Our TUV's

Peter NEVER sings. He loves songs, does the hand motions, but never, ever sings. Today he is home sick with a bad cold and I was trying to find low key ways to keep him happy, so I started singing the alphabet. After a bit, I stopped because he didn't seem to be paying attention. Turns out, not only was he paying attention, he knows the "words" and he started prompting me along. I kept stopping every few letters and he would fill in the blank. His favorite part is TUV which is what he suggests every time he's unsure what comes next.

You can see a video of him singing on our flip share site.

A Good Chuckle

Bellingham is an unusual town. It makes me smile.

Our usual Saturday morning cycle just rode past our house - The saturday morning unicyclist who rides a giant unicycle up and downhill and on a gravel path by our house, who today, really stepped it up a notch. He also had his dog on a leash walking in front of him as they rode down the hill. Who needs a circus when the people here do tricks right outside your front windows?

Cheaper than Therapy

My mom would always say that some things were cheaper than therapy - like her habit of leaving every light in the house on all the time and keeping the thermostat set at 72. These are the things that keep you sane during the winter sometimes. To keep ourselves sane this winter (even though it's been quite balmy) we have made it a goal to get out of town every weekend. Bellingham gets mighty small in January.

This last weekend, when we awoke to thick fog and rain on Saturday, we piled the kids in the car and headed down to the Children's Museum in Seattle.

First, there was a cool sculpture to run through.

Then it was time for, drum roll please...

The Sesame Street exhibit, which ended the next day. We caught it just in time. Peter was so excited, he ran around inside for the first 1/2 hr or so with his coat on. He couldn't even slow down for us to take it off of him until later (some of the pictures are out of sequence - just note the coat when it appears).

They had a big, soft obstacle course that Peter just couldn't get enough of.

But then, ladies and gentlmen, it was time for the biggest thing of all...

La la la la, La la la la...

Peter got a chance to actually go INSIDE Elmo's world. It was very neat. The whole room was straight out of Elmo's world. He didn't believe me when I kept telling him on the way to the museum that we were going to see Elmo. When a little kid walked past us out of the museum with an Elmo balloon, Peter wanted to chase him down, convinced that's what I had meant and that we were letting Elmo get away. But no...I mean for real - we were going to Elmo's World.

(How cool of parent's are we by the way? Elmo's World now. Midnight tween movie previews in 10 years. I can see the eye rolling now.)

In addition the the SPECTACULAR Sesame Street exhibit (which happened to be about the body, which was utterly beside the point to Peter), there were all sorts of fun things at the museum.

Peter got to go grocery shopping and take anything he wanted off the shelf and throw it into his own cart without anyone yelling at him. And he got to serve meals at a restaurant.

In the course of one day he got to be a fireman...

a sailor, a bus driver...

and a Filipino Rickshaw driver.

He got to play with balls - lots of ping pong balls that went in lots of cool things.

And he got to play in fountains - little ones...

and BIG ones. (To Quote Peter: "Big Wa")

It was a great day. We had one tuckered little bug at the end of it, but everyone, including Moira did great and we were all glad to have gotten out of the house and done something fun on our weekend, despite the weather.

Baby's Bath

Moira, much to our dismay, has begun trying to eject herself from her sink baths. Darn it if she isn't strong enough to do it too. She shoots her legs out, pushes against the sink and goes flying. So no more sink baths. Unfortunately, she hates the tub. Despite his expression in this photo- so does Peter. So it's funny at our house when bath time rolls around every evening. There's often a lot of tears, at least from Moira. Peter takes a shower.

General Silliness

Generalized silliness is common in our house.

Mittens anyone?

Mittens for Moira - pick a limb, any limb, to put them on.

Daddy storing a naked Moira in his shirt so she doesn't get cold while I go looking for a new outfit.

She thought it was pretty fun!

Cell Phone Non Sequiter

Here's the most recent random assortment of cell phone pics. It's what I grab when I'm either out and about or I can't find our camera, so they're all a bit of photographic non sequiters.

Here is Moira - wedged under the couch. She can skooch, but she goes backwards better than forwards. I find her, not infrequently a few feet from where I set her down, facing a different direction, and now, commonly, under something.

Peter likes to "dri" the car. I let him do it sometimes when we're parked and need to burn some time. When you turn the car back on afterwards EVERYTHING starts up - all of a sudden every light is on, the radio is blaring, the windshield wipers are on turbo. He finds things that the car does that I didn't know existed! Then I have to figure out how to turn them off.

Peter watches Elmo - Moira says, Hmmm, that toe looks tasty!

Peter wears his fireman towel for dress up.

Oh, too bad this one insists on loading sideways. Sorry. The story with this picture is that Peter has decided that he needs to bring things with him for every car trip. Usually it's just more trains than he can carry (as seen below - I've started giving him a bag to carry them in), but this morning he also selected sound protection for his ears. It was so funny! He wore them as far as the elevator.

My little girl out for a walk. Looking very, LaLooLischious as we say in this house.

Papa Paul and Gram Kim

The next night, Paul and Kim graciously came up to look after the kids so Cameron and I could have a date night. Peter was very excited to see "gram" and "papa".

The only thing to do when we have guests - PLAY TRAINS!

Peter and Grandma play trains.

Papa Paul and Moira play trains.

And an especially generous Peter shares a train.