New Toys and Old Friends

This is our newest baby toy. Not that we get many new baby toys these days. Between Sylvia and Gus and their toys, we pretty much have baby entertainment covered. In fact, I just got rid of 3 more garbage bags full of toys, bringing the yearly total to at least 10. That is insane. In case you have bought toys for my children and are now wondering if I have given them away, you don't have to worry, most of the toys were either thrifted or old hand downs from people cleaning out their basements (and we are always very grateful for hand me downs, some of our most beloved toys are hand me downs, I just have to keep the clutter under control!). But this toy is special because it was gifted from my dear old college friend Elena. Not only that, it is straight from Africa.


And here is the lady behind the love. This is Elena. She loves Africa. She loves it so much that she jumped at the chance to take a job in Sudan. Alas, the opportunity fell through when the political unrest became too much of a concern for her would be employer. So now she is going to Ghana instead. I think this will be her fourth job in Africa.

Anyway, Elena and I were great friends in college. We worked together, we partyed together, we were room-mates for a time, we were even in a band together. You see, we were both bluegrass geeks. I decided to take up the mandolin around the same time she took up the banjo. And that's how SexyGrass was born. Our repertoire consisted of about three songs and we never had a gig, unless you count the recital we participated in with all the other students of our pickin' teacher.

SexyGrass was a blast. But what we really liked to do was hang out with boys who played bluegrass. And have them give us haircuts.


Okay, that only happened once and Elena's the only one who got a free trim.

I don't play the mandolin anymore and I don't think she plays the banjo (do you Elena?). These days I spend my time teaching my own daughter how to play the piano. And ruminating over ways to take the stress out of cleaning up the playroom.

Temptation

I recently found out about Etsy. I love it, I want to buy something from it. I want to put a bumper sticker on my van (or do I?). This one is awfully tempting.



I found it at MuthaCrafter's Etsy shop.

Millie Magic

Feast your eyes on my sweet pea...

Sylvia Today

Today we are going to have an interview with Sylvia.




Sylvia who happens to be so stylish that she pulled this size 18 month jean jacket out of the coat closet, turned up the sleeves and made it work for a little playin' in the rain this morning.

(I stole this idea from another blog I read. Some of you may read it too, that's the only reason I confessed. I'm shameless.)

So Sylvia, what are you doing right now?



Drinking a rootbeer float.


What's the best thing you did today so far?



I made a house. I can open and close the doors.


What's your favorite thing to play with?

Sand and seashells at the beach.


What's your favorite thing to eat?



Candy.

What kind of candy?

Vanilla ice cream.

That's not candy.

Yes it is.


What scares you the most?




Ants coming on me.


What's your favorite school subject?




Math.


What's your least favorite?


Doing piano.

Do you like knowing how to play the piano?

Yeah, but I don't like learning to play it.



What do you want to be when you grow up?



A mom.


How many kids do you want?


Ten.


What will some of their names be?



Carsly, Holly, Bran, Scree, Aly, Path, Pat, Patty, Drey, Plea, Ask

I like Carsly, Holly, Aly, and even Drey, but do you really want to name your kids Scree, Bran, or Ask?

No.

What We Do For Fun Around Here

Gus is sweating from partying so hard...



A little of this...



this...



and this...



that's one of my nephews...




that...




Ugh, this is a bad picture of me, but can you see our false nose rings? So fun...



A little posing for the baby...



Hickory dickory dock, with humans...



and dangit if he doesn't take that thing EVERYWHERE.

A Dirty Little Secret

I bet you don't know the real reason we left our house in the country to move to the big city. You'll never guess so I'll just tell you. The rafters were getting too small for Sylvia's evil twin Goldia. We needed a full-sized attic.

Greenie Peas

We've got a new habit around here. Whenever one of the kids are mad, really mad, like not only can they not have another cookie even though they've been asking for one for the past half hour, now they have to go sit on their bed until they can keep quiet about the stinkin' cookie kind of mad, they up the ante from regular crying to a horrible tortured wail. The kind of response you would expect if they were standing in the street in a downpour and a murderous looking clown suddenly appeared climbing out of a gutter, coming to get them.

Yeah, we had some of that going on last night. Gus wouldn't eat a pea. Rex was determined to make him try one. He ate them a year ago and dadgum-it, he was going to eat one last night. Well I bet you can't guess what happened. After he expended unnecessary energy with a super-scream or two, he ate one, and he liked it, and today when we were outside he couldn't get enough.






So Sylvia and Gus (and Millie and any other kids who happen to read this someday) enough with the histrionics already!

First Impressions

It's been over a year since we've had a beach vacation. Sylvia has been several times before and ever since she could talk, she's complained about the loudness of the ocean. In fact, loud noises have really bothered her in the past and it wasn't unusual to see her covering her ears at the beach, in a busy gym, or by the roadside. But this picture confirms what I've been noticing over the past couple of months. She's growing out of it.



