On a recent trip to the playground at the park, we saw a friend with two little girls who had brought their own strollers to push around the playground. Beck and Theo borrowed them while the girls were on the swings. Gosh, they love a push toy!

This is our neighbor Christine's house. She has the lion cat, Simba, and, more importantly, keeps a broom on her porch. Hence it is Theo's favorite porch. 

Last weekend at Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu's house everyone was pretty tuckered out after re-elasticizing the diapers and a long morning at Iron Kettle Farm, so Grandpa, Daddy and Theo took to their respective couches to relax.

Step Three: Put Your Duck in that Box

Ju-ice

Good friend Anne Ju (hence the Ju-ice title above) came by for a visit today. It was beautiful out, sunny and warm, and we did some walking and mowing with the boys around the block and in the backyard. The highlight of the afternoon, however, was Anne allowing the boys the remainder of her juice. They acted like they'd just gotten their first hit of heroin.

Yesterday I went through all our winter hand-me-downs to get an inventory and figure out what we need for this winter. We have some good coats, mittens and galoshes. I've ordered some stuff from Old Navy to see what works and what will fill in the gaps, and I'm planning to buy some snow boots at the Multiple Moms Mingle sale Saturday morning. This is Theo trying on a nice warm hat and snowpants, and Beck tromping around in some galoshes.

Theo is crying because I said it was time to take off the snowpants (it was 65 degrees out that day).

Pumpkin Patch Visit

 Sunday Grandpa Stu accompanied the Lovebos to the Iron Kettle Farm, where Mama Lovebo spent many fun visits in childhood. The Farm has been greatly expanded since Mama Lovebo's last visit, with a huge petting zoo, some great play areas, and fun rides for little ones.

Ducks are one of the most favorite animals around here, so seeing lots of ducks and geese in the flesh was a highlight of the trip. Especially for Beck, who has an especially realistic QUACK. He also got bit by the geese not once, but twice.

This is Theo before testing out the slide for the first time. The slide on this stationary boat was especially slippery, much more so than either our baby slide at home or the slides on our neighborhood playgrounds. As a result, Theo flew down the slide, landing several feet from the base of the slide, on his butt. He bit his tongue in the process and seemed more than a little startled, but then wanted to slide over and over again.

Less thrilling for Theo was the hayride. I thought being pulled by a big green tractor ("VROOM!!") through a field populated by pumpkin people and characters at a steady yet slow pace would be a huge hit. After about a minute on the hayride, Theo was shaking his head no and indicating that he wanted to get off. Oh, well.

We waited for the photo op til the end as we were leaving, more than an hour past usual naptime. Not the best time to capture beautiful smiles, that's for sure.

Great weekend in Ithaca

While I was packing up for our weekend to Ithaca, the boys got into the pantry.

Theo had a grand time playing the piano with Grandma Joanie. He liked to bang along on the keys and dance to the music.

Saturday was a beautiful day in Ithaca, and we enjoyed a great time exploring the yard. The highlight was the pond, with the frog fountain and very slippery rocks and many many real frogs on the shore.

There were also lots of trees to rub and hug.

Saturday night after dinner the boys had a riot holding hands and touching each other's arms and then laughing at each other and the adults' reactions.

Grandpa Stu busted out ye olde Amish wood toy, which was a huge hit (sarcastic), as you can tell from Theo's face in this picture. A big old piece of wood just has very limited appeal. Yes, it's neat that it converts from a rocker to a highchair to a desk but none of those toys individually is very neat so the whole thing is pretty much a clunker. Look for it at Mama Goose/Mimi's Attic in the near future.

The real project of the weekend was replacing the elastic in the legs of our BumGenius 4.0 diapers. As our boys have thinned out after the fattiness of the 9-10 month phase, their diapers have become a little loose in the legs, causing leaks and requiring too many diaper changes. Our friend Stacey pointed out that she had recently bought some new diapers and had noticed that in comparison, the older ones looked less elasticized. Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu bought US some new ones recently (because we were having to do so many diaper changes) and we noticed the same thing. It seemed daunting to change out the elastics on 30 diapers, but luckily Grandma Joanie tackled the task with passion. She watched a couple YouTube videos on the subject, figured out our best strategy, and then patiently walked us each through the process. In the end, everyone found their own niche and favored technique. Grandma Joanie stuck by the sewing machine even as it misbehaved. Grandpa Stu did everything by hand, including sewing, start to finish. He also repaired the most diapers, he would like you to know. Mama Lovebo took a while to get the hang of the technique but did a combination of hand work and passing along to Grandma Joanie to finish the last seam. Daddy Lovebo's primary responsibility was taking care of the boys while the rest of us could work but became valuable as the "fixer"--threading through "lost" elastics that came loose from their safety pins. In all it was a highly successful group effort and amazingly, we finished all 30 diapers! We had to do 15 Saturday and 15 Sunday because we had to have a lot of diapers in use (darn kids kept peeing and pooping through the process, so we couldn't just do them all in one day) but we got all of them done! Most importantly, the newly repaired diapers fit much better and I think we're going to get a lot more wear out of them. We did not yet repair the back elastics because it was less of a priority (except one Mama Lovebo repaired by accident), so we'll see if we need to do that in the coming months. Here's a picture of us at work:

Pictures of our Sunday trip to Iron Kettle Pumpkin Farm to follow in the coming days....

A few house projects we've been working on

For my birthday, Jeff and Uncle Jon cooked up a beautiful sign for the living room/stairway area, with one of my most favorite Sark quotes. Last night Jon and Rachel came over to eat dinner and then put the sign up. I love it!

This is the front porch, after Jake and Chris finished construction a week ago and Grandpa Stu painted the first coat Friday. It looks great!

We're fantasizing about a number of other potential house projects, including a couple possibilities for our bedroom. In the meantime we at least cleaned up my dresser top, got rid of the TV that almost never got used, and have been sorting through some boxes, etc.

I have no explanation whatsoever for this picture. I can't even claim ignorance by absence; I was sitting right in front of Theo while this happened. I was talking to Beckett and heard Theo starting to get upset. I looked up and in like 20 seconds Theo had managed to get his arm out of his shirt; to get the arm of his shirt threaded through the ball/hammer toy base; and to get pissed about it.

Daddy Lovebo jamming out with the boys, demonstrating the pitfalls of dancing in footie pajamas on hardwood floors and the fun you can have before Mama gets up.

Today's Moment of Zen