I must be butter…

…’cause I’m on a ROLL!

I made another ramshackle toy this week.

On an ice cream bucket, I traced shapes of blocks and then used a razor to cut them out. Then I put masking tape around the edges because they were kind of sharp and Rose kept sticking her hands in and scraping them up.

I didn’t know they would like this simple, ugly toy THAT much! It was great—the parents watched General Conference, and the kids put blocks into a bucket. Everyone was happy.

Every time the bucket got full, Rose made sure I opened it up and dumped it out again. This is her “I’m-frustrated-this-is-heavy” face.

I may be on a toymaking roll, but I’m not perfect. All of the shapes on this latest creation do fit through the square hole, so the shape-matching purpose of the toy is nullified. Who cares? Jay usually matches the shapes, but Rose mostly beats the blocks until they fall into the bucket, no matter what shape they are.

Simple toys, simple joys. That could totally be my slogan if I ever go into business! hah

Lights, Camera, Action figures

When Jay asked me to build a block palace with him this morning, I was not very excited. We have built amazing edifices in every possible location of our 600 square foot domain, except maybe the bathroom. I feel like I’ve used up every combination of Jay’s small box of blocks. Jay doesn’t mind repetition, but I like variety. I have been trying to get him to build on his own all week, but he loves it when I build him an elaborate multi-level castle. So today I finally went to work. With no better ideas,we started building Darth Vader’s house in the family room. The outer walls had barely been laid out when inspiration struck.

Quick backtrack: Jay makes armies of Whiteguys with his big lego blocks. He plays with them for hours. While I commend his imagination, sometimes I forget who’s who—which square pillar is a Whiteguy and which one is a Strong Boy? [Whiteguy=Stormtrooper, Strong Boy=the good guys]

As you probably know by now, I love the challenge of constructing homemade toys for my kids. It’s way more fun than going to the store and spending millions of dollars on the “real” thing (and Star Wars toys are all collector’s items or something, so they’re even $$$-ier than other toys). Plus, Jay likes doing projects with me, especially when he gets to play with it when we’re done.

All we did was print Google images of the classic Star Wars folks, cut them out, and tape them to the blocks. Instant action figures! I did stick clear contact paper to the pictures to make them a bit more durable (aka in case Rose gets a hold of them). I hope I didn’t destroy Jay’s imagination with these! But we both think they’re pretty cool.

Here’s the dark side.

Marshaling the troops.

Point for Mommy.

Big Foot, Little Foot

Today is my “little” brother’s birthday!

23 years ago, I could hold him on my lap.

My, how times have changed.

This is one of my all-time faves.

Here’s a family classic picture of Brad that MUST be posted on his birthday.

Ok, now on to the little foot:

That would be Rosa, as we often call her. Rose’s feet are a size 2. At her age, Jay’s feet were size 6. Where did her petite feet come from? Not from her parents! Or any of her grandparents, for that matter.

Aren’t they cute? Rose calls them “zoo, zoo!” I rather adore them. And they are from Walmart, of all places! I don’t even remember the last time I set foot in Walmart. They were always out of everything on my list, so I gave up on that huge annoying place and turned to Target. Well, Target has been seriously lacking in the kids’ shoe department lately, so I briefly reigned in my pride and slunk into Walmart. Hello kid-shoe jackpot!

Jay got some Walmart summer sandals this week too. Jeff and I have had our trusty Keens for a few years, so now we all match!

Happy Birthday to Brad!

And happy summer sandals to the rest of us!

Guns and Rose

Jay loves Star wars, especially the Whiteguys (aka Storm Troopers). It’s hilarious when he walks around saying “I’m a Whiteguy! I’m a Whiteguy!” He has made himself a Whiteguy helmet—it’s easy, all he does is dump out all of his blocks all over the floor:

Not too accurate, but it works for him.

Rose had to join in, of course.

Every day, Jay makes himself a “peewer” out of his big lego blocks:

These guns are rather fragile and Jay has to hold them carefully in both hands so they don’t fall apart. Today I decided to make him a more durable firearm.

One gun is a paper towel tube held in a bent position by tape, and the other one is made of 3 pieces of cardboard taped together. He loves them.

That cumbersome helmet.

While Jay was peewing away, I thought maybe Rose would like a quick little homemade toy too. So I whipped up a little 6 minute pink purse for her.

When I handed it to her, she didn’t reach out for it with her hand, she reached through the strap and slid it onto her shoulder, little girly girl.

Jay is laying in ambush back there. Maybe I should give Rose a small hand gun of her own to hide in her purse. Or maybe some mace …

Family Photos?

Hah!

