These "guys" are a big hit with the boys. Gee, the playroom looks pretty well picked up here. I'll have to see if I have any pictures from later in the day. I bet it didn't last long.
(Here are a few more pictures of the playroom when it was all picked up!)
(And here's a link to the company that makes the football guys, in case you're interested.)
Look at that focus!
He's got great style!
What an entry!
He'll be ready in 2016 for sure!
Pumpkin LOVES music and he loves guitar in particular. He will turn anything into a guitar-- his fork, a book, his toothbrush, a flyswatter... If he isn't holding anything in his hands he plays "air guitar." Beloved found an old plastic toy guitar that looks like a guitar hero knock-off at Value Village a few months ago. It cost $2 and quickly became one of the most favored toys in the house. Here is a post with a picture of Pumpkin playing a clipboard guitar from a few months ago.
Anyway, my parents got Pumpkin a small "real" guitar for his birthday. It's kid-sized and it has real strings! We'll be in South Africa on his birthday, so they gave it to him now rather than wait.
Oh my goodness, was he excited!
Here he is opening the package.
The guitar gets a full-body hug even before it's out the box.
Pumpkin in stunned awe of this treasure!
Doesn't he look serious? He's trying out plucking the strings rather than strumming.
He still has little dimples on the backs of his hands sometimes. He's getting so grown up that those dimples, when they appear, make my heart catch with love for him.
Sparkle handled it all very well, as you can see!
Actually, he did do very well. He had to bury his face in the couch momentarily with impatience and jealousy, but I was proud of him.
You can see our first Value Village guitar beside him.
Sparkle did get a turn before too long.
Sparkle's interest faded after a day or so, but Pumpkin still loves both guitars. He still prefers the red one when he's listening to music and pretending to play along.
Oh, and here is the sweetest thing ever!
Pumpkin came to me with his new guitar and said, "Listen, Mama, I will play you a song."
He strummed along for a bit with pretty good rhythm but terrible sound, obviously, since he can't play any actual chords.
After about a minute the song was apparently done and he looked up at me and said, "That song says, 'I love you, Mama.' "
Be still, my heart!
We ordered new lamps for the living room a loooong time ago and they finally arrived, so we picked them up at the furniture store today.
Beloved put the two boxes in the back of the van, and I wondered which one contained the floor lamp because neither box seemed tall enough.
Having never before purchased a lamp costing more than $50, I mistakenly assumed that when you pay a bajillion dollars for a specially-ordered floor lamp that it arrives as a fully assembled lamp. Do not be misled, any of you shopping for floor lamps! All floor lamps come in pieces with a long wire through the parts, whether you buy them at Wal-Mart for $10 or a fancy furniture store for way, way more.
The kids were asking to play with the boxes before we even got home.
Remember how we purchased a lovely jungle gym and Beloved sweat and labored for days to get it all put together? Well, the boys were just as thrilled with the lamp boxes as they were with the jungle gym.
First they pretended that Sparkle was a daddy lion and Pumpkin was a mama hippo, and they lived next door to one another in their separate caves.
Pretty soon someone was invading someone else's space.
And things quickly degraded from there into some kind of wrestling match.
That's really pretty much how it always ends up around here anyway...
Sparkle got a Light Bright for his birthday, and I'm surprised by how much he likes it. The car was the very first picture he finished, and he was very proud. He's not usually so into following instructions! But he put every darn little peg through that pattern, determined to finish the whole "work"!
The boys were playing hockey in the playroom. Shirtless Hockey, obviously. (Naked Hockey has been played in our house in the past, but is now discouraged, so Shirtless Hockey was next best.)
They wanted numbers on themselves, because all good sports players have numbers, but the shirtless-ness was a problem. So I wrote numbers on their chests with a marker. They were so proud! They chose the numbers themselves. Pumpkin's number is "fifty ten" which comes after fifty-nine. (Duh!)
Look at my skinny little Sparkle! He's actually a better eater than Pumpkin, but he looks so scrawy in these pictures to me!
I'm not sure what was going on here, but I think they were playing "Monster Tag," which means Beloved growls and stomps and chases them, screaming, around the house!