Zoe is home from school today. Sick. Again. (Zoe is one of the few kids on the planet who actually LOVES school… so much so that she will fake wellness to go. Like, if her arm was half severed, she would try to tape it up and put on a heavy sweater and attempt to get out the door before I spotted the blood.)
Anyway, I made her stay home again today. She is bored beyond words. I am about to go print her out some math sheets so she can pretend that she is at school.
In the meantime, though, check out the sweet fort she built this morning in the piano room. She built it especially for spying on the neighbors and people delivering things to our door. (Our flat screen is scheduled to be delivered this afternoon… yeah, you heard me. Flat screen. The family who hasn’t had cable — not even local channels — for a year and a half is getting a flat screen. Sometimes we actually like to flush our money directly down the toilet.)
Behold: the “Sick Fort”
Did you see her wallet? Did you catch it? If not, go back and see if you can spot the 86 seconds its on screen again.
And here she shows you the peephole for spying:
And now I’m off to print math sheets and stealthily administer medicine.
(Post script… I realized after watching the videos that the video of her wallet was so long that flickr actually cut it off. You don’t get to see the other objects contained in her “adventure bag” or the sweet Exit sign. Darn.)
Deacon loves music. Any kind, really. He likes it in the car, he likes it blaring from the speakers in the house when I play my Pandora stations while I sweep and dust. He loves Lady Gaga the same as Michael Buble. He loves Earth, Wind, and Fire the same as Paul Oakenfold. He doesn’t care the genre or the lyrics.
When the kids are practicing piano, he crawls to the piano room and sits behind their bench while they play. During the day when they’re gone, he crawls in there (the kid can really crawl now) and pulls himself up to the piano, playing his own tunes.
He waits for Jon to get home at night so he can listen to daddy play the guitar. And when Jon isn’t here, he crawls to the guitar — which is always propped against the wall — and strums it until I put it down flat on the floor for him.
The kid just loves music.
Here is daddy playing (notice Deacon’s hot dance moves)
(Jon’s singing is awesome… even without all the words.)
My kids love crepes. My husband loves them, too. It’s one of the favorites in his family. On the weekends when we’re feeling ambitious, we’ll often make them. (And by we, I mean Jon, with the help of one or more of our kids.) But this morning, Jon asked the kids to make crepes while he mowed the yard… a request that they took very seriously. So seriously that there were no adults allowed in the kitchen. It was a Kid Only Zone. They got down the blue recipe book and got to work.
Crepes:
1 C. milk, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. salt, 1 C. flour, 1 Tbs melted butter
Mix in that order:
Next, use a measuring cup to pour batter into pan. “Swirl” batter to make crepes thin:
Flip after 1 minute. Don’t overcook.
Mix secret sauce:
My kids were totally ticked off that I disclosed the ingredients in the secret sauce, but I assured them that it’s still very much a secret, since I’m not giving you the recipe for our homemade jam. (Incidentally, you can experiment with different flavor jams. My personal favorite is blackberry.)
Finally, roll, drizzle with maple syrup, and sprinkle with powdered sugar:
Video was captured of events earlier this week illustrating an apparent attack by a ferocious infant boy on his older brother. For the entire duration of the attack, the sister of both boys laughed hysterically and offered no help to the older boy. In fact, at one point the sister actually spit on the older boy (though this may have been accidental, as the girl has a huge hole in the front of her mouth from missing front teeth). Meanwhile, the careless mother of all of the children sat behind the safety of the camera, also laughing and offering no assistance. The infant kicked the ten year old repeatedly in the head and face, and did so effortlessly; the infant almost seemed unaware of his own actions, though at one point he seemed to try to cover the camera lens to hide his identity.
I found this video on the camera card today. I didn’t realize that Zoe had taken some video while I was in the hospital. (The day after Deacon was born, to be exact.) But bless her for doing it, because Deac is so small. And we hadn’t yet even finalized the name.
(Pop the Dramamine before pressing play. After all, this was filmed by a 6 year old with twitchy hands and a wandering eye.)
I know, I know… the cuteness is burning your retinas, right? I am rude for not giving you a heads up… but I wanted it to be a surprise: the utter preciousness. Please email your kiss requests, and I will be sure to smooch the little guy for you.
Jachin and Zoe had their first duet recital tonight. They’d been practicing with the neighbor kids for weeks and weeks, and the night finally came. There were some nerves… I thought Jachin was actually going to throw up at a certain point before his performance. And when they called Zoe’s name, she stood up from her seat but wouldn’t walk over to the piano without a little coaxing. But they did just fine. They did fabulously, in fact.
Here they are after the recital with their certificates:
And for the video:
Oh! Susannah
Ode to Joy
Chop Sticks
(You can tell that he likes playing this one. And I love that he’s all worried about someone turning the page for them.)
Zoe and the neighbor girl are doing a piano duet showcase together next month. One of their songs is Oh Susannah! (the exclamation point is in the title; it’s not necessarily there because I am yelling or excited about that particular song). Zoe and her friend have been practicing tirelessly. Here are the results:
Sorry about the weird lighting in the video. Everything ended up looking kinda blurry and blue tinted. My house doesn’t actually look blurry and blue when you’re in it.
ps- Jachin is also playing in the duet showcase. And as soon as he actually practices his song, I’ll post a video of him, too. (My apologies to Jenna, because her kid is Jachin’s duet partner, and now Jenna knows that Jachin hasn’t practiced yet… although right this second Jachin is reading over my shoulder and swearing he has practiced it millions of times… and that it’s awesome.)
