Happy Valentine’s Day

It is probably a little bit ridiculous for  me to finally post on Valentine’s Day, which is a very silly holiday, when I skipped Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Penny’s Birthday.  Regardless, last night I was trying to take some pictures of Ben to make a little personalized valentine for him to take to preschool and I thought I would share the results.  It started out pretty uneventful:

Ben insisted on having his hair spiked, even though it is getting a bit long for that.  Also, he is wearing his new favorite shirt.  I am pretty pleased because I made it, and it turned out well.  Plus, he loves it, which is sort of the point.  He loves things with hoods on them, so I found a pattern and made this out of a couple of my old shirts and a small amount of a cute fire truck knit I got on sale at Joann’s.  I did a freezer paper stencil for the fire truck.  It’s already starting to peel a bit because I had to do too many layers of paint to get the red to look good on the black and Ben wears it every time I wash it, so it’s already been through the was several times.  Oh, and I am not sure why the fire truck is shooting out fire, but Ben thought it was cool.

Anyway, he is holding out his fist because we were going to do a valentine where I printed off his picture and then stuck a lollipop through the photo where his hand was. I got the idea here at makeit-loveit and it is super cute.   Then it was snowing and nasty yesterday, so I decided against having to go pick up photo prints.  At least I got motivated to take some pictures of Ben.

As you can see, he was not looking at the camera.  It turns out that I made an error in judgment.  I put a movie on to keep Penny  distracted  during the photoshoot.  Instead Ben was distracted by it and wouldn’t look at the camera and:

Penny jumped in the shot anyway.  On the plus side, at least she was looking at the camera.  So, I abandoned the Ben shot and embraced the moment.

Ben still wouldn’t look at the camera, but Penny sure likes to ham it up for the camera.  Her hair is so silly because I had just taken out her ponytails.

As with most cute, huggy, affectionate moments with these two, it played out a little like this.

Oh, big hugs. We love each other.

Seriously, could we be any cuter?

Uh oh, Penny’s getting bored with this. . .

And decides to make things more interesting.

And now we are wrestling affectionately (I think)

And Penny of course has the upper hand.  Either because she is just that aggressive or because we taught Ben too well to be nice to his sister.

Regardless, it is a pretty quick transition from laughing, giggling, affectionate horsing around, to hitting, biting, or trying to strangle. Sadly, I am not kidding:

At least Penny is still looking at the camera and trying to smile.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Our Little Builder

So it is so fun to watch Ben develop his imagination more and more.  He does some really fun things these days.  He is very curious and never stops talking.  He has also officially entered the “why” phase.  Which means of course that he asks ‘why’ about 1,000 times a day.  It was cute at first, but quickly has become wearing.  On the plus side, I try to use this opportunity to teach the little guy some things.  Previously, he lost interest really quickly when I try to teach him things.  Now, when he asks about something I try to give him as real of answers as I can.  I have made a resolution to try and give him accurate answers for his questions.  I have a strong feeling that this will lead to me either having to research a lot of things I didn’t previously know, or giving up and making things up like any good parent does.

In related news, Ben has become quite the little builder.  He loves Legos, and he has lots of little sets to build things (mostly cars and trucks, he has kind of a one-track mind).  However, those toys only really come down off the shelf when Penny is asleep so Ben has rediscovered his bristle blocks that my sister gave the kids for Christmas last year.  They are great because they are big enough to not worry about Penny eating them, but offer enough variety for him to explore and really build.  Today he built an awesome set of machines.  I had to give him a chance to show them off, so here is a video of him explaining all about them.  Excuse the messy basement.  I am pregnant and cleaning is very low on my priority list.

Ben showing off his awesome machines that he built.

Halloween

So, the kids had a great time this year for Halloween.  They are both at really fun ages for it.  I made both of their costumes this year and I think they turned out pretty well, which was pretty rewarding.  We got lots of compliments on Ben’s.  He was a monster truck and Penny was a butterfly.  More importantly, Ben loved his which made it worth it for sure.

