St. Patrick's Day: Round Up

Crafts and fingerpaints and fake mustaches aside, we did not call it quits there – although we could have and it still would have been a fine celebration.

However it wouldn't have been a special occasion without some special occasion cookies, so I made some:

And as if that wasn't enough I took things a step further and made this delightful mess: 

Try to suppress your gag reflex, everyone!

It's actually just vanilla pudding with green food coloring – and while I realize it looks completely awful, it turned out to be pretty much the best dessert EVER to a couple of toddlers: 

– Best dessert EVER, everyone!

No one was even acknowledging their shamrock cookies, despite "shamrock" being the word of the day.

So basically gross = awesome goodness if you are two and the endless chorus last night of "Green pudding! Green pudding delicious!" confirms that.

• • • • • • • 

Earlier in the day I was trying to get some pics of the boys sporting their St. Patrick's Day themed t-shirts, some of which ended up in this post.

Here are the rest (the majority of which took place while making carrot soup): 

 - L. 

PS. Both of my boys' hair photographs redder than it actually is. Seth's hair mostly appears a shade or two darker in photos, but is definitely red under any lighting conditions in real life. Nate's hair is darker and in real life is probably closest to this color minus 25% red. In regular indoor lighting or on an overcast day his hair might appear to be light brown to the casual observer. The right lighting on the other hand shows off his ginger tendencies nicely – however, direct sunlight + my camera makes it look like he's been sampling from the home hair color aisle. Or is possibly wearing a wig. 

St. Patrick's Day: The OP Gets Artsy

For the life of me I have no idea what possessed me to try out fingerpaints for the first time yesterday, especially since markers have been enough of a challenge.

Also we don't have any fingerpaint.

It was kind of a spur of the moment type thing, but it turns out that there are endless ways to make your own paint out of stuff you already have in your kitchen. And if you're limited on time like me because you decided to do it at nearly the last minute and don't have time for the stovetop paint-making recipes (which would involve cooling time and such), here's the one we went with in a nutshell:

• Combine 1 egg yolk* and 1/4 cup water. Add food coloring. Get painting.

And we did!

Markers or paints, I have to say my boys sure do love the Jackson Pollock approach. 

- L.

PS. I scanned some of the boys' finished works of art and while they look lovely, they don't show off the surprisingly cool feature of painting with egg yolk. I did my best to take a photo of it though:

It was hard to catch the light and take a pic, but egg yolk dries with a nice sheen and just a small amount of iridescence.

PPS. I would definitely do this project again. It was a less messy than markers (really!) and more fun for my boys than crayons.

• • • • • • • 

*The recipe indicated using 1 egg yolk per color, but I'd recommend halving the yolk/water mixture before adding food coloring. Really, a little goes a long way (even with two very busy painters).

St. Patrick's Day: The OP Gets Crafty

This was our very first craft type project, so I wasn't sure what to expect – but the boys had a great time and it really did turn out nicely.

Perhaps a little too nicely.

We got started on our own version of this project yesterday. I went digging around in the Crayolas to see what we had available which amounted to one green crayon and one blue-green crayon (which was certainly more blue than green), but then I discovered some dark green crayons we took home the one time the boys and I ate in a restaurant* so it started to seem a bit more do-able.

I added some white and what turned out to be indigo (the "blue" crayons from the aforementioned restaurant) and we were good to go.

There aren't any pictures of my guys actually getting crafty since I didn't have enough hands to also hold a camera, but it was both a fun and reasonably civilized time decorating wax paper with crayon shavings ("spa-rinkles", anyone?).

I pressed the paper last night after the boys went to bed and cut out shamrocks while they ate breakfast this morning. Word of the day today was definitely "shamrock". Also, they seemed pretty excited to see the "paper" they made.

I strung everything together while Nate and Seth napped this afternoon. I'm not sure Martha Stewart would approve of my use of ordinary kitchen string, but it's what we went with**:

I hung up the finished product in their favorite looking-out window. It was still fairly overcast*** at this point and the camera (or my skills with the camera) didn't capture how pretty it really was. 

I couldn't wait for everyone to get up and see the finished result.

Of course, they were suitably impressed****.

Perhaps a little too impressed as it turned out:

Er... so 'dis not part of craft-time then? 'Cause I feels pretty crafty right now.

- L. 

PS. Since Martha lives in a world where things turn out perfectly, she forgot to mention that you might need to take another quick pass with your iron after you cut out your shapes. Otherwise, this was a great craft and really turned out nicer than I was able to photograph.

• • • • • • • 

*No, I haven't gotten around to that post yet.

**Everything about this project was pretty easy, except for stringing it together. Kitchen string aside, I need to get some better skills in this area since the stringing took longer than the rest of the project combined.

***Also, my windows are dirty.

****They had it off the window faster than you can say "shamrock".

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

The boys kicked off the celebration by donning some festive mustaches after lunch: 

Which they got a pretty big kick out of:

Of course it was only a matter of time before Nate "went there": 

You did see that coming, right?

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

- L.

PS. Lots of fun stuff coming up. I think it's safe to say we did St. Patrick proud this year.

Crash Positions

As much as I'd love to report that the transition from cribs to beds has been incident-free, you already know that's not the case.

Daylight savings time turned out to be an unexpected curve ball. I should really check the news more often since I think we could have waited at least a few more weeks to switch things over, and I would have chosen to do so in retrospect had I been aware of it's imminent arrival. Of course, the late-night poltergeists and a bit of general illness this past week hasn't helped our cause either.

I served lunch at our usual time today, but it was too late.

Seth pushed his plate away two bites in and assumed the "crash position":

He looked surprisingly comfy and I knew if I woke him up to take him to bed it would be game over. 

Of course, 5 minutes later Seth showed me what comfy really looks like:

And while I'd normally agree that a hard wooden table doesn't look like the most comfortable place to take a nap, I also have to acknowledge that Pickles is the cuddle toy of choice when it's time to go to sleep. You do the math.

Bedtime tonight also yielded a bit of a surprise, although after last night you'd think not so much – except that tonight was the first time I've found Seth in Nate's bed (or rather, the bed formerly known as Seth's bed): 

I'll admit I'm halfway curious about pulling up the covers some night and leaving them wherever I find them – and perhaps someday soon I will. I loved their bedsharing days so much – maybe even more than they did – but it will likely take a bit more rest on my part before I'm willing to brave it. At this point all I can picture is a foot in someone's eye at 3AM.

- L.

A Lesson I Already Knew But Apparently Forgot

Just when you think everyone is settled in for the night and get down to the business of blogging about previous endeavors and forget to check in for more than 5 minutes, things like this are bound to happen:

I knew this day was on the horizon, even when I'm relatively on top of things. I just wasn't expecting it would be tonight.

And since I figured everyone would end up awake either way, I took a moment to snap a pic.

For once the camera click didn't wake anyone up AND I managed to transfer Nate back to his own bed entirely without incident.

It's an OP miracle, everyone!

- L.

PS. A little less dramatic than here, but I think that's only because Seth got in his way. Nate is still the master of the floopy joints, and never more so than when he's in a floopy state himself.

A,B,C, F and G...

There's a story here, but I'm pooped, so you should probably just head over and watch our new video.

- L.