Pictures and Commentary

Could I have come up with a more boring title? I don't think so. That makes me the best at boring. Yay me! Just wanted to share some photos from this week: a little Ukraine, but mostly my children. Calvin is not adequately represented in this commentary, but I will just say that we had a glowing parent teacher conference with his teacher this week. Those are always nice. I like it when people like my kids.

So, every summer the city of Kiev turns the hot water off by neighborhood to "clean" the pipes - Soviet era rustifications. I missed this fun tradition last year by going to London to have a baby. I highly recommend that course of action. Our hot water was off for two weeks and while we had a back-up water heater, it only serves the kitchen and the front utility-ish bathroom in which the choice is either to bathe or to squat shower. Yeah, not fun. The hot water in the rest of the house came back on a couple days ago, but it was just today that it didn't look like this anymore:



Both Calvin and Henry had little performances at their school on Thursday. Henry has a sidekick, Andrei. They adore one another and have the same quirky imaginations and absolutely contagious giggles, and I'm sure are a force for their kindergarten teacher to reckon with.



David caught these sweet photos during their "show" that melt my heart. And I'm trying not to think of the sad, sad good-byes coming up for these adorable, spunky little guys in a couple months. It makes my heart hurt.



In case you were starting to believe that I don't have the interesting "projects" and messes around the house that I once did, I took this photo as evidence. Yes, the carnage is less now that Calvin and Henry are older (and away at school most of the day), but Charlie is doing his best to follow in their footsteps. Today, he built a climbing tower to the top shelf of the drink fridge (it's not big enough to be the food fridge for our family...) while I was nursing Jane. He didn't believe that all the CapriSuns were gone. The blue bin represents wooden train pieces dumped in the bedroom so that it could make a step on the tower. I heard that dumping, and I heard the chairs being dragged across the kitchen floor, but was helpless until I could quietly unlatch Jane and put her in her bed. Charlie is just not as sneaky as the other two. (My favorite is when he calls out from the kitchen or bathroom: "I'm not playing in the water, Mom!!!")



Charlie has gone through an amazing growth spurt recently. He got some new clothes that he didn't believe were his until I explained that we bought him some new shirts and pants because his others are just too tiny for a big almost-3-year-old. He came into the living room a couple days ago sporting this sweater on his fingers and wearing a very sad look on his face. "Mom, this got too tiny for me, too." Um, yeah. Like when you were in utero.



And yes, (in reference to the picture of Charlie and his tiny sweater) I do occasionally comb (and cut!) my children's hair. But it is not my favorite thing to do and it really gets neglected sometimes. And tell me, if your little girl had little duck feather hairs like this, would YOU comb it down?



Lastly, Henry made me take a picture of this marshmallow monstrosity of a treat that his dad let him eat for breakfast the other day. You know why he wanted it photographed? Because the bite of chocolate he took left a little white heart on the side of it. How cute is that?



I heart my children.