Obvious and Not-Obvious

Here are some cute pictures (obvious):

And here are the facts about these pictures that make them interesting (not-obvious):

1.  Two little boys in my house LOVE to wear a white t-shirt and jeans because that is what their Daddy wears when he is home...takes off his work shirt, puts on a pair of jeans, and that is his civvy uniform, unless he's going out somewhere.  You know they are loving their Daddy when they go up to their room together and change out of mom-selected shirts into their white t-shirts.

2.  The papers around the neck were created by Owen all on his own (complete with cut paper hanging strip secured by tape) because "Me and Asher are going to have a race."

3.  Owen's understanding of numbers as they pertain to racing is that the lower the number you wear, the faster you go.  (I think this is because of the idea of  1st, 2nd, 3rd places in a race)   Asher was designated as #1.  Owen's number was more complicated.  "Mom, I made up a new number.  The number is 'Zoh-roh' [as opposed to 'Zero', ed. note]  Asher is 1, but I'm a lot faster, so I am zoh-roh, which is lower than zero.  Zoh-roh is a big circle with these lines in the middle of it [see first picture]."

He then proceeded to create 'Loh-roh', which was lower than Zoh-roh, and was a circle with a cross, with the addition of a cross/plus-sign in each of the four quadrants.  Following Loh-roh is 'Roh-loh', which was symbolized by cutting the interior space of a zero into 8 pie slices and putting a plus sign into each slice.  This number system was quite an occupying task.  Was he merely suggesting an alternate naming of negative numbers?  Or has he discovered an previously unassigned space between zero and the start of negative space?  What is the sound of one hand clapping?  In any case, I was impressed with his grasp of numbers, sequence and pattern.  Whose kid is this??  My favorite thing to do at 5 was gluing elbow macaroni onto a piece of construction paper.

4.  Asher is super-cute on a scooter.  He has no chance of keeping up with Owen on a bike, but he is getting really good at sailing down the hill.

5.  There is a car parked at the bottom of our driveway because Asher finally did the deed...wandered into the street without permission while I was in the house.  Talk about moments in which you realize a complete failure of parenting.  Imagine a car had come by.  So now I am being way more attentive about his every move outside until he proves that he is old enough to abide by the rules.  (He hadn't tried this in the entirety of their times outside so I had gotten too trusting of him, but a couple days ago we walked to the neighbor's house together and I think he then got the idea of going in the street in his head.)  Asher is not one to leave a boundary untested :}

Eden, 4 months

Height 25" (66%ile)
Weight 14lb 4.5oz (53%ile)
Head 41cm (40%ile)

...and cute as a button.  All the hair on the back of her head where it touches the mattress is rubbed off.  But the hair at the bottom near her neck doesn't rub off so there is some very long hair down there with a big bald swath above it...hilarious!!  I can't bring myself to cut off what hair she does have, though!!  Laughing, *extreme* eye contact, loves her brothers, and is a delightful little soul.  Loving our new baby!

Leiderhosen...er, um, I mean, Lederhosen!!

I am most honored to have received a compliment on my cuties from a REAL European family friend who kindly let us know that I had titled this post 'Song Pants' rather than 'Leather Pants'.  Oops!  Luckily, they are adorable spelled either way :)  Thank you!

The nature of elves and I got what I asked for.

First, I got what I asked for.  I decided that it might be good to up the level of literature in Owen's life.  We read lots of picture books, but frankly I tend not to like the long ones.  When we're at the library looking for books to read before bed, I need books that aren't going to take 20 or more minutes to finish.  So we end up with shorter ones which sometimes aren't as sophisticated as I think Owen could handle at this point.  My thought:  a bigger story that we clearly can't finish in a night...I could read just a few pages each night and we could both stay engaged.  I also thought it was time to get him hooked on quality stories so that he'll *want* to be a reader at some point.  It's hard to miss all the urgings to do lots of reading aloud to your kids, too.  So, without thinking this through, what do I do but pick up The Hobbit off of my bookshelf.  Well.  Like I said, I didn't think this through.  I just remembered how much I loved that book!  IT IS NOT FOR A 4 YEAR OLD!  Aside from a whole lot of semi-violent content about all manner of trolls, goblins, monsters, greedy dwarves and dragons, it is not written so that a young child can begin to understand it.  There's the British English factor, the writing in an antiquated style factor, and the way too big vocabulary factor.  Then there's the complexity of plot and references to a complex fantasy world factor.  I got about 4 pages in, finding myself doing a lot of paraphrasing on the fly just to get it mildly accessible for Owen before I closed it and told him we'd need to find something else.  The next day he wanted to try it again.  So a couple more pages.

