Interesting Inferences

A few days ago, they boys and I were playing outside. When his friends went home, we wandered up to the playground. I was watching Noah on the slide, when I noticed Harrison chatting it up with a grandpa. Harrison had noticed a stroller still at the park, and was concerned that it was the Sabey's. Sitting next to the stroller was a Chinese grandparent. There are many foreign grandparents in the Mesas who don't speak any English. So when Harrison asked him, "is that your stroller?" The man merely smiled. Harrison repeated the inquiry a few times, to which the man finally replied, "Hello". An unsatisfied Harrison responded, "no. I'm asking you about the stroller." I realized what was happening, and told Harrison to come over. I explained that the man only spoke Chinese. After a quick review of languages (we speak English. Sometimes mommy talks to you in French. I sometimes talk to you in Thai or Spanish.) Harrison thought about this and had the penetrating question, "I wonder what 'Hello' means in Chinese."

Shellac

On Sunday, Mollie and I decided to play a little mancala. We used to play it a when we were first married, but not so much lately. Last week we got it out and introduced it to the boys. They love it, although they don't really know how to play it. Mollie and I reread the rules and set out to play. During the first several games she was solidly beating me, but then came down the hammer. 46-2. That's right. During the whole game I garnered 2 tokens. Now that's a beating.

The mind of a 2 year old

Today I told Noah, "You're funny!" He gave a me a very serious look and said, "No. Harrison funny. I crazy." He cracks me up. Sometimes when I ask questions like, "Are you hungry?" or "Are you stinky?" He defiantly responds, "No. I Noah William Payne!"

New Year, New You

So, I've been contemplating for a while now chopping my hair off. I've had it long for quite a while now - last time I had it even remotely short was shortly after Harrison was born, and even then it wasn't really short. I was just ready for a change, and getting tired of the same old hair. Luckily, I have a hair stylist I really like now, whom I totally trust, so I felt pretty confident letting her do what she thought would look good. Even so, I printed out 15 or so short haircuts that I liked, and even tried on a few on this site. The top picture is my before shot - apparently I take all the pictures in this family... This was the only picture I could find of myself recently, which was on my birthday.

The next set of shots are of my new haircut - I enlisted the help of Harrison in taking several of the shots, and others I took of myself - so they aren't the greatest pictures, but you get the idea. I cut it short. And I love it. I can do it straight pretty easily now, and I can also do it curly really fast. Change is good.

Timber!

A few nights ago, around 6 PM, I was checking my e-mail while Sam played with the boys in their room. Something moving outside caught my attention and I looked just in time to see a large branch from the eucalyptus tree outside fall right where the boys play in our backyard. Eucalyptus trees are infamously brittle, and so I was not surprised when it happened, but was very grateful that the boys weren't out there playing. It landed right on top of the toys that they didn't clean up from earlier in the day. Sam and the boys had fun playing and hauling off some of the smaller branches to the nearby bushes. The gardeners had it all cleaned up before 8 AM - which was good because I was teaching preschool that next day, and new it would be much too tempting for the kids during outside time. Also a reminder how nice it is to have gardeners who not only haul off trees when they fall down, but mow the lawn, and trim the shrubs. I remember when a tree fell in our backyard in Oregon, it took my dad weeks to chop it up and get it moved.

Too Funny...

No matter how disgusting this may be, it was just too funny not to post. The other night Harrison was singing away a self composed song while he did his least favorite part of his night time routine, and when I walked by, this is what I saw. No, that's not a hat. It's a toddler toilet seat. On his head. Gross.

Happy Birthday!

It was Sam's birthday last week, and we celebrated quietly at home. I made him a Chocolate Buttermilk cake with real orange frosting, and topped it with all 31 candles (I'm known to cheat on how many candles actually make it on the cake.) Here's some pictures!