Typically

A couple of days ago, Harper and Hudson were talking about flowers and Hudson said, "Typically, boys don't really like flowers," which made me feel frustrated. Why have we defined our gender roles so rigidly (and WRONGLY, in my opinion) that a four year old boy thinks he can't think a flower is pretty or interesting?? Blech. I told him it was fine for boys to like flowers AND guns.

I think I've mentioned once or twice about how I really don't like arts and crafts. Harper can now happily entertain herself for HOURS drawing or painting independently. The only way I have to be involved is by making sure we have plenty of white printer paper at her disposal. Another highly time-consuming, independent craft she loves is fuse beads. They are these plastic beads (also called perler beads) that are placed on little peg boards shaped like flowers or puppies or stars or hearts, then you use an iron to melt them together, which gives you something like this:
As you can see by her joyful countenance, Harper was really pleased I was taking a picture. The only negative to the fuse beads is when a certain small sister sneaks over to the unaccompanied bucket full of 11,000 tiny beads, grabs herself a handful, and flings them.

Hudson learned to snap on Friday! We are now a family of snappers. Or "smappers" as Helena pronounces it. She says "sm" for "sn". My favorite is "smack" for "snack" and I especially enjoy it when we are in public and she proclaims, in a very loud voice, "I'm ready for my SMACK now!" She also played with some rubber smakes at the train gift shop this morning. Hudson also has, in the past week or so, stopped sleeping during nap time. We've had a nice long run, so I really can't complain. He'll still be playing quietly in his room for an hour or two each afternoon.

Hudson did get the throwing up thing Helena had, 5 days after she had it. Thankfully, it was just the one episode, but it was in the middle of the night, and he managed to get it all over his bed and both rugs in his room and down the hallway to our room. I remember reading once on Amy's Humble Musings that a kid officially becomes a Big Kid in their family (6 kids) when he or she can make it to the toilet before throwing up. Yes, that will be a marvelous day indeed. It takes about 30 seconds for a kid to spew, and about 2 hours for the complete clean-up. Needless to say, I was a little grumpy all day yesterday, and felt a little sickly myself by afternoon. I have diagnosed myself with a disease I am calling Chronic Unwell Syndrome (or C.U.S.) because that is what is makes me want to do--CUSS. And loudly. I went to the doctor for a physical a couple of months ago, which I had not done in almost a decade, and he ran extensive tests and found not a thing wrong. I need to clean up my diet and exercise and go to bed earlier. But then, I wouldn't be able to complain about getting sick every other week. Hm, choices.

While I was feeling puny yesterday, Harper and Hudson decided to put on a play, inspired by the free performance of "The Velveteen Rabbit" we saw at the Miller Outdoor Theater this week. I never did get the title of their play, but the main characters were Batman and a ballerina, sets were constructed, curtains hung--there was no real dialogue, but there was plenty of action:
In fact, it was hard to take a decent picture because the action was so fast and furious: