I wasn't kidding around -

When I say 16 minutes I definitely mean it... So here's how we spent the rest of our day.

Soph was a mermaid, yes that is my pillow being dragged on our floor, I'd rather not think about it... next.

We proceeded to stuff plastic eggs to mail to dad while he's away. Nothing says Happy Easter like pink peeps and green army men!

B got in on the action too... well, mostly she tasted the army men and threw the eggs at me.

Then they built a house together... ok, so Soph built and B tore apart - at least it was a joint effort?

This was the charging of (not so) lil' B. Doesn't she look serious when she's attackin?

Surprise!!!!

Not only am I posting, but I am posting pictures! I know, you all probably thought my camera had been destroyed by now. These are a few of our adventures from the past few days.

Well it appears that B has learned a new trick. She not only mastered the art of crawling in the blink of an eye, but apparently it wasn't challenging enough for her so she has moved on to bigger and better things - pulling herself up to stand. I have a feeling this one might be an escape artist.Yet apparently, she doesn't like company? This picture cracks me up because it's a bit of a roll reversal. B is always smiling and never really mad or anything, and Soph is always getting mad and protesting. Silly girls.

Soph and I busted out her tinker toys, she built a microphone and started singing with a guitar she made. Then she saw the bin and realized the girl had a pretty rockin' "guitar" - so I foolishly volunteered to make it for her. Hot DAMN that thing was complicated! There is no way little kids made half the things in those pictures! It's all a lie!

Yeah so DH couldn't resist joining in the jam - an every day rock star for sure. This is why I love the guy folks... he really is like a great big 7 year old. And who can resist a face like that?

Today we did some patterns- always fun

This would be Soph being me and DH - she stole my glasses, and his boots, and voila!

This would be us - I don't think I've ever ever posted a family photo before - this one is the best we could do, and believe you me, it's 1 of like 20. How sad is that?

B got a VTech car thingy for Christmas. I'm not sure who likes it more, B or Soph. Soph is taking B for a ride, as you can tell she's in the back seat :)

While cleaning and preparing B's room for moving, I stuck her in her crib so she wouldn't be crawling all over me - well I returned with a box and this is what I find - Soph "reading" to B in her crib - apparently she was lonely.

Yeah and that's about it for now. Hopefully, perhaps I'll have more to share. I'm fairly confident that I took more pictures than that, if I can remember where I saved them I'll post them later. Oh, and have I mentioned my children really really don't like clothes? Perhaps California and our family are just meant to be - we're not "winter" people.

I'd say weekly.... but...

Well I had the best of intentions of posting at least weekly. It seems, however, that after posting our Unplugged Project, that I totally forgot to post all the other stuff that had gone on! So rather than a weekly update, this will be a photo journal... in no specific (and definitely not chronological) order, although I did try a little to have it flow. Here goes nothin'! We have a calender in our "preschool" room, however I wasn't thinking clearly and put it on our back door... needless to say it has seen better days. I acquired this one and rather than have the whole month set up to start we are doing it together each day. So we have one calender that gives the whole picture, and one that goes piece by piece. Hopefully she'll develop a better sense of how long a month is and what not. It seems to be working well. Hopefully it will help with number recognition as well. She's pretty amazing at looking at a group and just spouting out how many there are and she's good at adding and subtracting, but not so much with saying which one in a group is the number 7, 9 etc. After nearly 7 months of having raspberries blown on her tummy, arms, legs, face... any inch of baby that there is... Little B discovered her tongue... and how to blow raspberries of her own. She spends about 70% of her day blowing raspberries, and is quite content in doing so. It's quite funny to watch - since most of the time she ends up cracking herself up. Silly girl! We enrolled Soph in an art class for preschoolers. In addition to acquiring the calender, I also scored some "frames" for her artwork. The one on top is the "piece" she did in class, it's water color that she textured a bit with sand or something... the nice lady that runs the class framed that one. The one below it was one of our early finger painting adventures. We thought it would be fun to have an art wall. I think this shall be the wall... although that might be changing soon - it might not be big enough. One of the reasons that my DH is the greatest is he made pumpkin (excuse me... Jack-O-Lantern) pancakes for Soph for Halloween. They turned out pretty cute and decently tasty too... the only negative - they turned Soph's face blue from the food coloring. That's OK though :) Small price to pay. 22222222 (that's was B's toe's contribution... I thought I'd leave it) Soph was Dorothy for Halloween. She put her costume on at about 10am and had me do her hair and she refused to take it off all day. Needless to say her hair wasn't so pretty by trick-or-treating time. Oh well. She was hilarious though, running around like she was on speed 'n such. She asked one man if there were peanuts in the candy and he was like "um, I don't think so I'm sorry" and she said "oh I don't like peanuts, I'm allergic, so this is good"... poor guy looked so confused. She definitely was high energy that night. I'm almost sorry I missed it - I only did the top half of our block with DH and the kiddos, then I had candy duty. yes... my living room is a mess. I know. But lets all look past the mess and see the really awesome Alphabet activity mats :) Sophia loves them. They come in quite handy when I'm attempting to feed B, do dishes, etc. The other day we lined them all up in alphabetical order and she hopped from A - Z telling me what she was hopping on as she was landing. If she knew what letter it was she told me, if not I told her. Then after that got old I "hid" the letters all over (except the kitchen), and then I would tell her what object and letter to find and she would run to it and bring it back to the box to put away. It was a very productive game. Soph wanted to color a Wizard of Oz picture after Halloween was over... alas, here she is... coloring. Exciting I know. I'm addicted to coupons. And clipping them. I usually sort through and take out the ones I want, then I clip the rest of them and either give them to our neighbor to pick through or in days of past I was part of a coupon train, and I would just mail them along. Well after I finished ours, Soph wanted to help me cut the rest of them. She did a good job of keeping her thumb up and scissors out.:) Can you tell whose pile is whose? I'm usually the moon foam police. I don't like the mixing of the colors - only because a)they're hard to pick apart and b) there are no single colors when she wants them... tears usually follow. Prior to the addition of the white I asked her why she was mixing up the blue and green. She told me she was making a flat globe and it was the Earth. Cool. Then I saw the glob of white headed towards the "Earth". I asked what the white was for on the globe and she said that it was from space and the white was the clouds. Rock on Soph.

