Have a happy Mother's Day!

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs... since the payment is pure love. ~Mildred B. Vermont

You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back. ~William D. Tammeus


Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

What's your favorite mom memory?

More pics from our trip

Nana got a couple of awesome shots of the kids (the close-ups). We enjoyed being at Nana's and Pawpaw Terry's. Ivan's back in his routine of waking up and wanting to go to Nana's house, or a party if he had to have a second choice.

Latest in learning and growing.

Ivan has been watching a video a friend lent us called Leapfrog Letter factory. I highly recommend it. It's fun and Ivan has already learned the sounds of all the letters. He can't recognize all the letters yet, but he knows their sounds pretty much. The funniest part is that he can't make the "k" sound so instead of saying: "C says k-k-k, it's cold in here", he says "C says t-t-t, it's told in here".

Dominique is cutting her top two teeth. She's had fever some- which my friend's pediatrician is convinced is not related. Some 20 teeth into it, I'd say he's wrong. My two have often gotten fever when cutting teeth- nothing high or lasting days, just coming and going.

Do you remember losing and growing teeth? What was your preferred tooth extraction method? Did you get money?

Bodacious beach

Our visit to what I erroneously label the ocean. 1st pic- Ivan making a sand angel. Next pic, his sand slide. Apparently, this is not the ocean. It is a gulf. Perhaps we can mark this up to me being from a landlocked province. Landlocked as in half a week to get to any substantial mass of water like an ocean or perhaps it comes from my total dislike of social studies- but I still don't get it. This supposed "bay" gets water from the ocean, sends it's water back to the ocean, mixes at some place with the ocean, but here it's now a bay. They should call it an ocean suburb or ocean outlet, maybe ocean cul-de-sac.

This is like when one of our main streets suddenly changes names. The poor visitor drives down the large, totally straight thoroughfare called Mockingbird- innocently looking for an intersecting street when suddenly, he looks up and discovers that not only has he not found his 2nd street, but he has also lost the very large thoroughfare called "Mockingbird". Without turning, or blinking his eyes, he is now on "Barrow" and very much lost. Someone in the street naming department is having a good laugh.

To all you Galveston, Texas "gulf" people- this is just to let you know that this Saskatchewanean will not be fooled. Change the name all you want. The water is salty and there are waves. I know about lakes and rivers, puddles and burst pools (ask cousin Kris- it wasn't me!), but what you got is a bunch of ocean water lapping onto your gulf's shores.

We had a blast as you can tell. I think I could go to the beach everyday and not get bored. And thanks to everyone for the encouragement. Ivan has raving reviews about the ocean and beach and doesn't mention his fierce sunburn. They are both turning a very pretty brown color. It may have cost dearly, but they are definitely no longer neon white (their birth color).

Have you been to the ocean? What's your favorite: ocean, lake, river, pool, waterfall and why.

Happy birthday Sis (2x)

I had my parents to myself for 2 1/2 years, but my life was forever changed with our family's new addition. 31 years ago today, I gained more than a sister, I gained a life long friend. Happy Birthday sis- my one and only.

Bad momma

I think I just committed my most horrific goof ever as a mom. I slow baked my children. It all started out very innocently. We had a total blast at Galveston beach today. They discovered the tide and salty water. Ivan kept yelling, "here it comes" and running out to catch the waves. He kept going at it even when the waves knocked him over and put him under a couple of times (with momma close at hand to scoop him out of course). He was buried in the sand multiple times. Dominique also had a blast crawling all over and checking out the waves. We had a picnic lunch all lightly coated in sand, collected a few seashells as cheap souvenirs and thought the day was a fabulous success.

Then Nanna said she'd gotten some sun. What? It had been drizzling and cold when we'd gotten there, to the point where Ivan was cold and shivering (he had run out into the water in his clothes), so at some point in the morning since they were both in cold, wet, sandy clothes, I'd changed them into swim diapers and left them unclothed. At one point the sun peeked out and I said "I should have put sunscreen on them", but wasn't sure how to accomplish this since they were both coated in sand. Each time I'd rinse them in the water, they were wet, or sandy still or wet and sandy. That wouldn't be good to put cream on wet sandy skin would it? That was the moment when the parent police was supposed to come give me a citation and tell me to get them either in clothes or sunscreen.

