Buster's Tie

Watching birds like a sir.*

*Photo and caption courtesy of Joey.  Well, I guess wardrobe is also Joey's doing.  It's not as if Buster gets up in the morning and puts this tie on himself.  Though he really doesn't seem to mind it.  It's attached with velcro at the back and he'll just wear it around for hours before he somehow pulls it off.  

And when he walks into a room while he's wearing it, all nonchalant, it is hilarious.  You keep expecting him to put down his briefcase and complain about work.  It gives the impression that he hasn't spent the entire day sleeping and licking his ass.  Which he totally has.

Nighttime Pictures

Joey decided to take pictures last night. Outside. In the rain. Under an umbrella.

Weird Kid Wednesday- New Camera

On Mother's Day, Joey used my awesome, fantabulous present to capture this.



Which I think is a pretty great present in and of itself.

Weird Kid Wednesday- An Unexpected Toy

"So Mom, can you, like, scan your face with this thing?" says Joey, eying the scanner innocently.

Apparently so. And it looks like quite a few other things, as well.

Weird Kid Wednesday- Envelope Emotions

Recently found these photos on the camera.





How are you feeling today?

Weird Kid Wednesday- Math and Music Education

I was in the kitchen one day when I noticed Joey singing.

"Meeeeee aaaaand, Mrs, Mrs. Jooooooones. We got a thiiiiiiiiiing goin' oooooon."

Turns out that her serenade was inspired by that day's math.



Which eventually led to a huge chunk of the day lost to YouTube.



I do so love the internet.

Weird Kid Wednesday- Knee Face

Bed Head Halo

When my nephew Kam spends the night at our house, this is how he emerges from Joey's bedroom. Every. Single. Morning.

I love how the morning sun lights up his hair like this.



And this one was from a bit later as I let him play with my camera. He was very specific about what face I should be making for the pictures he had planned.

Sadly, I failed to meet his expectations.



Note- I want to shout out a huge apology to anyone who has commented in the last couple of weeks. Apparently I'd changed an important setting and all comments needed my approval. And with more disastrous results, I also managed to turn off the email notifications that I had comments pending. So all your wonderful words have been sitting in comment limbo for the last 2 weeks or so. You think I would have suspected something and started poking around blogger, but I just assumed that no one loved me anymore. It took a friend living in France to point out my ridiculousness. Thank you much, Karin! And thanks to the rest of you for still continuing the conversation, even if I was temporarily mute to it.

Awesome Kid Wednesday- St. Baldrick's

Some of you may or may not remember that two years ago Jenny, Aurora and I shaved our heads to help raise money to fight childhood cancer.

It was one of the most liberating things I've ever done. I still remember how bizarre it felt to lay my head on the pillow and the crazy noise whenever I rolled over. I could actually hear my hair.

(You can see more posts about that here and here and my favorite picture of bald Aurora here.)





From that time until now, our good friend Raven has been psyching herself up to do the same thing. And I'm guessing that giving up all that hair will be a lot harder for a 12 year old than a bunch of moms.

She's the one with the flying hair in the picture below. You can see her beautiful poem here and her insane birthday present here. If you haven't read that poem yet, you really should click on over to it. It's worth the time.



So this Friday, we'll be heading out to Fado's to cheer her on as she gets every hair on her head shaved off.

If anyone feels moved to do so, please make a donation to St. Baldrick's, a not-for-profit organization that works to improve the lives of kids with cancer. And, as extra motivation, I'll once again be giving away one of my aromatherapy necklaces to a random donor. Just come back here and let me know you've donated. Also, I'll give you an extra chance at the prize if you link to this post from your blog (just let me know).

She's just 205 dollars short of her goal and you can donate as little as a dollar and still be entered in the drawing.

Click here to Donate.

Thanks so much.

Weird Kid Wednesday- Video Production

Here's a little project that Joey created with the help of her cousin Jaden.



And, as for Attack of the Monkey- Part 1? Well, that's basically the same thing, but without Jaden. So far, she's done 3 of these.

This is my favorite.

Weird Kid Wednesday- Joey Says

"I wonder how many people think your blog is awful?"



I was just looking back through some things I'd written and found this profound question posed by my incredibly supportive daughter some time ago.

I guess this is not so much a Weird Kid Wednesday. Do I need to start a Smart Ass Saturday?

(Though, really, in her defense I vaguely remember that the context of our conversation was the fact that not everyone has the same taste in everything. And she followed it up with this statement.)

Weird Kid Wednesday- The Somethingers

Jaden: We need to think of a name for our band. It should be like The Something-Ers.



Well, there you go.

(Yes, Kam is playing the drums with a paint brush and a highlighter.)

Weeds

 

Observations by my nephew, Kam.

Mom, this is made out of ...(long pause as he scans the yogurt container, focusing on the vanilla pods)... WEEDS!

Weird Kid Wednesday- Heh

*Picture courtesy of (and copyrighted by) my sis, Jenny.

Joey's Sketch Notebook

It seems like every time that Michael's has their 40% off sale on drawing pads, I stock up.

Joey likes filling hers up with great sketches on the inside. But she's also done a stellar job on the outside.



The notebook had the pencils on there originally, but she drew all the little trolls herself. I especially like how the H in the word 'Sketch' is in the process of being completed.

The perspective of this little guy struggling to work the giant pencil cracks me up as well.



And then there's the guy on the right who seems to be directing the entire operation. But I don't think he likes what he's seeing.

