dragon cake

I was inordinately proud of this one for Sam's knights & dragons 7th bday party.

Got the idea from here.

Here's the 7-year-old himself at his school's amazing Social Studies Gathering this morning:



(A lovely celebration to cap off a months-long social studies unit encompassing origins, immigration, geography, culture, and families. Each of about 100 1st and 2nd graders spoke individually, introducing themselves and saying 2-3 sentences about a place in the world important to their families. Also some singing, and then followed by breakfast in each 1/2 classroom.)

We're totally swamped and ridiculously sleep-deprived, but I'm done teaching in just over 5 weeks (and looking forward to a 5-day Easter Vacation in a week-- the perks of being at a Catholic school. I might even get caught up on grading.).

home sick

and singing. We discovered PhotoBooth and its video capacity, and now the fact that we never have the videocamera charged up or accessible when we want to record stuff is not such a problem!

how my parents...

One of Frida's favorite bedtime books is How my parents learned to eat. But one of her favorite things to do is to be silly by making absurd switches. Tonight she requested to read "How my parents learned to swim."

I need 3

Me: Frida, do you need attention? (it was pretty obvious she did; she was provocatively dumping things out, and J and I were sitting on the couch shopping online together while Sam read a book next to us)
Frida: No, I need THREE tentions.

pics

Between the rush of J's book-finishing craziness, and then as of mid-January my teaching 3 courses at once, I don't have time to update very often these days. But here are some pics from the past couple of months, with notable holes in the record.

Two from Hanukah gift-opening here at home, with new hats on both.

New k'nex:


and a new-to-Frida doll bed (Craig's Listed, repainted and covered with a flannel swaddling blanket that had been hers, and before that Sam's, and before that Uncle Markus' and maybe even mine). Also new tights and legwarmers:



We spent a nice week (sans J.) in Minnesota with Omi and Opa. No pics (I have some somewhere, but like I said, no time these days).

Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids a membership to the Children's Museum, and we went there one weekend in late January, meeting Frida's classmate Sam there.





Cool tank at which you can see the underside of turtles:



We enjoyed cookies at Flour afterward:






Frida and I have matching toenails:



She loves this outfit:



I spent a lot of time trying to capture her in it, and Sam got jealous and wanted me to take a picture of him. He rarely expresses jealousy of her, though he (understandably, I think) gets very frustrated when she breaks stuff that he has worked hard on. For the most part they get along very well and are affectionate with each other more than not, and Sam asks for-- and surprisingly, often gets-- space when he needs it. Sometimes he really looks older than 6, no?



Sam is really into k'nex. This is a motorcycle. It's sturdy enough that it has held up through multiple stunt runs down the ladder to the kids' new bunkbed:





Frida likes to build with magnatiles:



And here's a funny story that I posted on FB. Frida has been potty training (fairly successfully). For a while she got a Swedish fish each time she pooped in the potty. It didn't take long for her to start gaming the system: One night she pooped 5 times-- and this was *after* a full day of daycare with associated mid-day poop. I couldn't figure out a way to require a minimum size. We recently ran out of Swedish fish, though, (not surprisingly, with that many rewards/evening) and now she just poops a couple of times a day. In the potty.

Aaaaaand that's all folks. More at some unspecified point in the future!

halloween

Sam was fire (his idea). It doesn't show up well in the pictures, but inside some of those clusters of flames are little battery-powered flickering tea-lights.

Frida had said she wanted to be a gorilla, and I had a great idea for a costume, but we ran out of time in making it and fortunately she was totally happy to be a witch again.

pics from MN, and making one's own destiny

... courtesy of Omi.

Enjoying ride-on toys in the yard shortly after we arrived:



Omi had acquired and set up kid furniture, toys, and other great stuff to make a very well-stocked playroom. The girls one morning, still in pajamas:



Emma was very happy when Omi made Japanese food:



One morning while Emma and her parents were shopping (for a stroller for Emma's soon-to-arrive baby brother), Omi, Opa, Sam, Frida, and I went to the beach by the lake near their house. It was too cold to swim, but there was a cool digger toy:



Girls wearing matching t-shirts from Omi:




___

Recent kid quotes:

Both kids have strong opinions about the music we put on in the car. It's usually some kid-friendly (if not specifically kid-centric) CD, but even so, there are songs that each kid requests to skip. Frida calls out, "I want bippet doodit!" (I want different music).

The other day she was drawing, and first drew an "ah-dader". After that was done, she announced that she was drawing a "tott-diwul". The latter took me a while-- any guesses?

And then apropos nothing the other evening, Sam mused, "I really need to figure out what I am and what I'm supposed to be like." (me: ???) "What my life is for. Like in the Billy Jonas song, Happy Accidents."
Me: "Do you think every person's life is for one thing?" Sam: "No, I think my life has a reason." Me: "What kind of reason?" Sam: "A reason to live. Like a special reason, it could be hidden anywhere. Like in a cave."
(We talked for a little bit about how a person's life can have many reasons, how each one of us can do many different important things, and how many of those are things we don't realize are important until after we have begun or even finished them. Sam also mentioned that he meant the part of the song in addition to who you're supposed to marry, because he already knew that part, but he refused to elaborate on that.)
Sam: "I feel like there's something going to happen to me that tells me what my life is for."
(More conversation in which I let him explore this idea while trying subtly to reassure him that most of us don't have some stroke-of-insight about our vocation/avocation.)
Sam: "Or maybe you make your own destiny."