Baby race car

Munchkin has a future as a race car driver apparently

The boys have figured out that she fits nicely in a lego box. They take turns pushing her around the house, timing themselves and pretending they are driving a race car. Sarge loves to play chase and has a hard time not getting too rowdy during such games.

They take turns being the engine, the timer, and the pit crew for the race car.

It's lovely to see them having fun together and including her in their imaginative play. They have also built little houses for her out of chairs, blankets and pillows and played with her inside them.

Munchkin thinks it all a lark as long as she's not tired. She lets them know when she's done and crawls off to find me for some comfort and a nap.

Explorations and Dinosaur hunts

There's always time for a little bit of exploration. :) Our two explorers dressed and prepped their backpacks with maps and other essentials for dinosaur adventures. We went to a dinosaur park (around the block) and hunted for dinosaurs. (This was a compromise from sailing a boat across the ocean to explore the world in a dino hunt. Thankfully they are easy to negotiate with right now.)

Our neighborhood has stegosauruses, apatosauruses and droemasaurids running around with volcanoes and dinosaur trees galore. We were lucky to make it safely!

I almost got eaten by a droemasaurid taking this shot of the boys hiding from it. Guess I'm a thrill seeker! Luckily I had my fierce dog as protection. :D

Forts and more

Trainboy has been a puppy quite a bit of the time for the past few weeks. So he has moved on from building nests for baby birds to building "cages" for puppies. (Sarge sleeps in a kennel, which Trainboy calls a cage.) Dinoguy needed his own fort after it was discovered that Trainboy's was just right for one little puppy and no more, so Fixitman came to the rescue and helped them create a wall of fort fun. I think its great that he's putting all his building knowledge to good use.

Later, a tired little Trainboy puppy crawled into his "cage" for a nice afternoon nap.

Things around the house

I think we have really reached a good mostly moved-in state now. I say that because we would rather be here much of the time than go out anywhere. Our home is comfy and warm and full of love. There is nothing to escape, our home is a haven. I love it. More so when it is mostly clean instead of mostly dirty.

Things I better write down before they are lost to my memory:

Trainboy now carries an invisible train named Thomas in his pocket. Thomas is spelled of letters, much like the show "WordWorld". Thomas makes steam, which Trainboy will gladly demonstrate to you.

Trainboy also like to make nests, usually on the couch, but the photo is one of the more creative ones. Thank you Ikea for designing these nice organizing bins just the right size to hold little boys. Now I'll never misplace him!

Dinoguy loves Zooboomafoo right now. He has mastered the basic principles of DVR - namely that you can pause & rewind your favorite parts over and over, to learn from them. He plays the song at the beginning over and over and dances to it while singing. It's pretty awesome. The only other song that gets such treatment is the "I'm not an egg anymore" song from Backyardigans Mighty Knights. He asks many questions about animals and plants, some of which I know the answers to, some of which I don't. He watches Bindi the Jungle girl occasionally too, but I don't think he gets as much from it as he does from the commercials playing during its breaks. (And fast forwarding during commercials is a no-no!)

Dinoguy had his first ingrown toenail this past week, (put that in your baby book!) which led to a discussion of "good white cell guys" and "bad bacteria guys" in our bodies, as part of why Mommy had to release the pus from his toe. Thanks to google images, we looked at many leucocyte and bacterial images, as well as the various parts of the cell - flagellae, mitochondria, and the like! His toe is fine - its just a sign to us that he is past due for new shoes - to the store!

I have found my cooking experiment bug again and have been having fun in the kitchen. I post about that on my food blog though. :) However, I mention it here because of the fun thing that happened today with my chocolate berry tart. Dinoguy wanted to help put on the berries at the end and instead fell hand first into the tart, coming out with a hand full of chocolate. I cried out in pain (my tart!) but suppressed the yells. However I still scared him a bit with my reaction and had to reassure him that it was just fine, would taste fine, I wasn't upset, it was an accident, its just a tart...Fixitman helped me to stay mostly calm and deal with what really was a minor accident, though it felt major for a bit. So maybe I'm a bit neurotic about my food experiments?

