Scary Presidents at a Nats' Game

Last Friday we went to the Nationals' first home night game. It was a fun outing, as always. What makes it more awesome is that the Nats are off to an amazing start. Nine and three after last night! We're certainly fans at our house.

The only time at the park where the boys were hard to handle was right after they walked in and they saw the presidents. For those of you who don't know, the Nats have, I guess you could call them secondary mascots. Honest Abe, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt have a race from center field around the warning track and to the finish line by first base. They're gigantic heads on normal people's bodies and I never thought of them as scary before, but when we walked in they were there and people were taking pictures of them. Teddy is everyone's favorite. He hasn't won a race for at least the last two years and there is at least one blog created called "Let Teddy Win." When they saw them, Clark started shaking and soon they were both crying that George wanted to eat them. After they calmed down from that, we had awesome seats, the Nats won, and everyone around us got to see spectacular dance shows in the aisles from the boys. They were not only playing their air guitars, but also the rail in the middle of the aisle as if it were a guitar.

I wrote more about our trip on DC Metro Mom. Check it out here.

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Just Be Enough

It has been great to meet so many local Virginia and DC bloggers over the past few months. I've met many of them online and some of them I've actually met face to face. Today I have a guest post on Just Be Enough, thanks to having virtually met Elena, the voice and heart behind Just. Be. Enough. Read it here.

Paper Easter Baskets

I was about to pick up a couple cheap Easter baskets for the boys this year, but decided I’d try to do something simple that I didn’t have to store in our small space. So I made some paper Easter baskets. I have scrapbook paper that I’ve had forever, and among the patterns some nursery rhyme pages. I had the boys pick out what they liked best, looked up how to make paper baskets, and made these. I changed some things and added an inside green layer to look a little like grass. It was a quick project-- especially after I completed my practice basket. The best part might have been recycling everything at the end.

This is a 12" x 12" square piece of scrapbook paper

Make four cuts and bend them, and bend or cut the corners.

This was my prototype. 

Fold paper handles and attach everything with brass fasteners.

I folded green inserts for a liner and filled the baskets them with a few surprises.

Their favorite parts were the jelly bean-filled sports eggs from Grandma...

...and the egg hunt with cousins at Gammy and Poppy's house.

A few days later, I took out the fasteners to save, and recycled the paper.

Thursday Thesicle

Twins who make their mom gain 65 pounds need to wear a sympathy belt once-in-awhile.

Ingrid Hunsicker Photography

I remember having our family pictures taken at department stores when I was growing up. Since there were four kids in our family it wasn't an easy task for the photographers to get all of us looking in the right direction and smiling when we were little. They usually resorted to methods like swinging a stuffed toy around or acting like we should care if we made them sad. In my memory they smelled of cologne or perfume, chewing gum, and muted cigarette smoke. I’m guessing that’s not entirely accurate, but isn’t scent closely linked to memory? So it’s possible.  I don’t remember it being a pleasant experience overall. The pictures usually came out okay, though I remember some that had those creepy insets where it looked like part of the family was hovering in a cloud above the rest of them. We’d get one big copy and a couple smaller ones for grandparents a couple weeks later and be done with it.

Here's a pretty awesome family picture we had taken, circa 1988. Stellar. I couldn't find the creepy one with our parents in the thought-bubble.

This December we had some family pictures done by a sweet girl, who evidently had little experience in photographing kids. It was not a pleasant hour running around with them and trying to get them to look in the same direction and to get Cal to stop crying. She didn’t have any tricks to try to get their attention. They looked at the camera at the same time for one picture and she only captured the chemistry between them in one or two shots.

A couple weeks ago my very first blog sponsor, Ingrid, of Ingrid Hunsicker Photography, came and did a photo shoot with Cal and Clark. The four of us walked down to our self-named location, Popcorn Pond, and ran around exploring. Ingrid clearly has a lot of experience with kids in general, (she has two of her own) but also with photographing kids. She is extremely patient and has an arsenal of getting-kids-to-look tricks. She truly captured the boys’ personalities and relationship with each other. Because of their personalities, there weren’t a lot of pictures of them both smiling normally and looking at the camera, but plenty of them both smiling and hamming it up for the camera, which is much more in their nature.

The boys were happy through the entire shoot and only on our way home did they start crying, but that was because they were scared by some brazen geese. The next time we went to Popcorn Pond, the boys said, "This is where Miss Ingrid took our pictures! She has a funny tail on her back." (She had her hair in a braid.)

Without further ado, here are my favorite pictures that she took. Enjoy them and visit her site, Ingrid Hunsicker Photography to browse her work, and especially if you're on the prowl for a quality kids' photographer in the DC Metro area. You'll be happy with her and her work.

Let the Cal and Clark show commence. 

Remembering I Am a Model: The Smoking Ears

I’m not an easily-angered person. Not much makes me mad. But having kids seems to have awakened an occasional angry side to me that I didn’t know existed. I love my boys more than I thought possible, and they make me happier than I can even describe, but sometimes they make me want to put my fist through a wall. Pretty sure I’m not supposed to say that out loud or write about, but it’s true. I think most anger-inducing actions fit into four basic categories.

Creating intentional messes. The other day they were pretending Clark’s chair was toast and they were smearing tuna, which they were pretending was butter, all over the chair. Of course it doesn’t stay on the chair, but falls to the floor, chunky and disgusting. If you don’t know what it’s like to clean tuna up off a carpet, you’re lucky. I love all their pretending, but they know this is something they shouldn’t be doing—they see the mess they’re making. They know it’s not nice to me because I always tell them, usually through clenched teeth while I clean up something gooey and/or sticky from an inconvenient place. Their giggles usually make me so happy, but when they giggle about making a mess, when they know what they are doing, I am not a giggle fan.

