Weekend Observation

how is it that my sweet little sprout's chubby, yummy toes have become sweaty, stinky boy feet?? seriously this boy is sweaty! and his feet are smelly!!
i guess he isn't a baby anymore...

;)

Attention!

we have a biter in the house. i repeat, there is a biter in the house!!

sprout has taken to biting. mostly he just bites bean. sometimes she deserves it. and all the time she laughs about it until it hurts- then she screams. i try to tell her that her laughter is encouraging sprout to bite her more. she has yet to listen.

bean never once bit anyone so this is all new to me. i'm hoping that it is related to the teething and that when that is over he will be done biting. until then...

be careful! the wee one bites!!
;)

Sprout's Pool

so, way back when, we got sprout a swimming pool for his birthday. today we finally sat down and inflated it. (good thing daddy is full of hot air! he he!) bean was super excited about it! swimming! woo hoo! sprout, well, i'm not sure what he thought...

"you want me to get in there??"

he kinda lost his little mind when his toes hit the cold water. he ran to his mommy crying!

"oh for the love of pete mommy! that is cold!!! too cold!!!!!!

so daddy grabbed the cooler (it was the biggest thing he could find) and filled it with hot water and added it to the pool. things seemed much better then...

"maybe this isn't so bad after all. i like to splash!"

he splashed and played with his sister for quite a while. they were having a great time! he did make it clear that he wasn't at all interested in trying the slide out. so bean slid down head first over and over, always managing to stop right next to him.

"watch it sis, i'm trying to splash here!"

so what started out as a catastrophe ended up a splashing success! ;)

"oh yeah! splash-ity, splash, splash, splash!!!!"

happy really late birthday buddy! mommy is so glad that you like your present!! :)

Crafty Tuesday

as promised here are the lovely teacher gifts that bean and i made- bouquets of flowers! the solid red flowers were made by tracing her hand. the other flowers were made from magazines and buttons (directions can be found here). they turned out super cute! then we made a card- side one had an adorable photo of bean, on side two bean wrote "thank you" and "love (bean)" and in between i added the words "for making my first year of school so great!"
what do you think??
here is a closer shot of the flowers made from the magazines and buttons...
and lastly here is a shot of bean holding one of the bouquets on her way into school. i wanted to get pictures of her giving them to her teachers but i couldn't. she was so excited that she ran into the classroom and gave them out before i had a chance to get through the door!
oh, in case you were wondering, the teachers LOVED them. :)

Gone Fishin'

on friday we went to my sister's house to visit the cousins. my brother decided to stop by because he didn't have to work that day (dang economy!). he decided that it would be a great day to take the girls fishing!! now the cousins had been before but bean had not and she was quite excited about the whole thing. they gathered up poles, tackle box, and dug up some worms. then off to the pond they went.
(bean took her job of carrying the cup of worms very seriously. she walked slowly and surely to make sure she didn't spill them. ha ha!)

it was a beautiful sunny day. they walked around the pond until they found a nice spot with some shade near by. uncle put a worm on the hook, cast the line, then handed the rod over to bean. he explained how to know that there was a fish on the line and showed her how the reel worked.
soon she was on her own... waiting... waiting... and waiting some more.
sadly no one caught a fish that day. uncle had several nibbles but he was unable to make the catch. the girls got hot and bored, so we headed home.

bean must have really enjoyed herself though because when she got home she asked if she could get her own fishing pole for her birthday. looks like uncle is going to be busy this summer!! :)

The Last Day of School

remember back in september when bean was so excited for her first year of school. remember when she looked like this...
this week we had this...
a little girl on her last day of school. a little girl who was sad and couldn't figure out why school had to end. a little girl who didn't want to leave her teachers and friends behind for the summer. (a little girl who was also freezing because she insisted on wearing this outfit on the last day of school even though it was actually about 55 degrees outside. )

she did good once she got to school. she played, made crafts, and had a little graduation ceremony in her classroom. then she walked to the "end of the year assembly" holding one of her friends hands.
and the whole class sat together and watched the video that they made showing highlights of the school year. (they yelled out whenever they saw one of their classmates in the movie. it was pretty cute.)
but she really didn't want to leave. after the "all school picnic lunch" i let her linger as long as i could. but eventually all the other kids were gone and sprout NEEDED to go home for a nap. the whole way home she kept asking when she could go back to school....

