Our Children

There is a little song from the musical Ragtime that I've always been fond of called "Our Children" of two (separate) parents commenting on the friendship their son and daughter are cultivating.  I've always found it to be a sweet little tune, but there is one line that particularly stands out to me these days where they say, "...one like me and one like you, our children."

Because from the moment she was born, she clearly looked like me.  Elliot doesn't resemble Grant much when you compare baby pictures, but there is a LOT of resemblance when they are near each other.  I also think there is a strong family resemblance when you see Elliot with the sons of Grant's brothers.

So when we have pictures like this...

...it's pretty easy for me to get misty-eyed when I see our very own children.  One like me and one like Grant.  They are pretty awesome little people.

Not that it's all that difficult for me to get all misty-eyed in general, especially these days.

But I really, really, really love seeing our children together.

Rituals

I totally get that coming to the store with me must be kinda boring for Kendra.  So I try to compensate by letting her do a couple of things for her.  We often let her get a hot snack at the deli (it used to be cheese sticks but they stopped selling those so now to do popcorn chicken that she shares with Elliot) and if we happen to go through that part of the store, we let her do this:


Yep, we say "Hi" to the fish.  Every.  Single.  Time.  I used to get away with only passing through when we actually went through that part of the store, but now she asks almost every time we go to the store (which is what Wal-Mart is to her, "the store").  But it turns out that the fish are located right by the family restroom and it's just that point in pregnancy where I have to use the restroom every time we go, even if I used it right before we left the house like a good girl, so we almost always head in that direction anyway.

Elliot's starting to appreciate it these days, too, but this has always really been Kendra's thing.  :)

The best readers

I really, really love the fact that Kendra is old enough to remember that she has grandparents and who they are, even though she only gets to see them a few times a year.  In fact, she talks about them every now and again and identifies them when she sees pictures.  She also asks to call them on the phone sometimes.

One thing she's learned is that grandparents also make fantastic readers.  Last summer just after Elliot was born Grandma Farnsworth spent plenty of time like this when they came to visit:

 
(I'm pretty embarrassed that I haven't shared this one sooner since it's over a year old--I'm blaming the newborn-baby fog.)

And she got a great dose of Poppa's excellent reading skills when he came to visit for Elliot's birthday a couple of months ago.

So while Mommy and Daddy are no rookies with reading books, it turns grandparents make the very best readers.

Fun in the simple stuff

We've spent the past month or so making different preparations for our new baby--clearing out STUFF (we're very popular on FreeCycle these days), cleaning up the stuff we're keeping and taking care of a few extra projects around the house.

Grant's good with the Honey-Do stuff, especially when he gets to use tools.  I asked for some more shelves in our laundry closet for extra storage space, but as fate would have it our space was literally an inch too narrow to use the shelves we got at Wal-Mart, so I loaded up the kids to see what we could find at Home Depot (we ended up having them cut up a big one into properly sized pieces for us, it was actually pretty cool).

Kendra has long since been a fan of car carts, but these days, Elliot is starting to appreciate them, too.

Have I mentioned lately that these guys just rock my world?  I love them to pieces.

Let him eat CAKE!

It was already more than two months ago, but Elliot did have a birthday.  And there was cake.  Ohhhhh, was there ever cake!

"Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines..."

"That's better, now I can really dig into this thing."

"Hamoofananomnomnomnomnom!"

I'm not sure if he enjoyed his cake more than we enjoyed watching him enjoy it...it was incredibly satisfying to see a small child really get into the cake after Kendra's first and second birthdays were not the most cake-tastic and she was so sick on her third that we didn't even try.

Yeay, cake!!

Hard at play

Even though sometimes it kinda gets in my way or messes up my house...at the end of the day, I think it's pretty cool when my kids start playing with stuff that isn't "a toy".  Like this scene that unraveled one night a few months ago when I had both done folded laundry and assembled a stand fan during the day.

Very Elliot-sized stuff, apparently.  :)

Mommy's Sous Chef

(I'll admit it, I totally learned what a sous chef is from the movie Ratatouille)

If we haven't made it clear already, Elliot is kinda...a Momma's Boy.  And by "kinda" we mean, "a lot, a LOT."

And that's no crime--after incredibly independent Kendra, it's kinda nice to have a little person around here who literally can't get enough of me (though I have to keep myself from bursting into tears when I think about how his world is about to get totally rocked with the addition of a new baby).  But it does mean that it's often very difficult for me to prepare dinner (when I decide to cook at all...) what with Elliot clinging to my legs and begging for my attention.

I can put him in his highchair and give him a toy and/or a snack to keep him occupied, but then he's less patient to stay in it when it's actually dinner time, so I only do that if I'm putting things together in the morning.

If I'm trying to appease him while also actually putting the evening meal together in the evening, I do this:

I just pull up a chair and let him stand on it right next to me.  Mini rice cakes and Beanie Baby reindeer are not in any of my recipes, so he's still just playing and snacking, but he's doing it on my level and that's much better, apparently.

The only glitch so far is if I need to use a knife, because he likes to grab at what I'm doing and yeah, baby fingers and CutCo are not a combination I want to contemplate, ever.  So I just have to plan ahead and do all my knifing before I bring him up, which is pretty easy to manage.

We're really just getting a head start on the time I start having the kids help with meals whether they want to or not, but it adds a whole lot of cute to my dinner-preparation experience.  :)

Sittin' pretty

I found this draft from before Elliot was born that I've realized I never shared.  Enjoy!

We have some friends in our apartment complex who have been doing some cleaning out...

The result is that Kendra has acquired some sweet, sweet new stuff!

Her favorite items have been a table and chair.

She looooves it.

She'll take her little package of fruit snacks and put each little morsel on the table, discard the packaging (shown in above photo) and sit down to enjoy each chewy, one delectable bite at a time.

She sure is enjoy them, isn't she?  :)

Luckily there's an extra chair for her little brother when he decides he wants to sit there, too.

Common tastes

One day I left the kids with Grant and came home to find this:

Apparently Elliot enjoys an ice cream sandwich as much as his big sister does...