Little Flying Piglets

Oh how the deer love our yard. We're particularly enchanted by the baby fawn that frolic and run across the yard with the most adorable speed and agility. It's particularly sweet to see them playing and acting every little bit a toddler, just of the deer variety.

Of course, they do eat all of our plants so Chris is the ultimate deer stalker. He loves to sneak up behind the bushes, jump up and wave his arms wildly about and startle the deer into moving onto greener pastures (aka: the neighbor's lawn!).

Funny things that Lily is doing lately? She is obsessed with being naked. She especially loves her lady bits and any given day, you'll find her spread eagle, examining all things that make her a girl. She's especially fond of pointing the anatomically correct places and announcing, as though she was explaining something new, "Poop comes from here. Pee comes from here!"

Jamisen is completely getting into music these days - like, way way into music. He has an old-fashioned CD player (yes, they are old-fashioned for those of you above the age of 45 reading this and expressing surprise) and loves to rotate a selection of 10 CDs. His favorite two are creole swamp music (banjo, fiddle, tin cans) and African tribal music. Both are rather lively and if it were not for his propensity to play them so loudly that you cannot carry on a conversation in the same room with any other sentient being in the room, we would be delighted with his choice in music. As it is, we're mostly just deaf and hoarse from shouting to be heard all the time. Lily also loves music and often sings to herself, so much that her teacher remarked on it just this morning. She is on tune and has excellent pitch.

Jamisen has started a rather interesting habit. I'm not sure where he picked it up but for the last two nights, he's flat out refused the dinner I've prepared. To be fair, it was more odd than usual (last night was a choice of seaweed noodles or garbanzo protein pasta served with a walnut garlic pesto with a side of tossed chopped PNW salad aka: heavy on the kale; tonight was sprouted grain tortilla, veggie meat and salad quesidillas with no sauce). He flat out proclaimed "I don't want to eat that. I don't like that." To which I replied, "Well, that's what's for dinner and you won't be getting cheese later unless you at least try a few bites." So, he grudgingly did (both nights) but still didn't succumb to the deliciousness on his plate. Lily did better, albeit, not much.

We remain exceedingly proud of our little ones and their patience with reading. Just the other day, we had a brand new pinch-hitter sitter and she remarked, "It is so nice to have kids that actually want me to read to them. None of the other kids that I see let me read to them and sit their listening." In the perfect trifecta of parenting awesome, we were also told that our children behaved very well the other day when we were in public  (ding ding, gold stars for everyone!)

Lily is turning into quite the little daredevil. She loves to run fast. She squeals to push her higher on the swing (to the point where she is physically getting air in her little toddler chair and her little butt is lifting out of the chair at the apex of the swing). She climbs (oh does she ever! I do not recall Jamisen climbing this much). She also has figured out how to climb out of her crib and loves to do so nightly, at least 15 times. It's a fun game for her. And some nights, it's tolerable but when we're tired, oh man, it is the pits. Whiiiiiich, is why she's dropped her naps! That's right, our 2 year old is done napping WAY EARLY. She doesn't seem to need them or want them anymore - and if she gets them, she stays up until 10 (no joke).

Our new home is planted with tons of honeybee and hummingbird plants and we have miraculous, amazing flying creatures all around us. We tried to put up a brand new feeder for them (Grandma Faiola had generously donated an older version to us to use). They have officially rejected the new feeder and only want the old feeder. It's puzzling but those little flying piglets are apparently picky little flying piglets. We do adore watching them dart in and out of the trees and up and down in front of the windows. We have a resident couple (or perhaps just best friends) and they play extremely nicely together.

Our back patio is a great place for hours of fun for the kids and it's nice because the yard is pretty fenced in so we feel more safe letting them play in the backyard here than we did at our old house. Speaking of our old house, it's been on the market for 3 weeks and we've had 7 showings but the house wasn't ideal for anyone yet. We know that the perfect family with kids will show up any day and fall in love with the house, the upgrades we made and the ease of their kids walking to the middle school down the street. Plus, the neighbors are pretty great ... =)

The Ascendence of Baby Alise

Remember that last blog post where I said if it doesn't bring me joy, I'm not keeping it? Well, that's from this book that has taken America (and the rest of the world!) by storm: "The Magical Art of Tidying Up." It basically says that you don't need most of what you have and you should only keep things that bring you joy. I've slowly been working my way through the house with this philosophy and my closet is the more happy for it.

Baby Alise and Grandma and Grandpa Faiola recently visited and we had a great time playing piano, and spending time together. Baby Lily reallllllly likes Baby Alise.
 They of course showed their amazing musical tastes by sitting in rapt attention as Grandpa Faiola played them many a ragtime tune on the piano.

