Stuff from January

Here are my January pictures (maybe in May I will blog about what we are doing this month):

Tristan and Henry listening to Tristan's new ipod together.

Tristan at one of his basketball games.  His team was pretty awful, but he had fun.

Henry playing with Cynthia.  I brought out all the baby toys, and Henry thinks they are super fun.

Lizza being Lizza.  Our little ray of sunshine. 

Henry "helping" me make dinner.  Lately he has been super interested in helping me cook, so when I don't actually need/want his help, I give him a random, time-consuming job that may or may not even need to be done, but he thinks is important.  Like carefully drying each piece of asparagus with a cloth (I didn't assign him the task of lining them up neatly in a row - he does that himself.  Just tonight he asked if he could dry the mushrooms for me, and he had them lined up perfectly in one long string all the way across the counter). 

Rachel, Lizza, and Oliver painting with their new art set from Uncle Anthony.  They are happy artists.

Cynthia, back when she was only 3 months old:

We really, really, really love her.

Oliver displaying a friendly little art competition he and I had.  I lost, and it wasn't even close.  Henry had asked me to draw a transformer for him on the Magnadoodle.  I had no idea how to draw one, but I figured some robot-y squares and rectangles all connected together would be good enough.  Oliver laughed out loud, and was like, "you're kidding me, right, Mom?"  He then took the Magnadoodle, and seriously in about 10 seconds whipped out a perfectly realistic transformer.  He was even showing me the different parts that would then transform back into whatever car it was - so it was anatomically correct and all that.  I hadn't even thought about putting wheels on mine.  Anyway, can you tell which one is which?

Speaking of transformers, Henry just really loves them.  Pretty much every day when I get him dressed, he'll look down at what clothes he's wearing, and then make an announcement depending on what colors he has on - "Oh, this is orange and blue, so today I am Optimus Prime."  Also, any yellow cars we see when we're out and about are called Bumblebee, black cars are Ironhide, etc.  So in this picture, Lizza is riding on Optimus Prime and Henry is riding on Bumblebee (while wearing his favorite Bumblebee shirt). 

Elizabeth playing with Cindy.  She never gets tired of holding her.

Lizza getting some reading done under her umbrella on the couch.

What is it with my kids and pretending to read scriptures on the couch with an umbrella?  When I saw the one of Lizza, I knew it looked familiar.  I checked my old photos, and sure enough, found this one of Rachel from 2 years ago.

Listening to music on the ipod.  These two love listening to music together.

Which might explain the fact that Henry's favorite song in January was "Jar of Hearts", by Christina Perri.  ("Who do you think you are?  Runnin' round leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart, you're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul, don't come back for me, etc.")  There is something so funny to me about a 2-year old singing his heart out about people "tearing love apart."

And he was pretty much singing it all the time.

My favorite part in this one is when he nails the ending with the little pause (who do you think you . . . you are?), and then you can hear him laugh to himself with satisfaction.  Also the part at the end about "watch me be a crab" has nothing to do with the song.

One more.

He also spent a lot of January doing puzzles.

He was getting bored of his cardboard ones, so he was super excited when he found this state one.  I told him it was probably too hard for him, and he took it as a personal challenge to figure it out. 

He also loves matching up each piece with its corresponding state on our kitchen table map.

He is a fun kid to have around.