Eleventeen

Clyde is into counting now and can count all the way to eleventeen: one, two, free, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, eleventeen.... He loves to play with his "wheat" which is actually a mix of wheat, macaroni, red beans, pinto beans, rice, and corn. He gets his scoops and whisk and makes bread for all of us.

Today Alice was putting magnetic letters on the fridge and saying the colors. I didn't even know she knew the colors! She likes to copy Clyde's counting, but she can only count this far: one, two, six, ten.

Today was an overcast day so we're taking it easy, staying inside. Everyday they get better and better at entertaining themselves!

Open Gym

The cold weather has kept us indoors, but one nice place to go is Fort Boise Community Center for toddler open gym. Clyde especially loves the little red cars and has learned to share them with the other kids. It's loud, but a lot of fun...

Clyde's Arsenal

Clyde loves his swords. Santa Clause made him "two little swords" for Christmas and daddy recently made him some bigger ones (a friend gave us the bigger paint sticks from the hardware store). He wants to take them everywhere and has learned to carry them in the back of his shirt. He's always taking care of all the ogres around the house. and you'd be amazed at the scope of our ogre problems!

A Visit to the Museum

About a month ago we went to the Idaho Historical Museum one cold morning. They have a display with saddles. The kids really got a kick out of it!

As you can see, it's kind of hard to keep Alice quiet anywhere. It's not mad screaming or crying usually, but she has no volume control, none at all. Should I feel bad when she's so loud or just let it go?

Kids Room(s).... Done?!

So Katie (Ben's sister) made fun of my FB post in early January saying I was going to try to complete all my projects... she said something about my being too ambitious. Well, Katie, I was just trying to get them done so I wouldn't have any to do (I'm actually more lazy than ambitious). My mom came over for 8 hours and helped me sew and I finally finished my kid's room. Since then I've eaten lots of bon-bons, read the entire Twilight series and the first Hunger Games book, and spent too much time reading crafty blogs and not making a darned thing! It's getting hard not to start a new project, but I have to say those books were better than I had expected.

For those of you who haven't seen it, my kids live in what probably was an attic years ago (1oo to be more exact). When I bought the house it was the master suite, but the ceilings hit me and Ben in the head, so it was the guest room and TV room until it got remade into the kid zone. The main area is for playing, etc... Because the ceilings and the knee walls are especially low, it's really hard to get a good photo, so keep that in mind. Here it is:

This is the biggest part of the room, basically a big alcove at the top of the stairs. It's the play zone. We've loved this Nilo play table. It's super duper strong so when the kids climb all over it I don't worry. The shelf is from target.com. I like having things on a shelf instead of a toy box so the kids can see what they want and not have to pull it all out (of course they still do that, but it gives me hope that maybe someday they won't).

This is looking down the stairs. The door in the back is to the bathroom. To the right is Alice's alcove. She doesn't get a room, just an alcove. That's her dresser there. The quilt is something my brother got me in China in about 1992 or so. The print is from Land of Nod and my sister gave it to us when Clyde was born. It's an ABC print with cities from around the world.

This area is in the same big alcove as the play table and shelf. It's the reading/movie watching area. The ottoman is one of my finished projects. The guys at Mill's End fabric made me the foam cube over a year ago and I finally covered it with an old (and kind of cheap) quilt I had. It's a 20x20x20 square which I would change by making it a little shorter but still 20x20 if I did it again. The center of gravity's a little high and the kids often tumble off, but luckily our carpet makes for a soft landing. It's pretty awesome for putting my feet up though. On the floor is a cute blanket Ben's mom made for Clyde. I love using blankets instead of rugs for kids. I had a great braided rug in Clyde's old room (now our TV room), but it was really hard to clean short of taking it to the cleaner's when it inevitable got spilled or spit up on. Now I just use blankets and throw them in the wash.

This is the kitchen my sister Catherine got the kids. I tried to arrange the food, kitchen etc. so both kids could play at once. This introduced pink into the mostly primary color room, but I had been planning on incorporating a little pink into Alice's alcove, so it works.

This is Alice's alcove. The rosebud pillowcases were something I found on the ranch and have no idea where they came from, but they're old. They were the inspiration for a red & pink themed girl's room that would coordinate with our primary color scheme in the main area but give it a feminine feel. My mother made the curtains from a long insulated panel I got at Target. We used blanket binding and a cute crochet lace to finish them. The dresses turned out great and I am now recommending that everyone decorate their baby rooms with baby clothes. They hardly wear them, so it makes sense to get a little more use out of them! Free decorations - I love it!

Clyde's room was originally the master closet. When we put in air conditioning, the ducts were run through here. We had Ben's Uncle Richard frame around the ducts and make some shelves, a window seat and a built in bed with storage drawers. I sawed off the closet rods to make Clyde a small closet. Mom and I finally made the curtain a year later. The roman shade I made was so complicated with crazy dowels and ropes that I also thought might be dangerous, so I redid it with little ribbon loops that you just slip on two mug hooks. Safe and easy!

