Happy Birthday to Eric Carle!

It's belated now, but we celebrated one of our favorite author's birthday a few weeks ago. The boys love Eric Carle and Luke's current favorite book is The Very Busy Spider. We read it at least once a day. So, we made spider webs with glue and spiders with oreos to celebrate.

Luke's spider (with a little help from Mom)

Mark's spiders. He's very literal these days and wanted his spiders to have a nose, a mouth and eyebrows to go with their eyes!

Brothers and Friends

Having two boys two years apart can be exhausting. Sometimes I wonder, "What were we thinking!?" They are so noisy and messy and dirty and rough. (And we won't even mention the laundry!) It's enough to drive any mother crazy some days. But lately I've noticed that they are really enjoying each other too. I catch them playing together all the time. There's still plenty of train-snatching and tower-crashing accompanied by tears around here, it just seems to be mixed up with quite a few hugs and lessons on how to make car sounds. It makes those endless piles of stained t-shirts and referee calls seem a little easier when I hear them laughing together. And I look forward to watching them become friends as well as brothers over the years, especially since I'm now convinced they might not kill each other in the process.

Watch out Emeril!

Mark has been asking for a kitchen for a couple of months now.  At first I thought it was a phase, but he really enjoys cooking with me and pretending that all his toys are food.  So I started looking for a kitchen a couple of weeks ago.  After checking out the new ones priced at $100+ (yikes!) I started checking Craigslist and our local consignment stores.  Unfortunately we live a little far from most postings in Jacksonville so I was holding out for a nearby listing.  It never came.  And I saw this perfect little boys kitchen that was really reasonable and looked very small.  We drove an hour each way, but I think it will be worth it.  Mark is thrilled and it should buy me many hours of quiet play.  So, come on over.  Mark is making fries and carrots with pepper today.  Yum!