****

on a completely different note, is anyone else's kid completely losing their tiny little mind??? for the past month or two bean has been a crazy, monstrous, nutcase losing her shit at the tiniest little infraction. tonight she raged and screamed for over a half an hour about brushing teeth... not because she didn't want them brushed but because she insisted that i didn't brush them long enough. seriously. she stood on her bed and screamed and screamed. two days ago it was because the pajamas she wanted were in the washing machine and she said she wouldn't sleep without them. these are pajamas are ones that she normally doesn't want to wear because they don't have princesses on them. gah! this isn't what 4 is going to be like, is it? because if it is, she can stay 3, thank you very much!!

Rose Park Revisited

remember last year when we went to the rose park? well, i thought, "what the heck, let's go back this year!" bean did really love it, even after the thorn incident, but would sprout....

yes! yes, i think sprout did like it!

bean wanted him to smell the roses and she just couldn't understand why he wouldn't. (he more or less wanted to pull the petals off all the flowers.... oops, sorry rose garden!) we must have stopped to smell at least one of every kind of rose there. really. that is a lot of roses people!
oh! bean would like you all to know that roses smell "yummy!" ;)

they have this "observation tower" in the middle of the garden. it is like a gazebo on stilts with a spiral staircase. i don't think i need to tell you that both kids adored being up there, do i?

oh and going up and down the stairs is fun too! ;)

it was a lovely day. not hot (as you can tell from the long pants they are sporting!) and partly cloudy. the kids walked, ran, and sat...
and enjoyed just about every second of this lovely morning- the second they were not fond of? the one where i told them that it was time to go home! ha!
looks like we will be going back again. :)

A Trip to the Park

last week we took a trip to the park. sprout was pretty excited when he saw the big climber and he couldn't figure out what was taking us so long to get there...
i spent a lot of time carefully watching sprout climb up and the steps of the climber. he LOVES to climb! so when his sister did this...
he wanted to do it too. he found it was more difficult than it looked...
after a while bean and sprout did find something that they could do together and they had a blast!
wheeeee! :)

Snacking Outdoors

it was a beautiful day. we had snack outside- mini cupcakes, watermelon, and raisins.

bean ate her snack like this...

sprout ate his snack like this...

boys are a little different than girls, i guess. ha ha ha! ;)

Crafty Tuesday

last week bean celebrated her "un-brithday" at school. all summer birthday kids were given an "un-birthday" so that they could have a special day at school, which i think is nice. they get to wear the birthday crown, pick a present from the birthday box and bring in whatever treat they want. bean wanted ladybug cupcakes. ladybug cupcakes like the ones she saw on the computer. so mommy finally remembered what web site they were on and she made them, because she is a good mommy like that. ;)
i did change a few things... like instead of mallomars the lady bugs are actually mini cupcakes. and i didn't put on all the colored sugar. and instead of rolling out green gumdrops and cutting them into a leaf shape i just used spearmint leaves and sliced them in half (so they weren't so thick). oh, and i ran out of red food coloring so the ladybugs are pink instead of red. but bean liked them better that way so, yay me! ha ha!!

i think that they turned out pretty darn cute if i do say so myself!
wanna closer look?
and because i'm an overachiever i taped this to the lid of the box...
i can't take credit for the poem, at least not the first four lines. i found that in this month's issue of my big backyard magazine and thought it was too perfect for our "un-birthday" treat. so i made up a few extra lines found a clip art lady bug and we were done... at 11:15pm. seems a mom doesn't have regular working hours. :)

so that is my crafty contribution this week. next week i'll have pictures of the teacher gifts that bean and i made... i bet you can hardly wait, can you?