She Doesn't Ask for Much

I was tucking in my precious 3-year old for her nap the other day, being very tender and loving and kind, and this is what happened:

Me: I sure love you a lot.

Rachel (looking up at me sweetly, surely about to say how much she loves me back): Mom, when are you going to start being REALLY nice to me?

Me: What??? What do you mean? What things would I do if I was REALLY nice to you?

Rachel: You know - you would give me lots of ice-cream and buy me a new bed and all that stuff.

Me: ?????

Me: Since when do you need a new bed? You already have two beds in your room.

End of conversation. The mom is left wondering what the heck 'all that stuff' is that she's supposed to be buying, and what on earth made 3-year old think she needed a new bed. The 3-year old is left in her unsatisfactory bed, probably wishing she could somehow trade in for a mom who was REALLY nice.

I just love these kinds of meaningful heart-to-heart conversations.

Rachel's Song

Rachel found an old hymn book that she loves to carry around. She says it has lots of special songs in it, and she loves to sing these made-up songs while pretending to read from the book.

I call this song "Wishful Thinking" - Rachel goes on and on about how perfect her life is: everyone loves her so much and wants to sit by her in the car, the family goes to McDonalds and eats beautiful pink ice-cream, she has a pink bed and a red bed, Mom lets her turn on her pink lamp in her room, Lizzy is so nice to her and always gives her lots of kisses when she hurts her every day (this part is definitely wishful thinking - Lizzy is not very nice to Rachel), she gets banana splits and cake for snack time, etc., etc.

It's obvious from the raw talent shown here that Rachel is going to have a great future in the music industry.

Art Lessons

Oliver teaching Rachel how to draw a jack-o-lantern. They were both taking it very seriously.

BBQ with Daniel's Work

We had a little get-together with Daniel's team from work. There was a great playground there and the kids had a lot of fun.

Rachel's Progression as an Artist

Today I was looking through Rachel's stack of drawings that I have saved, and I was really impressed with how much she has improved over the last few months.

She first started trying to draw princesses around the middle of the summer. Her initial attempts were pretty bad, and she gave up for awhile, but then she decided to keep trying, and she has drawn hundreds of princesses since then, getting better all the while.

Here are a bunch of her drawings: The slide show starts back with her early attempts and then goes through gradually to some samples from the end of the summer, ending with the princess she drew this morning (this is just a small sample, as she draws several princesses every day).

I think it's pretty funny how her princesses have evolved over time.

Happy Birthday, Daniel!

Daniel's birthday, which we celebrated with delicious ice-cream cake (no dinosaurs and volcanoes for this 30-year old).

It was kind of weird to have someone turn 30 in our family. Oliver even wrote about it in his weekly journal: "My dad turned 30 today." That's all he wrote - it sounded very solemn.

*Tristan and Oliver do not have tattoos, in case you were wondering. They are just the fake sticker kind. Very classy.

Four Little Artists

Here are all four children coloring together. Lizzy thinks she is one of the big kids, and loves to climb up on the benches and scribble on paper, which is fine, except she is not very safe on the benches, and she also loves to scribble on everyone else's drawings, which is not appreciated. She is a huge cause of trouble in our house these days. But she draws very lovely "scribble-scrabbles" , which she claims are either babies or trees.