LEGO links for my mother:

I'm not sure which you've seen before.... 

Bookmarks

Brick Town Talk Roadkill Grill - LEGO Town, Architecture, Building Tips, Inspiration Ideas, and more!

building - What is the most compact way to make a flat six pointed star in LEGO - LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange

Chaotic Archive

Clickits Kaleidoscope « Modelbuildingsecrets's Weblog

Fascinating LEGO® Model of the Day Luncheon at the Royal Pavilion

flickr The Festival of the Masters 2011 Pool

Friends' Pavilion LEGO Friends LEGO LEAKS work

FUMITSUDURU - Color variations, step 1 by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

http--reasonablyclever.com-bw2011-transparent.pdf

Lego and other cool things LEGO - Rainbow (par eilonwy77)

LEGO Express — Color variations, step 1 by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

LEGO Express — Cool but ugly redux by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

LEGO Express — Different radii by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

LEGO Express — Expanding! by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

LEGO Express — Layers by eilonwy77 on Flickr.

LEGO LEAKS eilonwy77 さんのタイルアート作品

LEGO LEAKS レゴ 建物作品『 Look Both Ways.... 』

LEGO Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash at BrickCon by... SpeakingJargon

LEGO “Stained Glass” Holiday Window Andertoons Cartoon Blog

Listening for Patterns « Strategic Monk

noise (x, y, z)

the infinite fragmented datawaves of oXane

Tile art piece's Lego LEGO LEAKS eilonwy77

Underneath a flower by eilonwy77 (via oxane) - Everything Random

Varying Perspectives (oxane Underneath a flower by eilonwy77)

What you built with LEGO today

Sorry for totally neglecting this blog.  I've been working on a LEGO group competition (running the month of March), and I spend all my free time fretting about that. 

But one important thing to mention is that about 2 weeks ago Grant finally potty trained himself.  That's pretty much how it went.  I had tried and tried to give him the chance to pee on the potty, and he never did, not even once.  And then one night he went into the bathroom and told me to leave, and shut the door on me.  And then he did it.  He cheered and I came back and saw it, and we were all really happy.  After that, he pretty much did it all the time.  Even at night he was dry.  Now, we haven't managed pooping on the potty yet, but -- Madeleine didn't manage that till she was 4, so I guess there's no rush.  Anyway, every time Grant would pee on the potty, he would be excited, and then come and ask for high 5s and hugs.... he'd come at me and say, "Give me a hive five!  Give me a hug!  Yay, Grant!"  Brian laughs and comments on how self-promotional Grant is. 

Madeleine remembered back to her potty training days (I hardly remembered, but she did) when I had made a number chart for her, and we'd write a new number each time she went peepee on the potty.  So Madeleine went and made a chart for Grant, all of her own accord, and wrote all the numbers on the chart for Grant, too.  Some of the numbers aren't written the best, but you can tell what they're supposed to be if you know how to look.  Brian looked at the chart and said it was obvious we needed to practice writing numbers with Madeleine.  She's getting pretty good at capital letters (her preferred style of letter), but some number help might be in order.   

What else are those kids up to these days?  There was vomiting from both of them this weekend, and Madeleine has had a 102F fever on and off since yesterday.  But mostly things are good.  Grant says lots of cute things.  I like little phrases he uses, such as saying, "I guess" at the end of an answer he might give.  And when he's feeling in a loving sort of mood (as opposed to a playing, whacking sort of mood), he'll say, "I love you Mommy" and "You're my snuggle baby" (a phrase picked up from a My Little Pony episode). Aw, he's so sweet and cuddly (when he's not whacking or throwing or flopping).

Madeleine is smart and fun and creative.  She's always coming up with great ideas for art projects and all sorts of other things.  She came up with the idea of making a rainbow hand, by tracking her hand with a marker, and then re-tracing it so that it was in all the colors of the rainbow (in the correct order, of course).  And she drew a really funny picture of me -- I really need to upload it to the internet and use it as my profile pic.  It's so awful -- and funny. 

