New Family Pictures

Since Princess Kate went ahead and revealed her official portrait last week, I thought it only fair that we do the same. We desperately needed them and my talented sister in law Robyn was, I'm sure, chomping at the bit to shoot them for us. I had a great idea that we take them at a sushi restaurant, it more accurately reflects our personality as a family I think.
There were a lot of favorites, here is a sample.

Kudos to Robyn for figuring out how to do this while crammed into a booth with low lighting, and also for eating sushi, she was very brave. If you would like to see more of her work go here.

Opposition Therapy

On of our great troubles with Anna is that she's always "bored". No matter how many times we tell her that is not our problem she continues to expect us to fill all her waking hours with our attention. As I was lamenting about this in my journal a few nights ago I received a bit of inspiration: "opposition in all things". Anna can't be contented with playing all the time because that's all she ever does! Other than preschool 3 mornings a week, her life has no structure. So I decided to get strict about her chores again. Before she can watch shows or play with friends she has to do a few very simple chores. The best part about this is that when she complains that she "hates doing chores" I can smile and assure her that it will make playing more fun. And the more she hates something the more she will love playing when it's over. It's revolutionizing my attitude which makes it easier to enforce.

Additionally there was a quote in Downton Abby this week that I have since typed up, printed and hung up in the kitchen: (it's best if you imagine Maggie Smith saying it) "Anna dear, you are a girl with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do!"

Breaking it in

Here is a late Christmas present for Calvin. I finished it late last night and after all that work was having serious doubts about letting a known spit upper use it, but I made it for him and I can tell he likes the bright colors. At least I can cross it off my projects list.

My degree in Eliza Communications

So here's a good example of Eliza communicating. The girls were eating breakfast as I took Calvin into my room to give him breakfast and read a little of my book. Then Eliza came in wanting to play. I asked her if she finished her breakfast, of course she had not. So I asked her to go back in and finish - this is where it gets tricky. She made her slurp for drink sound and pointed at the ground. I wasn't really paying attention to her and what she said didn't make sense, so she repeated it again, "slurp, point to ground" then again "slurp, ground" and again until I started guessing. "your drink is on the floor?" no. "you want your drink on the floor?" no. "you spilled your drink" uh huuhhh she answered as if that fact was obvious 5 minutes ago. Awesome. So not only did I decipher her language, but I got to clean milk up off the floor.

5 months and some sillies

 Calvin is 5 months old now and still a charmer. I don't know what else to say about him, we love him to death.

Here is Eliza's cheesy smile face. She asked me again and again to take her picture, so I have about 20 pictures of her like this. They make me laugh every time. She's hilarious.

Anna may be the most photogenic child ever. Mostly I love the photobomb that Calvin is doing in the background.

 Here's another picture of silly Eliza. She's a ham.

New

So this is the new thing at our house. We spent New Years anticipating and setting up a 10 gallon aquarium on the kitchen counter. And when I say "we" I do not include myself. It was mostly Ben and Anna. This was not my idea, in fact in pretty sure we agreed never to get pets when we got married. Nevertheless, there they are. Anna bought two basic goldfish with her own money and named them Phineas and Isabella. Ben got one big calico named Buford and a small fan-tail goldfish for Eliza named "Nemo" (of course). They have been all the rage for the last two days. Frankly I'm surprised they are still alive.


Update: Isabella was found dead the next morning and Phineas followed her that evening. They were replaced by bigger, stronger fish. A black one named Nightmare Moon and a big Goldfish named Rarity.