Month 89: Our Nation’s Capital

Taken in Kiki’s backyard, in their souvenir t-shirts she got them.

Wapuu cousins!

Maybe my favorite picture from our trip so far.

MEGAFIST™

The boys got this awesome new machine the other day, it’s called MEGAFIST™. Here’s a demonstration of how it works:

I’ll admit, sometimes it’s buggy and will switch into MEGAHUGZ™ mode without warning. Or even more ominously, MEGATICKLE™. You gotta be careful with technology.

Drawings

It’s like I don’t know my own children anymore.

For the past few days, they’ve been drawing, reading, and playing chess. WHO ARE THESE STRANGE KIDS?

Yesterday, I came home from a bike ride (that’s kind of a lie. I went for a bike ride, popped a tire by the pub and ended up spending a few hours there.) and the boys were surrounded by drawings. Good drawings.

Somehow they found some video on YouTube that teaches kids how to draw using letters and numbers, and they’re now obsessed. I approve.

Here’s the channel:

Muffalo Potato

Month 88

You know what this means? Twelve months from today, we’ll be taking #100. Then, maybe I can consider stopping. (No, not really. As if.)

This month, we had a very special guest, all the way from Los Angeles! Give it up everyone, for COUSIN ELLIE!

Thursday

I posted a picture of the cousins in birth order a couple of days ago, but here’s how my brother got them to do it. Cue the giggles!

We came home on Tuesday so we could sleep in our own beds (my mom’s house, while large and lovely, is not quite large enough for four families, so the boys and I were camped out on the floor of my mom’s office on various mattresses and sleeping pads) and it was kind of sweet how sad Linus was to leave his cousins. Mean of me to take joy in his sadness, I know, but it just makes me happy that they are having so much fun together.

(He was also sad to leave the big house with the big yard. Yeah, kid, we all want a big house with a big yard.)

We had crawfish and shrimp Monday night, yum.

Ellie and Miles in their matching Wapuu shirts

Relatedly, my brother has spent a bunch of time working on his current Kickstarter project, which I promised I’d pimp out for him. A few years ago, he drove cross country and did a time lapse of the drive, which you can see here:

Now, he’s doing one around Iceland. Gee, must be nice.

So, go support him so he’ll stop bugging me already.

#NOLAmomprobs

Only in New Orleans…

Check out my latest post on the New Orleans Moms Blog. Do you know how many tries it took to get the perfect forlorn, tear-streaked photo for this?

(a lot.)

Cousins!

My brother made standing in a line, in birth order, into a game. Voila! Pics of the boys and almost all of their cousins. (Andrew is at home, but we’ll see him next month when we go to Virginia.)

Little random things

Some random things.

1. Inexplicably, the boys are into Power Rangers again. They stopped watching that dreck a year ago, and now it’s back. Yuck.

2. I was asked to be interviewed for a multiples-related podcast. Fun! If it happens, I’ll share more details.

3. I got to see my high school BFF this weekend, which was great. She was in town for another friend’s birthday party, so it was like a tiny high school reunion. I know most people would shudder at the thought, but my high school friendships are among my most enduring.

4. Miles says “night mirror” instead of “nightmare.” I love how their mispronunciations sometimes make more sense than the actual word. (They still say “movie feeder” instead of “movie theater,” because you eat there. Duh.)

5. Today would have been Stinky‘s 17th birthday. I was talking about her with the boys, and Oliver rather hilariously said, “it’s her afterlife,” whispering the last word for dramatic effect.

I did that 8k race this morning, so I’ll be working on that post next. Don’t worry, it’ll be short.

Shoes ‘n’ laces

I have nothing to report, fitness-wise today, since I took this morning off. All planned, normal rest day, etc. Tomorrow I’ll be back at the gym in the wee hours. Saturday I may go to the gym but maybe not since I have that race on Sunday. We’ll see. I know, zzzzz.

After I picked up the boys from school yesterday, I had to take them to the shoe store so Miles could get a new pair. I swear, I feel like I am always buying them shoes. And I’ve discovered it doesn’t matter if I buy them cheap sneakers or more expensive ones, they destroy them just as quickly. So off to Payless we went.

The boys still don’t know how to tie laces, and it’s one of those boring things I’m not really interested in teaching and getting frustrated with and they won’t go to college unable to tie their shoes, right? But as they get bigger, velcro shoes are becoming less common, so I had to bite the bullet and buy lace up shoes.

I’ll admit, they also look a lot nicer. But I’m not looking forward to either tying six laces every morning or teaching them how to do it. If anyone has any great ideas or resources, I’m all ears. I’ve watched a few YouTube videos that supposedly will teach me how to teach them, but I’m not sold. I think learning how to teach someone to tie shoes is like knitting – I have to be shown in person how to do it, I can’t watch a video. Maybe a book instead?

(Note about the photo at the top: Linus got new shoes, even though he didn’t really need them, but I bought them a half size bigger so in theory he can wear them longer. But because he didn’t need them, I would only buy him the clearance shoes, which are the uglier shoes on the left. Of course, he thinks they’re cool. But he’s a 7 year old boy.)

My boys and me

I had a friend take a picture of the boys and me at the New Orleans Moms Blog Easter egg hunt today. They had more fun helping with the setup than actually hunting for stuff. That said, we brought home plenty of Smarties. Woot!

Zoo pics

Some more pics from the zoo yesterday. Still loving my new lens!

It’s funny because for the past seven years, we had zoo memberships but the boys weren’t interested in going. And when we did, it was mostly to ride the carousel or the train. So we let the membership lapse. But ever since they had their time at the zoo for school, they’re obsessed and have been dying to go back. So we renewed our membership yesterday and actually went around and looked at animals.

These are the photos that I think are good…