fly me to the moon

NO those are not pullups (CLEAN!) on their heads! They are space helmets for these three astronauts. Of course.

Sammy was the mastermind here, I might add.

Why do we ever buy them toys?

bwothers

Boys will be boys.

And we have a couple of those in our house. Three actually.

Here's one in his ultramanly gear of safety goggles and popgun. VERY intimidating I know.

The other day Mimi found out that a future cousin will be a boy and she broke down into tears. And she even tried NOT to cry. She dreams of having more girls around, specifically sisters or cousins. If she didn't have The Soph I don't know what we'd do.

We know some GREAT gals who had all brothers and we always point to them to give her hope of turning out OK if she happens to have all brothers.

The boys have lots of fun together. My brother was the only son so I can see he really put up with a lot just having sisters. I love watching these brothers play together. They usually laugh and laugh and have so much simple fun. Like bucket rides:

And they get to wear matching jammies...

I read an article the other day about Jimmer. (Please pretend you know who he is so my husband can still be your friend. Just kidding. Kinda.) Anyway the article centered on how Jimmer was driven to greatness by having an older brother. Something like that. So although I know they might be competitive and roughish in the distant and non-distant future, it's nice to think they will compel one another to greatness. I have that hope for them.

But I also have the hope that having a sister to think about will teach them things too. And vice versa. Miranda has already learned to discern in her young experience with males between the ones who "respect women" --her words-- and those who don't. Interesting...

She and Sammy love to play together. They love to disagree sometimes too, but lots of times they are great to each other and they defend each other like crazy. One of miniman's first words was "manda," and all she has to do is touch a finger to the piano and he practically transports himself to the bench next to her and plays with her, a big grin slapped across his mug.

One day they fell asleep on the couch and I found them like this! Ha ha ha!!!!

So cute. Toxic, but cute.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I feel blessed to watch these three interact. I like to see the lessons they learn from their natural interactions and the interplay between masculine and feminine thought and interest. Fernando once did a research paper about how siblings play a part in future marital success skills and there was a connection there. So if you have skills thank your siblings, right?

Fernando also has reminded me a few times how our siblings are the people in life we know the longest, who are with us for the longest amount of time here on earth. Whenever I am with mine or Fernando is with his, we notice in each other laughter and personality that ONLY our siblings bring out.

So I guess the best gifts we've given these three is each other.

Miniman actually did have a birthday

It's true! After being scolded by more than one family member I figured I better get out of the antiblog funk and post something. And the truth is I haven't blogged about a lot of really important stuff with pictures of cute kids that go with the tales.

One of these is Miniman's birthday. It started out by me taking him to the dr. to get shots!!!! How cruel. Poor guy. I don't know what I was thinking when I scheduled that. Anyway, moving on.

We went to McDonald's of course, and ate super nutritious happy meals :) and the kids played.

Miniman ate F R I E S...he hearts fries.

Then we proceeded to go home and get ready for some sledding! His first for his first birthday!
We were joined by our faves XY and Lucas.

I've included several pictures of them just to torture myself since I cried on Saturday because they are across this globe. I would seriously dig a hole to China some days.

XY and Sammyboy in the minivan. I think this picture really brings out what a hip, happening, family fun vehicle the minivan is. Someday if the minivan dies I will include pictures like this in its memorial.


The baaaybees. Rear and front facing was working well for mutual entertainment in those days!

At Murray Park, loving the snow!

Unable to properly move but happy! Good birthday!

XY and Woocas.

The twins.

This is a really tortuous picture. The cousins all together. Sniff. I love pictures. These guys will be saying different words, liking different toys and cartoons, be really different little people when they see each other next time, but we have this moment captured and can remember all the fun things we laughed about and loved when they were at these stages together.

Everybody but me (behind camera) showing what a fun time we had. Yes we did actually sled, but it was pretty dark so I don't have great pictures of it.

Then another day we had a family birthday party at Gma and Pa's.

Jungle animal theme.

Getting ready to blow out the candle plus proof that I acually do participate in these family activities.

Trying...

XY and Lucas with birthday viddles.

Oooh. Spinny light up ball...

