"Yuh, Mommy! Moo!"

Sebby's latest phrase is "Look, Mommy!" (It sounds like "Yuh, Mommy!") He wants me to look at everything, so he says it all day long. "Look, Mommy, two fans on!" "Look, Mommy, Sebby drew hot air balloon!" "Look, Mommy; brown garbage truck!" etc.

This morning very early he came into our room saying excitedly, "Look, Mommy! Come look! See out window! Big moon! Pretty!" I got up and he pulled me out to the back door so I could look at it--the beautiful full moon. It did look really big and pretty (but of course the pictures never do it justice).

Squaw Peak

We took our usual Fall drive up to the Squaw Peak overlook to see the leaves the other night. We'd had a few days of rain and cold (snow on not just Timpanogos, but Y Mountain too), so the colors weren't as bright as they sometimes are. But they were really pretty in the twilight--hard to see in the pictures, but the reds really glowed. Sebby and Abey liked looking down at the view, and Seb keeps talking about it: "Remember? Saw BYU? Saw temple? Saw whole city?"

Growing Butterflies

Nancy's family gave us the idea of getting some caterpillars and watching them turn into butterflies. She lent us their butterfly "habitat" and we ordered some larvae (those are caterpillars) from a science store online. (They aren't expensive--about $12 for a kit of 5, although we got 6 for some reason.) They came in a little container with their food in it. At first they were quite small.

They just crawled around in their little cup for a week or so, and ate their food, and grew. Sebby loved to watch them (he loves The Very Hungry Caterpillar book) and talk about how they were getting "bigger and bigger."

Then one morning we saw them all hanging from the top of the cup. As the day went on, they turned from spiky little caterpillars into smooth-looking, shell-like . . . chrysali? chrysalae? . . . or, as we preferred to call them, cocoons. :) You're supposed to wait 24 hours for them to harden, and then tape them (attached to the paper top of the cup) to the butterfly habitat.

After about another week, one day Abraham noticed that some butterflies had emerged! They left their papery cocoons behind, and almost immediately started flapping their wings to make them stronger. ("Came out cocoons!" said Sebby excitedly.)

This part was very interesting to watch! 3 butterflies came out one day, and 3 the next. Unfortunately we could never catch them in the act of emerging, but we did watch them as their wings got stronger and they began to fly around instead of just hang there. (I like this picture of Sebby peering up at the butterflies.)

The butterflies were so beautiful! Abraham and Sebastian loved watching them fly around in their habitat. We fed them with sugar water. We just soaked paper towels with the water and put the towels in the habitat, and the butterflies landed on them and sipped up the nectar.

We waited for a nice sunny day, and then let them fly away. It was fun to watch them go up into the sky. Sebby said, "Butterflies! Flew away!" And Abe said, "If I were a butterfly, I'd want to be out in the big world! And if anybody ever sees a butterfly sipping from a nice flower, maybe it will be one of ours!"

Bunny Boys

I heard Abe and Seb walking around in the other room this morning, singing some sort of song with "Bunny" and "Hold hands" in it. Several times, I heard Abe saying, "Let's go in our bunny holes!" and then they'd sing the song again. I got the camera out, and when they emerged from their rooms I took these pictures. As they walked away to go to their "holes" again, Abe said, "That's one of the cutest things we've ever done, huh, Mommy---because it has bunnies in it!" (He knows how much I like bunnies!) :)

Preschool Projects

Happy Hat

Baby (with ball, blanket, and bears)

Elephant Trunk

3 Men in Ties

More from Sept 7th, post-Kiddie Kandids

The benefits of a snack, a nice sunny day, and a photographer no one is scared of

We went to Kiddie Kandids for the boys' birthday pictures, and the stars just seemed aligned against us. Seb acted like a wild man who'd never been in civilization before. Everything scared him: the camera, the feather duster, Winnie the Pooh---and this is the boy who yells "Thunder! Yay!" during rainstorms, kisses strange dogs, and says "Boom, Sebby, funny!" when he falls off the counter stool. He wouldn't let go of me (which is the opposite of his usual behavior), responded to everything with a desperate-sounding "noooooo!", and wouldn't even be fooled into driving a toy truck around in front of the camera. The moment I let go of him he fled out into the mall, pushing his stroller, and when I retrieved him he'd wet his pants, in spite of going to the bathroom happily several times right before the session :(

Abe, while cooperative, is so ticklish that when the photographer so much as looks at the tickly feather duster, he cringes back in his seat, throws up his hands for protection, and closes his eyes with laughter.

So we had a bunch of pictures of Seb crawling frantically out of the frame, Abe recoiling, Seb yelling "no!", Abe melting off of his seat in a helpless laugh-y pile, Seb looking alarmed, Abe grinning nervously, Seb glaring accusingly at the photographer, etc.

When we got home the boys had a little snack and played outside in the beautiful Fall-y weather for a while, after which pleasant interlude they happily (well, happily after being bribed with the promise of a piece of chocolate [Abe] and being able to push the camera button [Seb]) posed for some more pictures. And I even got some cute ones. Yay! (Now if only I was better at getting the lighting right!)

More Mowers

Cute Sebby

Pointing out the "water sprinkler" (he has to point out/touch each one)

Here you see two good examples of boys saying "vvvv." This is practically the only sound we hear at our house, all day long. "Vvvvvvvvvv!" It's the all-purpose sound Abe and Seb make for anything mechanical--lawnmowers, backhoes, fans, cars, vacuums, etc. "Vvvvvvv!"

(Seb stopped saying "vvv" long enough to smile, but Abe couldn't manage to.)

Rainbow

Same one Mom saw, maybe. It was really bright, and we could see it all the way down to the ground!