the utility of sleep

Josh has been working nights this month and thus needed to sleep in in the morning. He has actually trained his body quite artfully to sleep just about the right amount of time despite getting a bit interrupted by noise coming from other parts of the house. I giggled when I saw his purposed genius of extending that sleep time - construction grade ear muffs. He is convinced it helped him sleep longer than usual (although he appeared from the bedroom at the normal time as always) yet did complain that they woke him up a bit because they started to squeeze his face too much. I am convinced he saw them lying on his work bench in the garage at 3am and came up with what he believed would be a brilliant idea, yet, how many truly brilliant ideas come to a person around 3am?

They've got Skills

Scissor skills that is.


I am ultimately amazed at how quickly the kids picked up the joys of cutting paper into tiny confetti pieces. You can sense the great welling pride they have in their own fine motor skills, and with good reason! It is quite coordinated to get your thumb to work against your hand in such a sychronized fashion. It hasn't been more than a couple of weeks since I really let them start playing with scissors, now I can barely stop them. It has been helpful to their practice time that Faith and Danny both are adept at crawling up on to the counter, crouching under it while opening the over head cupboards, then standing to the perfect level to find whatever art supplies they need. It was a good plan in the beginning to put the art supplies up high so I could control when the messes occured, now I might re-think that. They are wonderful and sitting at the table to make their artsy messes. My favorite was this morning when Faith took the caps off the markers and stuck them on all 10 of her fingertips and then put them through the scissors to cut. I can understand the protective gear on the paper holding hand, but the scissoring hand did seem a bit much. She smiled, so pleased with herself, the whole time.

To scale

Your average cob of corn looks much larger when shoved into such a little face. Danny and Faith love the little pegs you stick in the ends to hold their corn on the cob. My favorite part is seeing their little bite marks in the discarded cob, it looks like mice nibbled them.

Much more fun all together

Our latest trip to the Arizona Museum for Youth was most fun - it was the first time that Josh could join us! Whereas most trips I am cheerleading the kids to be creative, Josh hopped right in first thing to build fantastic castles for the little one, mostly so he could topple them down on top of them. His enthusiasm was contagious and I couldn't help but be a 'bigger' part of the play as the queen in the castle sending little Danny out to slay the daddy dragon. Danny loves to 'got him!' any time I tell him to tackle his daddy.


Th Japanese art display is still up and we got the kids into a real pretend tea party, Japanese style. It was fun for me to remember going to a restaurant just like that in Japan when I was barely a teenager and kneeling on the mats just as they did. The kid size kimos were a big hit too!

These tube blocks were a great source of entertainment in Artville. Danny became a 'Dan in the Box' unprompted which spurned Josh to up the anty and stack the blocks so the kids couldn't get out. When they were stuck, Josh knocked them over, thus inventing the next came - roll the kid in the tube.


It also doubled for a nice puppeteer cover.

Where I was this weekend....

On Friday, Danny, Faith and I got to step in a bit at the Hancock home so that brand new little nephew/cousin Major John Hancock could be born! Lucky we only live a few houses away, and it was so fun to be there with the expectant family and then see this beautiful boy!

Girls' Best Friend

Faith and Dusti are best friends. It has been so wonderful to babysit Dusti while her parents work so that Faith has truly found her best friend. They have had swimming lessons together, taken preschool together and now are going to start gymnastics together! Yep, whatever one does, the other does too!

Faith was determined to make Danny's doggy costume fit so their imaginary play would work out. I have no idea what kind of wedgie she had after this one.

Moments of Faith: Jesus says love everyone

Early this morning Faith and Dusti (he littlest bestest friend) were having a discussion about who loved more people. Faith triumphantly declared "I love EVERYONE! all my friends, my family, my lots of lots of cousins, and Jesus and Santa Claus."

At lunch, sitting peacefully at her peanut butter and jam sandwich, a voracious playful daddy figure took a snatch at her grub. "Hey, don't eat my sandwich! This is a sharing house." Faith often uses the 'sharing house' rule to her ultimate logical leverage. "Okay then, may I have some of your sandwich," asks a kind daddy. Faith turns a bit on the diagonal away from him and sets her eyebrows the same. She mutters half under her breath, "Get your own sandwich."

Local Trends

This is my mini commentary on today's fashion:
Is it forward? Is it backward? All mixed up? Absolutely. Much akin to the 1980's anything goes, but there does seem to be some rules as to how they go. I took a bit of jaunt around the mall yesterday trying to find a simple swim suit for Faith and kept giggle at what I saw.....fashion. Ha!

Well, my kids are fashion forward....or at least I give the room to put on whatever they want to while in the house. Check out Faith's amazing layering effect, not one, but three tu-tus gracefully tiered and tied together ultimately with flowing fairy crown beneath the 'urban cowgirl' look hat.


Danny sports the every popular shag hair and backwards sister's tie-dyed t-shirt. Pair that with a permanent Kool-Aid smile and this kid is heading for the runway. Pants, you say? Who needs them, believe me, I just took a browse at the fashion icons of the day and found that they don't really wear pants. I count it good that Danny has on double underwear (as opposed to some pop culture icons going without).

Psychodelic man!

Labor-less day

Even though Josh did work in the evening we made sure to go to the pool and barbeque and spend a little time with family. It is what the fore-fathers would have wanted.

This just in

Blogging is boring.

The weekend I nearly forgot..

I love the spontaneity of being a kid. At any given moment of the day they have changed their whole world.



I couldn't help but sing "I'm a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride.." when Danny got demoted to the dump truck rodeo.
I babysit some kids on Thursday night while their mothers attend institute class. One little boy has an obsession with making everything into a weapon, very distressing. Yes, I know it is a boy thing, however, the problem with weapons is that it turns everyone into your enemy and my kiddos are very sensitive to being the 'bad guy.' So we have formed the rule 'No weapons cuz weapons make enemies not friends." It goes very well with Faith's favorite "Arizona house is a sharing house" and my favorite "we love everyone in our house. After the fourth time of repeating the 'no weapons' rule, which he has known for weeks now, he literally got the picture and decided to make a camera out of the legos instead of a laser. Perfect! Everyone loves a photographer and soon everyone was posing in front of him and he had the happy positive reinforcement that he needed to understand that weapons make enemies and nice games makes everyone love you (as opposed to tattling on you and screaming 'no!' at you).



Friday mug shots. They found my favorite lipstick. They found head bands and then the little warriors were lined up for role call. Naughty. Stinker. Too cute to stay upset with long. Unfortunately Faith has been asserting her 'too cute' scenario a lot lately which has blossomed into a full blown disobedience. What do you do with a three year old that you love too much to fight with?

Another no-no caught on film with the 'but I am so cute' pose. Monkey feet stinker.