HE WAS INSATIABLE.  Every moment that he has sensed that I have finished a required daily task, he is at my side *begging* me to read it to him.  He is just like me...he cannot get enough of the maps in the front.  Every page he is ripping the book out of my hand and going back to the map asking me to show him where the characters are.  He stops me every sentence to figure out exactly what's going on.  If I stop for a breath, he says, "So?  SO???" 

We finished it tonight.  I must have read to him for 2-3 hours today, he pushed me so hard!!  I am exhausted!  I was translating that book for him in real time the entire read.  Whew.  That is actually pretty strenuous brain work.  The amazing thing is that he has really shown himself to have excellent reading comprehension and he grabbed onto plot details and little side facts that I thought would have gone right past him.  He was listening to nearly everything.  The edition was perfect in that there was a page with a large full-page picture about every 10 pages.  When we got done he recited the whole plot to me as we looked back through the pictures.  The only picture he wouldn't look at was Gollum, which is odd to me, because the pages of trolls, goblins, giant spiders and wargs (wolves) were way scarier in my opinion.

Here is the funny I sat down to record.  On the maps in the front of the book (drawn by Tolkien, unlike the pictures I mentioned), there are elvish runes...letters from the elvish language devised by Tolkien and consistent throughout his books.  All along, Owen has been very interested in the runes and wanting to know what they say (just like I used to be!  can this be genetic?) and I tell him that it's a made up language, made up by the man who wrote the book, and we can't really understand what it says, we just know that the elves know how to understand it.  But it's all made up, just like the elves are made up.

Owen:  "But mom, are the runes pretend???  Because I know that the goblins and the trolls and the dragon and Beorn and wizards and hobbits are all made up, but Santa's elves are real.  So those elves are real, and that means THE RUNES ARE REAL.  So what do they mean mom??????  Because Santa's elves are REAL.  Right?  Santa's elves are real right?"

Me:  Hmm, these are hard questions.  What do you think Owen?

Owen:  Yes I think the runes are real because elves are real.

Me:  Well *I* don't know everything, that's for sure.  I guess you can figure this one out.  But I can't figure out what those runes say!

I've expressed my discomfort with Christmas fibbing, and see...one has to continue to dig deeper to keep it up!!!  Well, I can't deny it was super-cute :) 

I told Owen we would read The Boxcar Children next.  I also remember liking that book.  However, I have not looked at it to see if it is age-appropriate.  You'd think I would have learned...!

News!

1.  We just got a new niece!  Congrats G&M!  Laurel is beautiful!

2.  Just found a deer tick on Owen.  He was brave about having it pulled out.  I was just today loving how much my boys LOVE being outside and thinking what a great summer it's going to be.  And further explorations now reveal it stands to be a very ticky summer.  Not excited...Lyme disease = no joke.

Swingset

Wonderful neighbors passed down their swingset to us and it has been such a lifesaver with being stuck at home with Eden taking naps in her crib.  Yay!!  Boys are on it constantly.  Owen is a little acrobat and can climb the 8 ft. rope like lightning, swing across the monkey bars, flip here and there...amazing.  New England winters are way too long with 2 little boys...they belong outside :)

HAIRCUT!!!

If you don't spend regular time with us, you will not know that Asher has turned into a shaggy beast.  He completely rejects all notions of hair-cutting.  The last time he was able to get one was just after Eden was born when we were still in the hospital and my mom and sis held him down through the ensuing tantric fit and the stylist went after him.  I have been trying the gentle approach ever since (because this kid has HAIR!  Tons of super-thick, fast-growing stuff).  But my approach has resulted in...a very long-haired kid.  The closest we got was playing a game where we all got to have a snip, taking turns (I lost more hair than I would have liked to that evening) and saving the hair to make a craft with it (gluing it on a picture of a hairy monster and adding google eyes).  That got the bangs done temporarily but nothing else.  Owen had started suggesting that Asher wear dresses because he looked like a GIRL (heaven forbid!), but Asher just smiled.  I have asked him about 3-4 times a week if I can give him a haircut.  I get a curt and polite, 'No.' and then he's off to do whatever he was busy with.  I offer many bribes, but not are tantalizing enough.  Until today!  I told him that Dad would take him to the Jelly Belly store and let him fill up a bag with jellybeans if he let me cut his hair.  He hesitated...then, yes!!  Miracle!  I've tried that very bribe before, but no cigar.  He did not like this haircut one bit and after about 5 minutes he was done and it got more difficult.  But he chose it, and that made it somewhat successful.  The result is a pretty awful haircut, and I wish I could have had more time (cutting one swath of hair is a challenge, it's so thick and long!).  But it's a step in the right direction.  He got his jellybeans and he looks a *little* more like a boy again.  I think it was a combo of sheer repetition of the idea, and finally a sufficient bribe.  Now...to pottytrain.  Been putting that one off, same reasons.  :P

 (Nice.  Bangs go short to long from left to right.  But if I cut them all as short as the shortest spot it will look worse...!)