Masks

Well, my work is going to take 20 more minutes to download so, hallelujah!, I finally have some time to get some posts done.  First of all, the masks!  Evan is big into making anything with paper and tape lately.  In fact, he got lots of tape for his birthday because he was using all of our expensive Scotch tape (it's $8 for three rolls, people!  That's a lot for tape!).  Anyway, probably because of Halloween, he's been doing masks lately.  He'll disappear into his room for half an hour and emerge with a mask on, taped to his face.  Well, the other day Michael and I were in the family room chatting and in walk these two cute monsters. 

What's hysterical about this is that there was no noise coming from his room.  No protests from Maren as he taped it to her LIPS or anything.  Ha!  The other funny thing is that he made me wear one of these for about 20 minutes the other day and I couldn't see a thing.  So, how they got all the way from his room to the family room, covering basically the whole house, without running into anything is a serious mystery to me!

Now seems a good time to do a little update on both kids because there has been so much going on with them since the last time I did this.  We'll start with the sweet Maren girl.  Boy, does she bring a lot of joy and laughs to our house.  Some fun stuff about her lately:

She counted to 18 yesterday!  I am really, really going to get this on video to put on the blog.  I just about fell out of bed when I heard it.  We can't figure out how she would've learned it except that Michael said they played a lot of hide and seek last week. 

Maren is a big nurturer.  Having her has really shown me the inherent differences in the two genders.  If I get hurt from something that wasn't even her fault and I say "ouch", she says, "I sorry, Mom." and rubs whatever is hurting.  She loves to help out any time you ask her to do something.  One of my favorite, random things is this:  I lose about a toupee worth of hair in the shower each day.  So I won't clog the drain, I put it on the shower wall (am I crazy, or does anyone else do this?).  As soon as I turn off the shower, she comes running in there saying, "Yay, Mommy take a shower!" or "You all done with your shower, Mommy?"  Then I gather up all the hair from the shower wall and step out of the shower.  She flips the lid open on the trash can and says, "Here you go, Mom."  Every time!  She'd also like to help you wipe your bottom after you go to the bathroom and flush the toilet if you'd let her (true, true).

She is a total back seat driver.  If we are stopped anywhere for more than 20 seconds, she's saying, "Go, Mom.  Go, Mom."  Over and over and over.  And then she wants to know, "What are you doing, Mom?"  I can tell her we're going to Fred Meyer 17 times but she'll still ask the 18th time.  Right now she only wants "Jesus" songs for naptime and bedtime.  Her favorite is "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus".  However, if I only sing the first verse and try to put her in bed, she holds on tight to me and says, "when Jesus will come again".  That means that I'd better sing her the second verse, too, or I won't hear the end of it.  Ha!

Okay, when I was thinking of this post days ago, I had so much more to write.  I knew that as soon as I sat down to do it, it would leave my sieve-like brain.  Rats!  I'll have to add to this when I can remember everything else I wanted to say.

Now, about Evan...

What fun stuff he's getting in.  Writing, drawing, making things with paper and cardboard.  Planning parties and just planning, planning, planning in general.  He wrote a book the other day about titled Din's Adventure.  Here's the first page...

It's about Din, the cat (central figure here) and his adventure in this cave (notice the stalactites at the top?).  There are trees in there and a spider and an alien.  Anyway, this is new territory for Evan and it's really exciting.  He's never been real taken with coloring or drawing and now he's really loving it.  So we've got books and masks and invites to crazy parties that he plans for his friends...just paper everywhere!  We had to go buy him a trash can for his room yesterday to deal with all the paper mess in his room.

He participated in the Primary Program at church on Sunday.  It was so fun to watch him marching into the chapel singing "I am a Child of God".  He did a great job on his part.  The teacher said, "What I'm grateful that Heavenly Father created about me is..."  Evan was originally supposed to say, "My legs so I can play."  He took liberties to change it to what he liked.  First he was going to say, "My legs so I can run." but then he changed it to, "My legs so I can walk."  He talked very clearly and sweetly and I loved every second.  It's so fun to watch him growing up.

He is also doing amazing at swimming, doing things I assumed would take that big chicken a couple of years to do.  He loves his new comfort in the water, too, and when they're in the bath tub, he's always trying to teach Maren a new trick. 

I feel very blessed that my kids love each other very much and there is very little fighting between them.  I'm sure that can't last much longer but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.  We have attitudes and tantrums, spitting and hitting, yelling and kicking.  But that's not the majority of the time so I try to remember that 90% of our family life together is really positive and I love being a mom to these monsters.