This Girl

This girl is capturing so much of my attention these days as she is transitioning into such a big girl right before my eyes.

She still loves to lay on her dad anytime he is in the room.  They have a bond that is solid and unshakable.  But, with this growing up she's doing, "mom" has been more important in her life.  She cuddles and snuggles on me too now, and that's really different!

She wants to learn to read so desperately.  Every day is full of new questions and discoveries as the mystery unravels in her mind.  We are on the brink of something big here...

She plays more cooperatively with her brother than ever before.  She is a master at reading other people and will negotiate with Evan when she feels him getting frustrated.  Lots of deal-making and turn-taking initiated by her!  This is incredible progress.

Her new church coat is super soft and sparkly (although you can't see all the golden flecks in the photo) and exactly what she wanted.  A real, fancy, "big girl" coat.

Not one to be outdone by anyone, even someone three years older than herself, Chloe is practicing her knotting skills daily.  She's moved on to level three (for us) -- candy stripe bracelets -- with feverish intensity.  Put a challenge in front of this girl and she won't stop till she overcomes.

She's going places, this girl.  Big places.

Window Noise

This will always be funny to me. 
Hopefully the video works.

February Days

How we've been spending our days recently:

* We all wake up early.  Todd first, then me and Evan around 6am, and finally Chloe around 6:45am.  We're all awake when when Todd leaves for work at 7am.  It's like having babies all over again.

* We have ventured out several times to visit friends around town and carved out meeting times with family too.  Nothing brightens up a winter day like loving faces and fellowship!

* Due to the melting of snow again, our backyard is a slop pit.  So, the kids are enjoying having a great muddy romp every day, and I have been washing piles of mud-covered laundry as though it were spring.

* Evan and Chloe have fallen in love with a new (old) movie called Misty -- based on Chloe's favorite book.  It's wholesome and they both really like it.

* There are quite a few chapter books with bookmarks in them piling up on the bookshelf, which in a house with no TV is sort of like watching different shows all week that end with 'to be continued...'  But it works for us.  (Yes, we do have a TV, just not cable/satellite/antenna/netflix.)

* Using up the frozen pumpkin from the freezer, I made a pie for no reason at all.  That being the first real dose of sugar any of us has eaten in almost a month, it was heavenly.

* With the exception of a constant flurry of paper and pencils in the art corner there are hardly any toys being played with right now.  The marble chute and tape measures have been the main interest along with piles of embroidery floss for thread crafts galore.  Other than that, there is simply outside time and indoor horse racing to our favorite classical music CD, the Carmen suite.  Quite nice.

Marble Chute

Marble Chute has been a game in our house for years.  Evan invented it one day while playing with Todd's tape measure.  The kids just sit across from each other and shoot marbles down the path where they fall off the other end.  As with all their games the marbles are characters with personalities and catch phrases.  (Today's had something to do with brothers and sisters and a big bully.)  When they finish playing on the floor they run around the house measuring everything and trying to touch the ceiling without the tape measure bending over on itself.  Such is life for a contractor's kids.

Thread Crafts

At the request of my kids, I've been a friendship bracelet-making machine for weeks.  They are tearing through the pack of floss Chloe got for Christmas, using up all the bright colors first, for our lovely thread crafts. 

I taught them both the easier kinds (chinese staircase, candy stripes, and twists and braids of all kinds) and they just watch me do the harder ones.  I'm having so much fun!  We don't have a pattern book or anything, I just copy old bracelets for now.  I love how the kids bring their piles of bracelets with them everywhere they go.  Maybe someday they'll really like wearing them, but for now we have piles.

Explosive Play-doh

The influence of the Coyote and Roadrunner has now shown up in play-doh time.  The kids played yesterday for hours on end and started up again this morning.  They are making firecrackers, rockets, match-boxes and the necessary remote controls for detonating the explosives.  Observe:

Evan recently became fascinated with electromagnetism; he even made his own working electromagnet.  So, maybe it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to light things on fire and blow things up for real.  Hopefully he'll be content with play-doh dynamite sticks for a few more years.

Bits & Pieces :: February

Cube-eees, a new love.

 ** All through the day, Evan and Chloe say odd phrases to each other followed by the statement "There, the game is on pause" and lots of giggling.  An example:  "Are you sleeping dummy? There, the game is on pause"  or  "Save the palm trees!!! There, the game is on pause."  It's there way of quoting their own playtime to each other, and I love overhearing it.

 Hauling a giant snowball and a little sister too.

** We have a funny ritual at mealtime that we do when the mood strikes called the Alpha Prayer.  None of us can remember how it started, but it's when we all pray in our Alpha Dog voices (imitating the dog in "Up" whose collar is malfunctioning).  At the end we all Woof and occasionally someone yells "Squirrel!!" in the middle of the prayer.  I guess it can't really be explained but I had to write it down here lest I forget it someday.

Evan working on Thread Crafts (aka friendship bracelets)

** Chloe is currently caught up in the Misty books by Marguerite Henry. Todd read Misty of Chincoteague to her and now I'm reading Stormy, Misty's Foal to her.  These are really long books, but she is really in love with these horses.

 This reminds me of someone.... who could it be....

**  A couple more of Chloe's cute mispronounced words:   con-vader belt (conveyer belt) and took-en (taken).  Also she says knive instead of knife and leave instead of leaf -- all those words whose plurals have -ves at the end.

Sitting on the garage roof, naturally.

** Evan has been trading cuddle time at night in favor of longer book reading.  He's always been super cuddly at night so this was a surprise when he first it to me.  After about 6 days of not cuddling he told me he missed it and we are back to it again.  He still loves those nightly back rubs and I still love his arms around my neck saying "Stay" when I tell him good night.

Of course she had to make a horse.

** Evan's been playing with numbers in his mind again lately.  He told me all about the pattern he found when multiplying 11's and also how he discovered the "mystery of the clock."  Apparently he taught himself to tell time on a regular clock, and I am once again astounded at how this unschooling thing works.

 On the roof again.  This is life with a boy.

** Although Evan is officially 9 1/2, he is small for his age.  Not yet 50 pounds and not quite 4 ft. tall and wearing size 7 clothes.  So when he stands in front of me with his arms up, I still pick him up and hold him.   Being as strong as he is, I don't have to do a whole lot to keep him there.  I always wonder when that last pick-up will happen....

Father-Son bonding over Shop-Vac assembly.

** Evan loves to shy away from all my attempts to kiss him.  This started several months ago.  What he does now is run up to me and put his face close saying, "Let me kiss you" and puckers his lips.  He's so cute, trying to grow up a bit, but not quite ready.