I guess I should go get to work on my competition stuff again.  Yikes.  I'm supposed to make 6 things this month, but I doubt I'll manage it.  I'll do some, though. 

I started taking ballet classes again!  Yay!  After the first class I hurt a lot for 5 days.  But the last two classes have been pretty fine.  It does make me wish I had had an opportunity to practice everyday, like kids in sports do, but oh well. 

Madeleine made what I think is her first pun earlier this week.  We had pears at dinner, and she likes me to slice them for her.  There were some little slices, but then still a lot left on the pear, all in the same bowl.  She pointed at the bowl and wanted me to cut more pear, but I asked her what was wrong with it (since there were still a few little slices in the bowl... but apparantly (or is that ap-pear-antly?) they were unacceptable, and she said it was "too peary".  I asked her what on earth did that mean??  And she answered, "I'm just being pear-y silly!" 

Yay for punniness!  We'll have to tell Uncle Matt.

Grant is pretty sweet, when he's not trying to play the whack game.  He tells me a lot, "I just very love you!" and "I just very want you!"  Of course it's a problem if I can't be right there always... like last night when I left for ballet and he was screaming and crying about it.  But he also hadn't had a nap, because he'd slept for 12 hours the night before...  (We've actually had two great nights of sleep in a row-- it's a miracle!)

My Uncle Spence's mom Elaine's funeral is today, so we'll be going to that, and then to my aunt and uncle's house.  We'll bring some books for Madeleine to read to Grandma...  she's been reading the leveled books from Marcy's school, and can do the H ones, which are at the end of first grade.  Now I just want to practice with fluency before moving on too much higher.  She has moments of fluency, and moments of stalling and losing focus.  She also gets tired with reading longer books.  That's okay; she's still just 4.  I do really hope she gets into the dual language program, so that she'll have something to learn in kindergarten.  And I'd love to go in and volunteer in Spanish. 

The kids want me, so I'll go now. 

January 29, 2011

I think I’ve got a bit of the winter doldrums, perhaps.  I took Madeleine to a make-up ballet class (because we missed one during a snowstorm), and the older girls were there and I watched them a bit, and I was so sad.  Sad that I never really had the chance to be as good as they are, sad that I’m not dancing now, sad for all the things in my life that I haven’t done well enough, sad for all the things that I’m too nervous to accomplish… that kind of thing. 

I was thinking of going to the adult ballet classes again.  It’s always irritating, because they’re only 75 minutes instead of 90, which drives me a bit crazy, because a proper class really needs to be at least 90.  But I was thinking it would give me more motivation to go to the gym and eat better.  If I have a reason to do those things, then it would be much easier.  And then I’d get that happy feeling of accomplishment.  That’d be nice.

Yesterday was Grant’s third birthday.  I let him have a late nap so he’d be awake for his party at 7.  So then he wanted to stay up really late.  When I said it was time to go to sleep, he said he didn’t want to go to sleep, because it was his birthday.  That was a bit more sophisticated of an argument than I was expecting from him. 

Madeleine lost her first tooth last Monday (January 23, 2012).  It was the lower front one on the right (from her perspective).  We had already had a very trying sort of day, where everything seemed to go wrong, or at least was irritating.  Let’s see if I can remember…  we went to my Grandma’s house, and almost got into an accident on the way.  My garage door opener disappeared (Brian stole it, because the back door was stuck shut because of ice, so he needed to go through the garage door.)  Now that I think of it, a lot of these are reasons why we were late to my grandma’s house.  Before we left, Grant fell flat on his face in the kitchen and screamed and screamed, and when I stopped hugging him I realized we were both covered in some blood, as his face was bleeding next to his mouth.  Grant was tired all day and was wild at my grandma’s and it was all just very trying.  So we came home to let him take a nap.  As soon as we got home Madeleine went to get some yogurt to eat.  I wasn’t really paying attention, but something happened, and then I saw her and she looked so sad and terrified and in pain.  I asked what was wrong and she opened her mouth and showed me where her tooth was gone, and there was blood there.  It hadn’t been loose (that we knew of), and so I was concerned.  She started screaming, and then I went and called the dentist.  My general sense of things from the phone call was that it was probably okay, but that they couldn’t diagnose it over the phone, and they let me bring her in.  So I took her in right away, and they took X-rays to make sure it had come out all the way.  The X-ray showed that it had, and you could see the permanent tooth coming up.  The tooth next to it in the front also showed the permanent tooth coming up underneath, but not as far.  The dentist thought that tooth would fall out in the summer. 

