Through the eyes of a three-year-old

I let K play with my camera last night.  Here’s what he did with it.

Interesting perspective on the floor:

Is the room tilting or is it just me?

His favorite letter

TV:

Dinner:

Me & my budding artist:

And, just a couple more from playing last night.  I think the quote of the night was B, about one of the monsters we faced…

“It was like a water buffalo and a brontosaurus had a baby”

And if that mental image isn’t disturbing enough, here’s a disturbing real image for ya!

KW made a yummy orange chocolate birthday cake for N:

King K: For ME? (you should hear him say that in his sweet little voice.)

I should hope so! :)

The day they start charging for it, I give up…

;D

Of wish lists and games

Today when I picked the boys up from school, K’s teacher had posted the kids’ wish lists on the wall. This is what I found when I looked at K’s wish list for Santa:

My wonderful, silly little goober of a son has requested that Santa bring him fish (which we already have!), monsters (wha???), dogs (plural!), Christmas socks, and a piece of paper!!!

The paper he’s already getting in the form of an oversized pad of drawing paper that I already picked up. I will find the child some Christmas socks by the end of this week (so he can wear them this year!!) Unfortunately, monsters are right out, as are dogs since R and I are both allergic.

But I was screaming with laughter reading this list of his!

Then tonight T and KC came over to play games. N unfortunately got stuck late at work. KC came over first, we ordered some pizza and started a game of Zombie Fluxx. T showed up a few minutes later and started teaching R how to play Cosmic Wimpout. T apparently wasn’t rolling so well…after the food came we were in the kitchen chatting when we overhear R trying to teach K how to play. “You roll all the dice, and again, and again, and then you move. Then UT rolls the dice and rolls again and stays still. Then you roll the dice, and again, and you move up some more.” Not a direct quote, but close enough!!

Just Visiting?

I’ve taken to walking some mornings in a cemetary, while the boys are at school.  It’s peaceful, and interesting.  And in an odd way it has reinforced my desire to have no “final resting place”.  I look at some of the older stones there — there are some from the eighteen hundreds – and I wonder about the people and their lives.  And the large vault that’s for a 19 day old baby, and the brothers who both died in their thirties, and lots of others.  It is, like I said, interesting.  Intriguing, even.  But I don’t want it for me. 

So the name on this headstone caught my eye one day, and since it’s almost Halloween I thought I’d share.  I’ve done some editing to remove specific identifiers from the pic, but the actual last name is unaltered.

Butterflies

A while back we went to the butterfly exhibit at the arboretum. Here are some pictures from our day:

This way to the butterflies!

American Lady:

Black Swallowtail:

Monarchs:

One that I couldn’t identify:

R with his guide:

Caterpillars:

Butterfly Eggs:

Just-hatched caterpillar:

Some of the flowers:

Frogs — I JUST missed getting a shot of a frog eating one of the butterflies but it gulped just before I snapped off the pic:

After seeing the butterflies, we went over to the meadow maze. The boys on the way:

R was impatient to go in, C’MON, Mommy!!!!

A funny bush:

R saying goodbye to H:

It was a really fun day. The boys had a great time seeing all the butterflies, caterpillars, eggs and frogs. We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch, and R likes to take credit for single-handedly leading us through the meadow maze so we weren’t lost forever. The kids also found a water fountain on the way out that they enjoyed playing in a bit to cool off, since it was a HOT day.

I have some more pictures to post soon from our crazy weekend at Dorney Park and the Renaissance Faire, hopefully I can get to those soon. I also have to post the rest of the pics from the (mis)adventres of R, K, and IA when he was visiting us in August.

First day back-to-school

Today was the boys’ first day of preschool for the year. R is in his last year of preschool, and K is in his first year of actual preschool. (Last year he was in a Children’s Morning Out program.)

It was orientation day, meaning parents came with the kids and spent an hour hanging out in the classroom with them. Since both classes “orientated” at the same time, N came with us so he could go to K’s classroom with him. R asked me to stay with him (!!!) It wasn’t that long ago that R was all Daddy, all the time, so that felt GOOD!

R seemed to get along well with his classmates and he loves his teacher. It looks like it is going to be a good year, hooray!

Some pics:

Here they are, all ready to go. Last night R decided he wanted to wear his dinosaur shirt today. Then I was asking K today which shirt he wanted and he said he wanted HIS dinosaur shirt. Unfortunately, K doesn’t have a dinosaur shirt! Then he decided to wear a race car shirt…which he also doesn’t have. Then he asked for his Elmo shirt, but I just threw that one away because Elmo’s eyes were all yellow and scary looking. So then I asked R if K could borrow his Sesame Place shirt to wear today, and R decided he wanted to wear the Sesame Place shirt but K could borrow his dinosaur shirt. So it all worked out in the end!

