The First Bike Ride

 The training wheels came off!

 Their faces crack me up.

In fact, Noah has a lot of amazing faces.

Faces, I'm telling you.

He's had super expressive facial expressions since he was an infant.

 Frustration/concentration.

 Sometimes he's a thinker. :)

 And believe it or not, this is not an extreme face for him. We see this one almost daily.

 Nathan went up and down the driveway dozens of times.

  "Mom! Take a picture of my feet off the ground!"

 Everybody. :)

Bluebonnets!

Well, I may be too busy to post pictures, but I am taking them.  Here's some proof from yesterday.

Texas bluebonnets!

These were taken in a patch of bluebonnets near our house, with some careful framing in order not to include the cars and street which were 15 feet away or the ugly buildings in almost every direction.  I was pretty proud of the framing, actually! 
I took these a little after 4:00, and the sun was still very strong.  Next time, I'll wait another hour or two until the light is more diffused and softer, which will help with the deep shadows and the squinty children. :)

Authored by a Girl Who Has a Brother

Jane drew a bunch of pictures the other day, declared it a book, and asked me to tie it together for her.  I then asked her to tell me what was happening on each page and just wrote down what she dictated.  The result is hilarious.  And I think it is quite clear that this is written by a girl who has a brother.

 The Princess and the Castle

by Jane Elisabeth Benesh

The fire is exploding on the castle!

The firemen put the fire out, and the princess is smiling.

The princess wears a pretty dress.  There is a fire in the fireplace, but it doesn't explode.

This is the imaginary prince in the princess's mind.

These are hearts made of letters that are exploding.

This is a person who is thinking in his brain about chewing 100 pieces of gum.  Actually, he is an alien.  With one leg.  Actually, he is a tadpole.

The End.

Today

1. I realized this morning (or, rather, reminded myself) that it really does require my getting up at 6:00 in order to get us all to our destination by 9:00.  All the dressing, breakfasting, distracting, comforting (there's teething in the house), etc., just takes a long time when you have three kids under the age of seven.  Although the strange thing is that on school days, we do rush it a bit and leave very early.  I don't know why it takes so much longer on other days.  The only things that would alleviate this necessary-for-me early wake-up time would be if I took my shower and made lunches the night before, but I'm usually so busy doing other things (like trying to give some attention to one of the too many hobbies I have)--not to mention that at that time of day, I'm running out of energy--that lunches fall low on ye olde priority list.
2. That was a whole lot of punctuation right there.
3. It's kind of nice that Noah thinks that the best snack in the world is a big piece of homemade bread with "lots and LOTS of butter on top!"  Sometimes simple is best.
4. I explained to Noah that butter is not exactly good for you, and that lots of it (as I continued slathering it on) is not healthy.  He replied by telling me that butter makes you really fat, and that if you eat enough of it--say, one stick in a single day--that you will make a huge splash when you jump into the swimming pool.
5. On his own, Noah figured out how to count by fives to 100 today and how to count from 101 to 200.  He was pretty darn proud of himself.  He also used some triangle blocks to make a "new shape" with five sides.  I told him it was called a pentagon, and he was amazed and very impressed with himself.
6. We followed that with doing tally marks and learning to count by 5's.  I felt pretty brilliant when, for our tally mark assignment, we counted all of the stuffed animals which the kids had spread out all over the play room floor by putting them away.  I just do not have the gift of making my kids think working is fun, so to get Noah to clean up and think it was great was a victory!  Every time he tossed one into the toy box, he said, "Toss!" and I'd draw a tally mark.  At the end, we counted them--FIFTY-ONE stuffed animals.  WHAT IN THE WORLD??!?!  Time to give some stuff away!
7. Clara is teething.  The last time she was teething (was that only two weeks ago? yes, it was!), she got two molars and two smaller teeth.  Right now, she is cutting two more molars, and y'all, it is rough.  She is usually so easygoing and sweet, and she is actually pretty unkind when she's hurting and not medicated right now.  Give her some Ibuprofen (and some times even that just takes the edge off), and she is her regular old self.  But when it wears off, watch out.  She is a screaming, drooling, tantrumming mess.  I actually went back to 2009 on the blog today to look something up and discovered that Noah was the same way, only worse.  Between all three kids, he definitely had the worst time with teeth.
8. I've updated the Asian Dumpling Soup recipe here on the blog to be more specific about the type of broth and dumplings I use, which should make the recipe more user-friendly overall, since it's actually not always easy to find those items.  You can always make do with whatever you find at a HEB or Stop and Shop or whatnot, but this is what I've been making lately, so I thought I'd update it.  Also, the scallion pancakes at Trader Joe's are fantastic with the soup.
9. The end!  Good night!

