siblings.

there is a lot of chaos at our house these days, and i'm a person that is easily overwhelmed.  control issues, what?  i am working on lightening up and living in the moment and embracing the magic that is happening all the time instead of just looking at where i'm falling short of the mark and flipping out about stupid stuff like dog hair all over the floors and how that load of laundry STILL hasn't been folded.  baby steps.

anyway...one thing that is amazing and pure awesome is the sibling relationship that ek and hollis are developing.  i have to give her credit in that, for the most part, she hasn't been super jealous with "sharing" her parents.  obviously, we have moments of poor choices like grabbing toys out of his hands, being too rough with his body, etc, but i think she is really a great, nurturing big sis and i love that.  i also love that as hollis gets older and more mobile and more talky, they are really playing with each other now.  the other day, i had their nap mats home to wash on the weekend.  ek grabbed hollis's nap mat and he laid down on it and she was dragging him around for a ride on it, then they would lay on it together and just giggle.  it was really sweet.  at whatever point (i really wish i'd gotten a pic of this), she put the nap mat over their heads like a harry potter invisibility cloak and they walked around bumping into things and just cackling with each other under there.  i hope i can help foster this sibling bond for the rest of their lives because i love it.

we continue to have sleep issues at the browne house these days.  em is up most nights and comes into our bed stealth-mode and snuggles up until morning.  i am not a co-sleeper (i think it's a fine idea, but i'm a terrible sleeper and babies in the bed make me even worse), but i'm also operating on lots of sleep deprivation, so mostly i've just let her sleep with me.  but...this has been going on for about a month, so it's time to start establishing new habits....a friend at work suggested i bribe her with candy - like, if you stay in your bed all night, i'll give you this special treat.  i have problems with that on a couple of levels: 1) if she needs that closeness/emotional connection because she's not getting it during the day, i want her to feel like we're accessible for it; and 2) i am kind of against bribing with food (even though i've definitely done it on many occasions) as i think it creates a bad dynamic of reward = food mental thing that i have battled my whole life.  so.  the other night i was desperate, so i offered to let her watch tv in the morning before school if she stayed in her bed all night (we have never watched tv during the week in our house).  this is how the conversation went:
me: if you wake up in your own bed in the morning, we can watch tv before school!
ek: but why?
me: well, it would be like a special treat!
ek: but mommy, sleeping in your bed is a special treat.
me: oh, sweetie - you can sleep in our bed!  this will be like a choice - which special treat do you want?

so that night she actually did make it the whole night in her bed.  that hasn't happened every night since, but some nights it works, and i suppose it's not the worst thing to let your kids have like 10-15 minutes of sesame street in the morning...right?

outside.

we've been spending as much time as possible outside lately - walks, happy hour/dinner outside on fridays, park time, etc.  first, both kids are just in a much better place when we're outside and they have fresh air and space to move their bodies around.  second, i am trying to get walks/runs in where possible so i can sort of pretend to get into some semblance of shape.  third, walks in our 'hood help assuage my guilt over being a bad dog mom.  fourth, it's really really really beautiful this time of year - stuff blooming everywhere, perfect weather, etc.  

the kids' school did a caterpillar/butterfly metamorphosis lesson in each classroom.  they ordered caterpillars and watched them eat leaves and make their chrysalises and then emerge as butterflies to be released on the playground.  it was really cool to hear ek talk about it, and even the youngest kidlets (hollis's class) were fired up about watching the butterflies.  h's teacher sent a couple of pics of him on "release day".  we also found a butterfly weed in a neighbor's yard on our usual walking path that had about 16 big ol' caterpillars crawling on it.  ek was excited to count them all and i hope to take them for a walk again today so we can check on their transition into chrysalis.  

easter 2014.

we didn't really take many pictures this year, which is pathetic.  and the ones that we do have are all from my phone, which is even more pathetic.  also, hollis crawled down our concrete steps on our porch on his face the day before easter, but despite all of that, easter was pretty good.  i got the kids pretty mellow baskets this year - swimsuits, bubbles, some candy, a book each, a ball for hollis, pens for ek.  we hid their eggs around the house for easter morning so they could find them and nosh on the treats stashed inside.  they were pretty excited about the baskets.

