Wordless Wednesday--To the park!

Thanks to Wordless Wednesday for this excuse to share some of my favorite pics.

Coffee filter spring decorations

We have had the best time lately making these coffee filter prints.

The boys dribbled food coloring onto the coffee filters.  Some of them got pressed together to make symmetric prints, but most ended up pretty random.  They went through an entire container of coffee filters.

Then Noah picked out a few to string up in a garland.

And now we're all decorated for spring!

A word of warning, though:  food coloring stains. 

Half the fun for the boys was getting to use the normally off-limits food coloring, but I'm sure we could have used watercolors with equal success.

It starts early

Several months back, when the boys were having a hard time cleaning up like I'd asked them to, I was inspired.  I grabbed Nate's stuffed lamb, channeled Lamb Chop as best as I could, and had Flower ask them for me.  Presto!  The playroom was clean in no time.  And ever since then I've been periodically bombarded with requests to "Make Flower talk!  Make Flower talk!"

So now the boys are the ones making everyone talk.  Nate, in particular, can give voice to just about anything.  In the last few months he's made a puppet out of a spoon, a cube, a vast assortment of his stuffed animals, an equally vast assortment of matchbox cars, his toes, and, on one pointedly ignored occasion, his penis.

Boys are different.

Train ride

The boys have been begging to go on a train ride lately.  So today, Mark took off from work a bit early and we met up at Ft. Worth's mini train.

A beautiful spring day, a train ride, popcorn, and the playground and a picnic after.  It really doesn't get any better than that.

Imagination chair

A good friend passed on her daughter's outgrown car seat to us, so we'll have one for Nate when Owen needs the convertible one he's in now.  I thought we might put it to good use inside until then.

To make our Imagination Chair, I pulled out some foam stickies and some colorful string.  (I did test the stickies first, and yes, they do come off of the fabric cover easily.)  Then we set out to decorate

and pretend.

Courtesey of Noah--me imagining ice cream was the healthiest food on the planet and could be eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Noah as a sleeping cat

'Twas Fabulous Fun!

Back to normal

Lovely.

Texas weather

Just a few days ago, we had this:

Today, the second day of spring, we woke up to this:

Ack! Perfectionism

Somebody once told me that my problems with keeping house stemmed from perfectionism.  It made no sense to me at the time--if I'm a perfectionist, why do I allow things to fall apart so badly?  But now I see it.  They're always creeping up on me, the thoughts that since things will never look the way I want, I might as well not even try.  Paralyzing perfectionism.

So at least with the blog, I'll let the perfectionism go.  I had planned to go back and show every good picture and share some nice moments out of the last few weeks.  But no.  Just this:

Cousin Natalie and Nate

There.  Now that's perfect.

He likes it!

I'm way behind on everything I want to write about--most especially the COUSINS! last week--but I had to skip to today.  Today is a red letter day, for today, Noah finished his 5 bites of asparagus.  And said, "Yum!"  And allowed me to give him more.  And ate that too. 

Discarding the Christmas-colored sprinkles he puts on his oatmeal and the occassional lick of my lime sherbert, this marks the first time since toddlerhood that he has willingly eaten anything green.  Has he really turned the corner?  Cross your fingers for me.

Monday Monday

Nate's favorite day is Monday.  Every day he asks me what day it is, but if I tell him it's, say, Thursday, he corrects me.  "No, it's Monday!"  So when Monday does roll around, he is overjoyed. 
"What day is it?" 
"Today is Monday." 
"Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!"  (No amount of exclamation marks could overstate the 2 year old excitement here.)

What will he think of Mondays in, oh, 20 years?  We shall see.

Spring!!!

Lookie what's in our backyard:

It's finally been warming up.  Yesterday was gorgeous, so after voting we went adventuring.

This was, at times, a flag, a tree, a castle, a hide-and-seek game, and simply a way to annoy little brother.

Time to spend the next month outside, before it gets too hot to move.

Last week

Lots of Daddy fun

"Cleaning" the floor

Crystals of all kinds

Brotherly love

Rec center fun (why do I never take my camera there?)

Volcanoes!

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Roary the Racing Car,

which led to running around the house yelling "Go Go Nitro Boost!"

over and over and over

A new trick

Important business

Cupcakes!

Karnival time

Yes, I know we're almost two weeks into Lent--they still want to dance around the house to Mardi Gras music nearly every day.

Making pretties

Lots and lots and lots of Hot Wheels

and more brotherly love

All is well.