Here are some pictures of Ben’s truck up close before I put it on him for his preschool costume parade.  I know the wheels aren’t really big enough to be a monster truck, but I was sort of out of time and cardboard, and I couldn’t come up with a good way of attaching giant wheels to the truck without covering up my awesome paint job.  I was particularly proud of the flames on the hood, which I did by hand without a stencil.

And here is Ben in his costume.  I could not get him to look at the camera.  But you can see the little black smudge on his jaw from the paint when he helped me paint the wheels.  He got a kick out of helping.

I took a couple of videos of him at his parade and while they sang songs, but I haven’t uploaded those yet.  It was pretty cute.

The kids got a Halloween warm-up run with the trunk or treat at our church.  They had a great time and Penny caught on really quickly and only tried to stop and eat her first piece of candy.  She was great about saying “trick-or-treat” and “thank you” when she got her candy.  It was kind of hilarious because all of the little boys at the party were following Ben around, trying to ride in his truck.  He was a very popular boy.

Here are some pictures of the kids just before the real thing.

And a picture of the bag I rigged into the bed of Ben’s truck, so he didn’t have to carry one.

And the back of Penny’s wings:

She kept those antennae on for about 10 seconds.

And a video of the first couple of houses on our little cul-de-sac.  Penny is pretty adorable, and she got even cuter throughout the night.  She probably would have kept going all night, and she carried her own bag the whole time  She didn’t want anyone else to touch it (which led to a pretty cool melt down when we had to take it away from her to put her to bed).  I took more videos of a few of her later houses, but I haven’t even watched it yet, so I don’t know if it is as good as this one.

Ben and Penny trick-or-treating

Various and Sundry etc. . .

It’s redundant, I know.  But there is a story behind it.  I just got back from a trip to Utah.  I went out for Labor Day weekend to see my college roomies and help my parents move.  My sister, Courtney, also came into town and she and I were tasked with packing up the kitchen.  My kids were with Geri so we had plenty of time without interruption or fear of little hands breaking things.  I’d been helping pack up for a couple of days and my parents have a lot of things in their kitchen.  We were trying very hard to be exact in our labels on the boxes because my parents were hiring movers and needed it to be clear where everything went.  Also, my mom is very organized and labeling well makes unpacking so much easier.  As packing often goes, random things often ended up in boxes, so I frequently added labels like etc.  I started to get bored with that and started labeling every box with words like “etc, various, sundry, et al, misc.”  It should be noted that I had labeled dozens of boxes at this point and the permanent markers my parents had were fume-tastic (read, I may have been a bit high).  Courtney and I were very amused with ourselves and I even used some painter’s tape to label myself at one point, and, yes, I included etc or et al.  I don’t recall. 

All in all, it was fun and exhausting and I LOVE my parents’ new place.  So do my kids.

I didn’t take many pictures, but my mom did, so I will have to get them from her, including the pictures of me with Paige.  I think Dani has the pictures of us at her grandparents’ place.  It should be noted that Ben and Dani’s little boy James had the greatest time together.  Seriously, I have never seen two kids take so quickly to each other.  They were thick as thieves and spent most of their time trying to vanquish aliens.  It was all very exciting and loud.

We had a great time in Utah, in fact, we had such a great time that we extended our stay twice.  Eventually, I decided it was past time to get back to my husband and get into real life.  So I braved myself to make the 18 hour drive again and we came back.  I have more pictures from when we got back because my mom gave me her old camera (you may recall that Penny broke ours).  It is an awesome DSLR.  The smaller lens has a cracked casing, but it’s still a huge step up from the camera Penny broke and puts my college camera I’ve been using to shame.

We made it back in time for Ben to start preschool.  Actually, he missed the first week of preschool, but since he only goes two days a week, it wasn’t a huge deal.  Still, I had to take pictures of the first day he went.  The lighting wasn’t great and I am still learning the ways of the DSLR, so they didn’t turn out great, but Ben is still adorable.

What a cutie! He had a great time and his teacher said he did great.  I also have to say I am rather proud of his little messenger bag that I made.  I have some better pictures of just the bag somewhere, but you get the idea.  I embroidered his name on the back, too.  I used to tutorial here, so I don’t pretend to be awesome enough to come up with this.