So after that things perked up (Grant still had no nap, but we managed).  We came home to try to find the tooth, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Then Madeleine said she’d been over the garbage can when it came out, and Brian had already taken the garbage out.  So, no tooth.  But we got Madeleine excited about the tooth fairy coming.  And she just went on and on about how she was soooo thrilled that the tooth fairy was coming this week, so that she would have her own money and be able to buy Grant something for his birthday.  It was so sweet!  Brian and I talked in code about it, and Brian was wondering what my “favorite number” was (which was really an idea of how much the tooth fairy should bring, so she could buy a present).  During this conversation, Madeleine said her favorite numbers were 13 and 3 (she just thought we were actually talking about our favorite numbers).  And lo and behold, the tooth fairy left her 13 dollars.  How did the tooth fairy know?    Brian suggested to Madeleine that she buy lollipops, and I had mentioned a shirt, and so she ended up getting him a bag of lollipops and tootsie rolls, and a dragon shirt.  It’s an exciting blue dragon shirt, and she picked it out, because it is like the dragons in Skyrim, which the kids both love. 

Well, it’s time to go to church now.  So adieu. 

Grant has been a bad sleeper again the past few nights.  The 3 nights previous to last one he woke up for an hour or two each night in the middle.  He'll lie there in bed quietly, and you'd swear he was sleeping, and then he'll bust out saying, 'I love you Mommy!" or "What are you doing, Mommy?"  I love you too, kid, but I'm sleeping, and you should be too.

This morning he woke up before 5 a.m. and we were up.  We opened the window and looked outside, and then Grant had his version of a conversation with me, I guess.  Some of the things he said were, "Where's Jupiter?" and then, "Jupiter's sleeping?"  Yes, Jupiter's sleeping, and you should be too.  Then he said, "Jesus born!"  I think that came up because looking out the windows reminded him of Christmas lights, and of how they were there to celebrate that Jesus was born.  Then he exclaimed, "One hundred even number!!!"  (He loves to go around and say that 100 is an even number, and that 11 is an odd number.)  Then he asked, "What clock is it now, Mommy?"  So I told him, and then he informed me that, "Madeleine is afraid of ten o'clock."  Yes, yes she is.  Today when it was going to turn 10:00 this morning, Madeleine made herself a little cave out of two laundry baskets pushed together, so that she could hide from ten o'clock.  Grant thinks it's fun to copy Madeleine, and he found a hiding place under the blankets of the bed. 

Madeleine is obsessed with the clock too.  I think she manages to point out to me every single day each time the clock digits are all the same, which happens at 11:11, 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55.  If you tease her and ask when it's going to be 6:66 she'll laugh at you and say of course you know there is no such time.  She's also afraid of 10:00, but has a mild fascination with the other hours, too.  So she's always doing math, telling you how many minutes it will be until 10:00, or till 1:11, or till any other of her favorite times.  The other day it was 9:42, and she knew it was going to be 18 minutes till 10:00. 

