Pirates, ho!

We went to a pirate birthday party on Saturday, and Osten had lots of fun getting all dressed up in the garb. (For once, it was nice for there to be some boyish dress-up clothes, since all they have at school are dresses and tutus!)

There was even a pirate ship . . .

and the kids all took a whack at the booty buried inside.

Here's our little pirate (sans pretty much most of his gear except his sash) waiting to get some pinata loot!

We're Baaaaaack . . .

. . . and wackier than ever! It was "Wacky Day" at school last Thursday, and Osten loved dressing the part. These are his favorite suspenders, which sadly did not make it through the day in one piece. After losing the back clip while on the playground, Osten began using his suspenders as a lasso and whipping them around in circles above his head. Consequently, said suspenders were confiscated in short shrift.

Come to find out, dressing wacky makes you feel kind of wacky! In a rare moment of camera cooperation, Osten posed for quite a few pictures. Mommy was in camera heaven!

Here is Osten with his favorite girl in his class, Emma Grace. Their teachers call them the old married couple because they have a real love-hate relationship. Wacky day seemed to agree with them, and here they are raiding the leftover snacks in the afternoon.

A Mommy-Daughter Duet

When I picked up the kids from school the other day, I arrived to find Marci fast asleep in the stroller after a nice walk outside. Apparently, she had spent most of the afternoon asleep and hadn't had a drop of her bottle since lunch.

She woke up as soon as I got her out of the stroller, and I could tell that the little missus was not going to be happy driving home on an empty stomach. Luckily, it only takes us about ten minutes now to get home, but I hated to make her wait . . . and so, we debuted our mommy-daughter drinking and driving duet! While I do the driving, Marci does the drinking. It's really quite efficient, and I'm not sure why it never occurred to me sooner.

Marci seemed to get a kick out of our new schtick. She spent more time popping the bottle in and out of her mouth than actually drinking, but she was amused all the way home.

Here she is with the classic two-handed hold which she has pretty much perfected!

The Potty Chronicles: An Epic

We're hitting the potty training again. This past Saturday morning, Osten came out of his room suited up and ready for action. Here he is ... clad in his favorite muscle shirt, his big boy underwear and plastic pants (for furniture protection more than style) and his rain boots (which are fun to wear and are good for pooling any potential puddles, if you know what I mean!) Oops - I almost forgot to mention his two Curious George bandaids, which are actually covering honest-to-goodness skinned knees. Anyway, when Osten came out of his room in this get-up, I just knew that today was going to be the day. Oh, it was a day alright, but not the one for which I was hoping! And so goes another entry in "The Potty Chronicles" which apparently is an epic in the making!

After at least a half dozen unsuccessful trips to the potty in rapid succession, Osten took matters into his own hands and tried to get things moving south.

Marci, who I swear is wise beyond her years, steered clear of the potty-training attempts and kept herself busy with one of her favorite hand-me-down toys. She is getting pretty good at standing and is close to being able to balance on her feet all by herself. She is also just about ready to crawl, but hasn't quite put herself in motion yet although she is able to scoot around the room on her bottom pretty well.

And here we have a completely-unnecessary-but-adamently-insisted-upon courtesy flush. After a nearly two-hour battle of wills and at least eight unsuccessful attempts on the potty, we had an accident in the living room. Thank God for plastic pants and rain boots and most especially for a new laundry room with a big utility sink!

Girl Time

Gramma Sue was here visiting for a couple of weeks, and she and Marci got to spend some quality girl time together.

Wrigley enjoyed the girl time, too!

Rain, Rain, Go Away . . .

. . . only to come back the very next day! Ugh. It rained again on Sunday. It seems like we've had more rain in the past ten days than we've had all summer! Osten helped finish up with breakfast, and we were off to give our new church a try. After lunch and naps were done, the rain started to do its thing again. Daddy was trying to finish getting the bonus room straightened out while the rest of us had some rainy-day fun in the kitchen.


Since crayons and markers are not all that exciting anymore, we broke out the finger paints and watercolors for an art extravaganza!

Marci's not quite old enough to be in touch with her artistic side as of yet, especially since she puts most everything right into her mouth. But she was due for her afternoon snack, so she happily gummed some crackers and watched the artiste at work.

Hiatus

Dear Devoted Blog Readers,

LicketySplit Kids is on a temporary hiatus, but please don't abandon ship! We'll be back (and better than ever!) once Mommy has recovered from our recent move. We've been in the house two weeks now, and we're happy to report that we have found our computer! Now we just need to find the time (and motivation!) to get it hooked back up. Hopefully, we'll be up and running in about another week. Mommy is going through some serious blogging withdrawal, but without the computer as a distraction she is accomplishing lots of other small tasks around the house. (And goodness knows, there are lots and lots of things to be done to get us all situated in the new digs!) Anyway, please stay tuned for lots of pictures of us in our new place. Since we haven't been posting, we have lots of new pictures to share!