R in his classroom, playing with a toy. I used to play with this exact same toy when I was little. I haven’t seen one in probably almost 30 years!

K in his classroom. N got jostled by someone just as he was taking the pic which is why it’s all off-kilter, but K wasn’t in a picture-taking mood so it’s all we’ve got.

The boys enjoyed it and are looking forward to getting down to their regular schedules.

I love my children, I love my children, I love my children, I love my children…

Maybe if I keep repeating that I’ll remember it…

Seriously.

Nah, it’s not really THAT bad. One of them (And I’m pretty sure I know which one) put crayons into his pocket. Four of them. Then took off his clothes and put them in the hamper. Which I emptied into the washer, and then switched into the dryer.

Argh!!!

So now we have a pretty dryer. Seriously — it’s like a nice watercolor effect on the (formerly) white enamel.

And a ruined load of laundry. At least N will get some new socks out of the debacle.

For your viewing pleasure…

Dryer interior:

N’s socks:

K’s new and improved tie-dye shirt (and you thought it couldn’t get any more colorful!)

And lastly, the remains of the offending crayons. I think I know which Thing was responsible for this particular goof because the crayons are yellow, blue, red, and purple. Wiggles colors. Huh. I wonder whose those are??? That concert is costing us more money by the minute…

Photo Class Progress

I just mailed project #3 of 6. It feels great to have gotten it sent off but I’m really panicked. It’s taken me 4 years to turn in 3 projects…and I have 3 more due by the end of August. I REALLY want to finish this class. They gave me a year extension and everything. It’s just been very hard for me to focus on it and really take the time with it that I want to. I’ve already gone from vowing to do the entire class using my manual SLR camera to using my digital.

I’ll just keep doing what I can with it. I just need to stop f-ing off on the internet and start working my butt off on these projects.

The next unit should be fun…it deals with portraiture. One of my favorite things to do! (People and flowers are my favorite pics to take)

Updatey Insanity

Yeah so rather than post updates on each individual event with titles and stuff, since it’s 4:30 AM I’m just going to do one monster update post. Take that, organization!!!

Here goes!

We went to New Jersey Kingdom Renaissance Faire on closing day, July 1. It was a lot of fun! When we first got there, K and R helped one of the cast members (we never did get her name) make up a brand-new song about Three Blind Knights. “Three blind knights, three blind knights, See how they joust, see how they joust…” I don’t remember the rest of it. Hey, did I mention it’s four thirty in the morning? So anyway the nice bard-lady also bestowed upon K the King’s Bib as a reward for creating such a song.

Here’s the boys getting knighted by King Arthur, K is wearing the King’s Bib. In the background you can also see the costume place where I want to get a corset from: (see the one with the green skirt and black & green corset – they had one like that only the green in the corset was celtic knotwork. It was gorgeous!!

We promised R a while back that he could get his first “real” sword when he was five. He has a foam one, and a small plastic one, but we got him his first wooden one at the faire. K was jealous and took out his frustrations on Sir Bedivere:

K believes he is King of All He Sees:

R with his new sword, I don’t have a better pic yet:

The joust:

R was fascinated:

The day after Faire, F arrived to stay the week and help out with some stuff. We got the boys toys sorted through and some other random cleaning and yardwork done. We took a break to celebrate the Fourth of July. It was on the chilly side and it drizzled, but that didn’t stop us!

A nice shot of F:

Sparklers!!

R popped bubbles with his sparkler, K tried to catch them in his bug net:

A morning glory bud: I love taking pictures of flowers!

I’ve had an idea in my head for a while to get some pictures of the boys with their hair all wild in a woodsy setting. They look like little elves even without the pointy ears anyway. Thanks to F’s help, I did the session last week and got some neat pics out of it:

This next one is my favorite from the session.

So that is pretty much what I’ve been up to. We have a book club meeting tonight and then I’ll post my thoughts on The Thirteenth Tale. Thursday night we’re going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’m looking forward to the movie, although it is all overshadowed by the book coming out the following week! I’m looking forward to and seriously dreading the last book all at the same time. I’m already sad that it’s the last book, and I’m terrified of how it’s all going to end. I think I can trust J.K. not to pull a Stephen King Dark Tower ending on us. At least I hope I can!!!!!!!!! I can even handle it if Harry does die, just so long as it’s not pointless.

Giant Chalk

L, D & I gave K some gigantic sidewalk chalk for his birthday. Now that the weather is finally warm enough to actually play outside, we got to use it. He loves it!

Check out the size of this chalk…SO COOL!!!!!!!! The boys are each holding one piece of regular, everyday sidwalk chalk and one piece of the GIANT chalk. (It is seven times bigger than regular chalk…wowsa!) They were also running around using them as lasers and rocket launchers all afternoon. What can you say, boys will be boys…

Oh, yeah, and like their new shades?