I love me some Tanner

Tanner started out as the sweetest, cuddliest, cutest little baby you could imagine.  Seriously.  If all babies were like Tanner was, everyone would have 10 at least.  So cute and so easy.

Then he turned 2.

Now he's sassy and opinionated, but just as cute, so I have a serious problem.

For instance, last night, Kirk went in to get Tanner out of the bath, and he told Kirk to go away.  So Kirk gave him a few more minutes, and then went back to get him out of the bath, but Tanner told him to go away.  This happened several times before Kirk finally just took him out of the bath, and the look on Tanner's face was just priceless.  Deadly, but priceless.  That kid can glare with the best of them.

He's just so loveable, though.  Tonight, I turned on a Netflix show to distract me from the mountains of laundry I needed to fold after days and days of sickness and Tanner heard it and came out of his room.  When I told him he needed to go back to bed, he said, "Oh-KAY-yah" like the sassy pants that he is, but he turned around, went back into his room and shut the door, and for a moment I thought, "Amazing!  He actually just went right back to bed!" but then he started this sweet little wimper that I couldn't ignore and we cuddled for a while.  How can I resist?  I love the way he feels all curled up in my lap.  I'll be sad when he gets too big for that.

About half an hour later, I could hear him driving his cars on the walls so I went in to tell him to put his cars away and found him curled up back to back with Anthon, in Anthon's bed, with Anthon sound asleep.  And, while I think it's absolutely adorable that he crawls into Anthon's bed (on a regular basis--Anthon wins best brother of the year for putting up with it night after night, especially since Tanner doesn't go to sleep once there; he drives his cars on the walls...or Anthon's back) I told him he had to get back in his own bed to which he promptly shook his head and said "no." while giving me some serious glare action.  I insisted, and once he realized I meant business, he looked at me with those huge blue eyes and all the curly messy hair and the sweetness only a baby can muster and he said, "Lap?"

So we cuddled in the rocking chair for a while.

He gets me every time.

Here are some pics of the little munchkin...enjoy!

Cuddling in the chair.

 So excited about the kitty!

 Still lovin' those slides.

He ADORES dogs.  Any animal really.

5 minutes and counting...

I have five minutes before I need to be out the door and driving away to take Anthon to gymnastics.  I figured, what better time to catch up on the blog I haven't posted anything on in over six months? 

This is a perfect example of how great my timing is and always has been.

I can't tell you how many times in the past month I've thought "Oh, I need to blog that..." because I lost count at four thousand and sixty two, but I've always stopped myself because what about the past six months?  Am I supposed to just pretend I didn't entirely skip them?  But if I wait until I catch up on everything I've missed before I start posting about every day type stuff, I'll never start.  Period.

So I'm starting with this rather pointless post.  But it is a post.  And stay tuned, because there's more coming.

Gotta go.

Sewing with kids

I feel a little presumptuous trying to teach anyone how to sew, really.  I can do the basics, but I, by no means, am an expert.  For small children, however, who have never before done any sewing, I felt comfortable being the one "in the know."

We've been studying ancient civilizations for history, and we recently learned that hunters would sometimes have little bags made out of animal skins that held rocks, twigs, etc. for playing games on their hunting expeditions.  So, of course, we made hunting game bags.  I was not about to sew a bag out of leather, so we did the next best thing, we used animal print fabric.

The kids helped measure, cut, and pin the bags.  I sewed them and they played with them non-stop for days.  They went on countless hunting expeditions.  They slew horses (using Erilyn's giant stuffed horse as the target), imaginary bison, wooly mammoths, and stuffed cats who were stand-ins for saber-toothed cats, or smyladons.  They crafted themselves some bows and arrows with sticks and elastics for their hunting trips.  The funniest thing of all, though, was when I heard Anthon choking a mouse (his stuffed mouse) to death, making choking noises to make it more real.  When I laughed out loud, Anthon looked up at  me with genuine interest and said, "what are you laughing at Mom?" Since it was inconceivable that his hunting antics could be construed as amusing.  It's a serious business to provide for your family, after all.

Fun times.

Here they are on their latest hunting expedition (notice the slain horse in the background of Erilyn's picture.)

Tanner with swords and guns--ignore my obnoxious giggling

Tanner lately...

My baby is in nursery. This is such a cute age. And hard. He's getting very opinionated about things, and SOOO curious about everything. He's also in the copying stage, so he's always copying whatever we're doing. He'll put lotion on his face while he watches me get ready in the morning, he helps the kids with their jobs. He copies everything, really.


Here he's helping Erilyn dust the bookshelves.


Here he's reading with the big kids.

Here he's lamenting the fact that the big kids get to play outside in the snow and Mom won't let him out. Notice the stool.

Here he's cuddling with Erilyn while they watch Baby Songs. (This one was really cute; until I came around the corner with the camera, Tanner had his head on Erilyn's shoulder, and her head was resting on his. So cute!)

And here he's so proud of himself for climbing up onto the table with the other kids while they stare zombie like at the TV.  They really don't watch that much TV, but it's a good time to catch them when they're still, I guess. Anyway--toddlers are cute.

Science experiment

This is precisely why I love homeschooling. It's hard, it takes a lot of extra time and energy on my part, but you should have seen Erilyn's face when we did this science experiment!

We were talking about properties of water.

