Blind-sighted

After a rousing rendition of "Three blind mice" I decided to take a learning opportunity and explain to Megan about blindness. "Megan, blind means you can't see. These three mice can't see where they are going and so they are blind mice." Time to expand the point into an anotomy lesson. "Megan, what do you use to see with?" (yeah, it wasn't a grammar lesson).

Megan answered without hesitation: "Binoc-lars" (binnoculars).

"And also your eyes." I tell her as we laugh. The lesson is obviously over and she is ready to be silly. "Can you sing two blind mice?" she asks. And so I go through the song again, only this time with one less ocularly-impaired rodent. As I finish Megan gets very serious,"What happened to the other one??"

The boys

Even though people keep saying Liam looks like Mac, I had a hard time seeing it. But not in this photo. I can make out all the similar head features. Fortunately, Liam doesn't have the same dorky expression!

He Crawls

Sort of. (4.7 MB .avi)

Bad Hair Life

I thought Megan had it bad when she inherited my grows-straight-forward-always-in-your-face hair. But it is nothing compared to Liam, who seems to be destined for a bad hair life. Liam has bilateral cowlicks which spin in opposite directions resulting in an upright mohawk ridge in the center.

Rock on, Dudes!

Megan's Family picture

Inspired by Lisa's great posts of Albert's latest works, I decided to post Megan's masterpiece. I realize this isn't anywhere near as good without a scanner, but you get the idea. For the last two months Megan has actually been drawing, usually "happy babies" and "sad babies" or rainbows. But this one, she informed me, is "Liam, Mommy and Megan." The anatomy could use some help, but she's got great use of scale!

Kids photo op

Megan wanted to sit with Liam on the couch today - a perfect opportunity to get a photo of the kids together. Yeah, right!

I got two more pictures, both of which were at least partly blurry, before Liam threatening to fling himself off the couch and Megan got bored of sitting next to Mr. Squimsalot.

Halloween

By the time Halloween rolled around, Mac and I were both suffering from some serious inadequate parent guilt. I had been telling Megan we'd carve pumpkins for three days, but we still hadn't gotten around to it. And Mac forgot to send Megan to school in a costume for the Halloween party the day before.

So by Halloween, we were ready to put forth some serious Halloween-is-going-to-rock effort. In the afternoon, Mac dressed Megan up and took her to a local park Halloween fest, where Megan pretty much shied away from all the activities. When I got home from work, dammit, you better believe we were carving a pumpkin. Megan spent te entire time waiting to get out the paint to make a face. My "Ta-da! it's a Jack-o-lantern!" was met with a completely non-plussed stare and another inquiry about the paint. In the end, I let Megan paint two of the birdhouse gourds from our garden. She did get a bit more enthusiastic over Jack when she learned she got to blow out the candle.

Later we drove to a small neighborhood and hit about ten houses. I was surprised that Megan was more excited about ringing doorbells than getting candy. The activity was a good social exercise for Megan, who did a great job answering questions about her name, costume, age, etc. and with dispensing the niceties such as thank you and happy Halloween (with a few cues). Plus Megan was very impressed by all the new construction houses. At every stop, Megan would comment,"This is a nice house." or "This is a nice plant" or the ultimate compliment,"This is a nice doorbell."

Our parenting guilt was assuaged by our high blood sugar levels at the end of the night!