rumble rumble (a movie)

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overheard: a funny conversation between noah and kate. (thanks to irene for the movie!)

biking boy (a movie)

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in which noah rides a big boy bike!!! (for a very short time.)

blessed epiphany

god of epiphanies,
we give you thanks for jesus,
who reveals your glory.
open our eyes to the surprises
that are your gifts to us each day.
in jesus' name we pray. amen.

more noah-isms

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"thank you. than-kyou. you said, 'Q'!"

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"in. in. 'in' starts with 'N!'"

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upon checking out a dead snake in the street.
me: what did the snake feel like?
noah: what?
me: how did it feel? slimy? rough?
noah: it felt...sad.
me: it felt sad? (trying not to laugh.)
noah: sad like, 'waaa-waaa-waaa!' (pretend cry.)

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for some reason we are sitting on the kitchen floor, and i am feeding noah and isla bites of applesauce.
me: you guys are like baby birds! or like owl babies.
noah: you are the mama owl.
me: who will you be?
noah: i'll be the biggest one.
me: which one was that? sarah, or percy, or bill?
noah: sarah.
me: which one will isla be?
noah: bill.
me: then we need someone else to be percy. how about isla's dolly stella?
noah: okay! (runs to get stella. brings her back triumphantly. sets her down next to us.)
me: here, babies, eat your applesauce! (i feed them bites of applesauce. they eat.)
me: noah, would you like to have another sister or brother someday? do you want to have more than two kids in our house?
noah: yeah! i want to have three little sisters!
me: wow, really? would you be a good big brother to all of those little sisters? would you help them?
noah: i would give them each a car. isla could have a car, another baby could have a car, and the last little baby could have a truck.

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planning isla's birthday celebration.
noah: isla should have a clean party, because i already had a messy party.

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at 8:30am saturday.
noah: is it tomorrow yet?

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we are walking down our street.
noah: what does that sign say?
me: no parking.
noah: it doesn't say 'no parking.' it says 'no parking this side.'

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at the kitchen table, after noah asked for some food and was served.
noah: no, i don't want it.
noah: 'honey, you asked for it!'

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listening to a piano concerto on NPR.
me: what's this fancy music?
noah: it's not fancy music, it's old-fashioned music.

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on fiddling with the underside of the vacuum and finding a roller part that flips up.
noah: look--it's dolly wheels for a vacuum!

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after putting the board book "baby faces" on his new tractor trailer truck.
noah: look--i made a book truck. a library truck. a bookmobile!

breakfast conversation

me: daddy might drop you off at school today. would you like that?

noah: i will show him the tractor-trailer dump truck.

me: it's not a regular dump truck?

noah: it's a tractor trailer dump truck. the dumper is hooked to the trailer.

me: oh. is there a hitch?

noah: no. there's a rope. the hitch is lost.

me: oh. i wonder where it could be?

noah: maybe it is with lucy.

me: lucy? what's that?

noah: the doggie kate used to have.

me: ooohh. and where did lucy go?

noah: where?

me: did she go to heaven?

noah: yeah, lucy went to heaven.

me: and you think the tractor-trailer dump truck hitch might be in heaven too?

noah: yeah, it is in heaven.

me: how do you get to heaven?

noah: on an airplane.

me: can you go on a boat?

noah: no. just an airplane.

first first day

today was noah's first day of preschool! i can't believe what a big boy he is becoming. he was very excited for school today--packed up his backpack and hopped in the bike trailer, saying, "mama, ride!" when i dropped him off he checked out a few rooms and settled on... you guessed it, the cars and trucks area. he kept asking if certain toys were the preschool's, meaning, am i really allowed to play with all this stuff? he is in awe of how often they say yes at loving space.

check it out here. the website is lovely and does a nice job of explaining their educational philosophy, which they've taken from a variety of sources. basically, it's this: Together we celebrate what childhood should be: a time to explore the world unhurried, surrounded by friends and encouraging grown ups in an environment filled with endless supplies and opportunities for creative play. it's much more play than school, but i do not doubt that lots of learning will happen there as well. and another plus: it's in our neighborhood! i'm looking forward to the walks there and back as times to process what noah has been busy with at school.

when we signed noah up, we were asked what our hopes and fears are for noah as he begins school.

i fear that he will be hurt, or that he will hurt others. i fear that he will learn things that he's not ready to learn (or that i'm not ready for him to learn). i fear that he will lose his gentleness, that he will become a rough, wild boy, a member of a pack. i fear that he will no longer need me.

i hope that he will laugh heartily. i hope he will make friends, and feel welcomed, and feel ownership, and feel safe. i hope he will be challenged--to get messy, to play in ways outside his comfort, to express his feelings, to protect his needs, to share. i hope he will learn positive ways to resolve conflicts and to work cooperatively. i hope he will grow confident, strong and capable. i hope that he will have lots and lots of fun.

