Frivolity

This summer I earned some $$ and I decided to spend it on something completely frivolous: a shiny new camera!

Isn’t it pretty?

pretty skinny!

Let me back up. My sister-in-law Steph and her husband have a business called Dirtboy Designs. They sell silicone arm bands that look like dirt bike tires. It is quite the flourishing business! Steph “hired” me to fill and mail their orders while she was away for a few weeks this summer. Instead of being sensible with my earnings, I did the opposite. It was liberating. But kind of scary. Now I’m back to my normal, responsible ways. [This picture is Rose amidst an exceptionally large arm band order]

This is my now-old camera. It is pretty chunky. I have been wanting to upgrade my camera to a smaller, more portable model for a while, but I didn’t want to sacrifice the quality, zoom, and sweet settings that my good ole Canon S5 had. Well, in the 3 years since we bought that camera, Canon has come a long way. My new tiny camera has more zoom and more sweet settings than the old one! Win! The only downside is that it’s so slim that I can barely hold on to it—there’s no grip. But I can fit my camera into the diaper bag now. It’s revolutionary.

I love the “fishbowl” setting.

Cool-looking poster setting

Some of the settings are a little scary.

This blurry one is fun to play with.

Ah, sepia.

Speaking of brown… on to the OTHER “piece of frivolity.” We got a new COUCH this week! It pays to have some savings stashed up so when you find your dream couch, you can just GET it.

This thing is so comfy. The cushions are spring-loaded too, so it’s bouncy and easy to get off of—it doesn’t suck you in and hold on like our other couch. The house we stayed in for our Brown family lake vacation this summer had this exact couch in the living room. Jeff and I fell in love with it there, and vowed that we would get it if we ever saw one for sale.

Well, we were at Costco last week and guess what? So was The Couch of Dreams. It was actually affordable too, which was the bigger surprise. Within a day we had decided that we couldn’t let this opportunity pass us up. So we got it. We managed to get a couch that had been purchased and then returned, so we got a nice big discount. This beautiful couch was a mere $650! Hurrahhhhh! We crammed it into our little apartment, and now it feels like we live in a tree house with all those cushions everywhere. And none of the browns match. But this is not the phase of life where we have a cute-ly decorated home with matching furniture. So I’m ok with it.  

I’d say a little frivolity is a good thing every now and then.

The one good thing about having church at 1:00 pm

Yes. When you have young kids, there is really only one good thing about having church in the afternoon: Sunday morning BREAKFEAST!

Last Sunday, Jeff made pancakes for breakfast…

…with blueberries and whipped cream…

…and crepes for lunch.

Jeff is the crepexpert of our family. That’s why you want to marry an RM, girls. I love Jeff’s face in this picture—can you tell he loves making crepes?

Our kitchen is too small for me to get a picture with Jeff AND the crepe-flipping action, but you can see his smile in the shadow on the cupboard door.

Jay loves crepes. I put peanut butter, banana, and whipped cream into his. What’s not to love?

Raspberries and cream with a little Nutella. Oh boy.

Divine.

Jay ate 2 crepes—just as many as I did! This boy packs away the food at lunchtime. I don’t know HOW he eats SO much at once. Where does it go? He usually eats just as much as me—or more—for lunch.

As for Rose, she’s still plugging away at the baby food. So far she likes plain baby oatmeal the best, and carrots mixed with baby rice cereal second best. She hated pears! It was awesome. That’s the extent of her repertoire right now, unless you count the 2 or 3 crumbs of bread she recently ingested. [This picture is her “just-for-Jay” smile. I LOVE how much she LOVES her big brother]

Tonight, when Rose was slowing down on her dinner, Jay stepped in and got her to eat the rest of her carrot-rice-goop! It was amazing. Rose will do anything for Jay.

Here’s some of the action. When Jay ran off at the end, he went to grab the dishcloth so he could wipe Rose’s face. Then he kept feeding her the rest of her dinner. I think he’s better at feeding Rose than he is at feeding himself (Jay favors the …full-body experience approach to eating).