3 Days for the price of one

So... I haven't really posted anything about "preschool"... that's a my bad. I really don't know where my week went, or why it has been so rough since the family returned from NY... I have a few ideas why (they may or may not involve Sophia being allowed to stay up until 1am and watch not so good TV)... Yeah so a few moments of this week have been great... other's about as far from great as humanly imaginable. So... rather than dwell on the negative (which I would rather not remember anyhow)... I shall do a "Week in Review" of pictures... even though it really is only hump day. (It should be Friday though... don't you think?)One day this week... Monday perhaps? Sophia decided that it was only appropriate to eat breakfast outside since it was really nice outside and not too hot and not to cold. She tried to convince me that she needed coffee in a mug to enjoy while listening to the birds sing... I compromised with a Juicy Juicy instead. *Notice the super tacky yet totally awesome metal porch circa 1927) Another day this week... we finger painted. I have no clue what day this was... only that it wasn't the same day as the outdoor breakfast. Sophia somehow managed to make a really pretty shade of teal out of Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. I know she mixed them all together... I was there. Yet the result was quite surprising... I think she was a bit taken back herself. After that she said she needed to make orange, but to just give her yellow and red because she didn't want to end up with the Ocean again (as she appropriately named her color). Later some night (not tonight, maybe Monday)- She had a total and complete melt down. She's usually a verbal melt down type of person... alas, here she is laying on the floor having a complete tantrum because she wanted to do another letter. What?! I bought her a pre-K hooked on phonics because it was a) on sale and b)mis-shelved at target so I got it for $15 (I couldn't pass that up). She found it in my closet while looking for my high healed shoes so she could "practice being a princess" (I must say she walks better in them than I do). So she opened it up and saw that there was a CD-ROM. Now this little girl has never shown interest in letters, let alone their sound. Now... she is having raging fits because she can't do more letters? At least she's not screaming for Spongebob Squarepants (Thanks DH for introducing that one). Same day... an hour later.(yes that would put it at about 11pm... thanks again DH for the 1am bed time in NY)... Much calmer with a pile of books on my bed. I was tired... I wanted to sleep... I was told I was not invited and that I could sleep with Brenna. Gee... thanks but I think the crib has like a 75lb limit. So.....another day, another puzzle. Must have been the finger paint day. I like puzzles. I wanted to "help" her, or at least participate. I was not allowed. She informed me that if I wanted to do a puzzle I should do an adult puzzle because this was a children's puzzle and I needed something harder. Not very friendly now is she? Hmmph. After finishing her puzzle she took her counting bears and decided that they were going to drive in the taxis and eat ice cream.She said they weren't going to the toy store because they weren't for sale. Keen observation.I know this day... this was today. We made a huge mess making paper mache beads balls of goo. She had a grand ol' time. I didn't even get mad when my computer ended up covered in glue... I should have moved it. She really liked the ball she made. I liked it too, until she squeezed it. Now that she was effectively covered in glue. She decided she needed a bath, but not to wash her hair (we did that last night)... rather she wanted to stop being sticky while blowing bubbles. While in the tub (in her bathing suit of course because this was not a "bath" she just didn't want to be sticky) she noticed that her car would float from the back of the tub to near the faucet when she lifted the stopper. She asked me if I knew why it did that - I told her I was totally baffled and asked if she had any thoughts on why the car was drifting without her splashing it or pushing it. She told me it was because of the current. For that I say thank you Kate for mentioning Peep and his big big world... I forgot all about the link until Monday when we watched "Current Event" (like 10 times)... and everyday since the first thing Sophia says "is there a new Peep?" yup sure is... She especially liked today's about shadows. Although, she's not to keen on using her "imagination" about Peep, Quack and Chirp. She's actually pretty adamant that Quack is not a duck... he is an egg with legs. I tried to explain that he was not a real duck, but just a cartoon duck and she should use her imagination. She still wasn't feelin' it. So I said, well his name is quack so why wouldn't he be a duck? She said "You can name a chicken quack but that doesn't make him a duck".... game, set, match - I couldn't even argue with that.