Making Chex Mix

Since the weather has turned cold around here, I thought it was the perfect time to cook up a large batch of chex mix. The kids loved mixing it all up, and of course tasting multiple samples of the ingredients.

Junior Chefs

Today Betty and Coraline helped me make a big pot of fresh spaghetti sauce. They were great and breaking up the mushroom slices into little pieces, and throwing them in the pot, and in shaking the (entire) pepper canister in as well. We'll see how well they like their creation on their pasta tonight.

Salamanders!

Rainy Day Escape with ViewMasters

"Build Like Bob Builder"

Sand Cakes!

Reading Books

Coraline, especially, has taken to reading books. She'll go off on her own, and spend almost an hour quietly going through a stack of books. Now she knows some of the stories, and she'll read them to herself. A few of the books she reads:

"One day....pumpkin"

"One day...no pay...no caps"

"One day....little goose"

"One day....Mudge bath"

"One day...no choo!...no choo!"

Our Cousins Visit!

The Third Daughter

We didn't originally plan to raise Arthur and the girls differently. We thought that if Arthur played with dolls, and Betty liked trucks, that'd be fine, and we wouldn't limit their interests. However, we have found that there are some inherent differences between the sexes, as defined by biology and society. So we've slowly been working on the difference between boys and girls. First and foremost, we learned that we need to teach them that only boys can pee on trees. It still has yet to sink in. To make things even, though, we've told Arthur that peeing on trees is a boy thing, and wearing dresses is a girl thing. It still doesn't stop him from wanting to try on new outfits (he knew this Halloween costume was a girl dress, and frankly, he's the only one of the three that didn't complain about it being too tight).

Wednesday is Market Day!

Another Snake!

While the kids were playing with their strollers today, a shout rang out from Arthur - "Snake, Daddy! Snake!" Sure enough, they had found another snake. Luckily they knew what to do, and after calling me, they sat and watched it from a (short) distance.

Riner Heritage Day

The Bean Patch

When the NC triplets came to visit, we took our bean table outside to play in. Over the course of the day, we lost a few bags of beans in the yard. So after a month of heavy rains, we've grown quite a crop of beans.

Now whenever we're in the backyard, everyone (including the dog) hunts in the patch to find fresh beans to munch on.

Our Activities

The latest cool activity in our house is playing "strollers." The kids love loading things up in their strollers, and racing them around the house, or up and down Nana and Pop Pop's driveway. In fact, Arthur just said that when his cousins come visit next weekend, he wants them to play strollers with him. Besides this game, and playing in the sandbox, the kids love exploring in the woods. Today Betty found a discarded bird nest.

In other news, Betty has gotten in her last tooth (top left). All the kids are getting molars in, though, so night time is pretty difficult around here.

Tooth count: A-16, B-20, C-17

Train's Coming!

Kids in the Paper

We just found out that the kids were in Saturday's paper. I haven't seen a hardcopy yet, but a teacher at Erin's school is going to laminate a copy for her.

Visiting the Cousins in Richmond

The Tale of the Accident

Today Coraline fell while running down the driveway, to which Arthur shouted, “Run too fast!” Of course, his warning had come too late, as Cora already had bloodied her knee (a common occurrence). Nana scooped her up to check out the wound, and Betty suggested, “Bandaid, Bandaid!” (Betty loves bandaids)


Coraline said, “No bandaid!” Betty bent down, scrunched up her nose, and inspected Coraline’s wound, declaring “Red! Red!” After repeating this a few times, eventually Coraline started saying to her, “No look, Betty, no look!”


Then Betty went and brought her a big dump truck to put on her lap, supposedly to soothe the pain. While Nana and Pop Pop praised Betty's thoughtfulness, Coraline declared, “Too big! Too big!” So Betty took the truck away, but not before examining the wound again, “Red! Red! Bandaid!” Coraline repeated, “No bandaid!” and so Betty suggested, “Get milkie!” (which Coraline loves). So Nana went in and brought Coraline some milk.


Where was Arthur during this? Kept at a distance, with Coraline shouting “No touch, Arthur!” every time his hands crept closer to her wound.

Little Frog!

Arthur found a tiny frog today (usually we just find toads). And miraculously, it stayed on his hand while I ran inside to get my camera, and even more so, it survived the encounter with a two-year-old.

Loud Breakfast

This is the tail end of a large shouting event that took place over breakfast (I know, I need to get faster with these videos). Arthur decided that shouting should end because Pop Pop had walked into the room, and very methodically told his sisters that the game was over.