Yep, I've got two fried children now- you know, scary red- cheeks, shoulders, back, chest and top of legs- everywhere that has not seen sun yet this summer. The rest that already has a tan was fine. Dominique has been totally cooperative letting me put aloe vera on her every 3 minutes or so. Ivan is not wanting anymore treatments. She still has suptle cool skin. His is starting to get hot and dry- so I'll torture him through the night, applying aloe while I cry inside. I've almost come to tears a few times as I look at them and pray this will have no long lasting implications.

What a perfectly horrible way to finish off a great day. May this at least be a lesson, so that I'll never burn them again.

Sweetness

Dictionivary-

seatbelt- includes the belt for his pants
pillup- a pillow
favorite questions: "what color is this?" & "oh oh, what happened?" (for any unfamiliar sound or ocurence for example the thunder last night, someone's car beeping, the clothes dryer buzzer going off)


Today, while in the car, each child in their car seats, Ivan and Dominique held hands for about 2 blocks. It was so sweet.



My Dad always said the highest form of flattery is imitation and Ivan adores his daddy. Here they are "shaving". I made Ivan a razor out of legos and now he wants to shave with Daddy all the time. Wish he wanted to go potty like daddy too!!! (No pressure Ivan)

I was doing laundry and Ivan took the basket and started playing this "new" game in the kitchen. I thought it was so hillarious! I love how kids take words so litterally. By the way, this is such a better version for 2 year olds- totally do-able.



My littlest mechanic.

Gonna stock you up

We're heading out of town this week. We're driving to Houston where me and the kids will stay with Nana and Pawpaw Terry while Brian goes to a conference, then he'll come back to Houston and we'll be back home in a week or so. All of that to say, I won't be blogging most likely, so y'all get a break from here!

But, to keep your kid fix up, I'm including 2 photos AND 2 videos today and tomorrow, if all works well. Which will also get me caught up with our cutest photos and videos all being posted and ready to tell you all about Houston.


My new desktop picture is the close up one even closer still. I have been having fun changing our desktop picture regularly. What is your desktop picture now?

At the races

We are having to rediscover our inner child these days since games are pretty high entertainment now. I was helping out a friend and had her two kids and a cousin (ages 7, 1 and the 3 year old who only knew Spanish). My neighbor came too to help me. In the 4 hours they were in our house we: did breakfast, got mine dressed and combed, played house, legos, hide-and-seek, leap frog, musical chairs, make-up, ride the horsy (me and my neighbor of course), drawing time, snack time and read several kid books. Yep, they have an attention span of about 30 secs. It actually went surprisingly well. Of course Ivan and Dominique thought it was wonderful.



What was your favorite game as a kid? We LOVED monopoly (to dad's chagrin) and hide-and-seek. To MY chagrin, Ivan's favorite book right now is a Barney book (that was given to us of course!!!) I read the Barney's Please and Thank-you story 3 TIMES today!!! HELLLLLLP!

2 front teeth and some

one of her first slide rides- what a pro!



found her shoe


slides or swings? sneakers or dressier shoes?

snaps

Now that Dominique gets pig tails and braids, she comes out with all sorts of interesting hair at night when we take them down. While her hair is mostly straight, sometimes it decides to have momma's hair's attitude. I braided her hair today and after sitting in her chair, the braid is sticking straight out from her head- like pippy longstocking.

Some other bad hair photos, bad face and my little mermaid in the bath.

Dominique is at the stage where she can make up her own jokes and she is quite the jokester. At the pool, she thought it hilarious to stick a toy in my mouth. She didn't think it funny when Ivan did it. But she recognized that mommies don't usually gnaw on toys. Then, at night, she kept faking out Ivan. She'd offer him a drink then pull it away right when he was going to take it. They laughed and laughed as they repeated this over and over.

We are pretty excited today: our neighbor, big buddy just came home from the hospital. He's been in almost 3 months and before that was in many weeks. I can hardly wait to go see him. We painted him a welcome home card and made him his favorite desert (lemon cheesecake).

I'm enjoying all your answers to the questions. A couple of new ones: favorite baked desert? favorite woman's or girls hair-do.