Although I have issues with feeling distracted and disoriented when my children are in the kitchen with me, I do invite them in when they can be of service and I can ease up on myself for a bit.
This day it was for pizza dough. Chloe was a total natural when it came to handling the dough. Evan was out with Todd on this particular afternoon, but there is no chance he would have done this. Sticky? Possibly oozy? No thanks, he would say. He'd rather just watch. But Chloe was all in.
This video is pixel-y (I must have had it zoomed in when I pushed record) but it's still cute.
This was a video we took of the day Evan stripped down and ran outside to the snow pile on the deck. After Chloe saw his do this, she wanted in on it. She had no idea what she was getting into....
So this was Evan's second time out and Chloe's first.
She's always so excited to go out. She doesn't complain about the massive amount of layering. She waddles around with stiff legs in giant boots, not asking for help. She wants to dig, taste, stomp, throw the snow. She thinks she likes it outside in the cold (while we are in the house. She really wants to like it.
Then.... She gets out there, and... She is quite literally soaked and frozen within twenty minutes. I just wish she could have at least one time out that didn't end in tears.
The video is coming up with a weird "private" status on it... if you can't watch it let me know... it's never done that before and it took me a really long time today to even get it uploaded.
Chloe is a story teller. Her mouth is always moving anyway, so when you put a book in her hands the words flow like rivers. She usually just makes it up as she goes along (even if it is a book she's heard a hundred times.) Here she is in action:
For this year's pumpkin farm outing, Evan just wanted it to be us and Aunt Bryce "so we can all play together." We needed a day like this too. Just us. Playing.
It started out cold and drizzling, which we dealt with for about an hour and a half. But, then the sun came out and it was perfect, although really windy. We just played all day! I didn't take as many pictures as I could have, but that was kind of the whole point I think. Here are a few highlights:
It took all the strength I could muster up to peddle this load of kids around! Not surprisingly, we spent the majority of our time on the hay bale maze (where I ran around with Chloe to help her leap and jump like the big kids -- this is why I have no photos of it :-) Evan talks about the hay bales for an entire year until we go back so he always does it till he drops. This year was no exception. We revisited the hay three separate times... till he dropped each time.
Then... we found a new set-up that occupied the kids for a great deal of time.
The dirt patch. Enough said on that subject. If anyone knows where to buy these metal excavators and wants to get Evan one for Christmas, he'd be pretty happy with that.
Corn box goofiness: Chloe just rolled around in the corn talking to herself (she didn't stop talking during the entire day actually...) and building "houses" and beds for me and for herself.
The giant slides were wet most of the day, but once they were dry and the crowds were gone, we spent a long time here. Go down, run back up the huge path, go down again, run back up, slide, run, slide, run, slide, run.....
Enlarge this one.... hahahaha..... She talked to herself the whole way up but couldn't speak on the way down. As soon as she stopped moving she would stand and go back up the hill continuing the monologue right up where she left off... "That was scaaaaarrrrryyyy! I was so frightened, but I'm brave, so I'll go up the huge hill again, I'm not really that afraid. This is a big hill, but I'm a climber....."
She was all about the slides. She tried them all.
We were pretty well exhausted by 5:15pm when we got in the car. I am still amazed that we were there for six and a half hours! Crazy. We stay longer each year, so I think next year we should just shoot for a full day 9am-6pm :-)
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(I have a couple videos from the farm I will try to post by tonight.)
updated to add: I added one video, I don't know why I thought there were two... there weren't.
There are so few movies "for kids" that are, in my opinion, really for kids. "Mary Poppins" passes the test , although it takes us three consecutive days of tv watching to get through the entire thing since it's over 2 hours long. I just can't believe I hadn't thought of it before now. It has brought some interesting play ideas and new songs and silliness to the house.
Chloe has always had this little Asian sounding bit to her voice and talking, but now we are laughing about it more than ever since her /L/ sound is no longer a /W/ sound but an /R/.
So her name is not Cwo-ee anymore it's Crow-ee.
We have a lot of fun making her say words we know will be really hilarious like roly-poly or lollipop.... hehehehe... so when we had carrots, broccoli and cauliflower with dinner the other night, we couldn't resist:
But Chloe was all in.
She talked to herself the whole way up but couldn't speak on the way down. As soon as she stopped moving she would stand and go back up the hill continuing the monologue right up where she left off... "That was scaaaaarrrrryyyy! I was so frightened, but I'm brave, so I'll go up the huge hill again, I'm not really that afraid. This is a big hill, but I'm a climber....."
