Friday, March 28, 2008

Out like a lion too?!?!

It's officially spring and we're having yet another snowstorm. While Liam will be happy about this (he was lamenting to me yesterday that his sled didn't work as well on a muddy hill as on a snowy hill), I am sick of hats and mittens. At least for spring, they can all put on their own puddle boots without parental intervention!

We have a bit of a mishmash of pictures this week... Eamon and Liam hanging around the house with me while Colin was at school, Easter eggs galore, and then a fun outing to the Museum of Science for their new live lizard and snake exhibit (a must for our boys -- and I had fun playing radiologist at their new body imaging exhibit...). Lots of learning this week... Liam perfected his own popcorn-box tower "all by mine self", Colin started hitting balls OVER THE NET at this week's tennis lesson and Eamon took his first mini step yesterday from one chair to another. (Next week will be full of Eamon's first birthday pics so I'm going to live it up the next few days while I still have my "baby".)
I don't know how this started but Liam became obsessed with stacking these popcorn boxes. I showed him once and then he insisted he could do it on his own. And then he did.


Eamon somehow found, smashed and opened some chips. See that that mischievous smile? He is going to be trouble one day (soon!)


The little explorer takes his first of many rides on Rocket. A rite of passage in this house!


Eamon discovered the rice table. And enjoyed every moment of digging, sifting, throwing, eating it.


Colin meets one of his cousin's new bunnies.



Did that thing just pee on me? Liam actually was quite gentle with the living Easter bunnies.


I thought the kids did an amazing job this year with the Easter eggs. And NO creative input from Mommy for once!


While the boys love baking, they don't always love the outcome. Liam was gung ho about these cupcakes until we added the two cups of shredded carrot, to which he replied: "Bleck. I DON'T LIKE carrot cupcakes". Then he ate three of them.



The Easter Spider tied yarn around each of the kids' easter baskets this year and looped it all over the house so they had to follow the trail to find their loot. Liam got bored after a while and just found all the eggs and ate their contents while Colin painstakingly followed his string hither and yon. Liam has brought me his ball of yarn everyday since asking to recreate it though.


The boys were suddenly enthralled with space on this trip to the science museum and insisted I take a picture of this to show Daddy who chilled at home with Eamon that day.


They had a particularly fun time looking at all the veterinary X-rays at one exhibit. They REALLY liked the ones that showed paper clips, rubber bands and all manner of other foreign objects that the pets had swallowed. I fear they are going to start feeding these things to Clara just so we can take pictures of her innards.


Colin put the whole skeleton puzzled together by himself. Liam took credit though!



Liam gets an earful from one exhibit. I wish he listened to me half as well.




They had a very cool exhibit I hadn't seen before of all kinds of playground equipment and the physics that goes along with it. The boys very much liked the gravity experiments (elevating blocks 50 feet over their heads and then letting them fall) and Liam had fun riding the centrifugal force experiment.


I was instructed to take photos of every single lizard we saw. I'll spare you all of them. Here's one guy (or girl) who was particularly social and greeted us nicely.



Colin said these lizards were "just like us--one Mama and only two boys today!" since Eamon stayed home with Daddy.



This python was exactly 6x Liam's height.




The boys actually worked together to put a snake and lizard skeleton puzzle together. There were real skeletons embedded in the plastic which amazed them. Liam threw a FIT however after he walked away and the museum staff took it apart for the next set of kids to figure out. He cried real tears (rare for him, he's more of a rage and stomp type).


They spent quite a long time finding all the camouflaged lizards in their different habitats. Colin was disappointed that we weren't allowed to scare the bejeezus out of the frilled lizards so they'd show their "ruffled collars" though.


Digging for fossils and artifacts amused the boys for long enough for me to do check out all of the geeky science stuff I wanted to see.