P52: Photo 6

This is my little boy, putting on his lab coat and safety glasses for his science lab.

So serious!

His favorite activity of the week is definitely science lab.  And the teacher told me this week that he is far more serious than the other kids his age--that he tries very hard to do well on his lab reports (which include writing, something at which he is new, of course).

In this photo, he's facing some large windows, which is what accounts for the very nice natural light.  And I like his serious face, because it's not an expression I see very often.  Ha!

Lens Envy

I rented a lens today.  It's my first time to do so, and I love the one I picked up!  It's a 24mm F1.4, the purpose of which I will reveal in a few days.  Photographing a walk with the kids is not the reason I rented the lens, but I took it along to get used to it and check it out.  I may never give it back. ;)

Little Miss Clarabelle

I am absolutely loving this picture of Janey.

 Zero gravity for this astronaut!

Love that kid!

 Seriously, it's hard to take a bad picture with such an awesome lens.

The Big Reveal: Noah's Geometric Boy Blanket

I finished Noah's blanket!

Actually, I finished it a couple of months ago, but I only just now took photos of it.

I wanted a more boyish pattern--the boyish colors help, of course, but something more geometric also seemed to be in order.

Although I do wish I had made it bigger, I am pretty pleased with how it came out.  The punch of red in the border, especially, makes me happy.

Two down, one to go!

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I adapted a pattern from this book, changing it so that it goes back and forth rather than round and round.  And then I just experimented with borders until I had something I liked--sorry, I didn't write it down!  But it was pretty simple, and you can probably figure it out by looking at it carefully, if you are so inclined.

Pattern:

-Foundation Row: Chain a multiple of 4 (such as 80), then ch 3 more.  Turn. 
-Row 1: In the fourth stitch from the hook, dc.  Dc two more times in the following chain stitches.  *Ch 1,  sk 1 ch, dc in each of the 3 following ch* all the way across.  Turn.
-Row 2: *Ch 3.  Sc in the sc sp between clusters* all the way across.
-Row 3: Ch 3.  2 dc.  *Ch 1, 3 dc in ch 3 sp* all the way across.  Turn.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until the blanket is the length you'd like, changing colors as you go if you'd like stripes.  **Important: Row 2 is the contrast color row (the red in my blanket).  You will only see the stitches that you single chained between the clusters.  I only used the contrasting color every fourth row.**

Finish with any border you'd like.

The Many Faces of Noah T.

We took like a million photos over Thanksgiving in an effort to get a good family picture, and we did not come away with even one where everyone looked good.  And Noah had a lot to do with that.

Now, he's always been very expressive, but he went above and beyond that day.

 Dead eyes.

 Deader eyes.

Crazy eyes.

 Crazy everything.

 

 And that is my son.

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What do y'all think?  Nathan says we should send this out in a Christmas card, just to keep it real.  This is a slice of reality, for sure.

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But this one is pretty cute. :)

My Noah

I'm loving this photo of Noah, because it captures who he is, in many ways.  He is engaging, inquisitive, and chatty, with "chatty" underscored.  This photo was taken just after Nathan had arrived home from his last trip, when Noah just could not stop talking and asking questions.  Cutie.

On a Neighborhood Walk