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 ... =)