Changing Gears

There's been a shift here.

1.  Talmage and Sydney started school.  
M:  What are your favorite things about school?
T:  P.E. and recess.

Talmage could hardly believe his good fortune that first grade affords TWO recesses.


 S:  [At the dinner table]:  Mom, I'm going to sing a song.  [starts singing the primary song, "When my mother calls me, quickly I obey".  Half-way through, Talmage says ...
T:  I have invisible earplugs.
M: When you're a teenager I'm going to remind you that you sang that song at the dinner table when you were four.
S:  Remind me right now.
M:  Syd, I remember about one minute ago, when you were four, that you sang that song at the dinner table.
S: Oh!  I didn't remember that!

2.  Disciplined shopping.
 Grocery shopping is now corralled to Saturday, when one of us can go child-free.  No more mid-week ingredient runs.  This won't last, of course, because you can only fit so many gallons of milk in your fridge.  And we go through a lot of milk.  On account of this child:

... who can easily down a half-gallon a day.  Above pics show how she dealt with sibling rivalry:  if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  She insisted on wearing Miles' clothing.  That phase, and the binky phase, are over.  (but also, she's not really potty-trained).

Clara has caught on to her BIG sister role:

 

 

 

 

Her dollies are all named "Miles".  She is careful to apply Desitin.

With the real, live baby Miles.

3.  Laundry.  Now there are four piles of kids' clothes.  That was weird at first.

4.  Name mix-up.  I'm a little better now than when Miles was first born.  For several weeks I kept calling him Cole or referring to him as a her.  But I still am calling Sydney, Clara, and Clara, Sydney, and Talmage, Sydney, and ... you get the idea.   This wasn't such a problem with 3 kids.  I don't know why 4 has short-circuited my synapses.

5.  I'm not bugged now when people say, "You've got your hands full"  Because I do.



That's all on that topic.   Below are images that have been languishing in iPhoto.  Some may have already been posted.  Can't remember.

Summer Utah trip.  Outside the Dinosaur Museum with Cousin Brie.

At the cabin with Great Grandma Kartchner.  She's 94 and goes walking every morning.

Briton took the oldest kids to the zoo one Saturday so I could be alone with Miles.

Clara calls those hair thingy's "haircuts".  I can't convince her to call them clips, ribbons, barrettes, "pretties", you name it.  Aaaaaaand, I like her expression.

In the bike trailer.  Miles got out after this shot.  But on a subsequent bike ride, he was strapped in his car seat next to Clara.  That worked out well.

Syd being studious:

How to make monsters out of TP rolls:  (This is a picture tutorial, like you see on those fancy blogs):  Just pinch the top and add googly eyes ..

...like this (the idea was from High Five, I think).

 

Already a good little bubba, helping his mama with the laundry.

This was before Miles started smiling.   I wonder what he makes of it all.

Clara loves those polka-dot PJ's.

You never know...

(back in August)

...what you'll find when you come home from work.  One evening I found the kids making a "new plum tree."  They had picked all the plums within their reach off our tree and transported them over to our neighbors low-lying pine bushes.  There the plums were skewered on every available branch.  Lots of plums is the mother of creativity.  The kids had constructed several mini plum barbells and balanced them carefully on the bush branches.  And then I guess it's just a natural extension to poke pine needles into the plums.  The rest of the week at work I'd get to think of the kids during lunch as I filled up on healthy portions of freshly picked sour plums, and pulled pine needles out of my mouth. 

One excellent use for Heavy Whipping Cream:

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2012/09/peaches-and-cream-sensation.html

More ballet footage

If you want to watch Syd's dance recital from last June, you may view it here (linked by permission).  She is on the far left of the line and Sonya is next to her.

The Cheetahs.

Free soccer.

Special Moments with Miles

Real special.

Scientific Inquiry

Miles:  [fussing]

Me:  [attempting to soothe; failing miserably]

Sydney:  [wide-eyed and serious, with a somewhat consoling tone]:  Maybe he thinks you're a monster.

Other Goings Ons-es.

 There were some killer hot days.  I mean, like, over 78 degrees.

 What you don't see is that she is also wearing high heels.

 I guess the theme in these last few pictures has been:  fake animals.  Use your imaginations, kids!

 Briton took T&S to the demolition derby.  Just kidding.  That was on Sunday.  If the kids were taller (or the sign was shorter), they'd be pointing, correctly, to "Monster Trucks and Mud Drags."

