Why I Don't Take More Pictures

It is nearly impossible to take a good picture of Miles.  He never stops moving.  Our house does not have the best lighting for pictures.  Gerrit is trying to save money on our electric bill by only replacing about half of the bulbs that burn out, so it is kind of dim around here.  Also, Gerrit and I are both kind of inept with a camera.

Here's a perfect illustration of these three principles.

My mom made Miles this royal cape and crown for Christmas (along with a bunch of other dress-up clothes.)  She wanted a picture to send to a crochet magazine.  I thought this would be easy as pie.

Not so much.

Gerrit started off by taking some up in his room.

Some of these are not too bad, but Gerrit decided that the yellow shirt was distracting and made Miles change into his white church shirt.

At this point, Gerrit gave up and made me take the rest of the pictures.  I did not do much better.

If nothing else, at least these pictures show that the cape and crown are a lot of fun!

Blind Date with a Book

I didn't ever go on very many blind dates.  If I had, I may have avoided the siren song of this book at the library:

Look at it!  So exciting!  Who knows what could be hidden under its mysterious newspaper wrapping?  They had about six or seven of these, and I picked the one that looked most promising, based on my deep intuitions.  I was excited about what the book could be all the way home.

And then I unwrapped it.

That was when I realized that if all of the books around the book are romance novels, the wrapped books will probably also be romance novels.  Then I remembered I don't really like romance novels.  Then I realized that this is a companion book to Persuasion.  I have never read Persuasion, but it is the next book for one of my book clubs.  I should add that I also do not much care for books where people take the entire plot from another author.  I like fairy tale retellings, but I do not like it when they just look at it from the viewpoint of another character, and that is what this book is.

Now I had a dilemma.  Should I read this book first?  Would it spoil all of the plot?  What if I didn't like it?  Would that keep me from reading the book for my book club?


Oh, blind dates.  So complicated.  I ended up returning this one.  Luckily, this is much easier to do with a book than if it were an actual blind date.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I feel like we have had really relaxed Valentine's Day celebrations for the last few years, but now that Miles is actually in school, that upped the celebration factor a lot.

This was the first year that Miles actually gave out valentines to friends.  I tried to find him some at Target, but Miles didn't like any of the preschool-friendly selections.

Here's our conversation:

Me: Miles, what kind of Valentines do you want?
Miles: These ones!  (pointing to the very expensive knight and castle ones that I would need to buy three boxes of to have enough.  Of course.)
Me:  How about these Cars ones?  Or maybe Mickey Mouse?
Miles:  I don't like those ones.  How about the knights?

There was not a very wide preschool-friendly selection.  A lot of them were Avengers or wrestling or something else that he doesn't even know about.  I was hoping for Sesame Street or Super Why or just even some generic robots or animals or something else he likes, but we were not in luck.

So we made our own.  These were in Family Fun last year and I think they turned out really well.  I made 30 (16 for his class and 14 for a playgroup) and they didn't take very long, so that was a big plus.

Miles had his class party.  That had the cutest "Bee My Valentine" theme.  They wore bumblebee hats, read bumblebee books, and ate scones and honey butter.  We also went to two different Valentine playgroups.

Miles had a lot of fun decorating his bag for Valentines.  I tried to convince him it was a mailbox.  He informed me that it was a bag, and it can't be a box if it is a bag.

 Molly slept through a lot of both parties.

After putting so much energy into making Valentine's Day special for Miles and Molly, Gerrit and I didn't really end up doing much for the two of us.  I made a special Valentine's dinner, and Gerrit surprised me with a trip to the waffle truck.  Do you live in Utah County?  If so, do yourself a favor and find that truck.  It's amazing!  This waffle has Biscoff spread, bananas, and whipped cream.

Stir Crazy

We've been stuck inside for a long time now.  I'm excited because the 10-day forecast had a day with a high of 46.  That sounds like outside weather to me!  Miles and Molly have different reactions to being stuck inside all day.

Miles does his "crazy dancing."

This last picture is my favorite.

Molly has responded with moves of her own.

Like standing (sometimes, even on her own!)

 And cruising.

And getting into the most dangerous possible thing.

And climbing.

Miles was not much of a climbing baby, so this one is pretty new to me.  We have two steps between our kitchen and living room.  I don't mind her climbing those, but she will also climb up all of the stairs to our second floor.  That is terrifying.


Gerrit and I have responded with moves of our own.  In this case, installing a lot of gates.