Hannah in her curlers

Hannah sometimes requests curls for her hair. Unfortunately she has my hair (ughh, I may write a rogaine blog at some point in the future but I am not going there tonight) and the curls fall out pretty soon afterwards even with hairspray. So we bought sponge curlers and she and Jacob both think they are pretty fun.

This is this morning. I did a rather poor job because one: she wanted to use every color curler i.e. different sizes, and two: I really did not believe she would lie down with them in her hair so I wasn't really going for great. We tried again this evening so we will see how it looks in the morning.

A frog named Bicycle

After we came home from church Hannah pulled the bicycles inside for a quick ride around the kitchen while she waited for lunch. Jacob's seat lifts up to reveal a storage spot and he likes to fill it with trains before he begins riding. This time he had a stowaway of the amphibian variety. Hannah came upstairs: "There's a frog downstairs!"

Jeff and I are unimpressed: "oh really?"

Hannah: "yes!"

Jeff and I still unimpressed: "Is it green?"

Hannah: "yes!"

Us again: "is it real?" (To our credit our house is currently infested with nice monsters. They are everywhere)

Hannah: "Yes!"

Us, a little more intrigued: "Is it inside?'

Hannah: "YES!"

And there he was, a real green frog inside our house. The kids loved it and Hannah promptly named him Bicycle.

My fleeting flower-picker

Hannah loves to pick flowers. And then give them to others, mostly me. It is such a sweet yet inconvenient gesture because it can happen anywhere. If we are at home it is no biggie, I whisk out a tiny vase, place the flowers in with a little water and then discard them in a couple days. Other times she might spot some right when we are getting into the car, going into a store, or visiting the library. Not so easy to decide what to do with them and I came to see it as a little bit of a hassle. Then I realized that there is a very limited amount of time that I will be receiving these loving gestures from my sweet girl and my attitude changed. Now I accept them with a smile and it is wonderful to know that if she inquires where I placed the little bouquet I can reply, they are sitting on the front seat of the car, or they are in my purse (not, I dropped them on the ground the second you weren't looking). Now please excuse me while I clean out all the dried flower pieces from my purse.

deciding to be dedicated

Katy is a friend of mine who I have known since I was 12 years old. When she came back to SC to visit her family I was able to visit with her and her husband and her adorable little baby boy, Rueben. She inspired me to start drawing again. I have always enjoyed drawing but never felt like I was very good so I didn't pursue any art classes in high school or do much studying or practice. So I have decided to try to develop my hobby and I really like sketching and watercolor. Here is a picture that I am working on. It feels really good to give myself a break, to actively decide that even though I am not as good as I would like to be, that I can still enjoy the process, that I can be proud of what I am doing, (and even post it on the internet). I still feel very self concious about the whole thing but it is so freeing to believe that I can get better as I work on it. So, I have decided to do some drawing or painting at least five days a week.

Frusterated

Well I wanted to put some pictures from Easter last year on here but because of my lack of technical expertise, I cannot figure out why the computer cannot find a file blah blah blah, it is too long and boring to try to explain what I did and how it didn't work so I will spare you all. Also, the software I normally use for the pictures now brings up paint when I want to edit and I can't figure out how to change that which is really irritating. I donated blood this afternoon and have been feeling just a little off since then so I am going to blame my less than chipper mood on that. So here is Hannah "reading" to Jacob which is really sweet until you get to the second picture and he turns into devil spawn. Crummy paint program with no red eye removal.

Hannah's new skill

We discovered some children's software we had forgotten about when Hannah was helping me organize the computer drawers. Well Hannah and Jacob really enjoy using them but me, not so much. (It is a little tedious to sit at a computer and be the mouse slave). Today I decided to start teaching Hannah how to use the mouse so that maybe in a couple of weeks she would be able to do some things herself. Imagine my happy suprise when she was able to use it right away! Now the only problem is convincing both of us that she can't sit there and play games for an hour. I hope this picture is big enough to show that she is curling her tongue.

First skinned knee

Jacob was running on a sidewalk that suddenly dipped and he went down. Skinned both knees (one hardly grazed) and scratched his forehead. He cried for a minute and then calmed down. About 5 minutes later, he looks down and sees that his knee is all bloody and he freaks out! The rest of the day if he looked at his knee he would start crying again.

Poor guy uses his knees alot, to sit on while eating at the table (he was furious when I had him use his booster seat for dinner) or playing with his trains (which consumes most of his day). I was pretty impressed when I looked over and saw he had come up with a solution for pain free play.