spring showers

the rhododendrons are blooming! and it's rainy, rainy, rainy, with a few intermittent sunny days. i'm not sure about that whole "april showers" rhyme. maybe in our case may showers will bring june flowers... and strawberries, and lettuce and sunshine.

what have we been up to lately?

noah and isla are getting into yard-kayaking. it's a very exciting sport. (aaron traded his coworker a custom cabinet for this kayak. we tried it out last weekend and it's lots of fun!)

aaron hung a swing for isla in the holly tree, and she loves it. (please note our tiny squashes growing in the bed under the tree.)

naked baby cozy in mama's bed!

isla munching a teething biscuit. she is very much enjoying eating food these days. she especially loves to feed herself, and is getting pretty good at the pincer grasp.

isla is trying to figure out how to crawl. she often gets herself into this or a similar position, and can't quite get out of it.

noah got this cool barn for his birthday. thanks, grandma louise, great grandma katie and grandma helen! he loves the pulley thing on the side that takes hay up to the loft. also, vehicles sometimes end up in the loft. (and here i thought i'd snuck in a toy that didn't have to do with cars or trucks...)
two kids in a box. we finally said goodbye to the dishwasher box, but it did provide hours of fun.

noah is a hard worker in the yard. he'll spend a long time digging, loading, dumping and starting over again. he has his sandbox and a designated dirt digging area, and thankfully he is pretty respectful of the plants. let's hope we can say the same for isla!

avocados. i love her eyebrows in this picture!

more swinging!
riding the bus to fairhaven. we've done this a lot lately. noah loves the bus.

silly girl with many toys at grandma's house.

messy party fun

noah's birthday party on saturday was lots of fun. it was a "messy party," an idea which we got from an old issue of mothering magazine. (the sub-heading for the article was, "in a world of no, the messy party says yes.) actually, the party wasn't really all that messy, though there were lots of opportunities for mess and general disorder.

aaron set up a few stations around the yard for digging in dirt, sandbox play, water play and slime play. the water station was definitely the biggest hit; it involved pulleys (boat hardware), buckets, pipes and pools. the whole thing is still set up, which is fun for noah but a bit of a hassle for the mailman.

aaron and i got noah a little wheelbarrow and some garden tools for his birthday, and on that note we asked people to bring plants as presents. we've been working on planting starts and seeds this week, and noah has really been enjoying digging, raking, watering, dumping wheelbarrow loads, etc. also finding worms. i'll post more garden pictures soon.

a big crew at the sandbox worksite

maryka and isla, not messy at all

nessa doing some chalkin'

jessa and evan at the digging station

grayson sliming it up

elliott and pearl and the water station

jessica, noah and grayson in a cardboard box/house

happy three, noah barnes!

similarities

i was perusing pictures of whistler weekends of yore, and found these comparisons. here's noah the kid on the blackcomb gondola this year...

and last year. what a little guy!

and here's little isla (at around six months)...

looking a lot like little noah! (he was about ten months here.) the cheeks must be a dominant gene!

we're off!

...to whistler for our fourth annual bandstra-vaganza of cross-country skiing, hot-tubbing and tube-cookie eating. check back next week for snowy photos!

happy saint patrick's day!

big and little boy

i wrote his name and maryka drew the giraffe. but he did the rest of the chalkin'.

