random house

It has been quite a while since I've been in the blogging world and I have a huge amount of stuff in the past I still want to blog about. Will it ever get done? I don't honestly know, but I still have high hopes of writing about Christmas, Anya's birthday, her trip to the dentist, our preschool search, etc. But for now, I'm just gonna look through our almost five hundred photos from this year already and post a couple with comments to catch you up on a bit of our lives. I'll start after Anya's birthday and just go in order up until today. Here we go...

These first two are for Tanino (are you still reading my blog?). He sent us a package after Christmas that had some awesome presents for the kids. After Christmas, Evan was super into opening presents and he had a hard time at Anya's birthday since he didn't have much to open. So, when Tanino's package arrived, he was so excited that he actually got something.



He's really not trying to eat the present, he was just that excited.



Here's a random sewing photo. I wanted to figure out appliqueing. As with most things I try to figure out on my own, I was frustrated with not being able to find simple directions on how to do this. I really need a sewing book for dummies, if anybody has one to recommend. I'm sure there is one by that exact title, but who knows if it is actually any good. I just free-hand cut the flower out of some fabric scraps and then used some iron-on adhesive stuff to attach the pieces to a piece of white muslin. I think it kind of ended up looking more like a palm tree than a flower and it really looks far from perfect, but considering that this was the first thing (except for a test one inch rectangle) that I tried to sew like this, it looks okay. Anya loved it and insisted that I put it on a baby blanket for her babies. We argued for a while because she was determined to make me sew it right in the middle of the blanket and I had my heart set on putting it in the corner. I won.



I haven't actually been doing very much sewing lately for no particular reason. I have had one outstanding project (pillow covers for Hilary...more on that later) which was causing me some problems because I didn't know how to do it and I didn't feel like I could work on anything else without first starting/finishing the pillows. But to be honest, I don't have many ideas to work on anyhow right now. I did manage to make 35 little bean bags for our kids and for Noah's birthday. It was just the mindless easy project I needed to get me inspired to start sewing again. And my kids play with them constantly. I seriously had like two or three ideas of what could be done with bean bags, but Anya and Evan have gone way beyond that. Evan's favorite thing to do it put them on his or our heads. Anya's uses for them range from Halloween candy for pretend trick-or-treating to snow to pillows to patterns.



I call them bean bags, but really they are filled with popcorn. It actually took a long time to fill these little bags because I was using this tiny little funnel and it kept getting clogged. But then Steve brought me his huge beer making funnel. It was about 100 times faster, except that I had to fight Evan for "his hat."



Filling the bags took me so long that I had to give Anya some corn in a tub to play with. She loved it.



When I finished filling the bags and Evan tired of the funnel, I put the tub on the floor and let them both go to town with the corn. It was a complete mess. I didn't regret doing it because they had so much fun, but wow...I'm still finding kernels of corn a month later.



The next two photos are for my mom and dad. We were talking to them on the webcam and my dad got the brilliant idea to draw a couple pictures for Evan which he held up to the camera. Evan is OBSESSED with stars and the moon right now, so he got most excited when grandpa held up the star picture. Every time he held it up, it was like Evan had never seen it before. "OH...STAR!!!" It was adorable. Then they sent the drawings to Evan in the mail. These photos are from when we received them.





Anya and Evan continue to have so many great moments together. They also have their tough moments with each other, but they have so much love to give. The obvious moments, like the hugs and the kisses, are wonderful to witness as the parent, but even more touching than that are the quiet little moments. The ones where Anya helps Evan without being asked or when she explains something to him so tenderly are what really gets me. Or when Evan imitates his big sister or when he just goes up and lays his head in her lap...those are the ones that really bring tears to my eyes. This moment below was just great because they were sitting so close in their little chair, both doing their own thing, but yet totally together. It also shows two things they love doing lately. Evan is completely obsessed with his magna-doodle. Don't you dare try and take it away. And don't make the mistake of drawing something for him on it, if you aren't committed to drawing for request after request (bus, star, tree, moon, sun, daddy, over and over). And Anya loves her scissors. Here she is just cutting a piece of paper into strips and then cutting the strips into tiny squares.



Near the end of January, we all went to a preschool fair to try and figure out some options for Anya for next fall. It was pretty overwhelming, and I'm sure you'll hear more about our experiences and decision in later blog posts. But for now, here's a photo of Anya with her face paint she got at the preschool fair.



Anya has really started enjoying art projects lately and will now draw things on her own a lot. The picture below is a picture she drew of me "with freckles."



And just to show you what I really look like, here's a rare photo of me. I don't remember what Anya and I are making in the kitchen, but we've been doing a lot of baking lately. It is one of our favorite things to do together. And I'm not mad, just concentrating.