Another thing that makes me mad is when they’re mean to each other, specifically when the mean is unprovoked. Sometimes one of them will be having a fun time playing alone and the other one purposefully comes along and pulls a jackass move simply out of boredom or just plain jackassery. For example, Clark loves to pretend everything is a hockey puck, and often it is a little shamrock from a necklace that is his puck. He was happily pushing his shamrock around, being a commentator at his imaginary hockey game, and Cal came over, picked up the shamrock, and flung it behind the couch. What a little punk! Why would you do that to your brother? Anger.

Another anger-inducing situation is when they disobey me and then laugh when I’m frustrated. When I’m telling them to come over to me for something and they stand there, saying they’re tiptoeing to me, or walking backwards to me and they actually aren’t moving, and smoke is welling up in my ears, and then they laugh. The smoke empties. In public is the worst because it’s also dangerous for them to not come to me immediately. Often when I’m in a hurry, they think I’m being funny because I’m doing things quickly and asking them to speed up. They must think that laughing at me in distress makes me funnier.

The last one is actually a different form of anger; it’s mostly incredulous and often comic frustration. I cannot believe how long it takes me to do something simple most days. I’m interrupted so many times that it’s nearly funny. I feel like I’m looking at a movie of myself flailing around trying to do 47 things at one time and there’s a laugh track with it. This often involves taking two hours to make scrambled eggs and toast because I keep having to stop to put Cal on the toilet, off the toilet, clean up the floor he peed all over, apply sock gloves to Clark and then cheer for him each time he scores his imaginary hockey goals, change Clark’s diaper, wipe noses, turn on Jimmy Buffet for Cal, clean up the spilled milk, start laundry, change laundry…you get the idea.

As I said, these quick feelings of anger are somewhat new to me, as a laid-back-in-general type of person. But they are canceled out by so many moments of love, fun, pride, and downright amusement that they are of course worth it. The other night, while saying prayers, Clark prayed out of the blue, “Help Mommy not have seizures,” which of course made me proud and sad at the same time. I hope the boys learn not to hurt each other, how to hurry when we need to hurry, and to not laugh at people in distress, so hopefully those instances of frustration will diminish. I have this feeling that different ones will emerge as they grow, but it doesn’t matter. I have to remember most importantly of all that they are always watching me and that I am their model for how to handle frustration and anger, so I need to only punch that hole in my imaginary wall and ease off on the steam pouring out my ears.

P.S. You would not believe how long it took me to complete this entry.

Learning to take turns and work together

Natural Dye for Easter Eggs: aka Crunchy Eggs

My sister-in-law has self-proclaimed "crunchy" tendencies (think granola) -- which I admire. She's aware and avoids harmful additives in foods and chemicals in products. I try to do as much of that as I can, but she's downright awesome at it. She sent a link around to family members with directions on making natural dye for Easter eggs. The pictures of the eggs were pretty-- very Martha Stewart-y, nestled in soft fabric and diffused lighting. They had much more vibrant colors than the tablet colors you get in dyeing kits and the directions seemed pretty straightforward.

So the boys and I set out this morning to get our crunchy on. I discovered that Clark might have OCD tendencies, based on his immaculate, methodical peeling of the onion, and that perhaps Cal will be more on the ADD side, as he cracked an egg open on purpose, washed his hands in the vinegar and water solution, and experimented with my reaction to his dropping cabbage bits in various places around the kitchen. As I progressed with the directions, I actually found them a little confusing and realized I did some of them wrong. I decided that I'd create this blog entry as a way for me to remember how I did these for if I want to do them again, as well as a less convoluted a tutorial for any of you who want to be crunchy about egg-dyeing.

Two beets, chopped, 4 cups water, 2TBS vinegar, boiled 30 mins 

Great color, but uneven and smeary

4 cups chopped cabbage, 4 cups water, 2 TBS vinegar

Boiled with eggs for 30 minutes

Kind of cool looking, but it didn't work the way it was supposed to

Cooked some of them longer in the cabbage, but scorched them

I reread the instructions and saw that I did it wrong. I was supposed to strain the beets and cabbage after it boiled for 30 minutes and then boil it ANOTHER 30 minutes with the eggs in the dye this time. That makes sense.

We peeled two onions.

Boiled them in 2 cups of water, 1 TBS vinegar for 30 minutes

They turned out burnt sienna-ish. This picture is a little deceiving-- they're browner.

2 cups water, 1 TBS vinegar, 1 TBS turmerac (spice) for 30 minutes

 

Love the result!

Clearly the onion skins and turmeric worked the best for vivid, solid colors. I redid the cabbage and beets, but instead of boiling them another 30 minutes I let the dye cool to room temperature and soaked them in cups like normal egg dyers. I also tried the turmeric at room temperature.

Soaked in room temperature turmeric juice for an hour

Soaked in cabbage water for 30 mins

Soaked in beet juice for 30 mins

Soaked in beet juice for 1 hour

Soaked in combination beet and cabbage juice for 1 hour

Soaked in turmeric juice for about 4 hours

Soaked in beet juice for about 4 hours

Final products, minus the one Cal ate and the scorched ones

Proud boys

They want to have a hunt NOW!

Turns out Calvin loves hard-boiled eggs

This was a fun experiment, even though it lasted longer than I expected. Thanks to my awesome recording of our mistakes and successes, next time we do it, and if any of you do it, won't take so long. The boys loved it, and they're excited to put some stickers on them and color on them with crayons. Cal wants to eat them.

Do you want to eat a bunch of natural, healthily-dyed eggs? Come on over. And Happy Easter!