jb made breakfast for us and i attempted thumbprint nest cookies with cadbury mini eggs to bring to the easter party at our friends' house.  they weren't an entire disaster except that i unintentionally doubled the butter so had to double the whole recipe, and then i massively underestimated the amount of time homemade cookies take, so there was lots of scrambling to get out the door.  that is a feeling that should not exist on easter sunday.  it's also a feeling that is responsible for the fact that when we got to the party we had: no camera; no shoes for hollis; and no baskets for the kids to collect eggs during the hunt.  super parents!

anyway.  our friends have this gorgeous house on like two acres and tons of families were there, so kidlets were everywhere and there was lots of food and egg-related games.  super cute.  i wish i had not been so flustered and so ridiculous about my contribution to the potluck.  i have a lot to work on at a personal level.  haha.

after the party, the kids crashed hard in the car and magically transferred to their beds without too much fanfare as well.  ek got up about an hour into her nap and wanted to move into our bed, which i said was fine.  of course, she wet the bed (on my side, no mattress pad like we have in her bed) for the first time in probably six months.  so, the afternoon involved laundry and a nice walk around the neighborhood.  we are really loving the spring weather and our proximity to parks.

bluebonnets.

a couple of weeks ago, we attempted bluebonnet pics with the kids.  in years past we have scored some great pics of the pups, and the bluebonnet pics from when ek was 16/17 months old are probably my favorite pictures of her ever.

so my thought was this year, with both kids being able to sit independently, etc., we would get the best bluebonnet series yet.  aaaannnndddd…i was wrong.  of course.

our first try was saturday morning.  it was overcast and pretty chilly and the kids were hungry (why do i always think it's a good idea to take pics of hungry children?  is that better than children with stained clothing?).  emme was off running through the fields doing her own thing and basically giving us dirty looks any time we attempted anything structured.  hollis was having none of the morning session.

that afternoon, i had a sewing class so justin took them back after nap and tried again with no mommy-distraction.  he also brought blueberries for bribery.  smart.  those turned out much better than the morning ones, but still no money shot.  oh well - next year, right?  in any case, i really love most of these a lot more than i thought i would.  my kids are super expressive, even when those expressions are ornery, and it's pretty hilarious to see it captured.  and, even though there isn't a single "perfect" shot, i am still posting WAY too many pics…and this is condensed way down from my initial culling of ~50 photos from the 462.

photography.

have i mentioned my friend callie on here?  i know i have, but man.  love her.  love her photo-taking skills.  hate hate hate that they're moving away from us, but really excited for their next adventure.

so, sunday morning callie came over because they listed their house this past weekend.  sunday mornings can go one way or the other at our house.  any morning, really.  but this sunday was going the other direction, mostly because i was trying to sort of clean up the house and sort of look like a person who looks presentable sometimes on sundays.  so, the kids were hungry and restless.  but callie had offered to take a few pics of us and i put on mascara for crying out loud.  we walked right out the front door and attempted shots for maybe 10 minutes or so before i gave up and we went to breakfast.  i was not optimistic that we would have a remotely functional anything to look at, let alone a picture that i'd want to hang on the wall in our home.  but c managed to capture a shot of our whole little family looking at the camera and making mostly normal faces.  magical.

she also spent a few minutes playing with ek in her room and snagged the other shot.  love.  really grateful for such talented friends.

weekendly.

the weekends are never long enough and i always plan to accomplish infinitely more than is possible with two young kidlets, but whatever.  lately we've been beginning the weekend at the new whole foods up north by the kids' school - pick them up friday afternoon and let them go buck wild while we sip a beverage, enjoy the springier weather and graze on yummy snacks.

this weekend, we went to the natural gardener saturday morning to pick out some stuff to grow this year.  our yard was really well-landscaped when we bought our house, but it's been a super hard winter, so we had some stuff to replace.  plus, i wanted to attempt a few veggies this year, and i have a nice herb garden kicking as of now.  so for edibles we have: zucchini, yellow crookneck squash (heirloom variety - super excited), cucumbers, japanese eggplant, banana peppers, cherry peppers.  i will pick up a cherry tomato plant or two this week, as they tend to fare better in our super fun texas summers.  herbs: oregano, cilantro, rosemary, sage, english thyme, lavendar, feverfew, chives, spearmint, burnet salad.  i'm just guessing we'll lose the chives and cilantro before too long, but they've had a good run.  if i could grow other plants as well and i can grow oregano, i would be a horticulturalist.