Kind of a dazed look here but happy with the Pa and with the birthday!

He has been learning stuff like crazy since 1 yr old hit. Even before then I guess but it is so fun. He has such a fun sense of humor and great faces to go along with it. We LOVE this little smush like crazy.

puppies

Anyone who read my post about how our children are dog-deprived will be happy to see that we took a little field trip over to our neighbor's house to see their NINE puppies! So cute. They are selling them so we wanted to catch a glimpse before they are all gone. It was fun. And educational.

Mateo loves dogs the most, I think, but he was a bit wary.

He actually loved the BIG PARENT dogs but the little nippy guys made him a bit nervous.

Here he is with the daddy doggie. He calls every animal a doggie which sounds like dah dah, so maybe he doesn't like dogs the best after all. He does call ducks some sort of quack sound. So there's progress at least.

This was his position most of the time when the puppies were out. Attached to my knees. Hee.

Miranda was the least afraid and most comfortable with the doggies. Yesterday she made up a song called, "Why can't I live on a farm." It was a melancholy song. Moving.

I told her we are going to live somewhere as soon as we can where we can have chickens, and a big garden, and maybe a goat if we're lucky.

She said that's not a real farm. A real farm includes cows and horses, of course, and a big, big barn.

I'd like the big, big barn but I told her all about what her morning routine would be if we owned a real farm.

I though, ha, that'd show her.

Didn't phase her. A girl after my own heart. A girl who dreams of pioneer, simple, do-it-yourself living but in actuality would rather not axe a chicken head off nor use an outhouse regularly.

Look at this little cute guy. I meant Sammy but the little puppy is cute too. A bunch of kids and puppies? So fun. Thank you thank you Owens for the visit!

back to normal

I needed a good bridge between the last eyesore of Napoleon and Pedro back to my normal mommish posts. So this will have to do. Hubby on ugly sweater day for the faculty and staff at Paradigm. He did get a prize for this beaut, of course. I think maybe he should pull it out again for our Valentine's Day date because it has hearts. And I will wear my Napoleon pants. We'll turn heads as USUAL.

Good thing we married each other or we never could have acheived moments like this.

Yes, I did do the Napoleon election dance on film. Be thankful I do not know how to include it here. It would be a dangerous thing to have on the world wide web.

Isn't Fernando awesome there?!!!

keep up the habit

It felt right to re-enter this practice of blogging practice yesterday so I decided I better try to continue so I can try to make a good habit out of it.

I was dutifully about to begin a post when Miniman attacked the computer (Ferni and I think he actually said "puter" yesterday...it's a new generation people) and started going beserk with joy over some random dog in a picture on someone else's blog.

So then I had to spend the last 15 minutes showing him barking dogs on youtube. Those are the type of 15 minutes I omit when Fernando asks me what I did today.

But it does make me a little sad that our children are so dog-deprived that they have to watch them bark on youtube. Oh well. Maybe someday. After I get my chickens. I really want chickens and I bet they could be sort of fun like dogs, right?

So I was starting to post again when Mimi came in here. She had just finished watching High School Musical because during our exercise time today she got a sliver in her heel that I could not extract because I'm not a dad. Makes sense.

Naturally we had to cancel the rest of exercise time AND science time which is her favorite (obviously a serious sliver). During the endish of the movie she came in here with a choked-up expression on her face and told me that she just started bawling during that last scene and she doesn't know why. I told her she's not allowed to watch High School Musical anymore.

Then she rephrased herself and told me she didn't bawl she just had tears in her eyes. What a relief.

And to make sure to include all children here, yesterday Fernando told Sammo that the sauce (red glaze stuff) that he put on the strawberries was actually a mixture of whale blood and monkey brains. Well I added the monkey brains.

Disgusting I know.

Anyway Sam WOULD NOT eat it. Even after Daddy said he was kidding. When forced to taste it he gagged. The power of suggestion. Although that red glaze is a gory shade of red.

And here is just another shot of el chubbo for Gramma Rosie.

And because a baby wearing a Peruvian hat with a fish sticker on it is a GREAT way to end a post I think.