Growing WarriorsJust your typical family…

sibling rivalry, originally uploaded by deannajo.

The kids are fighting – AGAIN.

Boxing on the Wii and the new tv. We love both.

Andrea, thanks for the Rayman Rabbid Rapids (or whatever it is) suggestion – we LOVE that game. I love the “bunnies can dance” sections the best..its all I can do not to go play it right now. At 1AM. With everyone else asleep. Pathetic.

You know, I’ve been reading blogs of people using Wii as a workout device. Its been reported that you can loose a lot of weight just by playing this game

And look whats coming out in 2008:

When we went to TX last fall, on the way back home, in very southern Oklahoma, we stopped to use the potty. When we did, one of Lydia’s favorite green croc-knock-offs, fell out of the car (unbeknown to us until the next potty stop). The other day, she took her shoes off in the car, and one fell next to the seat, by the door. Lydia sadly proclaims, “Oh NO! Now that shoe is in Oklahoma too!”

Lydia, originally uploaded by deannajo.

THIS is Lydia. Little bit of grime on her face, whispy hair, impish smile and big wise eyes.

Another thing I like about this picture – I can see the baby and toddler that she recently was, but I can also see the little girl she’s becoming. Can you see it too?

Something clicked. I figured out the light metering thing last night. Whoo hoo!! I rock.

I just could not understand it. The books said that metering takes place in your viewfinder – telling you what aperture or shutter speed to use, but I just wasn’t figuring that out and the manual wasn’t cutting it for me. I wasn’t understanding something. I sorta figured I could point the camera and it would tell me what to set it on for optimal exposure (now that its clicked, that sounds silly) Finally it clicked. Its the little bar thingy. You set one or the other (aperture or shutter speed) and then adjust the other until you get the bar at the exposure you want (optimal is at 0, over-exposed moving up on the bar towards the positive, and under-exposed is moving down toward the negative).

These manuals and photography books are clearly not written for complete newbies like myself.

Four girls in the rain, originally uploaded by deannajo.

I have the hardest time getting a (decent) picture of all the kids together. This one is ok, but that little one in the front needs a stern talkin’-to.

Ok, Wii.

Wii finally got one and wii love it! Wii’ve been haphazardly looking for one for a while now, but, as you know, stores are always sold out. Today wii stumbled upon a few boxes at a furniture store of all places! The guy there told us that they had gotten in 100 that morning, and what wii saw was all they had left…there was maybe 8 boxes left. Wii quickly grabbed one and hi-tailed it on out of there, and let me tell you, dunno why my search was so haphazard, that game is COOL. Even Lydia can play it with some success and a great deal of joy. So what games do wii HAVE to have?

And in other news. Eric has been “shopping” for a bigger tv for months now. Probably at least 8 months has been spent researching and considering…with three months of more intense shopping. Well today he finally made a decision and, come Sat, wii are going to have a big honking tv in our living room. Just in time for…….you guessed it….football season. Last year, he complained that our tv was just too small because he couldn’t read the scores anymore. (ahem, cough, sputter). I remember how HUGE our current tv seemed when wii bought it years ago. And I tease Eric, but I’m looking forward to the tv too…finally get to see what all that HDTV hype is about, and now when wii do movie nights, it will be rockin’. And a lifesize Dora the Explorer? What three year old could ask for more?

When did Lydia evolve? Seems like yesterday she was flipping through the pages of a book with wild abandon, pointing at the pictures, hardly letting me read the words on the page, and being generally disruptive during story time. But in the last few days, she has sat and listened, not interrupting, being attentive and following the story. Tonight when reading a story about a pig, she was able to draw inferences about what would happen next as well as why certain things were happening. The farmer’s wife vacuumed up all the pig’s mud, and then several pages later, the pig winds up in a junkyard (looking for another mud puddle) and finds instead an old vacuum cleaner. Lydia told me that the pig didn’t like the vacuum because it cleaned up his mud. There were several other examples just like this. I was blown away because really it does seem like yesterday when she just wanted to look at the pictures. Also, some of her thought process were very impressive. Especially for someone who was only two years old less than two months ago.

She is growing up though..in the last few months, she has turned three, moved out of our bedroom into a big girl bed in Meredith’s room, and had her first dentist appointment. And tonight she asked for a sip of my beer. Just one sip Mommy.

At Meredith’s last tball game, Allison, Lydia and another girl were playing. The were slightly observant of a group of boys who were also playing in the field. The group of boys were swinging from the trees and being rowdy. The girls were concerned, so told them a few times that they should be careful. At one point, a boy threw a tennis ball into a fenced off area where they are constructing a playground. The boys then set out on a mission to recover this ball without crossing the fence (and violating all the signs that said “Do Not Enter”), so they started doing things like throwing rocks and clumps of dirt at the ball. The girls were horrified. They were concerned that someone would get hurt, or that the boys would get in trouble with their parents. They kept coming to me with their concerns. My advice was consistently to not worry about what the boys were doing, just play and have fun. Finally Allison came to me with this important revelation:

“The thing about boys is that they just don’t think about things. They don’t develop a plan. They just do and they don’t think about what could happen. Like they don’t think that they could get hurt, and they didn’t stop to think up a plan about getting their ball back. Boys just don’t PLAN things out”

She then went on to tell me that if THEY (the girls) had lost their ball, they would have sat down and talked about everything they could do to get their ball back and then they would decide what the best course of action would be and start there….of course making sure that they considered any possible negative ramifications of that course of action (like someone getting hurt) first. THEN they would implement their plan.

Speaking of gender stuff, I lectured the manager at BurgerKing the other day about calling the toys in the kids’ meals either boy or girl toys. I told him that it is sexist and sends a message to the kids that isn’t fair. He should just offer it as ” would you like a transformer toy or a groovy girl toy with your kids meal?” not a boy toy or a girl toy. He didn’t get it. His response was, “Yeah, well I liked it better when there was no choice anyway” – um, not my point..but at least the girls heard me standing up for them…as we’ve discussed this multiple times. And for the record, Allison chose the “boy” toy and Meredith and Lydia got the “girl” toys. Everyone was happy.

Last t-ball game, originally uploaded by deannajo.

I do. I really do.

Jess & baby, originally uploaded by deannajo.

Ok, we took several of these pictures, and I was going to post a really silly one (as I alluded to in my last post), but then I got scared thinking it might embarrass or anger Jess, so instead you get this pretty one. Ain’t she a cute preggo?