Saturday, March 22, 2008

Excess exhuberance

Poor Liam. He doesn't always TRY to be bad, it just seems to happen most of the time. He has been terrorizing Colin all day and Colin was finally fed up. I told him he could go up and play in his room by himself and have some peace for a bit. Liam went searching and searching for him to continue his reign of terror but Colin has locked himself in the upstairs bathroom with some books and his Leapster. Liam was hurt at first and then decided that they MUST be playing hide and seek and he just wasn't informed! As he continued to look high and low for Colin, he stopped by to tell me as I fed Eamon: "I am looking for my best big brother in the whole wide world!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that Colin doesn't want to be found. Or that Clara is also hiding under the bed to get away from him...

Friday, March 21, 2008

Peeps and Jellybeans

Here are some goings-on of the week, topped off by Easter-egg coloring today!

1. Colin started tennis lessons which he LOVES. He already wrote a love letter to his teacher, Phil, and got his own racket while out shopping with Daddy. He scurries around the court with such glee... though I think he might do slightly better if he wasn't stopping to hug Phil every few minutes. Hopefully he'll outgrow all this teacher-love before he hits high school!!

2. Liam decided he doesn't want to take tennis... "I want golf" instead... well, that's not going to happen but I did pick him up a set of kiddie clubs for his upcoming birthday party. He's been a real handful this week, but he did find time to be a little cute... I found him under the kitchen table spearing miniature marshmallows with a toothpick, making little barbells out of them and then popping them in his mouth. He exclaimed: "Mommy! I need another polka dot!" I was clueless until he said: "You know, the wooden ones, the ones I poke the dots with!!" Ah... another toothpick! He loves to eat with toothpicks... wait until his first cocktail party, he'll be all set!

3. Eamon said his first "real" word this week. He's been waving for quite a while, but he now adds on "Bye-bye!" when he waves. And he does it consistently so I think it counts. We're very slow to "believe" in first words, but this one just might stick!

The boys had a photo shoot at our friend Jenn's house on Thursday in their Easter outfits. She's drumming up some photography business and I knew she had a much better shot at keeping my kids interested than the grueling, sweaty, anxiety-ridden sessions at Sears that I usually endure. Between her kids to act as playmates and the M&Ms and gummy bears I bribed them with, I actually got all three of my kids in one picture. This is the first time EVER. It's impossible to get them to all stay still and smile at the same time, but at least you can see that Liam IS part of the family for once! Here are just a couple of the many shots we got. Thanks, Jenn!!




All three in one place! For about a nanosecond...
I always wonder... do other people drug their kids for photos or is it just mine that run amok the whole time?

You can see Liam pouting and clutching his container of gummy bears... in case anyone tried to deny him his "treats".


He looks so harmless... looks can be deceiving though!


That's all I'm hoping for in MY Easter basket this year!!

Plopped down in a giant tea cup... though not giant enough for his growing girth!

Colin's silly smile, saved only for photo ops.

There's Colin's REAL smile!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

In like a lion and out like a lamb (I hope)

Colin and I made Leprechauns out of a paper towel tube and some hot glue. He LOVED the hot glue, but Liam thought it was "bleck" because he kept getting "spider webs" of glue stuck in his hair. He also stuck all the googly eyes up his nose.

Eamon is constantly stuck in/under/on/against random pieces of furniture and toys. Bad mommy always finds time to get the camera out before saving him. He doesn't look any worse for wear though!

Big truckload of baby!


The best way to clean up after a dinner party? Get some cheap help! The promise of "green spray" and climbing on the table was more than enough to entice Liam to lend a hand.

Daddy left a magazine laying around. Eamon ate it. We figure it's good roughage in his diet.

Liam is at the height of couture fashion with his argyle, big brother's boots and saggy diaper. This look will be all over the runways in no time.


Eamon had a fever for a day or so and spent most of his day napping to get rid of the nasty virus.


Mommy and Daddy went shoe-shopping over the weekend so we had lots of empty boxes hanging around. We used them to do a cool painting project with rubber bouncy balls. The kids liked it and it wasn't nearly as messy as I had anticipated... until one of the balls got loose and bounced blue paint all over the playroom.

One of Colin's finished rainbow ball paintings.

Are you talking to ME?
Eamon loves to open all the cabinets these days. I don't mind when he's in the plastic cup cabinet but I put the kabosh on the cereal cabinet after he had a blast dumping it all over the floor and then eating it. Clara loved it of course.


