Oskar and Elena Provide Amusement and Exhaustion

I had a fly in my mouth the other day. It was not my favorite.

This is the best family picture we could get at Dan's sister's wedding. Goodness it was tricky.

My kids. Man, oh man. They are equal parts brilliant and exasperating. We have crazy oozing out of our crappy windows.

Oskar loves play-doh. And I love play-doh primarily because it can keep Oskar busy for a long time. He usually makes birthday cakes. The other day he requested that I help him make a necklace. I told him it wasn't necessarily a great idea, but I helped him anyway.

"Oskar, play-doh doesn't make a good necklace."
"Yes it do. It's called play-doh necklace."
Who can argue with that? We got the necklace on and he says, "Oh thank you! Now I need a star and a genie bottle." No idea where he gets this stuff.

Cake is in the oven.

During the same play-doh session he was trying to ask me to help him with something and I was not able to understand what he meant:

"Oskar, I'm sorry I can't understand what you're saying."
"That's okay."
"Thanks, because I feel bad about it."
"Sometimes disasters happen."
Sometimes disasters happen. He really has a way with words, don't you think?

I know lots of people do feet pictures when they are on vacation.
I do not. This is probably the only feet picture I will ever take.

Generally Oskar does very well with the amount of attention Ellie gets. The other day he may have reached his breaking point:
"Yes, Oskar, I will help you. (Ellie bonks her head on the table.) Oh Ellie, are you okay sweetie?"
Oskar: "Ellie. Is. Fine."

We were making a list of things we needed to get for preschool (because Oskar wanted to make a list) and this is what it looked like:
Preschool
Notebooks
Play-Doh
Suitcase
Hawk

Solving problems and going after her goals.

Another gem of a conversation, where my three year old schools me with the proper use of 'can' and 'may:'
"Oskar, you can NOT go over there."
"Ya-huh. I CAN. My legs are PERFECT."
Stifling laughter. "YOU MAY NOT GO OVER THERE."

That took less than 30 seconds. First try.
I put the box there because the track tips when she tries to climb it.
No, she can not be stopped from trying to climb it. The box placement backfired a bit.

And then there is Ellie. Ellie, Ellie, Ellie. Let me begin by saying that she will be 9 months old on August 11. Most of you saw that we ended up sending her to daycare a month earlier than planned. She is practically walking (she has taken a couple steps by herself) and worse than that, she is climbing EVERYTHING. And she does it very quickly. She is extremely clever and has absolutely no fear. This is a bad combination. Because of her, let's call it rambunctious spirit, I wasn't able to get any work done during the day so then I would be up all night working and exhausted the following day. That schedule was working for no one. She is in her second week now and we are all happy. Yay.

Ellie rocks this romper.

Oskar knows how to party.

Oskar has been really excited about finding feathers in our backyard this summer. I haven't the heart to tell him that there is a full on avian war taking place over our yard. You may think I'm jumping to conclusions. I assure you I am not. One or two feathers can be expected, but between hawk tail feathers and tiny downy feathers I'm positive there have been HUNDREDS of feathers in our back yard. And then there are the small animal skeletons on our driveway. I'll leave it at that. I went out to work on my patio today (yep, still working) and I found my hawk friends in the back yard. Just chilling. I'm pretty sure they are the reason my bird feeder has not been well attended this summer.

They sat really still for a long while, like half an hour.
Then they got up and hopped around each other for a bit.
It's possible they were playing a game.