This summarizes our week:

Around here, it has been a week of bad behavior, bad health and for Molly, bad hair. She had been coughing all week, and on Friday afternoon she slept for four hours--I think because she was exhausted from being sick. I couldn't resist taking some pictures of her giant hair post-nap. The longer her hair gets, the wilder and bigger it gets. I think hair products may be in our future.

Here's a view of the hair puff from the back as Molly was watching Josh play Curious George games on his computer.

Fish Slapping

Chris was somewhat skeptical when I told him I had signed us up for a "gyotaku" (Japanese for "fish printing") class today. He repeatedly referred to this activity as "fish slapping," and while we did slap a few fish, we mostly painted.

The kids loved it. We all painted a dead fish, then made a print of it on a piece of cloth. We also made Josh a T-shirt with a print of a dead fish on it--how many kids can say they have one of those?

The instructors gave 2- and 3-year-olds rubber fish for the project. Surprisingly, the rubber fish made better prints than the real ones.

Our Latest Obsessions

Molly has moved on from her fixation on shoes and hairbows to stuffed animals. She has nine (that's not an exaggeration) stuffed animals that she likes to be in her bed, all of which have names. She knows if one is missing, and she stands in her cribs and yells for it while we frantically rush around the house looking for the missing critter.

Her newfound menagie (plus three blankets) has now overflowed into her daytime life, as we rarely can leave the house now without a few of her friends. In the picture above she's running out to the car with the missing bunny that she dropped by the door, and below she's with the bunnies and one blanket that went for a drive with us.

Josh is all about hopscotch this week, and every time the weather is semi-decent he spends the afternoon drawing criptic designs on our walk.

On the Road

After this very cold winter, we have a new appreciation for mild weather and now head outside at every opportunity. Josh has been very eager to ride his bike this year, so we drag it out of the garage almost every day. We've learned that kids with Josh's issues have an unusually hard time learning to ride a bike, so I've been very proud that this year Josh can steer and pedal at the same time and is enjoying himself on the bike.

He doesn't however, enjoy being photographed while biking. Here he is telling me there is a Christmas tree behind me that I should take a picture of.

Molly has been trying out Josh's old tricycle, which she seem to enjoy. She especially likes the "trunk," where she can put her milk and her helmet when she gets tired of wearing it.

Valentine's Day and 2 Year Olds

Today I fulfilled my preschool mom duties for the year and helped host the Valentine's party for Molly's class (similar to the Christmas party, just with hearts). As always, no matter how creative I get with planning crafts or choosing a great story to read to them, I can never beat the popularity of the cookies!

The class was less excited about the group picture this time. Herding uncooperative 2 year olds into a corner for a group picture is not easy!

Painting

Today we took Josh and Molly to an open studio session of Kendra Baird, a painter who lives in Charlotte who we have met through church and mutual friends. We thought Josh especially might enjoy seeing where a grown-up artist paints. They were thrilled when Kendra pulled out kid-friendly (i.e. washable) paints and let each kid paint a picture. I didn't have my camera with me at the studio, unfortunately, but here are Josh and Molly showing off their paintings.

A side note: Some of you may remember the bright green T-shirt Josh got at YMCA camp last year that he pretty much refused to take off all summer. We finally weaned him from that shirt, just in time for the orange 2009 version, which we got when we registered Josh for camp last week. Expect to see a lot of it in the future.