At the end of our hike, Liam decided he needed some refreshments
so he got a stick to use as his "cone" and ate a bunch of snow ice cream!


This imprint is about as close to being an angel as Liam gets these days!

Two explorers on their big expedition. Their favorite part was
tossing snowballs in the stream and seeing whose melted fastest!

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Cost of Saturday

a new swingset for the boys: $1115.61

Liam's first bicycle: $38.23

propane refills for the grill: $21.98


a day of errands and lunch with Colin: priceless

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I've been having trouble uploading pictures from the last week or so but in the meantime, here's some audible tidbits to keep you up to date on what's been going on here in Casa Crazy recently.

Exhibit A: The weather turned warm for a couple days so the kids got to wear their spring vests instead of the full regalia of coat/mittens/hat/snow pants. Liam exclaimed, upon putting on his puffy blue vest: "I'm wearing my life saver!" Summertime seems eons away, but the last time he wore a vest, it was his Coastguard-approved life jacket. It must have made a big impression!

Exhibit B: Winter came back with a vengeance and dumped a bunch more snow on us. During a hike in the woods with big, half-dollar sized flakes drifting down, Colin waxed poetic: "Mommy! It's like snowy butterflies dancing on my nose!"

Exhibit C: Liam: "Mommy, what does dotcom mean?" Ah, the technological age.

Exhibit D: After Liam was clambering to go outside, I asked Colin if he wanted to come out too. His response: "Nah, I think I'll do some worksheets" and proceeded to sit at the kitchen table with his markers and do kindergarten vocabulary worksheets while Liam ran around the yard like a maniac and went sledding backwards down the back hill. Sometimes we worry about Colin but there's a reason we call them "the Brains and the Braun". :)

Exhibit E: This morning, on my way to work, I noticed that my gas tank level had sunk from "15 miles left" to an ominous --- on my dashboard. This, after already being late, having yet to drop the kids off at my parents and needing to photocopy a quiz before my first class... Liam calls out from the backseat: "Mommy, why you say 'Oh Shit'?? You're SUPPOSED to say 'Oh Sugarpops'!!"

Exhibit F: Picking up Colin from school is Liam's worst time of day. He wants to go to school himself and since he isn't old enough yet, he likes to get his attention by running circles around the other moms like a whirling dervish and refusing to listen to anything I say. Tuesday was particularly bad at pick-up when he took his boots off and had a tantrum when I made him put them back on. As I lugged Eamon out under my left arm and built powerful bicep muscles literally dragging Liam along the ground back to the car, the Zen Colin proclaimed: "Liam, you look RIDICULOUS! You're going to ruin your shoes like that!" Ah... age four is so pleasant. (Almost) three... not so much. I have two more months of age two left, what happened? I got gypped!

Exhibit G: After using googly eyes to make little Leprechauns, I caught Liam hiding under the table with them and we had a little chat about it. Last night as I tucked him into bed, I asked him what his favorite part of the day was. He said: "Making Leprechauns! But I NOT put eyes up my nose ANYMORE!!"

Exhibit H: Uh.. uh... Eamon said: "Bababa" a million times. And he waves when you ask him to and he is learning to sign "more" this week (crackers are amazing incentive). Not very verbal yet, but I felt bad leaving the little guy out!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Mathematics v. Construction Paper and Glitter Glue

I was helping Colin get dressed this morning and I happened to be wearing an old tee shirt with the RSA algorithm on the front. Colin starts reading, "P, Q, P, R, I, M, E, N...I don't know that one, daddy, looks like a ladder (it was an "=" sign), P, Q...." He runs through it all and asks, "uh, what words are those?" I told him they're not exactly like the words he knows but they still mean things like words in a different language. Since he's been chugging along with addition fairly well recently I saw no reason to ruin his Sunday by explaining the difficulty in factoring very large numbers so I said that he could learn more about it in school someday, if he wanted to. Colin looked pensive for a second then sort of shrugged.

I suspect that art and recess just won a major rock-paper-scissors round over mathematics and cryptology.