Summer Fluff

It's a fluff day. Summer needs those. It's essential. I am spending time I don't have reading the ever so fluffy Tao Of Martha. It's hilarious and over the top and ridiculous and I am quite addicted. I spent naptime with my feet on the dashboard at park, reading more of it hungrily while the boys snoozer in their carseats. So delicious.
As a result I am now planning a Martha Stewart inspired backyard clambake to celebrate the golden end of summer.
Now that dinner is over (pesto chicken, cheese cubes, sauteed garlic summer squash and a cold melon soup) I am in the office positively giddy about watching Mama Mia with A as soon as he is done reading bedtime stories. I have been dying to see it for years and am sure cravings for The Medditerranean will result. Bring it on! I am in the mood!

Band-Aid Thief

I am a pretty stern hand with the bandaids at our house. I know its an American expectation that kids be given character bandaids every time they bump their shins. I'm mean. I insist on blood before there be handing out of bandages. Stickers are stickers, bandaids are bandaids. When Nib was in the hospital this past spring I relaxed my rule and let the nurses give him as many bandaids as they wanted to try to cheer him up. Mostly, he's back to my standard procedures but every once in a while I find those little plastic tabs on the floor and wonder where he put the contraband bandaid. I just found one of them. Sweet, sly boy.

One Less Shirt To Wash

You know, there are whole workbooks you can buy these days on developing "scissor skills" for your preschooler to be sure their snipping will be up to social standards. I think we have this particular skill covered in our preschool here at Chez Armstrong as Nib so easily demonstrated here.

Curved lines? No problem. He's got it down. Two years old and he's a crack shot with a pair of snips and Mommy has less laundry too! Forget those chi-chi workbooks. Who needs 'em?

Mud Monsters

And then sometimes you just have crazy whims like, "Why not!?! All the kids really want to do is play with mud today....let them." I got out all my big mixing bowls and the hose and whipped up some serious batches of good squishy mud and then the boys went at it while I stalked them with the camera.

Simple. Slightly demented. And pretty fun to watch. Maybe they'll remember it fondly. The only rules? No mud on the car. No mud on the house. No mud on your mother. There was a serious round of baths to follow. Epic.

Sweet Moments

You can tell Halloween just happened and we're still living in the celebratory Land of Abundant Candy when you open the dishwasher and find the soap cup has been secretly stashed with the toddler's back-up supply of fruity ju-ju drops. Sometimes motherhood does make me smile. Love the random silly bits of life.

My dishwasher is so clean, you can eat out of it!

Those, folks, are the two cleanest peas on the planet. They've been through turbo rinse and heated dry, a swish of Jet Dry and a whole lot of hot water and cheerily presented themselves to me this morning when I opened the machine. Bing! Here we are! Bright and shiny! The world's cleanest food.

Hand-me-down Shoes

Recently, we had a little discussion at the breakfast table about hand-me-downs because Ru was alarmed to discover that Dee was wearing one of his old shirts. A and I patiently explained that this is what happens to clothes in our family...the biggest person wears them and then the next person gets to have them, etc. Eyes were opened.

Then, later that day after lunch I came upon Ru telling his wide-eyed brother, Dee earnestly all about his personal take on the subject. He was fondling my black kitten heels and telling his brother matter-of-factly (with a touch of condescending reminiscence) that he used to wear these shoes and now Mommy did which meant that she was wearing his hand-me-downs.

Clear as mud, eh kid? To his credit, he did used to wear my heels around the house an awful lot around the age of two or so....but, we may need a little refresher course on what hand-me-downs are all about. It's amazing what seems obvious to a grown-up.

In The Clink Together

They had their first joint time-out session this week. Big stuff. You can see it was very popular. So, typical "them," my tender-hearted little flower and my spitfire rebel, side-by-side in shared misery. Sure did make for a good picture though, eh? Extremely hard to take without glamorizing their transgressions or bursting into riotous laughter. Sweet, silly boys.