yesterday while isla was sleeping, i heard fake-crying sounds from the kids playing in the yard next door. noah must have heard them too, as he came into the kitchen and asked me, "mama, is isla freakin' out?"
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noah loves our new chalkboard door in the kitchen. he pulls up a chair, gets the bowl of chalk and tells me he's going to do some chalkin'. "mama, i'm chalkin'!" it's interesting how much he has taken to this medium. he has not been much into drawing or coloring, and his efforts on the page have pretty much been scribbles. but things are different on the chalkboard. as soon as he got up there with a piece of chalk, he began drawing boxes, circles and long person-like images. it seems like he was just waiting for a comfortable medium! it's very cool.
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we've been identifying numbers a bit lately, as we've talked about thomas the tank engine and his friends, and what numbers they have on their engines. thomas is number one, of course, and now noah is very good at identifying ones. yesterday we were in the front yard looking at our house, and noah noticed the house numbers on the porch. "mama, there are two ones!" he told me. which is true, in our 1716 address.
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noah is very precise with language. recently he corrected his little friend not to say "breaked" but "broke." he also uses the funniest adult-sounding words, like "actually," "rather," "option," "cooperating," etc. he really likes rules and will recite our family rules when prompted. though he will also change the rules on a whim. "no, we are allowed to eat in the living room!" or, "i may have two chocolate chips. that's the option!" he will tell guests, "no boots or shoes on the rug!" which isn't really the most hospitable.
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he has the funniest ways of identifying his cars and trucks. he is very specific about what they're called and what they do. our friend and mailman, mike, recently gave noah a mail truck. he already had one, but he clearly loves the new one more. he calls it his "side-door-open mail truck," and the other one is his "back-open mail truck." he also has a "fancy car," a "tow car," a "side-door-open bug," a "john deere tractor duallie," etc. he also pays attention to how other kids label things, and often adopts their lingo. when jasper was here in the fall, he referred to one of noah's trains as a "honkie choo-choo," since it made a little steam noise. since then we have called it that. jasper also loved to eat "yogurt and granolie," so now we eat that too.
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the past few days he has chosen "regular" cups instead of sippie cups to drink his juice in. today when i asked him if he's done with sippie cups he said yes, he'd use regular cups now and isla could have his sippie cups. "i'm a big boy," he told me. but later when he was feeling tired and needing a hold, he told me he's a little boy. (he is also a little boy when he needs a pacifier.)
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noah is such a good big brother. he is very on top of keeping "chokables" away from isla, and is good at helping her find toys and her pacifier. in the night when she wakes and i go to nurse her, he often says, "it's okay, isla," sleepily from his crib. he doesn't like it if he wakes up and she's gone (to my bed, where she comes if she wakes super early). he has enjoyed trying to feed isla little bits of food, and cracks up when she makes funny faces. he also loves it when she tips over on my bed after sitting on her own for a few seconds. they both laugh hysterically then. he calls it "1, 2. 3, tip!"
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i am so very thankful for my sweet and tricky, little and big boy.

thankful

for isla and noah's very lovely bunny shirts, made by jess thistle. also for the train whistle from sarah and andrew. we are missing you all very much.watch out, noah--isla is a toy stealer now!

amtrak, amtrak, goin' so fast...

noah, isla and i had a great adventure this weekend taking the train to grandma and grandpa's house. aaron stayed home and worked on some house projects with a few helpers. (thanks grandpa, kevin and alan!) i'll post house pictures soon.

noah was a little nervous about how loud the train would be...
so he took some precautions at fairhaven station before the train arrived. after the train pulled in to the station, though, he got really excited and hopped right aboard. he said, "i have my own seat! i'm riding on the train!" it was really cute. he was a little upset, though, that the conductor didn't say, "all aboard!" he also really appreciated that the train was a double-decker. we spent most of the nearly two-hour ride to vancouver upstairs in the observation car, sitting at a little table where we ate some snacks, read the train magazine and looked out the window. it was a really fun, reasonable adventure. i enjoyed traveling the same route we've driven a thousand times, but seeing the scenery from a different perspective. we talked about how we often look for trains along highway 99 in delta on our way to grandma and grandpa's house, and now we were ON a train! crazy.

here's the tiny passenger with all his supplies.

and in other adventures, we spent sunday morning at UBC cheering irene on in her second annual traithalon. here she is swimming in the outdoor pool. she's in the farthest lane, with her head peeking up. she also biked and ran. she did great!

here are noah, aunt nicole, uncle colin and grandpa cheering for irene at the finish line.

and here's little isla lou, who spent a good chunk of the race snoozing in the stroller.

little isla two

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in the spirit of marking isla's half birthday, here's a walk down memory lane. irene took these videos in the hospital when isla was hours old. she's so tiny! (well, relatively tiny at ten pounds.) and noah seems so small too, and his voice is so childlike! these videos really mark his growth these past six months as well. he is such a big boy now.

in this video noah identifies his new little sister's body parts.

little isla one

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in this video noah counts his new little sister's toes.

these days

isla spends a lot of her time munching her feet.

aaron recently made this bathroom stool for noah. noah loves it. he spends a lot of time "washing" in the sink now.

aaron installed a pull-down attic ladder a few weeks ago, which got noah very excited about the attic. he says he's going to build a fort up there. i'm not very supportive of this idea.

a fun new activity: eskimo kisses.

two in the tub is pretty fun. isla kick-kick-kicks and splashes noah, and he cracks her up.

her cheeks are something else, aren't they?

noah is no longer afraid of masks. he embraced his animal side with this one recently and actually wore it around town!

more interest in animals: here's my old teddy norman cozy in the wrap. please also note the hawaiian shorts layered over his pants. high fashion.

isla is nearing sitting up on her own. she has two teeth. she has licked avocado, pear and banana (but not swallowed, i don't think). she steals noah's toys when she can reach them. she laughs heartily at her brother.

we caved and acquired another big plastic yard toy. noah loves this car. he named it arthur. and he will spend big chunks of time driving it around the yard or just hanging out in it, parked. he especially loves to tow things with it. and he likes the cargo space for his water bottle.