Magic Mirror at age 2-1/2

Sylvie got a little backpack with princess makeup from her Abuelita, so I brought the mirror down for her to watch herself apply makeup. She had me laughing when she started applying eye shadow! Good thing this stuff is non-toxic and edible! Here's the latest and greatest.......

Before......

I WISH my hair was this thick!
The final result!

What a brother! She got him to paint her nails for her! He did draw the line when she wanted to put makeup on. He kept screaming "I'm not a girl!!!!"

Magic Mirror

I love taking pictures, and got the idea to use a mirror from another mom way back when. Since this mirror is on my makeup desk, Sylvie loves it. These are some cute pics through the years as she got older....

6 months old.......

17 months old....

Imagination Movers

Logan:
"Mom! Come see this spiderweb! SPIDERMAN was here to make that last night! "

Sylvie:
"Mom, CINDERELLA came here to bring me Princess Milk. And she played with me. And Prince Eric played with Logan. She was Bootiful."

Me:
"Sylvie, you look so cute!"
Sylvie:
"No mom, I look Bootiful."

Not a "Pony", it's a "Bow"

Sylvie decided a few months back that she no longer liked any hair apparatus in her hair. At first I fought with her and tried to sneak in little clips, but then I chopped her hair into a cute bob. Lately, she's been very into letting her hair fall all over the place and it's always covering her face, getting in her food, getting painted or glued-on. It's getting annoying. So I'm revisiting the "Let's put something in your hair" idea.

This week she saw a picture of the little mermaid with a bow in her hair (when she meets Eric but has no voice). Extremely observant child of mine wants to know what Ariel has in her hair. I called it a "Bow." So later I found one of those little baby headbands and called it "Ariel's Bow" and convinced her to put it in her hair. She was running to the front hall mirror as I frantically installed some sort of hair "pony" and told her how wonderful her new bow looked!

Here is a smiley sun-in-the-eyes snapshot from a nearby fountain I was so excited to capture! I almost forgot what she looks like without hair in her eyes! Any brilliant ideas on getting hair out of her eyes?

Then she saw me uploading the pictures and was very adament that she did NOT like the way she looked with this hair. And then she saw the picture below and said "Look Mommy! The pony is gone! It looks so much better now!!!!" By the way, why don't kids smile for pictures? They are all happy and playful and then I get the camera out and wham, slack, sad faces! I promise they were having fun!

I'd like to Introduce to to...

Meet the "Lizard" of Legoland, according the Sylvie. To us, the "Wizard" will do. But 2 minutes hearing about the "Lizard" and I'll bet you'll be calling him that too!

Check out my "Blog Role Call"

Apparently there are 36 million moms who blog. I'm only one teeny piece of the puzzle. But I enjoy reading everyone else's life events! I have more internet friends than real life friends but I'm working on that one. I joined a mom's group and it's going well!

Snow White

Today's Art Project

I wanted to make a birthday card for our friend's birthday, and get the paints out - which the kids love but takes a lot of time so we don't always do that. So I got paper, paints, brushes....Sylvie was already soaked from helping me "Do dishes" so I figured a few extra minutes down to Mermaid underwear could help with the paint cleanup.

Sylvie is my little artist. She spent a lot of time intently mixing, brushing, washing the brushes and did about 6 pictures all together. This one is my favorite of hers....

Then Logan got started and 4 minutes later, he was fussing with something else. So I look over to see his painting. This is his one picture of the day. Yes, it's yellow on yellow.

He came over to show me his other project- a silly putty egg. He started pointing out all the molding he had done. He said "This is our house. This is Daddy's room, mommy's room, Abby's bed, Sylvie's room, the Kitchen......" So my genius is a sculptor. Two dimensions is just toooooo easy for my Little Einstein!

Double Double......

She likes music!

Today's fun activity involved setting up camp and slaying dragons! -Sylvie celebrating

Working World

I feel like I've talked and written about all the job stuff to my friends til I'm sick of it. But let's just say I'm on the job hunt and hoping it goes well!

Two Minutes

I was browsing the new Constructive Playthings catalogue and came across a game and thought "I can do that!" So in 2 minutes I cut up some paper, grabbed some random little toys from the junk drawer and traced them. Threw them in a container and the object is to have the kids match each toy with a card. I made mine a bit complicated so Logan could enjoy the game too, but if you have a 2 year old, I'm sure tracing spoons, forks, and keys would make for a great game too. Sylvie loved having her own scraps of paper to color on while I made the game. Two minutes to make it, two minutes to play it, two minutes to blog about it. Steal away!

What to do on a hot August day....

Spray the kids down with a hose!



And then get out some umbrellas and have even more fun!




Logan just had a blast. He's getting so brave!


Sylvie's favorite part was getting the rest of us wet.

A day at the Zoo

Nothing too exciting, but we do go quite often. I can't expect the kids to have their Disney World faces on....:)

Sylvie the Monkey.


So close to the animals!




Logan picked out his own clothes. Sylvie usually fights me on clothing as well, but today she liked something decent- woohoo! One out of two dressed like I dressed them isn't bad!

Boys will be Boys

Milwaukee Art Museum= Calatrava!!!!!

My lovely sister and her lovely husband kidnapped our children this weekend. And my lovely husband and I celebrated 11 years of wedded bliss. In true form, we saw some famous architecture:)

Enjoy!





The "ribs" are "wings" that open and close to protect the center space from the sun. So so unbelievably cool. And so ridiculously expensive I'm SURE.
















Look....even the parking garage was fabulous!

Pancakes

"Who wants Pancakes?"
"MeMeMe!"
"Who wants them cut up?"
"Not me!"
"Who wants them rolled like a taco?"
"Me!"- Logan
"Not me! I don't want water on my taco." -Sylvie

I got tagged!

I got tagged by Chau (http://ky-an.blogspot.com/) So I guess I'm supposed to tell everyone 7 things about myself. Hmmmm.....7 things interesting enough to write about?

1. I wrote a lot of stories when I was young. I have binders of stories and one novel. Meant for the age 8-12 set, so maybe I'll publish them someday! With some editing of course! So....when I wrote these stories, I started drawing floorplans of the houses where the stories took place. It didn't really occur to me to consider architecture until High School. In Junior High I planned to make a career of writing. And when I went to a writing seminar, I found out that rejection is a huge part of writing and got discouraged with the idea of writing as a career.

2. Raising Logan is like raising my brother. Raising Sylvie is like raising my sister. They remind me so much of my siblings as I was growing up it's ridiculous! I cant' wait to see if one of my siblings has a child that reminds them of me!

3. When I let the kids watch tv, I don't mind watching Caillou, Max and Ruby and Disney movies. I despise Dora (she yells everything), Cartoon Network (it's like one long barrage of images) and Sponge Bob (he's annoying).

4. I lost my teeth in the wrong order. I grew them in the wrong order. Logan grew his fangs before he grew all the front teeth.

5. I am still friends with some girls I met in High School. My mom is still friends with girls she met in High School. I hope someday my kids have strong friendships like that.

6. I have a TON of first cousins. And most of them are taller than I am. Even the younger ones. I hope my kids are both taller than I am eventually.

7. My husband used a pickup line that I was impressed with at the time. He said "What's it like to see the world through green eyes?" Swoon.

Not earth-shattering but heck, there you have some things you may or may not have known about me!