Weird Adult Wednesday- Best Day Ever

This picture is of Joey after we heard that the Wiener Mobile was in town.

Strangely enough, though, today's story isn't about her. Mainly because she was not the one who was excited to tears by the whole experience.



(Here's the conversation between me and Jenny and Aurora, as best as I can remember.)

Aurora: Today is the Best Day Ever! I went to the grocery store and I saw the WIENER MOBILE! I didn't want to run right up to it and seem too excited, so I decided to go shopping first. But then I started to freak out that by the time I was done they might be gone. The whole time I was inside the store I kept saying to myself, "Be cool, be cool."

Wendy: You were crying weren't you?

Aurora: I was trying not to.

Aurora: So I finished shopping and asked the wiener mobile people if I could have a picture. The lady didn't understand and thought I wanted to take it of just the wiener mobile. So I had to explain that No, I wanted a picture of me standing next to the wiener mobile.

Aurora: Then I asked for an Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistle.

Jenny: I didn't know there was a such a thing.

Aurora: Of course there's a wiener whistle. But she said I needed to sing the song to get it. But I was so excited...

Jenny: and crying by this time, right?

Aurora: Oh yah, totally. So I was so excited (and crying) that I couldn't remember the words, so they had to whisper them to me every other line. But I got my whistle!

Wendy: Probably because they thought you were a special needs person. After you left, I'm sure they even remarked on how high-functioning you were.

Aurora: Yah, something like... Oh good for her. She almost remembered all the words to the Oscar Mayer wiener song.



Love you, Rora. Your enthusiasm for life really does make you special.

(More info about the Wiener Mobile here.)

Watch Out it's Like Farting Again

Whenever Kam sees Joey shuffling cards, he lays down in front of her and asks her to shuffle on his back.



And since they spent the weekend playing with some inherited games from our childhood (this Sorry game is from 1964), there was plenty of shuffling to be done.

Apparently he likes it for the sound effects.



Fart jokes. Always popular with the kids.

Weird Brother and Weird Kid Wednesday

Warning- This post contains violent, comic book images rendered in stuffie form. Just thought you should know in case you're squeamish about that sort of thing.

This is my little brother. Not Tommy, the one I've mentioned before, but his twin, Matthew.



In this picture, he is using my sewing machine to make a birthday present for his girlfriend's daughter, Raven.

Raven loves a comic book that, frankly, scares the crap out of me. It's called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and was created by Jhonen Vasquex Vasquez, the same guy who did Invader Zim.

If it strikes you as odd that a kid who could write such beautiful and tear-jerking poetry would also love such a twisted story, it shouldn't. Raven is bizarrely creative. And that's what we love most about her. I once watched her play a song using our wall as an instrument.

True story.

So without further ado, may I introduce you to Nailbunny, complete with abdomen hole and removable nail.



Click here for a ginormous version of the picture to see this guy up close and check out the awesome nail channel that I helped Matthew engineer.

(Huhm, it says that my spelling of 'ginormous' is an actual word. Who knew.)

And I'm not sure who is top of the weirdo list for this post, the kid who loves a comic book with a dead bunny nailed to the wall (and who also happens to be a vegetarian because cows and pigs are cute) or the grown man who decided that a dead bunny nailed to the wall would make the perfect stuffed animal for a 12 year old girl.

I guess you can decide for yourself.

Gumpaste Frogs- A Tutorial by Kam

Recently, Jaden's favorite movie to watch is The Triplets of Belleville. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a kids' movie, though. It's really dark and weird and well, yah, you'll have to watch it yourself (plenty of it on youtube). But, what can I say. All of our kids love it too.

So, of course, she chose that as the theme for her birthday. For the cake, Aurora decided to cover a sheet cake with frog pieces. Once again, hard to explain if you haven't seen the movie. (Though if you watch from about 4:05 on this link, you'll get the gist.)

We all sat down to sculpt them out of gumpaste, but Jenny was the only one who was able to make anything presentable. My frogs were so ugly that I squashed all of them and made tadpoles instead. And even those managed to look more like sperm than tadpoles. Aurora's attempts were a bit better, but still, Jenny kicked our butts on the frog sculpting front. Then again, she's awesome like that (in a very 'perfectionist, keep going til it works' way, while my personal style is more along the lines of 'meh, good enough').

And guess what, I've got a Don't Do What Donnie Don't Does for you. Don't leave a bunch of gumpaste figures out in the garage during a rainstorm without first double, no, triple checking that your roof doesn't leak. Because ours leaks. And I had no idea that it did. And I actually cried when I saw this.


(And for those of you who are wondering why I would put these in the garage... here's my reasoning. We have a naughty cat and I didn't trust her to not eat these. I thought of putting them in the oven for safe keeping, but I was sure that someone would turn it on without realizing they were in there. Most likely me. No one goes in the garage, so I figured they'd be safe out there.)

So my wonderful sister came over the next day and re-sculpted a cake full of frogs. Isn't she sweet? And I think the second batch turned out even better than the first.





And while she was re-making them, Kam was nice enough to give a tutorial for just how to make this frog. We used cocoa to keep them from sticking and also to give them a nice "fresh from the swamp" color. It totally worked.



Aurora whipped up a sheet cake with some brown/pink cream cheese frosting and we just plunked the frogs down on it.





And this last picture... technically that is one leg and one arm, but I stuck them in there like they were a pair of legs.

Don't tell Jenny.

A Little Help in the Kitchen

At least I didn't need to make breakfast.