Happy 2013!!

Beautiful Mess by LD. Mixed media. 2012.

It wasn't until naptime that I realized LD's "beautiful mess" was so much more than crayons. It's an art installation. A three-part commentary on the existential plight of man.

The piece in its entirety:

Part One: Pain. Foam roller, free app card for a web clipper, Belle, black play-doh, cat toy, yellow cardstock, crayons, a black race car.

Part Two: The Mystery. Gordon and his tender, a single tricolor candy cane of pipe cleaners, crayons, yellow cardstock. (I'm not sure, but I think this part is unfinished.)

Part the Third: Chaos. Gavin's sock, a pad of mini-sticky notes, a police car, red and green card stock, one green clog, knitting stitch markers (mini hair elastics), a plastic Thomas ring, crayons, many pipe cleaner candy canes in a seemingly random (or is it?) pattern.

Liamism

After dumping his crayons all over the floor:

"Mama! I made a beautiful mess!"

"These Are a Few of (Liam's) Favorite Things"

Alternate Title: "Is My Child a Hoarder?"

I was sent on a mission to find the toys that Liam NEEEEEEEDS before naptime and found this tableau, carefully staged on an overturned brown storage crate.

I spy with my little eye ...
... A bunch of engines (of course): 2 Thomases (Thomasi?), Gordon, Belle, Percy bath toy, a boxcar, and a coal tender of unknown provenance.
... A lobster purchased at the Providence airport known around here (and everywhere else since it goes everywhere Liam goes) as "Tigey."
... A tennis ball
... A snowglobe
... A fun-size Kit-Kat (left from Halloween)
... A yellow foam die that I use with my library classes
... A teething toy
... A tiny garbage can that goes with his green garbage truck
... A scoop for laundry soap
... An elastic band for my physical therapy

And Now This ...

I blinked, and suddenly this was going on. Gav is sitting up and munching on Cheerios.

SEVEN!!

No. No. We haven't forgotten you. We've just been crazy busy and are rarely in front of the computer at home. (Even now, I'm posting this from my phone.)

Here's our delightful boy at seven months.

Liam Quote of the Day

(fueled by an Almond Joy)

I see something white and wintry!

(growls): It's a van!!

Month Five

I will post something with words soon. Promise. In the meantime:

Where do they come up with this stuff?

This is the string of thoughts that came out of Liam's mouth one morning this week when he saw the fall decorative display outside of his daycare.

LD: "Daddy, look over there!  I see a scarecrow!  I see pumpkins!  I love pumpkins!  But they are still just pumpkins.  Not pumpkin scones yet."

I love that he somehow already knows that the pumpkin scones that he loves come from pumpkins.  We have never talked about this before.  That kid never ceases to amaze me.

Saturday Has Always Meant Chocolate Milk

This Kid is Ridiculous

Bumbo: Four Months

Best Day Ever (8/15/12 Edition)

And then a train went by in the background and then we got ice cream and then Liam's head exploded.

It's Hard Out There For My Boys

Look at these two. It seems that getting pushed to the park and back is EXHAUSTING.

Velociraptor

If Liam taught us anything as parents, it's that babies make very, very strange noises.

Gavin is no exception. This is the near-constant soundtrack of our lives right now:

Keepin' Cool

Maybe you didn't notice, but it's been hot this summer. We've found some ways to stay cool.

We've spent some time by the pool (we didn't open the real pool this summer, which is probably why it's been historically hot):

LD pretending to be an elephant. 

We've used the sprinkler for more than watering the very dry lawn:

 

We've eaten ice cream:

A lot of ice cream:

We hit the beach:

Sometimes, though, it was just too hot to go outside. Cabin fever sucks, especially in July. So we've found some ways to pass the time inside, too.

With some crafty-type activities:

With some yoga:

With some baking:

Gavin has kept cool by sleeping in the air conditioning at home or turning purple and complaining loudly when we've taken him out. Kid does NOT like to be hot.

Sunday Morning

Three Months

Poor bug. He's got a cold. That's why he has dark circles.

Bumbo Time Machine:

Two Months.

One Month.

Liam's Bumbo Pics.

Musical Interlude

Liam is his own biggest fan.

Liam At School

Liam loves school and always has. From the pictures below, taken from his school portfolio, it's not hard to figure out why.

One of the first pictures we ever got from the school was of Liam laying on his tummy with a piece of paper and paint in front of him. He was about four months old and couldn't even sit up, but they had him painting! That's continued into the preschool class that he is in now.

Since his transition to preschool last month, LD has been learning to write his letters. Look closely and you can see that we might have an aspiring doctor here.

The sandbox has long been LD's playground fave. The proof is in our vacuum cleaner bag, which is now home to at least half of the sand from that sandbox. Here, he's poking around the cover and asking his teacher where the water came from.

Panopticon

Our poor little bug confined in his circular prison.

Don't feel too badly for him. He's needed some way to exercise his legs for a couple of weeks now.

What to Expect When Your Kid is 4 Weeks Old?

Expect to lose your mind and think that it's a good time to take down a wall in your kitchen.

We've been dreaming of taking down the walls that separate the kitchen from the living and dining rooms for quite a while. However, removing whole walls means new cabinets, rearranging (and probably replacing) appliances, new floors, etc. Plus the wall between the living room and the kitchen is the main load bearing wall in the house and the furnace and water heater chimneys run through it, so that's going to take some planning (and we'll probably get a new and more efficient furnace and water heater). And, oh yeah, some dollars too.

The project remained very much in the dreaming stage with a timeline beginning when at least one of the kids is out of daycare (if not both) and we aren't shoveling most of our disposable income toward that.

When Gav came along, though, space that was already tight became kind of impossible. Either three of us were crammed in there while a fourth (oh, who am I kidding? while DAMIAN) tried to cook or three of us had to be elsewhere and D was left alone to slave over dinner.

This is getting really long.

Short version: we realized that we didn't have to take out both walls at once. We could take out the non-load-bearing wall now! This weekend! Why not? The baby's only waking up three times a night! EASY!!

After some talking and measuring and idea-bouncing, we decided to only take out the upper half of the wall (to avoid losing cupboards, having to reroute a furnace intake, redo the floors, etc.).

Before:

Stupid wall. Even looking at it now, I can't think it's anything but stupid. Why is there a wall there?

Whoop. There isn't now!

D did the bulk of this over Memorial Day Weekend. At the time, we joked that it was the hottest weekend of the year. We were so naive then.

But anyway, he spent several hours in the 100-plus-degree attic rerouting couduit to move the light switch from the marked-for-death wall to another.

He did an AMAZING job. It's such a big difference.

During:

And after!