baby hammock, they wanted to use them to make yet more valentines.


And valentine necklaces, of course.


Then Daddy sent them flowers for the day itself.





Love Day, indeed.


And this is what happens when you're taking pictures and Daddy walks in the door.


Random pictures, but they make me smile... While doing laundry, I heard a thumping noise. When I came out to investigate, I found this -


She was teaching Grayson how to throw potatoes down the hallway. He was a quick study.


Ignore all the buckets. I was organizing food storage.

We call him Hansel.

He would never get lost in the woods if he had a candy trail to follow. (Hannah had just had Hansel and Gretel read to her and was worried about him not finding his way to the living room. She was amenable when I suggested using crackers next time.)

Also, I've added links to Snapshot Sunday participators on that post, but didn't want you guys to miss them - all of them made me smile this week. Great photos.

Sunnymama and Joxy have joined us this week!

Steph's up also!

Snapshot Sunday

How it began.

Duffs are up!

Sunnymama and Joxy (her first picture made me laugh out loud) have joined us today!

Steph's up also!

The best way to clean a house.

Look for something very small that you need *right now*. Decluttering with a large trash can beside you springs spontaneously from this.

Little things...

about the little ones.

Why is it that when you are trying to buckle in an infant that should be easy to physically manipulate, you can't get their arm in the second shoulder strap without them slipping out of the first? Yet when you go to unbuckle them, you can't get their arm out of the second strap without their other arm going back into the first strap? I don't understand.

Note to my two year old: When you are two rooms away from the bathroom and you realize that you urgently need to go potty, you'll get there faster if you leave your pants up, run to the bathroom and *then* pull your pants down. Pulling them down and then waddling at top speed takes a tad longer. Not that you're not hilariously cute when you do it, I'm just trying to help out.

Bats bats bats

Hannah was flipping through one of our encyclopedias a month or so ago and came across the entry for bats. She asked me to read some of it to her. We learned about echolocation and for the next three days our house was filled with screeching echolocation. I tried explaining to her that we humans actually couldn't hear most bats' calls because they were too 'high', but that just made her echolocate at a higher pitch.

Our next trip to the library saw me getting several bat books for her (including this one that will be the jumping off point for a whole 'nother post) and several for me so that I could answer more of her questions. Word of warning - don't go learning to much about bats. You'll lose all fear of them and want to get actively involved in saving them.

One of Hannah's books had this picture in it -



I still can't look at that picture without giggling. He makes me happy. His cheeks are full of fruit.

And check out this artwork Hannah did while in the throes of bat love.


It's a picture of two bats.


The tape is the flowers that they're about to land on to eat.


Little circles of tape. 3-D art. How 'bout that.

For more on bats check out Bat Conservation International.

These books were ones that I got that I really enjoyed:
The Moon by Whale Light (in which I also learn about how very ancient crocodiles are)
Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (in which I learn that opossums don't pretend to be dead when they're scared, they actually get so scared that their body goes in to a trance like state - a bit like fainting goats)
Darkwing - a novel by Kenneth Oppel about the first bats, way back when dinosaurs were dying off - very well written

I can't recommend any of the 'kids bat books' that we got for Hannah because they were all pretty bland and generic, nothing that really grabbed her and fascinated her as much as the encyclopedia entry had.

Would you?

Breastfeed someone else's child?

I would. I totally would. In fact, I have. Wouldn't have seen me doing that ten years ago.