Author Archive

Morning People

Posted Friday, September 9th, 2011 by Toad

Some people are born morning people:

Benjamin in the morning.

Some people… aren’t:

Natalie in the morning.

Brought to you from the files of “trying to get the kids used to waking up earlier for preschool”.

Kids On Bikes

Posted Saturday, March 5th, 2011 by Toad

For her fourth birthday, Natalie got a bicycle.  It has “manes” (so she calls them)  and flowers and is otherwise very girly, and she has named the bicycle Daisy.  When she is tired, it might be because Daisy needs to go eat some grass.

I took the kids out to the front yard, where they can ride in circles around our landlord’s roundabout driveway, and this picture is typical of how I typically saw her:

Natalie on bike

She loves her bicycle!  She has trouble riding it up the steeper part of the driveway, and hasn’t quite got the hang of either set of brakes (the hand brakes are too big for her little fingers, anyway), but she has a great time.

When we unveiled the bicycle, Benjamin was quite distressed that there was not a matching vehicle for him.  Since then, though, he’s relented, and is content to stomp around on the old Bigwheels trike:

benjamin-on-trike

His feet don’t reach the pedals and the noisemakers don’t work anymore, but he doesn’t know the difference and had a grand time!

Lest you think our lives some idyllic paradise, however, I submit exhibit C:

kids on elephant stump

Long ago, Natalie decided this bit of wood was an “elephant”, and it has been called the elephant rock or stump ever since.

The real joy of the excursion, though, was how nicely the kids played together, and how happy Benjamin was to see Natalie enjoying her bike!  He was only too happy to help her out when she needed it. I wasn’t planning to video anything when we went out (because I am a lamo), so this is just a cellphone shot. It comes to you, nevertheless, in enhanced definition:

EDIT: As a quick caption, at the end of the video Ben is saying, “Good job, Nata! Good job, Nata!” I sometimes forget that not everyone speaks his particular brand of toddlish.

As always, if you would like a copy of the non-youtube’d video, feel free to ask.

Free Post

Posted Friday, October 1st, 2010 by Toad

In case any of you using the subscription feed only saw the broken image links, I’ve repaired the images in Mollie’s last post. Enjoy!

A small change

Posted Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 by Toad

My apologies to those of you expecting another of Mollie’s great posts! This is just to advise you all that we’re trying something a little different in our continuing quest against comment spam. As a result, you will no longer see the Captcha letters and numbers when you try to post a comment. If you have any trouble posting comments please let me know and I will look in to it!

Wibble Waddle

Posted Saturday, October 17th, 2009 by Toad

Natalie’s favorite part of bedtime has always been story time.  We’ve read through a lot of children’s books and even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!  These days, though, she’s returning the favor and doesn’t mind reading me a book or two.

The video is also available for download in 720p HD here. If you can’t play the video, download the Xvid codec or VLC.