Row, Row, Row Your Boat (or chair)

Ellie decided she wanted to row in the pool today. So she improvised with a plastic golf club, and the little chair from their playhouse. Surprisingly, it seemed to work fairly well for her. I think she's practicing for some white water rafting sometime in the future.

William LOVES to play outside. Now that he can tolerate the feel of grass on his feet. Just like the big kids!

How To Give Yourself An Outdoor Enema (In case you ever wanted to know...)

1. Sit on the "Mount Tiki Soki" sprinkler.


2. Wonder what is going to happen next....
3. Uh Oh! What's that?!


4. The close up shot of that expressionWhy an enema you may ask? Scroll down to see why....




















Yikes! And yes, Nick did high tail it for the bathroom directly afterwards. It does beg the question, why would you do that?! And the standard kid answer: "I don't know"! He assured me that "DAD lets (me) do it ALL the time Mom". Figures. Apparently when the neighborhood kids come over to our house to run through the sprinklers, this is what the boys are doing. Now I'm not so sure I want the whole gang in our yard!

Yum, Popsicles!

Ellie was actually enjoying this rocket pop, honest! (She is watching her older brother interacting with the sprinkler. See that post for details. I sympathize with her confusion.)




Aaaaaggghhh! Brain Freeze!!

Bye Bye Birdie, Part II

Some of you "old time" blog readers may remember a posting from way back when we first moved here:

Summer 2006
The kids and I were out in the back yard gardening, when I noticed a baby sparrow sitting on a shrub. We had just enough time to Ooh and Aah over the cute little bird when SNAP! A ball of blonde fur went streaking past us and the jaws clamped down over the little guy. Nick and I stood in shock, horrified and speechless as the dog swallowed the poor little creature whole. But our sweet little daughter, who was only 20 months at the time, summed up the event very matter of factly with "Bye Bye Birdie"!




Summer 2008
So tonight I was outside with the kids when a ruckus erupted on the neighbor's lawn. One of the neighborhood cats had caught a baby robin and was making a run for it. The neighborhood kids noticed this and descended on the feline as if they were storming the beaches at Normandy. They did manage to wrestle the little robin away without any injuries to humans or the cat. This is Thea (one of the neighbor children) proudly displaying the rescued bird. Now I use the term "rescued" loosely. She was squeezing that little bird pretty tight, and it was none to thrilled about it's new captor. The poor thing was peeping in terror as the kiddos sternly lectured it on staying away from cats and each one tried to pat it on the head. Needless to say there were a lot of pecked fingers. I was having a hard time not laughing, but I did step in when they started looking for somewhere to give it a bath.

Anyway, true to form our daughter frankly summed up the situation. She announced to the crowd of much older children that "You are going to have to put that bird down sometime. Then the cat is going to get it for real. And then it's Auf Wiedersehen bird!!"

I think that Eleanor's use of German to illustrate her point clearly demonstrates how much she has matured in the last two years.

I really wasn't aware that she knew that particular phrase. Perhaps she is channeling her German ancestors?!

Summer Nights

It has been so super hot here during the day that the kids are relegated to the safety of the air conditioned house after lunch. However, come evening time they are free! The whole neighborhood seems to magically appear after dinnertime as the day's heat starts to dwindle. It is surely Nick and Ellie's favorite time of the day. And of course like all children, they LOVE that it is light out until almost 9pm. Now if they can only figure out a way to convince Mom to let them stay out that late....

July 4, 2008

It was a quiet day around here. Not very much going on in the way of daytime, patriotic celebrations. We do miss the East Grand Rapids festivities! The kids did lots of water balloon fights, sprinkler leaping, and paddling in the swimming pool. At 97 degrees, it was the perfect weather for water fun!

Ellie singing her own unique version of the National Anthem.

William had already passed out for the night when I took these photos of the big kids. Maybe I'll try to catch a photo of him in his patriotic t-shirt tomorrow.

We drove over to the Fireworks and decided not to park in the "sardine can" type parking with the rest of the city. We had hauled William out of bed and plunked him into his car seat, and weren't sure how long we would have before he completely lost it. Plus, Ellie has ear tubes now and you never know how she is going to react to loud noises. We fortunately found a parking lot close by with a fabulous view of the spectacle. Even that far away the kids were complaining it was too loud. And William slept through the entire show. So we were very glad that we didn't invest the time and energy in going to the actual festivities on site! Maybe next year....

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy Independence Day!

William

William at 14.5 months.

Nick

Nick 6 years.

Eleanor

Ellie at 3.75 years.

The Many Faces of William

William is really fun now at fourteen months. His vocabulary is growing by the day, we are up to 25 words with one two word phrase. We decided he will have to be a good talker soon, just to keep up with the constant jibber-jabbering from his siblings! He graduated from walking to running about a month ago and now is perfecting walking backwards and discovering the joys of climbing furniture. He hasn't reached any dizzying heights yet, but I am sure that will come soon enough. He is our first child to discover how to go DOWN stairs all by himself. We had to teach Nick and Ellie not to go head first/face first downstairs when they were toddlers, but William figured that out all by himself. Which is sort of a relief for me. He is fascinated with how things work, particularly anything electronic. But also enjoys slamming doors, defeating child safety locks, throwing (any) object, and generally following the big kids around like a puppy. He thinks they are too cool, and so are their dangerous toys!!

Health wise he hasn't had the best month. Gastroenteritis followed by about ten days of toddler diarrhea, followed swiftly by Croup. He is about a week out from the Croup now and still coughing, but feeling much better today thankfully! He is supposed to be concentrating on gaining weight (yeah, right) but all of these viruses are not helping! Ugh!

Hello? Is this the Overseas Operator?!

William's favorite new "toy" is the phone. Any phone. He knows how to turn it on, and dial numbers randomly or access the phone book feature. Be forewarned! If you answer a call from us and you hear only breathing, babbling, or "Hi Dada" (his first two word phrase! New this week! Of course it's always Dada first....) it's probably little guy reaching out across the miles!

Summer Silliness

A fairly uneventful weekend around here. Just house/yardwork and trying to stay cool in the 90 degree temps. William tried the kiddie pool for the first time. He was so fascinated with splashing in the "deep" water that I wasn't able to catch a photo of his face.

Sunday we decided to go for a picnic after church. After packing up the car with the requisite mountain of kid related gear, numerous trips to the potty, and filling up with ridiculously overpriced gas, we were off. An hour's drive into the mountains we had finally found the perfect spot and settled in for a scenic meal. When wouldn't you know it, the skies opened for an afternoon storm. Perfect timing. So it ended up being a picnic for five in the minivan. Not particularly pleasant. And now the interior is covered in sticky kid fingerprints of various colors and textures, gummy puddles of lemonade from the Capri Sun packets, and piles of crumbs. Guess what I will be doing this week?!

Now THIS is how you PARTY!!

Nick received a very neat painting easel for his birthday from Nonie and Grande. Both the kids love it and couldn't wait to try it out. Thank You so much!!

But as usual, Eleanor carried on the creativity a little farther than we wished.... Here she is in all her green and blue glory. "Mom, you have to feel your emotions" was her explanation for this horror. Not sure where that phrase comes from, but I was definitely "feeling" something!! I couldn't decide at this point if it would be better to have a glass of wine (or two), or to just throw in the towel and go to bed for the night!