rolling your Rs

One of Nate's favorite school activities is their Spanish class. His teachers last year used to say Nate thought the Spanish teacher, Sandra, was a rock star. He seems to feel similarly this year, although their movement teacher, Katie, seems to be giving Sandra a run for the title. A few days ago we were reading a book in Spanish, saw a word with an "rr," so I asked if Nate could roll his Rs (he can't). A minute or two later there was a word beginning with "p" and Nate turned to me and asked, "Mommy, can you jiggle your Ps?" (I can't).

budding musicians?

Just behind violin on my List of Instruments You Don't Want Your Kid to Play are the drums. And before you all jump on me about how great the violin and/or drums are, I want to clarify that if my kids could jump in as advanced, or even intermediate, players, I would be thrilled with a violinist in the house. I am just not so interested in the beginning stages for either of these instruments. But like most kids, mine are doing their darnedest to drive me nuts without doing anything particularly wrong. Nate is really interested in the drums. His favorite song is a version of "Strawberry Fields" from the Anthology set that ends with a long drum solo. Now he's made his own drum set of pots and lincoln logs (although, I think he's using a real mallet in these pictures), which he's taken to playing regularly. He's not too keen on giving Anja a turn, but she's been getting in on the action when he's taking a set break. I'm thinking a real drum may be in our very near future.

were in!

The room is finally finished! Our contractor finished up his end of things what feels like ages ago (probably about a month, maybe a month and a half) and we've been painting ever since. We've determined that it is much harder to accomplish pretty much anything when you have two kids. We'd been painting for an hour or two whenever we had a free evening, but did the final push last weekend when Grandma Shirley was visiting and watching the kiddos.

In related news, the construction outside our house is finally finished. We have a newly paved street (technically it's our cross street, for you sticklers out there) and a new sidewalk. The only casualty is half of our hedges that were dug up accidentally and then, adding insult to injury, the curb was dumped on top of the remaining scraps of hedge. We've been assured that there will be replacement hedges "soon."

anja update

Anja is all over the place. She's now not just taking steps but walking. And not just walking, but walking towards things. It's funny, because I've been dreading this step (pun intended - ha!) but now that the inevitable is here I'm ready for her to move on to walking all the time. Enough with this mix of crawling and wandering, I'm ready for her to stop dragging herself all over the playground. My car has enough mulch from Nate's antics, I don't need double the amount!

Anja's not quite the eater Nate was, but she's almost as messy. Even though she's not ingesting much of interest, she's putting everything else in her mouth, like any good baby does. We've been trying to ween her from the pacifier (which has been successful outside of the crib) but she's found her own paci substitutes. Oh, these darned kids! So clever.

a budding photographer

Nate's been having fun taking photos over the past month or two. I've weeded through the blurry ones and am presenting a selection of Nate's best work. I think his perspective is interesting, and I guess this is what he looks at?