Our little hot rodder loves Jamisen's motorcycle - and as he is moving onto other things, he's generally happy to let her borrow it.

Behold the cousin love. Alise is clearly curious about Lily's eyes or maybe she is trying to sing "Head, Shoulder's, Knees and Toes" and just forgot all the lyrics except the one where you point to the eyes. She is so bright that anything is possible.

The cousins loved bath time and Lily played very nicely with Alise.

Grandpa Faiola brought water guns for the kiddos. Jamisen especially loved them and squirted Lily many (many!) times. He showed restraint with baby Alise. It's reassuring to see he's not a total savage.

Lily shows no such restraint unfortunately.

Jamisen loves to try to push the kids up the lawn. He really isn't strong enough to do it without help when there's two of them in the car but just Lily? He totally can push her up the lawn and strains and strains on that last little bit. He's showing real perseverance when he does this and we only hope this trait continues through college chemistry and physics courses.

Erik and Cheriss brought the kids hula hoops and they brought serious levity to the adults (we really did a terrible job with them) and also to the kids for quite some time. It was a really lovely gift that the kids enjoyed a lot.

Father's Day + the $7 Cookie

When I read about Mr. Nelson's cookies, I was intrigued, shooting off an email to a select group of people that said something like "Wow, almost seven dollars for a cookie! I'm really intrigued. Can you imagine making the world's best cookie and only making 24 dozen a day, limiting supply and having no staff! Sounds like a dream company ..."

Of course, I was curious but had no intention of spending that sort of money on a cookie myself. I mean, a chocolate chip cookie is a chocolate chip cookie!

Then I remembered, it was Father's Day and what better loving expression of kindness and admiration than to invest in a dozen $7 cookies for my father?! Brilliant!

I mean, my Dad doesn't actually like chocolate so really hasn't ever eaten a chocolate chip cookie in his life but, details.

The cookies were indeed delicious. Nothing can beat home-baked, fresh-from-the-oven but these mail-order cookies were indeed, yummy cookies. I tossed a few in the freezer and am looking forward to defrosting and eating them over the summer.  The kids loved them. And, it's a measure of how much I love them that I even shared those cookies with them.

Jamisen and I continue to do mad scientist, artsty stuff. Recently, we made glorified Jell-o and turned it into a sensory tank that we played with and threw things into. It molded within a few days, providing an extra-exciting science experiment.

The garden at our old house is growing so well! In fact, the kale is getting white mildew because it's growing so densely. I need to go thin that out in all of my spare time (she said, drolly). The deer are loving the garden situation at our new house because it's not protected. They've never eaten so much kale in their lives! We're going to work on getting chicken wire grates to put over it to protect heirloom varieties of beets, baby carrots, bok choy and kale just sprouting.

Behold, our little engineer/architect rigs up a little world for himself, complete with a rope line that no one shall pass without his permission. He had a full story for this set-up, complete with 'tricks' and bridges. 

The kids' latest vegetable obsession is okra, followed closely by chard and broccoli. They are so funny; tonight, Jamisen told me that he "didn't like those kinds of cherries" (referring to the lovely dark burgundy variety versus the yellow/red variety). He was perfectly happy eating the burgundy-colored cherries just last week. Ah, kids.

They also love their homemade yogurt - and I love it because I know there is no sugar added at all. Each little delicious bowl of yogurt has over 7 grams of healthy protein for our little ones - and I am going to start making them yogurt ice cream soon. Yay for healthy guts! =)

The Great Kale Hunters

Oh our sweet, sweet little ones ... we love walking over to the old house and get our greens for green smoothies. Our kiddos love harvesting but they're not eating them as much lately - probably because I've decreased the sweetness and upped the greens. Duly noted, kids, duly noted.

Check out our little stud below - including his tattoos. He heard us talking about the finances with tattoos (and how expensive it is!) and clearly went the cheap route on his own. He told us that Lily did that to him. Alrighty then ... sure she did =)

We got our clothes back after the explosion and it was SO overwhelming. They all came boxed and individually tagged and individually wrapped in plastic.

After over 20 hours of organizing and de-plasticking, this is what the closet looks like. And I'm not done. I'm decluttering like you won't believe! If it doesn't bring me joy, I'm not keeping it!

I also got a chance to go to Alabama to speak at the Alabama Soap & Candle Conference. It was fantastically fun but a very quick trip. Like the last business trip, I zipped in and zipped out. I'm pretty sure I was on planes more than I was actually at the conference but it was worth it to get home to the family as fast as I could.

With the amazing weather, we've been loving lake time -and the kids are big fans of the boat. They're really good about wearing their life jackets which, I am so thankful for!

We've also been enjoying the backyard at the new house and Jamisen continues to insist on wearing his full fireman regalia, even in this heat. He's a stubborn one =)