Things around our house never stay in one place for long. We recently just rearranged some furniture and are mostly happy with the results. We still have a displaced cabinet in the dining room waiting for a home. It began when I wanted to bring down my old childhood desk from the loft to give to Anya to put all her miscellaneous stuff into. She just has all this stuff she wants to keep "safe" and I have enough trouble keeping my own desk clear of my own stuff that it was getting overwhelming with all her little projects (artwork, small objects Evan couldn't have, random scraps of paper that we just had to save, cards she got in the mail, stickers, etc.). So, she got her own desk and a place to put everything wherever she wants. And after the initial couple of days of newness, Evan pretty much stays away from it, which is amazing. It is so nice for her to have a place she can work on things all by herself. A place she can leave unfinished projects. And a place she can be in charge of. So, the photos below are what the "couch room" looks like now. We also brought in some lamps from elsewhere in the house to make it a lot more cozy without having to have the overhead lights on all the time. We used to have lamps in there when we had the old couch and TV room. Now that Evan is older and doesn't knock over stuff as much, we were able to bring back some lamp-light. And no, it almost never looks this clean.







Just another fun moment with brother and sister...





And here's our crazy Anya. She got this adorable Lucky shirt from Tanino, and what does she choose to wear with it...striped pants. She still looked cute, but wow, it kinda hurt the eyes, there was so much going on.



Here's just another photo of Evan with his beloved magna-doodle. He is so old!



Since the end of January, Anya has been taking a class at the children's garden. It meets from 9:30-11:30 on Monday and Wednesday mornings. She absolutely loves it. There are only four kids in the class with one teacher and one or two helpers, so she is well taken care of. It is a wonderful transition for her before going to an actual preschool later this year. She is so happy when she gets to go and has a lot of fun telling us all about it when she comes home. During the Wednesday classes, they have residents from a nearby Alzheimer's nursing facility come into the class and do a project with the kids. They call them "the grandmas." And as you'd probably expect, Anya doesn't really interact much with them, but she has become more comfortable with them being around and I know it is good for her. The whole thing is really good for her to have this experience at "school." Every day she goes, they do some sort of art project and she loves to show them to me when I pick her up.

Here is one of our favorites...showing the sunflower seed "she planted," the roots growing under the ground and the sunflower with the new seeds in it.



Here's another picture she colored. It is so fun to see her art progress over the years from just random scribbles to coloring parts to coloring everything all one color to coloring different parts to even using realistic colors.



She has also, on her own, taken an interest in writing her own name. She has been making "A's" for a while, but it really only took about two times of showing her an "N" and a "Y" before she could write the whole thing. The best part is just that she is so proud of herself for doing it.



Here's another random shot of something Anya and Evan both love doing...playing on the computer. We just do it occasionally, but they both love sitting at the computer and doing these little "learning to read" games on starfall.com. My favorite part is that at the end of each short game/story, it asks you, "Did you like this one?" And then you're supposed to click on one of three faces signifying "yes," "kind of," or "not really." As soon as the screen pops up, Evan shouts out, "YES!!!" before the question is even asked. It cracks me up every single time.



And here is my road block sewing project. I actually finished them! Hilary has this plain colored couch with plain throw pillows. When she was out here last fall, she picked out fabric for me to make covers for the four pillows. I had all kinds of ideas of what the pillows could look like, but just wasn't brave enough to make any of them happen. So, I just made up a really simple design. I am still happy with how they look, but they aren't as interesting as I had wanted to make them. Mainly, I had intended to make some sort of binding around the outside in plain brown, but I just didn't have enough confidence that I could make it look as good as I would like it to look, so I chickened out and went the simple route.





And now we're caught up to today. We have had a busy week and today was totally free of any commitments, so we could do whatever we wanted. We started out just playing at home and then took a spontaneous trip to the donut shop this morning. Yummy! After lunch I decided to clean a couple of windows. I was just going to clean the three windows and glass door at the back of the couch room since those are the ones that get touched all the time and the sun shines through them showing how dirty they always are. I knew that Anya would love helping with this project and I was right. She got to spray them with a water bottle and wash them with a towel. I followed behind her with some Windex. After we finished the four windows I had intended to wash, I was ready to be done. I mean, come on...let's not get carried away! But Anya said, "Are there any other windows in our house?" So, we decided to wash the ones in our bedroom, too. She's such a helpful kid. I love it.



She had to wear her sunglasses because it was too bright.


Evan didn't participate in the window washing because he was enamoured with this scarf for like 30 straight minutes. By the way, many of you have asked about his leg. It just stopped being a problem, so we'll probably never know what the issue was, but we're happy it just resolved on its own and didn't require further investigation.



Overall, things around here are going well. We spent almost two solid weeks of passing around the stomach flu at our house. Somehow, Anya escaped getting it completely, but the rest of us had a rough time, especially Evan. So it feels really nice to currently have everyone healthy.

Hopefully I'll find the time and motivation to catch up on some of the other past posts I want to write and keep up with our lives in the present, too. Keep checking back!