Here's Millie's maiden voyage into the water. She found it a little shocking.



When Gus got his first close up glimpse of the water he immediately turned around and without a sound bolted back up the stairs and down the beach access. He was almost to the street before my sister caught up with him. But she brought him back and it was only a minute before he stood bravely facing the surf, shorts pulled up, waiting for the water to touch his toes. And then he ran away again, but this time I think it was more for laughs.

There are several beautiful gardens in this city. Sylvia especially enjoys our visits to them. We kicked off our vacation with a trip to a Celtic festival. There's a large garden where the festival was held which we roamed around in between leaving the festival and going to get ice cream. The poppies were heavenly. I'll definitely have to get a pack of seeds for next year. I also found out what a safflower is, what a wild looking plant, I wish I got a picture.

As for my own flower garden, I almost succumbed to ambition with plans to run down to Ace Hardware and pick up some summer bulbs, but I cut myself short (for now at least), I have enough to keep up with around here and it's amazing how easy it is to neglect the watering when it's 90 degrees outside.

Piano has been our toughest subject. Sylvia has started to say she doesn't like it and I've felt my hair turning gray at the end of the lesson too often. And it has everything to do with me. I started off expecting too much. In the interest of establishing good habits (correct finger position, accurate timing, etc) early I have been too harsh and demanding. It can be so hard to remember that she's only five! Sometime last week I reevaluated my strategy and have been much more forgiving when she plays with the pad of her fingers instead of her tips. I've cut our load down to working on one song per lesson. We still work with a metronome but I don't expect perfection. Things have gotten better.

I also asked Sylvia what we could do to make piano practice more fun. She's come up with several solutions. She's decorated the piano with flowers from outside, we play silly little games (ex. I have to say "ding !, ding !" whenever she's played well), and today she got a sticker each time she played in time with the metronome.

There is a certain set of skills I'd like each of my children to master, even if they don't enjoy the work...especially in the beginning. But truly I do want it to be enjoyable, this is worthwhile stuff. I am sure there's a way to impart the skills without leaving a distaste and I pray I'm on the road to finding it.

Although she isn't crawling, Millie has been getting herself around lately. At first she was rolling all over (and under) the place. Today I noticed that she's progressed to pulling herself around by the arms. Kind of like the army crawl without her legs. Very cute. In the above photo, she was attempting the short trek from her mat to my chair. Notice her lips pursed, she must be concentrating, it's hard work.

Sylvia is still enjoying drawing. I'm going to add drawing lessons to our morning routine. I think I will start off using the Drawing is Basic program.

This particular drawing features Sylvia and Laila laughing about something (and that something is unknown). My favorite detail is the pineapple knocker on the yellow house.

Gus made a neat little Tinker Toy creation yesterday and I wanted to take a picture of it. But while I was getting my camera out, things slid from a pleasant weekend breakfast to screeching and hollering as Sylvia took back her doll from Gus so that she could pretend to feed it a pecan banana muffin. Since the camera was ready I decided to persist for my photo. I got Gus to sit down with the toy in his lap. Before I could take a picture of it, he insisted that I catch one of him crying.



Here's the toy.

Sylvia and Gus each had $5 to spend (from the Xmas before last I believe...they're not into cash yet obviously) so I suggested they take themselves out to dinner and of course they picked Chick-fil-A. To sweeten the deal, I offered to take them to the Children's Museum to work up an appetite.

So we get to the Museum, I whip out my membership card as I approach the front desk, and am greeted with "Your membership has expired." What!? Didn't I just renew that thing 3 or 4 months ago. Nope, turns out the computer was right, it had expired, that very day in fact. I can hardly grasp how fast time is moving past. The older I get the quicker it goes.

The lady-behind-the-desk had mercy and let us in, telling us me I could renew on our next visit. The question is, should I renew? I love the Children's Museum, it is chocked full of creative and imaginative playthings and the kids always have so much fun there. But our own house is full of fantastic toys and art supplies that we hardly touch. We've got large blocks, small blocks, pattern blocks, Kapla blocks, beads, paint, board games, an unoccupied ant farm, really great things that are very rarely handled.

I think for now I will forgo the membership as an act of simplification. It's one less thing to spend money on and one less thing I feel like I have to get to. Maybe in the winter I'll be changing my tune. But for now I'll be opening my own cabinets when entertainment is called for.

The salad greens are ready! Rex and I have a little joke. We're both trying to watch our weight and whenever we're tempted by anything, one of us will remark..."That won't look good on my g-string." It's in anticipation of our beach vacation. Finally, we can be tempted by something that will look good (hypothetically speaking of course).



I came up with a new rule for Sylvia. Whatever's on your face has to be eaten.




So far we've got a new celery and olive lover in the family.