Exploiting my son talents

I've come home from a long day at work where I was on my feet in lab for 12hours straight. I've made it home just in time to Jude down to sleep and to then spend some quiet time with Tam before his bedtime. We usually spend this quality time playing a board game or watching part of a movie.

This night, Tam asks to watch a movie (Cars, of course!). We watch the movie upstairs in the spare bedroom. As a side note, Tam calls this spare bed "Aunt Shelly's bed"; apparently he really remembers the last time she was out to visit :-) Anyways, Jude's sleeping, I put the movie in, and Tam and I lay down on the bed to veg out a bit.

Moments later I am thouroughly enjoying being off my feet. Tam then gets the bright idea that he wants to climb on mama. "Please mama, climb on you?" says Tam. Oh, um, I know Brian lets him do this when they are rough-housing, so I say ok if he remembers to be careful.

OH_MY_AWESOMENESS. Tam immediately climbs up on my backs and steps all over, conveniently hitting all of the sore spots. It is like having a little masseuse working for me.
Go ahead Tam and walk over my shoulders one more time, please! In the end, Tam thought I was an awesome mom for letting me climb around and I thought he was an awesome son because he helped my back feel better :-)

Afterwards, it was time for stories and bed for Tamlin.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday - Killing Time with Picnik.com

I discovered the website Picnik.com. This is a free program that allows you to edit uploaded photos. And not just boring editing like crops and tints...but fun manipulation of photos. I spent a great evening playing with some recent photos of the kiddos. Ooohhh...I could easily become addicted to this :-)

Faded photo - to look like a film photo from the 1960s

Adding Text to explain Jude's antics

How Tam will look when he gets older:

How Jude will look when he's older too:



Kaleidoscope effect with so many happy Judes!

Print Painting

I spent quality time with both kiddos this week...which could be done because they napped opposite each other that day :-) We painted outside and here's a photo blog of it:

Me: Hey, Tam, you wanna paint outside with your feet?
Tam: Wanna go outside, mama. And Paint.

We made cool footprint butterflies

Me: Tam, go and find a leaf or something to paint with.
Tam: Okay, mama
He comes back with leaves and flowers...in his monster truck :-)

Tam: Truck in paint?

Our paintings with handprints, feetprints, flower and leaf prints, and truck track prints

Tam: Yuck. Truck's all dirty
Me: Not to mention your hands, feet, neck, arms, etc.

I got out a bucket of soapy water for clean-up.

Tam : All clean!

Tam: Let's do it again!

Mom Sale Score

Headed out to the local Mom Sale a few days ago. This is the first time the sale is running on two days instead of just one mad-house Saturday. I won't be able to make to the sale tomorrow because of a field trip with my Ecology class, so I ran over there from noon to 2pm on Friday. The plus side was that there were fewer people (read crazy moms) there on Friday, but the down-side was that there were only about 200 sellers compared to the usual 300+ present on Saturday.

I was on a mission to find winter clothes in the 6-12 month range for Jude, 4T clothes for Tam (for next year), games for a preschooler (UNO, Matching/counting games, anything with a spinner), books, anything that catches my eye.

The summary of the score:
2 Hours walking around looking at stuff
35 Dollars spent
25 Pieces of clothing bought for both boys - heavy on the winter play-suits for Jude and 4T shirts for the future
3 books for Tam
2 pairs of shoes - boots and slippers
1 gigantic floor puzzle with trucks for Tam's birthday
1 Chutes and Ladders game