8 posts tagged “kids”

Yesterday I went to work with it all gloomy and rainy.

When I left the sun was shining so brightly mere squinting was not doing the trick.  Especially since I drive West going home.

Rooting around in my purse, I couldn't find my sunglasses.  Then I remembered I'd left them in the van from our family excursion over the weekend.  I did however, have my son's bright yellow Finding Nemo sunglasses.

I don't think I made it a mile down the road before I gave up and put them on.

Too small, uncomfortably pressing on my face, slightly distracting with the frame in my peripheral vision.  Not to mention the annoying little tiny Nemo sticker on the upper corner of the left lens.

But the best reward of all was not the protection from the sun's glare.  Oh no.

It was the exaggerated looks of confusion and outright staring from the people in the other cars.

Took me back to the days of dressing up in my fanciest of clothes and galivanting around the small towns and countryside of SW Michigan with my friends Matthew & Dennis.  The looks we'd get from people. 

Oh, and here's a pic of a moth newly emerged from its crysalis.  My Mother In Law took it when we were on our family excursion at a local nature preserve.  The hand holding it is a field guide leading her and my daughter and a group on a nature walk.  My husband, son, & I were with another group doing some bird watching.

 

Isn't he beautiful?

 

I have found the secret to getting little boys who don't want to go to bed to actually WANT to go to bed.

Ben is having an EEG tomorrow, early in the AM, prescribed by a neurologist because he has some quirky neurological tics.  (LONG story for another time).

Part of the requirements for this EEG is that he be tired so they can get a certain reading.  So they asked that we keep him up as late as possible tonight.  We laughed, ha ha ha, Nooooo problem, we'll have a harder time getting him to bed than getting him to stay up.

Around 7ish I told him "Guess what Ben, you get to stay up as late as you want tonight!"

Typical challenging child he is, "How late exactly?"

Me:  "At least til' midnight."

Him.  "YAY!"

Around 8:30ish I can see he's tired, I offer a snack to give him some energy.  Around 9ish he's still flagging and actuallyl asks, "How much longer before we can go to bed?"

LOL, note the use of the word "Can" as opposed to "have".

I said, "Three hours, why are you tired and wanting to go to bed?"  Which of course prompted the expected, "Me?  TIred?  NO I'm not tired, just asking is all, nothing to see here, move along..."

9:30, I had to give him a tiny infusion of caffeine, tiny I swear.  He's so unused to it within 5 minutes he was running around the house like crazy.  But that could've just been from the excitement over having such a rare treat. 

9:45-10:30 he kept looking at the clock and asking if it was midnight yet.

He made it from 10:30 to 11:00 without asking, but about quarter after 11 he asked again.

Now it is after midnight and we're going to bed.  And I think he is secretly very happy.

The fun part will be waking him up EARLY after this very long night.  Wish us luck.

 

MIL got a new toy from this place:  http://www.112sewing.com/

They are SO serious about sewing at this place they don't let you take your machine home until you've had lessons from them on how to use it.  PLUS they hold the embroidery attachments hostage until you've completed your lessons with them. 

 

MIL has completed her lessons and she has her whole machine and is quite happy now.

So of course she's been experimenting.

Bring on the models!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

//Side Note//  Apparently the 112 Sewing place is supposedly the first place some personage from Project Runway got her 1st sewing machine.  She was supposed to be there a couple of Saturday's ago and despite never having seen the show I was going to go to snag some photos but something came up and I didn't make it.  //End Side Note//

I was taking photos of some things around the house and I saw these two pics of Gabby when she was about 2ish.

These were just regular 35mm snapshots scanned in and enlarged.  No professionals were involved.  They are my favorite photos of all time.

 

 

Look how different she looks now!

 

 

 

 

Now to be fair I have to throw a pic of my boy in here.  :-D  Here he is on his 6th birthday which also happened to be the 1st day of school.

 

Here's what I was aiming for when I first started taking pics tonight.

I made some flower craft at library craft classes recently.

 

 

We also got a new resident in our household who we hope will help us to keep our fuel oil costs down this winter.

 

So, how random can you get?  Old kid pics, flower craft pics, and a wood burning stove.  :-D

Sunday we went to the local park Ecology Center: (Edit: Note almost all of the animals here are either 1) being rehabilitated or 2) were rescued from injuries (or bad peeps) and are unable to return to the wild.) where they have a free zoo with my daughter, her best friend and my son.  *shaking head* I don't get it.  When I was a kid I spent HOURS walking around looking at animals, even ones I saw every day whenever I went to my local zoo.  These kids, they just wanted to get through the zoo as quickly as possible and get to the playground.

*sigh*

Anyway, I gots some WONDERFUL pics of some of the local residents of the zoo.

 

And here is the special dessert.

While lunching at the peecneek tables at the park the kiddoes got all excitedable about something and my daughter whispered to me over the table, "Mommy there's a squirrel RIGHT behind you."  Sure enough this little guy was munching on some goldfish crackers dropped by (I'm assuming) the table's previous tenants.  I'm thrilled to share his royal highness King Redeye.  (on account I ain't got photo fixing softwares here at work and can't fix his eyes sorries).

 

Oops missed the bestest one of all sorries.

 

Ok so our (2nd) family computer crapped out on us a couple of weeks ago.  (The 1st is technically my husband's).

So we hooked up an old one we'd more or less abandoned when it got too creaky and un-upgradable as a temporary measure until our "good" one is fixed or replaced. 

I had thought everything had been cleaned out on it but while doing some exploring to see what was left I came across this little gem of a slide show made on an obsolete picture program.  I tried to save & copy the individual pics but wasn't able to right click on them, durn it.  I was able to do screen prints of each "slide" and copy them and crop them in paint then I "blew" them up a bit so sorry if they're a tad blurry.

This is my daughter Gabby when she was about a year old.

 

It's amazing how much she has changed in the past 9 years.

 

Ok I've joined the Quote of The Day group, just so I can share this with you.

"Don't you roll out my playdough!"  Ben Rothman (age 3)

My son.  Whenever he was reluctant to do something, like take a bath, I'd use the old standby, reverse psychology.  "This is my bath, don't you take my bath.  Don't you get in that tub, hey put your clothes back on and get outta that tub this instant!"  Worked like a charm every time.  It was all wink-wink and he knew the difference between that "game" and when I really meant no, so no harm, right?

One day, while I was busy puttering around the house he was playing with his playdough at the table.  He has a bit of trouble rolling it out flat but I've been encouraging him to try to do as much of it himself as he can.  He asked me to roll out his playdough for him and I told him that I couldn't at the moment then resumed the activity I was engrossed in.  All of a sudden I realized he was tip toeing past me with a shifty look in his eyes and in a very grown up tone (and trying so very hard not to giggle or grin) he said, "Don't you roll out my playdough!"  He then pretended to be very interested in a box over in the corner of the room peeking over his shoulder at me from time to time.

Of course I rolled out his playdough.

Show us something that's ridiculously cute.

My children singing & dancing.

Nuff said.

:-)

Just try, TRY not to fall in love, or awwwwww.  Or giggle or smile while watching these.

Sorry I don't have the actual videos on my computer but here's the link to where they are.

http://www.ringo.com/member/video.html?photoId=207648898

http://www.ringo.com/member/video.html?photoId=207649979

Just try.

I dare you.