Marshmallow Catapults

The boys have been building stuff out of Bens Cub Scout book for hours. Mostly marshmallow catapults from every piece of recycling material in my waste bin, chop sticks, plastic spoons, tape, elastic, hack saw and a hand drill. They are in heaven. I love it too.

These are our two newest friends (twins) to move to Singapore and their house is full of movers unpacking boxes so we had the four kids for the day. Everyone has been pretty happy. We are always glad to find friends with kids our kids enjoy.

Dog Show

Kids are out of ideas on what to do today. Stella said she wanted to play family and be dogs. Maddie had a rotten face because she didn't want to be the owner. Jacob was willing but Maddie still drug her feet so me decided not to get into it.

I showed them a YouTube video of a dog show where the dogs run through tubes and jump over poles and such. All of a sudden everyone was into it and the big boys were ease dropping and planning. Five minutes later we have Ashlyn's baby tunnel out and the furniture is moved to the side if the room. We have the poles from the back yard we use for drying bed sheets and all the kitchen chairs and stools.

Here are the cute dogs ready for the show.

Walkie Talkies

Maddie made walkie talkies today. They even have a "tock" button so you can talk. Since Jacob can't read his says tock plus has a mouth drawn on it so he knows how to use it.

One of the things I love lost about Maddie is that if that girl has paper, pencil and scissors she will just draw any toy she is lacking and be totally fine with playing with a paper version of the real thing. She has a wondeful and active imagination and is so pleasant when she plays something with Jacob that requires totally suspension of reality and they immerse themselves in their own detailed imaginary world.

Restaurant Dining at its Finest

I was invited to but my lunch at McDonalds today from this helpful staff. Jacob wore an apron made of his woobie and a Mickey Mouse chef hat. Maddie and Ben specialized in fancy dishes like spaghetti (rubber bands in medicine dosing cups I got at my hospital stay), noodles (more rubber bands in cups) and chinese dumplings (bean bags). It was delicious!

Chainsaw

Ben wants to show everyone, especially the grandparents how he made his own chainsaw to help him pretend to be a firefighter. The one question he has is why a fireman would use a chainsaw since it adds heat to the air and a fireman is trying to stop the heat so the fire goes out.

Ben is Lucifer

Does that title rub you the wrong way like it does me? Even still, the fact remains that Ben keeps running around the house saying with loud acclaim, "I'm Lucifer! I'm Lucifer!" One of Ben and Maddie's most common play themes for the last six months has been that Ben is a cat and Maddie is his mother. There have been many, many days when my children have been characters more than they are my children. Ben always loves to be a cat. Just a cat. Always a cat. Maddie is always a mother, but she can be a mother of all sorts of varieties. She can be a people mother, cat mother, dog mother, mean step-mother, Angie mother, regular mother, princess mother, robot mother, mermaid mother, doctor mother and many other kinds of mothers. Due to Maddie's recent obsession with Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty she has over time worn down Ben's resistance to pink and princess so that he will watch Cinderella with her. His favorite character in the movie is the cat Lucifer. He thinks Lucifer is really funny, so he wants to be Lucifer when he pretends to be a cat. It doesn't quite sit right with me when he runs about the house telling people he is Lucifer. When put in context, it isn't that bad, but it just doesn't feel right. For now, I choose to let it go. He knows who Satan is. That is good enough for now.

Sleeping Beauty - A Damsel in Distress

Maddie has been obsessed with playing princess the last month. In particular she has chosen Sleeping Beauty as her favorite and has worn a beautiful velvet and sequin dark pink princess dress from the Soderborgs every day for over two weeks now.

Overheard today: Maddie storming into the kitchen lips puckered in a very serious pout and arms crossed across her chest. She calls out to Ben in the living room, "But you have to be my prince because I keep falling asleep and getting DEAD!" Ben: "But I don't want to be a prince anymore." She is lured back into the living room... Maddie pleads her case about desperately needing him to kiss her and wake her up. I hear a bit of unhappy complaining out of Ben then finally the long drawn out noise of a loud kiss. "There" he says begrudgingly. "Now you're alive again. Okay?" "Thanks Ben!" she exclaimed. Knowing Maddie, I'm sure it was followed by a big huge thank you hug from the damsel in distress.

Super Spy x2

This is the castle. Not to be mistaken for a fort. I keep getting in trouble with Ben and Maddie for calling it a fort. The castle takes a long time to build and even more time to maintain. They take all the pillows from the basement, blankets from all three floors of the house, every stuffed animal no matter how small it is from their room upstairs. Then they move all the party table chairs to surround the coffee table. Finally, they pile everything up as high vertically as they can get it to balance. After all that hard work, they commence spying. Spy #1 and Spy #2 have spent a fair amount of this week planning how they will spy on me. They request that I go into this room or that and work so they can spy without being seen. Once I comply, they hide for about 30 seconds, they are so excited about being hidden, that they tell me where they are (like I couldn't hear them 3 feet away in little kid loud whispers and giggles planning their big reveal). I pretend not to be able to find them and they describe again where they are until I am surprised to discover them and they are thrilled that their big joke worked again.

Their favorite place to spy from is the castle of course. They remind me of that game Whack-a-Mole when they do it. Their giddy excitement means they just can't stay down long and it's only about 12 inches deep anyway. They pop up and down and up and down alternately. Cracks me up watching--I mean not watching of course.

Playdate Fun

We love playdates. Today we had the non-school aged Hyatt clan come over. I got a mommy playdate with Jana and the kids had a blast using their imaginations. The Hyatt kids all seem to have above average imagination skills which make them some of our funnest friends. Today they played house in their bedroom in "the cave" under the loft bed and went fishing in the living room.