Breaking News

Rex celebrated pioneer day this year by breaking his arm.  He broke it at our stake picnic when he stood and lunged out of his stroller.  (Oh, that's what those safety buckles are for.)  We realized it was broken a few days later on July 24th to be precise, and so unknowingly continued Shula's tradition that broken arms should not be treated the same day.  Rex now has empathy for the pioneer toddlers who fell out of wagons or handcarts, but had no Dr's offices at which to gets X-rays or casts. 

Here he is sportin' his cast and looking pretty darn cute.  

 

I love this last one. I was coaching him to lift his arm so I could get a better pic of his cast--and he did, just the wrong arm. 

Make Way

As would be expected growing up in house with two older sisters, Rex is surrounded by girl toys.  He hasn't shown any aversion to pink and usually plays just fine with whatever toy happens to be in his path.  However, we are slowly accumulating more "gender appropriate" toys and he does seem to like the trucks, the blocks, the tiny replicas of man-eating animals and so on.
The other day I was helping clean up the kids room and saw this:

I couldn't decide if it was more Jurassic Park or that lame sitcom Dinosaur.  (You remember right? Not the Momma!)


Either way,  I got a chuckle of Rex trying to find a nice backdrop for his dinosaur to play/attack.
It seems the other appropriate use of the doll house is a climbing wall.  Climb on little man, climb on.

Sometimes Your Kids Surprise You

We had a fun trip at a lake in NM to celebrate Grannie's 80th birthday.  With so many descendants who love her and also came to celebrate, it was inevitable that one of those descendants would bring the stomach flu and then pass it around to all the other relatives.  Marielle got it on day four and we decided to rent a movie to pass the time in the hotel room.  We got Mr. Popper's Penguins because a friend of mine had recommended it and I wanted to enjoy the movie too.  About 1/2 way through the movie, Marielle asked if we could turn it off.  "I think this movie is for older kids."  I'm thinking, you'd rather stare at the ceiling while nauseated than watch this movie? Okey, dokey, we turned it off and finished it that night after the kids were asleep.

Fast forward two days later to another hotel room on our way home from the trip.  The Man from Snowy River was playing on one of the cable channels.  Marielle was enthralled. She nearly cried when we told her she couldn't finish watching because we needed to get on the road.  We promised to rent it from the library when we got home.  Not sure what she saw in the movie: accents that make it difficult to understand dialogue? unsettling images of wild horses' eyes zoomed in for effect? girls in long dresses?  Who knows, but she loved it.  Take that Mr. Popper's Penguins and all your fancy cgi.

The other surprise came from Rex.  For weeks, possibly months, I've been mentally gearing myself up for his rejection of all things nursery. I don't want the ordeal of crying as we drop him off each week, so I thought we wouldn't push nursery.  After all, this is Rex, our most intense child and we keep things his style as much as possible. We'd just take it slow, go now and then to have fun with the toys.  But today was day one and he stayed the whole time and never once cried once for mom or dad.  Go figure.  I'm happy, but surprised that the kids I thought I knew so well, proved me wrong.

From Concept to Execution

Jenna wanted an Ariel party to celebrate her third birthday.  This was a pretty sweet deal for me since Marielle also requested an Ariel party when she turned 3.  I got to reuse, recycle, and revamp the same games, crafts, and activities. We hunted for the junk (ahem, treasures), made seashell crowns, and danced to Under the Sea with seaweed streamers.  The one spot of individuality came from the cake. Early on Jenna described in garbled 2 year old lingo that her birthday cake should be wedding cake style complete with three layers and Ariel and Eric toppers.  Marielle loved the idea and drew up a sketch to make sure we got it right. I'll admit the final product isn't stunning, but the girls got to help decorate and it tasted great.  Happy Birthday Jenna  -- we sure love you!

Can We Make This Thing Go Viral???

Marielle and I (and Jenna) made this video little by little for about two weeks.  It's done now and we'd like the world to know.  So talk to all those people you know who are singing Nephi's Courage with mumbled or erroneous lyrics, and sit them down to watch.  Do an intervention if you need.  And make sure you watch long enough to see the real life kids who "go and do"  with great courage and cuteness everyday!