I also put Penny’s hair in pigtails for the first time.  I know she is nearing two, so it’s silly that it’s taken this long to do  it.  In my defense, her hair was very slow in coming in.  Plus, her little curls are so adorable on their own and I never have the energy to wrangle a very lively toddler to do her hair.  I finally broke down and did it, here are the results:

Last but not least, in honor of today’s BYU game against Utah, I dressed the kids in their new Cougar duds that Geri bought for them while we were in Provo visiting Robert and Michelle.  And all I can say is, oh man, they looked cute.  We just took these in our backyard, and yes, it is that crazy wild and overgrown at the moment.  Also, it was super overcast all day so I was still struggling with the lighting on the new camera. The kids were being really cute with each other, too.  I have to say that I definitely stole the dress from Dani and Mat who had already gotten one for their little Allie.  Can you blame me though?  Check it out:

Off to the races.  These two love being outside and it was rainy all week so they were pumped to be set free.  Penny insisted on wearing the hat and Ben did not want to take his hood down even though it really wasn’t cold out.

Penny is entering her “cheesy smile for the camera” phase.  Also, note the adorable pink high top Converse.  Our friend Marca gave those to us when Penny was born and I am so pumped that she can finally wear them.  Although, if memory serves, Marca is a U of U girl, so she may not be pleased with the rest of the ensemble.

I am normally not a huge fan of from behind shots, but I love this picture and the next one.

I just love those cute little behinds.

Again, I am still working on better focus, but, seriously, does it get any cute than this?  It should also be noted that as soon as you put a dress or skirt on Penny, the first thing she does is twirl around and watch it flare out.

Finally got Ben to take the hood off.

It was impossible to pick a picture of these two being adorable together, they kept chasing each other and then giving huge hugs.  A lot of the pictures were really blurry because they never stopped moving, but I turned one series into a little video slideshow.

Just a slideshow of my kids being adorable together

And my favorite pictures out of that series:

Just melts my heart.  That is all for now, although there were definitely more pictures.  But it’s time to watch the game!

Edited: Apparently this didn't post last night when I told it to.  Alls I have to say is I am no fairweather fan and I still love the Cougs, but YIPES!

The Great Cookie Experiment

So, to make up for my silly “Hunger Games” blog post I am posting this video of Ben that I’ve been meaning to post for two months.  It is a very long video and I had to post it in 2 parts.  I didn’t cut it down because it’s kind of an experience but I definitely won’t be offended if people don’t watch it in its entirety.

Basically, I don’t remember why, but I was thinking about the experiments that sociologists and psychologists have done about delayed reward with kids.  President Uchtdorf, a leader in the LDS church, gave a talk mentioning it, so I looked into it.  Basically, they put small kids (most of the studies had kids between 4 and 5) in a room with some treat (a cookie, marshmallows) and told them not to eat it until they came back.  If the kids did not eat it, they were given twice as much of the treat.  They followed the kids in the study and found that the children who had waited tended to be more successful, better test scores, etc. . . Anyway, it sparked my curiosity.  Does Ben understand delayed reward well enough to resist a treat right in front of him?  I decided to put it to the test.

I put Ben at the kitchen table with a cookie and told him that if he didn’t eat it until I was done putting Penny to bed that he would get two cookies.  My little experiment differed from the studies in a couple of important ways, but I wasn’t looking to prove anything other than Ben’s understanding of a principle so I wasn’t too meticulous about following experimental protocol.  First, Ben was kind of stuck in his seat with the cookie right in front of him.  It is my understanding that the kids in the study could roam the room.  Also, I am his mom and he probably trusts me more than he would trust a stranger.  I was in ear shot of him as well and responded to him a couple of times when he called for me.  I even came back into the kitchen for a bit.  So for those of you scientists out there, I know that my little case study doesn’t prove anything in relationship to the other studies.

Still, it did make for a pretty cute video.  I set up our camera to capture the whole thing.  It’s a hoot watching him try to resist a delicious cookie for 15 whole minutes.

The first 9 minutes of my experiment with Ben

The second half of Ben’s cookie experiment

So there you have it, Ben didn’t eat the cookie and got the two cookies.  Way to go little dude!