Sunday afternoon is turning into family tackle time. Today Jay and Rose were still bare-chested from their lunch (messy eaters who won’t keep bibs on), and Rose had long since removed her cute church hair bow. In spite of these minor details, we were all piled on the floor together, so I thought I’d try to get a nice family photo.

Like I said, HAH!

That’s enough.

__________________________
PS   I got contacts this week—for the first time in over 2 years! My eyes still prefer glasses, but contacts really make running easier. I ran nearly 7 miles in them yesterday—what a panorama of clarity!

Learning Curve

That’s all I have to say today.

Feeling Springy

March is an antsy month. It starts getting tantalizingly warmer in the daytime but it’s still uncomfortably chilly in the wee hours. Maybe I get antsy because it’s the end of a whole winter of too much time cooped up. Maybe the wind gets to me. Probably all of the above. Whatever the reason, I always feel ready for change in March.  Last March I got to start running again for the first time after Rose was born. That was a sufficiently exciting and large change.

Rose is looking for a new jungle gym.

This year, we don’t have a big change happening in March, but we are at least preparing for a big change. The time has come at last: this week we officially started house-hunting! For our very own HOUSE! I’ve always thought it would be so fun to go house-hunting and be able to 1. see a bunch of different houses and then 2. choose one to be my very own. This is yet another Shaina-ideal that has been smooshed. Crunched. Splatted. Maybe it’s just Grandview, but this house-hunting thing has turned out to be hard work, and kind of stressful! I could go on (and on), but I’ll just leave it at that—finding a nice, affordable house in our town is uphill work.

I was telling my dear, patient mother all about my demolished ideal that house-hunting would be a breeze, and she said, “well, here’s one ideal that won’t fail you: Rose is cute!” I can count on that. And that’s where the pictures come in. Some day in the near future I hope to be able to post pictures of our new house, but we haven’t found one of those yet. So I’d better stick to the reliable ideal of child-cuteness for now.

This week we had some lovely warm days around here. Friday afternoon we went to the park together. I had fun playing with my camera settings.

Jeff and Jay played fetch and went exploring by the train tracks.

Rose practiced walking. She’s getting better at it every day! The bumpy grass was a pretty tough challenge for her, but she did pretty well.

This week we also had our first experience with gasping, rasping children late at night. Croup? Congestion? Who knows what it was, but thanks to all my pals who’ve dealt with this before, I knew one remedy: cold air! So one night Rose and I spent half an hour bundled up in the cold. It was amazing. The next night it was Jay’s turn to wake up gasping, so out he went. Amazing again. Tired again. Now my head is stuffy. Maybe that will calm my ansty-ness for a day or two…

Rose can walk!

Rose has really refined her walking techniques over the past week. In about 10 days flat, she went from 2 or 3 stuttery stumbly steps at a time to power-walking down the hallway like a pro. It’s so cute (and slightly startling) to have her come strolling on into a room instead of crawling. We’re still getting used to it.

The narrow hallway in our apartment is the longest stretch of open territory for Rose to practice—she’s not the best at stopping and turning corners or dodging toys on the floor yet.

I love how Rose’s hair is long enough to pinch into a ponytail and clip a bow on now, because she will not keep a headband on atall. I also rather love her little pink diaper. She loves that fuzzy satiny pink bunny blanket.

Do you see that belly? I took this picture after lunch on Sunday. Sunday lunch usually means Jeff’s specialty crepes for us. Yes, we’re spoiled. Jay and Rose eat SO MUCH on crepeday. This past Sunday, Rose and I ate the same amount of crepes for lunch, and Jay ate MORE than us! I guess when you’re learning how to walk, you need the energy.

Rose is exploding with sweetness and new skills—I love this age because there are new developments almost every other day! And I am enjoying this time especially with Rose because I was kind of a pukey-preg0-zombie when Jay was this age, so I missed a lot of his early one year oldness.

It surprises me how much Rose is learning all on her own. With Jay I was trying to teach him things for fun all the time, but Rose just watches Jay and picks up almost everything. She says please (dee) and thank you (deh deh), for goodness sake! I never taught her that. She just watched me drilling some manners into her big brother, and learned some of her own.

Some things aren’t learned—Rose is a natural TEASE! She pokes Jay, hides her face, peeks at him, and then pokes him again, over and over. It is hilarious to see Rose giggle and Jay get annoyed at his little Rose Monster sister. But one night, Jay did say “thankee for the Rose Monster” in his bedtime prayer. They do love each other.

There are definitely plenty of squealy screamy fighty cooped-up moments around here (check out that boo-hooey lower lip in Rose’s shadow), but being Jay’s and Rose’s mom is still mostly totally awesomely FUN.

[kiss]

And last but not least, please enjoy this song. We do.