When I told her we were going to do a science experiment, you could literally see her thinking, "Say what? How long till it's over and I can go play kitties again?" But she tried to be a good sport about it.

First, you do the trick of putting some cardboard on top of a really full jar of water and then flipping it over. Ta dah! The water doesn't spill out!

Her eyes literally go twice as big as normal. She immediately said, "Do it again, Mom!" Ahh....the joys of seeing your child get excited about learning.

So we did that a few more times, and they each tried it.




Then, you put hot HOT water in one jar, color it red, and then cold COLD water in the other jar, and color it something different. Do the fancy trick with the cardboard, and then put the cold jar of water on top of the hot jar of water. Carefully pull the piece of cardboard out, and watch what happens to the water. (The colors mix. Predictable. And not that interesting. Unless you like mixed colors.)



But THEN! You do it again, with the hot jar on top and the cold jar on the bottom. Pull out the cardboard, and the colors don't mix!!! Again, Erilyn was amazed. Anthon was too, but I knew he would be. This is right up his alley. We had to do it about 4 thousand more times. We learned that hot likes to be on top and won't mix if it's already on top. But if it starts out on the bottom, it races to be on top as fast as it can. Same with air.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but they loved it. So fun.

Reading buddies

For homeschool, I'm making Anthon practice reading out loud. He reads too fast in his head, and he just skips over words. Reading out loud helps him slow down, practice being animated, and forces him to pronounce words. Plus, it's great sibling time. And Erilyn loves it. (Anthon does too, but he has to pretend not to. See "Cool Brother Code sec. 2 item 24")

Here's what we're loving lately. So fun.

Cooking with Tanner

Tanner loves to cook. He's already discovered, of course, that he can carry around his stool anywhere and immediately be able to see and do things he's never seen or done before. He has two stools, one big and one small. Actually, niether stool is really his, but you try to tell him that. The small one is handy for around the house stuff. Turning on and off the TV, for example. Or, even better, the Wii or Xbox while the kids are playing a game. Or for finding books on those hard to reach shelves. It's light, and easy to carry. But for jobs where height is really important, he uses his kitchen stool. It puts him at precisely the right height for "helping" with every day cooking chores. He's becoming an accomplished stirrer, a competent scooper, an excellent licker, and the best ever mess maker.

He loves it thought. LOVES it. Anytime I even go into the kitchen, or open a cupboard, he comes running--running--from wherever he is in the house, finds his stool (and if I've locked it up in the pantry to prevent this very thing from happening, he goes to the table and gets a chair. Stinker.), pushes it up to the counter and looks at me like, "Okay, Mom! What are we cookin' today? And where's my spoon?"

I can't resist.

It's lucky I have a broom.

And then this happened...

I'm sure you are all aware of the super storm that has dumped a boat load of snow across the American Midwest.  Apparently, that includes Texas, though I'd call us the Southwest.  Anywho, we got dumped on.  And iced.  But first, iced.

First we had some hot weather, you might recall, and then we had a good ol' Texan rainstorm.  Then it froze, and Texas shut down.  We were all iced in.  Seriously.  I could never grasp this concept of an ice storm until I moved here. We had 2-3 inches of ice covering everything.  People couldn't even open their garage doors, let alone drive their cars anywhere.  I was glad we are well stocked in the food department, because if we weren't, we would have been SOL, as my dad likes to say.  Kirk didn't even have to go to work!  I still didn't see him, though.  He was studying.

The kids spent that day skating on our back patio.  Fun times.

Then it snowed.  And none of this little fairy dust stuff.  It snowed big, fat, white chunks for a full night and day!  We had nearly 8 inches of snow on our trampoline.  So the kids spent that day doing snow angels, having snow throwing contests, eating snow and icicles, and getting soaked and frozen since we don't really have the proper outerwear for this kind of weather.  (We live in TEXAS for heaven's sake!)  The kids toughed it out, though.

Notice the 6 or more inches on the trampoline and fence, and it's still coming down!  Love those fat, fluffy flakes.

I thought about trying to go sledding, but when I took into consideration our abysmal outerwear situation, and the fact that there are no hills nearby and impassible roads, as well as the fact that they don't even sell snow boots here, let alone sleds, we decided to stay home and play in our own backyard.  It's a shame, though, really.  Sledding is one of the few great joys of winter.

Kirk teased Anthon about the fact that he had more school last week than all his friends did, since school was canceled for the whole week!  Crazy.  It was kind of a bummer, though, thinking about all of Anthon's friends who were home during the day, but we couldn't play with them because we were snowed/iced in.

It's all mostly melted now, though it's supposed to snow/sleet on us again in the next few days.  We have errands to do tomorrow, though, so I'm hoping it'll hold off until Tuesday at least. 

Happy Winter!

That is SOME. HOT. WEATHER.

Said Anthon as he walked in from jumping on the trampoline with Erilyn.  "Can we have a popsicle?"

"Hmmm...hot?  Really?"  I thought.  The Weather Channel says it's only 73 F, but when I went outside, sure enough.  The sun felt hot.

I happened to have a couple of popsicles in the freezer left over from summer, so I let the kids eat them.  But when they came in asking for more, and I told them we were out, they filled up cups with ice cubes to take out and crunch. 

I just have one thing to say about all this: IT'S JANUARY FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!!!!

The end.