Even though Sundays and church with young’ens can be draining, these Sweetfaces (along with a loaded crepe) MORE than make up for it!

What to do when your table is too big for the tiny kitchen:

Take out the leaf and give it to the resident 2 year old:

Ramp for cars. Check.

Hill for trucks. Check.

Indoor jungle gym. Check.

Indoor slide. Check.

Hours of fun for Jay. Check.

In-house entertainment for the parents. Definitely.

Watching Jay play (and playing with him) is getting more and more fun every day.

Little Swimmer

This week we finally got out Jay’s birthday-present blow up baby pool. We took it over to the grandparentals’ yard and filled it with icy hose water. Jay had a blast!

We all sat just outside the splash zone in the shade and “hung out at the pool,” watching Jay play. It was pleasant. I’m looking forward to this time next year when Rose can play with Jay—I’d say he could use a little healthy rivalry. He makes up 50% of the grandkids on the White side, and gets attention-a-plenty.

Rose took a very brief dip.

Grampa’s head took a dip too…

Luckily, this creature (aka hairy Toby doglips) did not get in the water.

Meanwhile, Rose tried to see how far Daddy’s lips would stretch.

It was a hot day, but the shade was actually not-so-hot. By the end of the hour, Jay was shivering in his little swim costume. In spite of his immanent hypothermia, he refused to leave the pool, and I had to bodily remove him from the water and burrito him into a towel (with many boo hoos).

Steph makes everything better! I love this picture because it shows just how sweet she is to Jay. He adores her.

Rose had a little Grama time. It was nice for her to be in a sociable mood with Leslie. In the last few weeks, Rose has wailed at the very sight of this loving Grama for some reason.

Warming up in the sun. I recently realized that I have zero pictures of our in-town family. So I decided to STOP taking them for granted and START taking pictures of them! [brace yourselves, Westridge Drive residents]

“M” is for…Uncle Brad!

A few weeks ago, I had the brilliant-mama “let’s combine fun with learning” idea to make Jay an ABC book in one of those little 4x6 photo albums.  A few times a week, we do a new letter-page in the “CB-Book” as Jay calls it. On each page, I write one letter and then draw a few little pictures of things that start with the featured letter. Jay loves watching and helping me draw pictures. I love drawing cartoons, teaching Jay, and watching him learn all at once. It’s great!

I’m surprised and impressed with how much Jay is actually learning from our little ABC book sessions. We sit on the floor and use that handy diaper box as a table while we draw pictures for the book. When Jay wants to do a page in his CB book, he pulls out the box, sets the book on it, and tries to get out the crayons (I keep them out of reach to save our walls, furniture, Rose, etc.)

Here are a few of Jay’s favorite pages:

Before we start a new page, we review alllllll of the other pages first. Today we did “N.”

When we reached “M” in our review today, I said “M is for…” and pointed to the pictures on the page. Here’s what happened:

I drew a picture of a muscly man for “M,” and I explained what muscles were to Jay like this: “Muscles like Uncle Brad and Kyle.” Uncle Brad is what stuck in Jay’s brain…

…even though Kyle is the one who did “triple-neph-ups!”

There’s nothing like a buff uncle to teach a little boy the ABC’s.

CARROTS

Rose would probably be a kindred spirit to Anne Shirley.

Rose’s first food after rice cereal was carrots. She’s such a little trooper—she kept trying to eat them, even though she obviously hated them. I think she kept trying bites because she couldn’t believe that I would actually keep giving her something so disgusting. Betrayal! As for me, I had SUCH a fun time sitting there with a spoon in one hand and my camera in the other, laughing my head off.

I’m supposed eat this stuff?

yuck.

ok, one more try

Rose did this funny button-the-lip face in reaction to the strong carroty taste.

Miraculously, Rose still forgave her mean mama after all that orange colored torture. She’s such a good little example.