Odds & Ends around home

Thursday we went to get the newspaper and found the most amazing spiderweb in our front yard. It was huge and beautiful. We spent a while looking at it and taking pictures. H really liked it and didn't want to go inside. I really encourage you to click on the picture and enlarge it so you can see it better. It was almost perfectly symmetrical, and stretched from the tree down to the shrubs that line our front walk. Sadly, it was gone by Sunday. (Probably the lawn mowing on Saturday or something disturbed it.)


Saturday we worked in the yard moving the garden box (box o' weeds really) off the patio into the yard area. Digging up the dirt in the box was heaps of fun for the boys, they said we were making "dirt castles." They dug for quite a while, moving the dirt mostly to the wheelbarrow... only a little ended up on each other! I had no idea digging in the dirt would satisfy them so much, I would have let them do it all summer. Kids have such awesome imaginations. Digging up the grass was much more fun to DH & I, but not to them. That wasn't nearly as cool as making dirt castles. They went and watched "The Brave Little Toaster" while we did that. Haven't watched that in ages? You should. It's fun. :)

But we did find TONS of these interesting little larvae in the yard. Totally funky looking. Turns out they are stag beetle larvae that feed on decaying wood, so apparently we have that in our yard? Anyway, they aren't considered a pest, which is good, because we have an army growing in our yard!

There were some other interesting bugs too, but this one won my interest because it had the little legs and was so long. Total ick factor!

Our little garden box is now full of good quality dirt, 6 pepper plants, 15 bean seeds and some onion seeds too. I plan to add some cool weather crops soon too. One of the bonuses of the Texas heat (yes it was 95 today) is that there are 2 full gardening seasons almost, and we will basically be able to garden year round without any special equipment. Woo! Now I just have to develop my gardening skills more!

Home Depot Kids Workshops & other thoughts

We went to the free kids workshop at Home Depot today. The project was biplanes.
Here is DH & L working on them:


L has gotten really good at nailing thanks to practice at the kids workshops. He does very well. H is not so much great at nailing though he likes trying, and loves the finished product! Well, they both do:






But pretty much, I made H's with some help from DH. It made me wonder about things that kids think they can do but really can't because their parents have done them for them. How bad is that?

I'm not really sure. It's not really a preschool craft, its aimed at 5-12 yr old kids, but they let us do them with the boys. And they do like the finished project. A LOT. I'd like to think that L has at least learned from it some, about how things are put together. I know he worked on his nailing skills. It wasn't really free play, or child led from the perspective that there are instructions, specific pieces and specific orders to put them together in. Is this really the parents enforcing a set of rules about how the craft turns out and expectations and setting them up to feel inadequate that they can't do it on their own?

If we didn't help them, it wouldn't turn out like the others, and that's what they wanted right? I think it is. I guess I didn't give them enough chances to say what they wanted and how they wanted to do it. L probably could have eventually done it himself with guidance, H just doesn't have the hammer skills yet. What to do? Probably take longer, be more patient and helpful instead of leading and being in charge like I prefer. Even with H. Because he is growing up so fast.

Well we got the package for last months craft that we missed to do with them at home, so I guess I have another chance this month to be good and patient and nice and genuinely helpful. And then there is also Lowe's workshops. ;)

Change of topic

L has really started to get into imaginative play that is genuinely his now. His doggie, who he has named "Fred" and he do many interesting things together and Fred also needs his own sunglasses, swimming pool, and anything else L happens to be doing. He has also tried to lead H in some imaginative home play that he picked up from a cousin I think. It's so fun to see.

While talking with a friend the other day about kids with labels, she talked about a nephew she has with a poor home life where the babysitter allows him to "run wild" all day. The phrase really struck me and made me wonder. What does it mean to "run wild". Can adults run wild? If so, is it okay for adults and not okay for kids? I think the meaning of the phrase is important, because I strongly believe in kids having free time to play however they want and do whatever they want. Structure is good in some things, but not all the time. Is that letting them run wild? Or is it when I don't make L put on his clothes until noon because he just wants to wear his PJ's? Or is it allowing them to eat pizza with me for breakfast? Or is it all related to a lack of discipline and cultural understanding of what is okay and acceptable as opposed to what isn't? I haven't decided yet.