An(other) Hour in the Life

In an effort to document our lives every so often, I've opted to take another hour and post it through pictures. Here is what life is like at the Hart household on an average Monday during one late afternoon hour.

The babies start the hour off by watching Baby McDonald or "eee iii oooo" as Liam calls it.


Nico contemplates, long and hard, whether he wants to eat some of his gingerbread house or leave it how it is. (And by "long and hard," I mean loooooooooooooooooooooong and hard. He was there for at least 30 minutes before this picture was taken.)


Ellie does her homework. She is very studious.


Having finally decided to eat his Christmas tree brownie, Nico does so and then goes off to spin on the office chair and look at his Ninjago cards.


Liam saw me eating a Gogurt and wanted one.



Anders saw him eating a Gogurt and wanted one.


Nico saw them eating a Gogurt and wanted one.

Being a frozen Gogurt, it gave Nico "Brain Freeze." Nico is pounding his forehead to alleviate the "Brain Freeze."


Ellie is doing her homework.



Liam is sad because he wanted more Gogurt.


Having seen me put the Gogurt wrapper in the garbage, he tries to retrieve it, hoping (I suppose) that there is more yogurt in it. As I'm not to keen on the twins excavating things out of the garbage, I blockaded it. Liam is doing his best to move my 100 lb. tower of flour. It didn't go very far.


Anders was very sad and needy and clingy, and therefore ended up in the backpack. Shocking.


Ellie is no longer doing her homework, but is instead doing a workbook of homework type stuff, all of her own choosing. This is after having regaled me, on the way home from school, with how much she hates school because they always give so much homework. Hmmmm....


Giving up on the flour, Liam attacks the Kleenexes.


Utilizing the assets at hand, Nico is either surrendering, polishing his sword, or raising the Title of Liberty.


Fresh from the backpack and ready for action (and apparently left unsupervised for a moment), Anders is joined by Liam in his exploration of the dining room table.


Ellie does more extra work.


Whining again, Anders goes back in the backpack.


"No, no, Liam." I'm not sure he knows what "no" means.



She "haaaattteeess" homework.


Still there.


Green Monkey!


Shortly before Anders tried to put this cracker in my ear. He's crazed for ears.


Really?!

Mine!


Ellie, finally done with her homework and extra work, pulls Nico and Anders around on a blanket. They LOVE this activity.


Liam likes it too.

My super-cool designer husband.

Okay, so you know your husband is a designer when his comment after watching "The Lion in Winter" is, "Wow, I really liked the font used in the credits!" Or how about when he gets his new cell phone and rhapsodizes about the packaging. "Someone put a lot of thought into this. This is great!" Or when he goes to put the new sim card in and rhapsodizes again about the inside of the phone being designed well. My husband is a designer.

And, he must be a good designer because he has an awesome new job starting Monday. In case you don't know, Alex has been the Director of Landscape Design for Manhattan for about a year now. No more. On Monday he starts as the second in command for landscape architecture for all of NYC Parks. My husband is cool. And smart. And awesome. And good at what he does. Congrats Alex on a job well done!

The Happy Dance

November deserves many posts, but I have not gotten to them yet. I will. In the meantime, please enjoy this. Liam does this dance whenever he gets really excited and also when asked to. Enjoy.

Mmmmm.... cookies.

It turns out that Alex "isn't a big fan" of chocolate chip cookies. He prefers them with lots of add-ins like nuts, and other bits of things. So, when Alex made a quick trip to Utah a couple weeks ago, I went ahead and had a Chocolate Chip Cookie-Off with some friends.

Each entry, and there were many, was rated on flavor, texture, chip-to-cookie ratio, and appearance. I must admit, I am a big fan of chocolate chip cookies and eating lots of them was a wonderful way to spend an evening!

The spread.


Ellie and Abby contemplating their ratings.


Nico contemplating his.


At some point, Nico turned to me and said, "Mom, I don't want to eat any more cookies." It turns out Miles felt the same way and off they went to play legos and playmobils instead.



All the contenders.



The winner turned out to be Alton Brown's "The Chewy." Mmmm... Good stuff!

Thank you to all the various Merceds and nee Merceds for a wonderful evening!

Onwards and Upwards: Part 1.

Anders = Upwards

Every morning, one of the first things I do is lay (lie?) all the chairs in my house on their side. Here's why:

random baby pictures!

It has begun.

School that is.

Actually it began a week and a half ago, but I'm just now getting around to this post.

Most years, I'm really sad to see my kids go off to school. I was still a little sad this year, but it was VERY apparent that Ellie and Nico needed a new project in life. And what better project than school.

Ellie started 3rd grade this year. At first she was disappointed she didn't get the teacher she wanted, but once she started, that has all changed. She loves her teacher. Ellie says she makes things fun. After meeting her at meet the teacher night, I can confirm it would indeed be fun to be in her class. Here's hoping it is still fun come June.

Nico started kindergarten. Yup, that's right, he's in school for real. Alex and I were a little apprehensive to see how he would do. However, our worries seem to have been needless (thus far), as he LOVES school. LOVES it. He gets excited to go. He comes home off the bus cheery. He's in his element. He did, however, ask me yesterday when he was going to learn something at school. I attempted to explain to him that sometimes the most important things we learn in kindergarten are how to be a student and how to be around other people. I think he was hoping for calculus.

And now, here is what you really came to this blog for... pictures!