Split Second

Sam and Evie played so nicely in her room the other day.  It was warm and sunshiny in there and they both wanted to draw.  They were so quiet, too, focused on their artwork.

But don't be fooled - they don't always play this nicely.  

In fact, it often changes in a split second, with little to no warning and maybe even for no particular reason.

Oh well.  It was nice while it lasted!

Library Girl

Evie and I went to the library on Monday with some photography friends.  Most of the pictures I took of her there were outtakes (i.e. blurry messes), but I still caught a few of her in action.  She's such a busy little thing at the library, it's hard to keep her still long enough to snap a photo.  She enjoys the books and likes to watch the other kids play with the alphabet puppets, but her favorite thing by far is the play kitchen.  She's so busy fixing everyone tea and oatmeal and soup.  She shared nicely with the other little kids there, too, which was a pleasant surprise for Mommy!

We brought home a couple of books for her; a full-size version of the "strawberry book" (which she has memorized!), a couple of books with photographs of baby faces, a book about colors and a book about numbers.  She likes to read the number book and point to the objects in a very random way and say "one, two, free, four, five, six...". She isn't counting one-to-one, but she gets from one to ten and always sounds very proud of herself for doing so.

The tricky part of taking her to the library is finding a way to get her out of there without her screaming and throwing a tantrum.  Food usually works.  This particular day we needed get groceries so I asked her if she was ready to go get a slice of pizza from Market Street and then get food for dinner.  It worked!  

Until next time, library!

Guybrarian Sam

Friday was community helper day for the Kindergartener's at Sam's school.  He chose to go as a librarian, or as our friend and favorite librarian Ms. Ellis called him, a "guybrarian".  He dressed up in his shirt and tie, grabbed some books from his library basket and borrowed the wayfarers we bought Daddy for his MadMen party last spring.  I added a notecard with some call numbers on it in one pocket and pencils in the other to complete the look.

He also had to create a poster that showed what a librarian does, so we came up with some questions and did a phone interview with Ms. Ellis to help him come up with ideas of what to draw.  He presented his poster in class and his teacher sent me a picture.  We think he makes one cooool guybrarian!

Click, Take 2

This is one of the images from the series I took of Sam for our photography exercise.  I like this one a lot, even though we can't see his face.  I took another one of Sam playing with this Brownie at a playdate almost four years ago.   He's not using it right either time, but gosh, it's cute!

{2015}

{2011}

Take Five (or so) with Sam

Sam and I participated in a creativity exercise for our photography playgroup yesterday.  The original plan was to shoot for 90 seconds to capture some of the expressions and little details that make Sam...Sam!  When the time was up, we would put the camera down and be done before he got bored or annoyed.

We ended up shooting for at least ten minutes.  Whoops!  It took us both a while to get into a groove.  I realized fairly quickly that the best way to get natural expressions from him was to get him talking.  He's such an animated storyteller, as many of us already know.

We talked first about Andrew and Kelly getting married next fall (and "the kiss"!) then Evie and school and some other stuff.  He asked me where wind comes from, how it's "made", and shared his theory that tornadoes blow through Denton and push the air to Providence.  I had to put the camera down at that point and clear up a few things; can't shoot and talk science at the same time!

I look at each of these thirty-two images and think, "That's such a Sam face!" and "Oh, that's such a Sam face!", and yet they're all so different.  I don't know how many people, strangers included, pointed out how expressive Sam was as a newborn, but it was a lot.  Looks like not much has changed.   Now we've added marker-ink on the hands, shaggy hair that needs a cut, chapped lips and an amazing vocabulary to those expressions.

And we love each and every one of these Sams.

Naptime

I've posted a lot of sleeping photos of Evie lately...I'm afraid that's the only way to capture our little blonde blur right now.  She's always on the move!

I'm guessing Brian won't be thrilled I posted pictures of him sleeping, but I just couldn't resist.  Evie was so comfy snuggled next to her daddy.  Brian on the other hand, not so cozy.  It's hard to be 6'3" and be comfortable on a small couch with a two-year-old couch-hog 

and

her blankie

and

 her dolly, but he did his best to rest with her for a good long while.  Such a good daddy.

The Spritz Tradition

Christmas doesn't start until the first Spritz is baked!  Having done this for the last several years, Sam is a pro at making our favorite Christmas cookie.  Now Evie's old enough to learn how to help make them.  Sam graduated to coloring the dough this year so Gram and I could teach Evie how to decorate with sprinkles.  She was quite a forceful sprinkler, so Gram had to tape all the holes closed but one!  The only thing she'd sprinkled up to this point was parmesan cheese on her spaghetti, so she kept asking to put "more cheese" on the cookies.  Silly Evie!

Gram's antique cookie press has been on the fritz for several years and finally died this Christmas, so we had to press the design disks into the dough by hand.  But it worked great and the Spritz were as yummy as ever!  Thanks, Gram!

Finch Park

Brian and I took the kids to Finch Park to burn off some energy and enjoy some outside time.  This was our first time there (not counting the time I took my class here after a field trip about eight years ago!) and Sam and Evie loved it.  They ran back and forth between the two little playgrounds and Brian helped Sam try to climb a very challenging tree.  It's always fun to explore a new playground; we all get bored going to the same places over and over again.

Dinner at the Mellow Mushroom downtown (with a very hungry, very crabby Evie) and a walk around the very crowded square concluded our family outing.  Despite the challenge of taking two little ones out to dinner it was a special little afternoon together!