This is the closet. The fabric is some vintage cowboy print sheeting that I got on sale at Caledonia (a very nice but pricey fabric store on Americana). You can see the baskets are on a ledge that's concealing the ducts.

The lighting was terrible with the bright sunshine coming in, but here's Clyde's bed and window seat, great for reading him bedtime stories.

Now we're working on a cushion for the window seat, but it's really just a figment of our imagination for now. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

I love Christmas!

The other day we went to our neighbor's house and she had a big tree in her living room. Mom says it's a Christmas tree. I wanted one too. Daddy cut one from the forest on the old railroad at Grandpa Harry's ranch. Mommy put on the decorations (and took this horrible fuzzy picture - the lighting was all wrong).



Mommy keeps telling me I have to be a good boy so Santa can bring me presents. I met him. I told him I want two small swords. When I was meeting him, someone made me a balloon sword and I was fighting... Alice didn't like Santa.

We got all dressed up and my sister looked so grown up!

I like to see all the Christmas lights too. We went to a big park where there were lots of lights and I climbed the mountain to see all of them.

Christmas is so fun. I hope I get lots of toys!

-Clyde

Auntie Shelley's house...

Clyde and mommy built two houses today. Mommy designed the bottom one and Clyde directed the design on the top one -- it's for Auntie Shelley!

Birthday Boy - Two Years Old

Happy Birthday to me! Two years old! Mumsy gave me my own bike, "Look out!" I pedaled it right away even though my feet just barely reach.

My neighbors, Alice and Nick, gave me a cool balloon that is hooked to my chair now. I love how it shines.

Mommy and I have been working in the garden and on my birthday it was really warm so I spent a lot of time outside.

My friend Livia (Olivia) got me a drill and a chainsaw. I love them! They make good noises.

Mommy made a cake with my favorite thing on it - a hammer! It had two candles and I blew them both out.

Then my cousins thought the cake would look good if it had all my new animals on it, so it had lots of sea creatures and African animals like I see at the zoo.

It was fun to have so many cousins and friends there. And the cake was good too!

It was so hot that my cousins started a water fight with my dad...

Guess who won???

All Better and Then Some...

We were able to spend some time outside now that Clyde is feeling better and it's warm enough outside (though the wind and rain haven't helped much). Here's Clyde in his flower-picking ensemble. Very fashionable, he thinks....

He was having a hard time walking in the big gum boots and I think that's why he stood still on the bench for about 30 pictures taken by his dad. He loves flowers.


Alice got sick too and isn't this just the saddest sick face??

Now she's feeling better too.

Fun and Easy Mother's Day Project

For those of you with kids who have grandmas that like vintage things, this is easy and fun. I (this is mommy talking, not Clyde) made these silhouettes for my mom (who hopefully won't check out the blog before Mother's Day).

All I did was print out (on regular paper instead of photo) profile photos I took of the kids. Then I placed those on top of black paper and traced their profiles. This left an indentation on the black paper that was enough to use as a guide for cutting. I had thought I might have to trace with chalk or something, but this worked well. I've seen where people make the silhouette in a photo editing program, but I think the cutouts seem more authentic and they turned out well. I just glued them to white paper and put them in an inexpensive frame from Target. Enjoy!

The Cure for Almost Anything...

Clyde's not well. He was having so much trouble breathing yesterday and had a fever for a few days, so I finally took him to the doctor. They sent us to the hospital for chest xrays and tests. Clyde was a real trooper. Turns out he has RSV which is a virus that can lead to bronchitis and pneumonia, but we hope we don't go that far. He's been so tired and had no appetite, but today he started to get better and get some energy. He's still coughing a lot, but we found something he likes to eat:




And he's taking lots of baths, because it's one of the only things he wants to do and it helps a little with the congestion.

Popsicles and bubble baths -- that would cure most ills.

Springtime....

It's getting warmer outside and I get to go to the park a lot. I even go on the big twisty slide all by myself now:

My Aunt Catherine was here for a few weeks and it was fun to have her play with us.

I got to go to the ZOO!! Here I am looking at the "raffs"

And here I am riding a komodo dragon, but it didn't go anywhere....

My cousin Elliott has a baby now, just like me only he is tiny and they call him Harrison.

PIZZA!!!

I love pizza. I always ask mommy for pizza. In the morning she makes me egg pizza (egg with ham and cheese on top). Sometimes she makes me pancake pizza:


(That's a pancake with yogurt, jam, bananas and dried fruit). And sometimes she gets a pizza from the big freezer downstairs and we cook it. That's my favorite pizza. I don't really like the pancake pizza near as much.

Latest photos...

Mommy's camera got broken and the new one doesn't take such great photos, but here are the latest...

Clyde shower.


Mohawk (Clyde's new favorite hairstyle which he requests by name)...

Baby loves to roll: