Spring Evenings with Daddy

  

The weather has been so great this past week and with the warm temps and extra sunshine we've been spending most our evenings in the backyard--well I've been forcing the kids to spend most of their waking hours in the backyard really.  It's good for them :)  They just especially like it when Dad is home and will do fun things like pitch them the ball and push them on the swing and not pretend like he can't hear them begging for said activities while he reads a book.

David started coach-pitch baseball this year which seems like a ridiculous time commitment with two games and one practices a week plus an optional Sunday batting practice but we'll make it through--it's a lot of activity for this homebody to wrap my mind around.  He seems to like it, but all he really wants to do is batting practice.  To him, practicing any other baseball skill is just a waste of valuable time that could have been spent hitting the ball over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

He might be a little crestfallen when he realizes that an actual home run will take a considerable bit more umph.  

On Having a Lot of Legos

 

Legos.  They're kind of a big deal around here.  Probably due in no small part to the fact that Daddy will gladly sit and play with them indefinitely.

I've come around to their charm, which is good since they've completely invaded my home.  It's fun to see all of the creative things the boys make.  Even John gets in on the action although he only knows how to make one thing, which is always a flat piece with some other piece on top and occasionally a minifigure:  "a  boat mommeeee!  a boat!  look at my boat!  BOAT!"

We used to store them in a dresser organized by color but now that John is in the mix there really wasn't a prayer for that system to work anymore.  When we moved I had Chris build dividers into the trundle part of John's big boy bed so now the front three sections are full of Legos and the back section holds shoes-to-be-grown-into and winter gear.  Of course that solution only holds the loose Legos.  We also have finished and in-process creations on pretty much every flat surface of the room.  The big boys have also taken to hoarding all the *best* pieces in their own designated special spots to make sure no one else can use them even though they aren't actually currently being used..........which generally ends about as well as you would imagine.

The giant bin-o-legos has made clean up much easier, although clearly it's not foolproof since--children.  Luckily, David jumped down from the top bunk this week only to realize he'd landed directly on his own tiny instrument of torture and I think we may have finally made a breakthrough on understanding why I make such a big deal about always clearing away the Lego minefield before bedtime.  I suppose only time will tell if that particular lesson sticks.  

Here's hoping....

On Snow Days

It's a little lame to have a Saturday snow day when you know that if it was during the week your husband would have had the day off but we made the best of it.  And by "we" I mean "Chris" who was outside for four hours straight with various children coming and going.

Please note that the children are all wearing snow pants.  Interestingly February is apparently much too late to actually buy snow pants in a regular store--I tried Walmart hoping to grab some on clearance and there was nothing.  They had already turned the whole store over to Spring, including the baby section where I could have bought Margaret all the sundresses and shorts she could ever want but there was not a long sleeved onesie to be found.  So to recap, now that it's actually snowing and most definitely still winter there are no winter clothes left to purchase.  There are plenty of bathing suits though.

Chris found these (after a hot tip from a colleague) at the nearby Columbia outlet where there were still a few pieces left in the clearance section.  Catastrophe averted.

So the boys were warmer as they went sledding at pretty much the best sledding hill ever.  According to Chris when he was on the sled too they were getting air going down those bumps.  I'm just glad I wasn't there to witness all the shenanigans.

Even John had fun although, once again, he ended up napping through sledding time.

He tried really hard to get his trike going in the snow and yes, making some sort of bike port on the side of the house is one of our projects for Spring.  

 

And here are some bonus sledding videos, because I can........

 

 

Hope you all are *still* staying warm!

Snow Day

It has been years since any of the kids has seen snow and I'm pretty sure David is the only one who really even remembered it at all.  The only exception being last winter when we drove to Texas and the boys found a tiny pile of slush in a shady flowerbed outside our hotel--they were ridiculously excited to play in the "snow."  Well, today.....

....today they had a teensie bit more to be excited about.....

Poor sickly John slept through everything and Margaret and I retreated to the fireplace fairly quickly but David and Henry had quite the time and I think I've almost convinced Henry that it is not Christmas Eve even though there is in fact snow because clearly if it has snowed then it must be Christmas all over again.

I also couldn't help but smile while watching them hone their skills with those snow shovels.  There's going to come a day when they'll probably regret developing such a useful skillset.  What are sons for though, if not shoveling the driveway?

Metro Rides and Museums Without Dinosaurs

We braved the cold and the metro this week on our first trip into the city.  It's only a little less than a mile to the nearest metro from our house so we just walked down took the kids on their very first metro ride.  The double stroller did just fine and the boys were really excited about being on "the monorail"--clearly we've been living too close to Disney for too long.

We were going to take the kids to the Natural History museum because--dinosaurs!!  Unfortunately when planning our visit online I found out that the dinosaurs have been removed from the museum for the next five years!  I cannot begin to describe the disappointment in the Reintjes house when that news was broken.  We promised to take them once the lame (and not nearly as exciting as the old exhibit) on American dinosaurs opens next week which offered some appeasement.

That and the promise of the Air and Space museum.

The boys loved all the planes and space stuff.  I, well I prefer the Natural History museum.......or the art museum.........or pretty much any other museum......

......and I'm pretty sure Margaret agrees with me...girls united against science!  I kid, I kid.....well, mostly..... ;)

Me:  Give me your best astronaut impression!
David:  Like what?
Me:  I don't know, pretend like you're floating in space.
David:  ..... (giving a very awkward thumbs up)
Me:  That's what you think astronauts are doing in space?

It was a fun first excursion into the city and now I'm confident I can handle the metro on my own with the children--I even know where all the relevant metro elevators are, which is a feat in itself!

I think I'll wait till spring to venture out alone though--the circus that is outfitting these little ones in all their winter gear is quite an adventure and the trip home from the metro is all uphill and no one wants to listen to whiny boys with frozen noses complain about all the injustices of their cold cold lives while pushing all their weight up a partially frozen hill.  At least, I don't.

On Having Hobbies

I was recently asked what I do during the day besides take care of the kids to which I responded fairly lamely that I like to read....and you know, sometimes I quilt......oh and I have a blog where I write stories about my kids....and things that I read.....and sometimes things that I quilted....I mean, I do interesting things during the day!  This week for instance I watched Henry spend several hours pretending to be a dinosaur for my amusement with very realistic sound effects, so that was exciting......Okay, I mostly spend my time taking care of the kids.  And cooking.  And cleaning.  And having the occasional calm down break in the shower.  But in a really fulfilling and not lame at all way......

All that's to say, I decided to finally dust off the how-to-use-my-camera-for-dummies book that I bought two years ago in order to take another crack at figuring this baby out so that I can add "excellent picture taker" to my list of accomplishments.  As a result I've been practicing using my camera in manual which explains the sudden wealth of pictures of all the exciting things we do during the day :)

I think the main lesson I've learned so far is that it is impossible to adjust my settings fast enough to account for the children running in and out of the shadows so I think I may give up and just tell you that my style is overexposed and super hip.

In other news, we got a giant watermelon from our CSA bin and the big boys wanted nothing to do with it because it tasted "not good."  Evil mom that I am, I decided to puree every leftover piece that I had already painstakingly deseeded to make it palatable for my ungrateful brood and turn it into popsicles.

Apparently watermelon is "not good" but frozen watermelon puree is delicious :)

And yes, in addition to watermelon popsicles and paint John Michael also eats bubbles.

I guess you can add, "tricking my children into eating things they hate" to my list of accomplishments.  The watermelon that is, not the paint and bubbles.

 Does that also count as a hobby?

En Plein Air

In an effort to get the children out of the house and involved in more productive pastimes than seeing who can pinch/kick/punch each other the hardest without mom noticing (there's really an art to this as there is a fine line before your brother starts to scream and then the game's up) I packed up our paints and took the crew outside for a double whammy of artistic pursuits and fresh air.

John was only mildly impressed with this new medium.  He still prefers his crayon rocks--not to draw with so much as to put in and out of their bag--but I'm sure this early love will eventually evolve into artistic passion.

I wish I could say he learned his lesson after one taste but alas, he also tried the blue.  Maybe he thought the different colors corresponded to different flavors?

The boys have been begging me to get them wooden bird houses to paint from the craft store which I always refuse because I just knew they would spend twenty minutes picking out the perfect one and 1.5 minutes actually painting them, but I finally relented.  I remember my grandmother taking me and my brother and sisters to the craft store every week while we stayed with her during the summer and letting us pick out any projects we wanted to do and I suppose I wanted to capture a little of that summer magic with my own boys.

I have a lot of latch hook rug kits, paint by numbers and iron-on/puffy paint decorated shirts in my past.

And friendship bracelets.  A lot of friendship bracelets.

I was wrong about the birdhouses though.  The boys totally spent five minutes painting them before they declared their masterpieces finished.  I still maintain that the mess to time-spent-happily-occupied ratio is not good enough to justify any more painted dwellings for our avian friends.  The boys disagree however and would really love to make a whole village.

We'll see.

Oh, and we also found a frog :)

Painting and impromptu nature study.  I suppose it was an afternoon well spent even if we didn't quite get the mess : time spent actually painting ratio completely right.  At least they stopped attacking each other for the duration.....