My Smarty Pants Little Kids

While I was doing dishes Charlie decided to play with the chairs.

He organized them so well.  (Charlie saw me writing this post and decided that he wanted to organize the chairs again.)

 Henry loves to chew on anything that he can get in his mouth.  This makes me very excited because hopefully that means he will want to eat normal food and be normal in that regard.  Charlie never put anything in his mouth ever but then he hated eating normal food.

 We are installing a sink in our laundry room which will be a long ongoing project, but here is the beginning of it.  We got a pre-made cabinet on sale at Home Depot.  Charlie LOVED using the screwdriver to "tighten screws" or just stick it into any hole he can find because that is pretty much the same.

Happy Easter!

Dying Eggs

Here is the grand mess for dying Easter eggs.  I invited my friend over with her two boys to dye eggs at our house.  It was a blast and well worth the entire mess to watch all of the fun they were having being kids.  We have cups full of dyed water, spoons for picking out eggs and plates for... I don't remember why those came out.  Of course the rags are for the dye spilt accidentally and purposefully.  You can see the egg cartons filled with eggs.  The glasses in the cups are to help submerge the eggs that she and I blew out.

Charlie didn't really get the concept of using the spoon to get the egg out.  He also kept wanting to drink the dyed water too.

 Here the boys are taking a break from dying to have a little snack.

 The cheering section.

When we ate our eggs the next day it was fun to look at them.

Charlie had smashed this egg while dying it. 

Charlie couldn't wait to eat his eggs and ripped this one apart. 

All of the pretty egg shells. 

Here are the three eggs that I blew out.  I made small holes on both ends and then used a little baby nose sucker to blow out the yolks and whites.  It was fun, but I just couldn't seem to get it completely blown out so I had to throw them away.  It was a fun experiment.

Now that we did a pagan tradition of Easter, onto the real meaning of Easter.

Total Cuteness!

My blog titles for posts are never very creative, with most of them saying something like, "Oh So Cute" or "Cutest Ever"but no other words really describe how cute my little boys are like the word cute.

Here they are being oh so cute and the cutest ever.  It is total cuteness!  I know this in the millionth picture about how Charlie loves being with Henry, but it is so true.  It has really blown me away at how much Charlie absolutely loves Henry; it warms a mother's heart.

The laundry basket was calling Henry's name the other day and I couldn't resist putting him in it on top of the laundry.  The picture doesn't do the cuteness of the scene justice.  You will just have to come visit to see how cute it truly is.

 

Henry loves to laugh too, but his favorite thing is to squeal!  He loves squealing!  Skip to about 20 seconds for when he starts.

Charlie has been having an explosion of learning recently.  Here he is organizing all of his books in a row.  He had lined them up against the wall first but I guess he decided that the blanket was better.

 Charlie likes to talk on the "phone" a lot and has learned that Dominos are about the right size for a pretend phone.  Back when I was a kid a banana was the right size, but I guess phones have shrunk, and so shrink the pretend phones.

Charlie has lots of fun helping out in the kitchen.  He loves pushing the chairs around so he can be high.  Here he is rolling out the dough to make pasta noodles for dinner that night.  The other day he helped me wash dishes in the sink.  We were both really wet, but it was lots of fun and a good learning time for him.

Charlie has a little electronic toy that plays songs and talks.  Someone gave it to us; I would never have inflicted such noise upon myself, but it looks like he is learning from it.  I noticed that whenever he played with the toy he would stand up and stomp his feet.  After paying attention I noticed that one of the songs says, "stomp your feet."  I didn't even realize he had really ever been paying that close of attention to it.  I didn't really know he knew the word "stomp" but apparently he does.

Charlie has also been learning how to respond to certain questions when we ask him.  If he wants something and just whining I say, "Use your words" to prompt him.  He then responds with a very happy, "Pwease!"  He is so proud of himself.  At first "please" was good enough if he brought me to whatever he wanted but now I require more than that.  At times he forgets what other word he is supposed to use, but with a little prompt he will then say it multiple times.

Two other questions we like to ask Charlie are: "How old are you?" and "Guess what?"

It has been warming up here in Grantsville and Charlie is loving it.  The other day he wanted to go out but I had to get things done in the house so I sent him out by himself.  He wasn't too happy with that idea, but he realized it was better than being stuck inside.  I love having a fence up to keep him in our yard.  He heard the neighbors on the other side and kept trying to look between the fence and ground to see what was happening on the other side.

 He found David's go-cart in our backyard and spent a lot of time playing on that.  He liked grabbing the rearview mirror to look behind him like I do when driving to be able to see him in the backseat.

One day while playing outside Charlie fell face first into the dirt and was covered head to toe.  His after photo here does not show the dirt well unfortunately.

When I was growing up our animals always seemed to do some of the funniest things that kept us laughing.  I think our kids will be able to have that same experience, too.  From our kitchen window I saw Duke laying in a ditch for a sprinkler line for whatever reason.  This reminds me of my dogs, Duke and Socks who would lay (or is it lie, only Nathan or Jan would know) in my mom's little flowerbeds that were on the deck in half of a wooded barrel thing.  I don't think my mom really cared for it, but us kids thought it was great because it looked like the the dogs were little birds sitting upon a nest.

 

A while back I posted about one of our birds that liked to hang from the top of the birdcage funny.  Well that same bird has a new place to perch.  This is less cooky, but still pretty funny.

Safety First in the Martin Home

I am sure you have all seen those canvas prints of temples that people buy.  Well, I have really wanted one, but they are WAY too expensive.  So, I did it myself, kind of.  I bought the frame at DI and then ordered one of my temple paintings to be printed on canvas.  Once the canvas arrived, I had Charles attach it to the frame with staples.

Of course the wall we wanted to put the painting on was super high and over the stairs, and we don't have a ladder.  We have hung lots of stuff on our wall without a ladder so we figured we could figure something out.  

Materials: 2 food storage buckets, 6 text books (I knew we would use them later), folding table, and a bar stool.  It was actually quite safe and sturdy for the most part.

 I weigh less than Charles so I was the one risking my life to hang the painting; and I was the one that wanted it up.

 Charles walked me through everything and helped make sure I was stabilized during the whole process.

 There it is up on the wall.  I know it looks high, but that is for a purpose.  I want to put individual family photos below it.  So once I get around to doing that, it will then look correct.

The Boys

Henry absolutely loves smiling and laughing!  Things are just always so funny.

Charlie loves to hangout with Henry wherever he is, whether with his toys or in his crib.

 Charlie likes to help me cook, especially fling the stuff out of the bowl.  It is lots of fun and the meatloaf still tasted great.

Charles is building an amazing dog house for Duke to keep him nice and warm in the winter.

Since yard work has officially begun this year, Charlie is having fun playing in the dirt once again.

Charlie also enjoys grinding grain.  Really just swinging the thing back and forth.

Charlie likes using the laundry basket and often collects things in it.  I found blankets, shoes and other such items.

It's hard to tell, but here is Duke sitting on the stairs going into our garage.  He likes to sit there and wait for us to open the door.

Now for some fun little movies from the Martin household:
Charlie likes riding his truck around the house.

Henry is so happy and smilie.  He loves putting his fits in his mouth too.

Charlie has become quite fascinated with dogs since getting Duke.  He loves showing Duke his Valentine's Day card which has dogs on it.

Charlie loves anything that resembles a dance floor.

Duke like to dig and get whatever animal he thinks is down in the dirt.  He dug his hole pretty fast considering the ground was still frozen and he was going through ice.