 Has this picture been posted already?  The expression, Sideways Glance, is classic Clara.

CLR Offspring Reunion. 

Observe the beauty and orderliness of the ice cream-induced state.

Another example of orderliness.  The kids made up this factory (I guess) game.


1.  QC check finalized prior to production:

2.  Fill molds with liquid substance:

 3.  Transport to pre-fab platform:

 4.  Pour admixtures, watchful to avoid explosions.

5. Highly trained technicians move substance to raised platform, where it is poured out and percolated:

 6.  Before dripping into collection device:

REPEAT.  All the live-long afternoon.

The night before Miles was born, Briton and I went to the Street of Dreams.  This table would be a dream.  I love the live edge (I think that's the technical term) of this table.  The price tag for this tree slab?  Take a guess.   Also, all seven homes had these open walls.  There were no flies in any of the houses.

 Another cool feature in another home was a mini-greenhouse in the kitchen, for all your year-round herbal needs.

There were other neat things, too.  But not as neat as meeting Miles the next day ;).

** I don't remember exactly, but it was in the neighborhood of $2,600.

"This is the coolest thing I've seen in my whole, entire life!" -- Miles T. Barker

Miles Taylor Barker

He's on the outside now!

8:08am Aug 10, 2012  8lb3oz

Ketchup.

Ballet

Under Miss Kim's gentle and graceful tutelage, Sydney was introduced to the world of ballet last school year.   Her language is now adorned with such elegant terms as "arabesque."  She was giddy about her recital costume (now crumbled in the dress-up basket) and enjoyed performing at June's end-of-class she-bang.


Next up:  Annual All-Comer's Track Meet. 

Looks like the sporty lady in white is gearing up to run the 3000m, having sufficiently carbo-loaded.
BTW: Clara only has one more week left before her followup visit with the eye guy -- we ran out of patches last week and don't want to buy another box for just 7 days worth of eye patches.  I bet there's a tutorial out there on how to sew your own eye patches, though.  Betcha.

Recovering from a run?

Talmage and his friend, James.

 Gardening.

The potato experiment.  First year growing potatoes.  Potatoes are fun.  Very fun.  When it's time to harvest (which time is a good guess as far as I could tell), it's like digging for gold.  Yukon GOLD.

 All that gold in a row.  Some potatoes were the size of ping pong balls.  And some were regular size.  Like the kind you'd see in a grocery store.  Next year we'll harvest twice as many -- maybe get TWO meals out of the potatoes.

 Assessing the tomoatoes.  Talmage goes out to the garden most mornings to see how his plants are coming along and pick what he can find.   This is the first year he's taken a long-term interest in the garden.

 In the spring, I had let him and Sydney plant all the leftover seeds willy-nilly (mostly to keep them busy, i.e. out of my hair, so I could play in the garden without interruption ... "Don't make me have a productive, educational, bonding, garden experience with you, kids!").   There were mixtures of seeds spread all over the garden path and buried haphazardly in inches of soil in different box lids and shoe boxes.  I didn't expect their unorthodox methods would produce anything -- and also thought they'd just forget about their seeds and then I'd toss the boxes/lids, etc.  But lo and behold, the seeds germinated, grew, and are now producing -- thanks to just a bit of transplanting and coaxing from grandma.  So let that be a lesson to all of you pessimistic parents.

Make-Work Projects:  or -- Teach a Kid to Dumpster Dive, you Feed him for a Lifetime

Grandma, although okay with my character going to pot, is keen on improving the character of her grandchildren.  Here you see one of her plots in action.  She gives the kids one dollar for scrubbing out the yard debris bin and garbage cans each week.   Talmage is told that he can practice on our garbage cans for a year and then when he's 7, he can charge people money to clean out their garbage cans.  We'll see what happens.  Meanwhile, our garbage cans have never been so clean.

 Sydney is also given a dollar for her work.  But after one time, she wizened up, er, the novelty wore off, and she couldn't be persuaded to add to her resume.

Father and Kid Campout

Our ward has it figured out.  Do a Father n' Sons campout and a Father n' Daughter campout.  But combine them into one campout.   So basically it's a ward campout without the moms or any babies.  They had fun.  We had fun.  Win-Win. 

 Relaxing after a bike-ride.

Pending:
This weekend Briton is running Cascade Lakes Relay and hopes he will not come home to find he has a newborn son.  We're holding out for 8-10-12.  Looking forward to meeting the little guy and getting to know and love 'im.