I've been practicing her letter sounds for taking the dual language program entrance exam.  She's a good reader, but she just knows a lot of words from memory, and from piecing parts of words together.  If she doesn't know a word, she approximates it from her knowledge of other words that look similar, and does a pretty good job of it.  But if you ask her the actual phonetic sounds of individual letters, she doesn't always know.  Or at least not as much as you would expect from a girl who can read as well as she can.  So I guess I'm having my parental moment, trying to get her ready so she can get into the program.  I really want her to be in it, so she'll know Spanish (since I'm bilingual), and also so she'll have a challenge in school.  It'd be tons of fun to go volunteer in her classroom, and the teacher is my aunt's friend, and it'd just be a good thing.  I don't want her not to get in because I was too busy teaching her about planets or prime numbers or things like that, and not enough time teaching her the short i sound. 

I guess that's enough for now.  I'll try to write a bit more often.  I just seem pretty content with things, and don't feel the need to write down everything they do anymore.  Though I should say today they were being zombies and running around in the dark and eating peoples' brains.  Well, Grant was.  Madeleine was the Yeti Zombie (from Plants vs. Zombies) and she would run away after a short while (as that is what the Yeti Zombie does). 

Grant's being really silly right now.  He's coming at me like a robot, saying, "Ro-bot is com-ing," in a robot voice, and then when he gets to me he sneezes with a big "Achoo!" and then falls over backwards onto the floor.  Over and over and over again.  Who knows where he got that from. 

Since I'm here (which probably won't be for long, but I have a brief moment), here is a list of Grant's favorite sayings:

"That's so silly!"

"That's so funny!"

"That makes me laugh!"  (Usually this can be anything, such as blinking Christmas lights.)

"That's my favorite!"  (Said about most anything we give him.)

I think there was one more along these lines, but I forget at the moment.  But it sure makes me think of him as a good-natured kid, since he finds most everything silly, funny, and agreeable.  He also loves to call me Mommy Dolphin... he says, "Hello, Mommy Dolphin!" with the cutest intonations.  For Madeleine I'm Mommy Hello Kitty Ladybug, since she's Hello Kitty Ladybug.  She used to be several things.... it started when they were hiding, and they'd make animal noises to let me know where they were, and I'd call them baby pigs and horses and zebras and things like that.  But somehow they each settled on a certain name that they like.

The kids got a cool cabinet from my mom for Christmas.  It used to be hers when she was little, and then ours, and then went to my cousins' house.  Now it's with us.  It has a lower cabinet with shelves, and an upper cabinet with shelves, and in the middle is a counter-like spot.  My mom gave the kids lots of toy kitchen equipment and lots of wooden food -- a fruit set, a pizza set, and a sandwich set.  The food velcros and you can mix and match and cut and serve, and they both love it.  Then we got out the play-dough and use that to make more food.  We got Grant a play-dough Cars set, which has a Mater that spits out strands of dough.... one makes thin strands like spaghetti, which is perfect for serving with the kitchen stuff. 

Also, Grant got an indoor basketball hoop that we put on the pantry door, and he just loves to shoot baskets all the time. 

Also.... they both got big kid bikes to ride, and so we've been going out (thank goodness it has warmed up!) riding -- Madeleine loves hers, though Grant isn't really into using his yet.  But he's still just 2.  I'm sure he'll like it better a bit later.

It snowed a little last night, and by the time we got dressed and went outside, it was almost gone.  But Madeleine got a shovel, and then we got buckets, and they shoveled itty bits of snow into the buckets, and eventually we had enough for a snow ball.  Then I managed to get three little snow balls out of Madeleine's snow, and made an itty bitty snow man.  Grant just liked to put leaves in his little bucket of snow.  They had lots of fun putting in snow and leaves and mixing it up.  I guessed it was a snowy leaf stew.  Madeleine says, "How can you know?"  (She asks "How can you know?" about a zillion times a day, about just about everything I say.)  Well... it's snow and leaves mixed up.  It could be stew, right?  Or maybe a snowy leaf cake.

Grant has started repeating words, and then if it's a hard word he'll say it, and then add, "What does that mean?"  Then he listens to our explanations.  He probably learned it from Madeleine, because she's always asking that.  She wants to know about everything.

Grant has a little fever tonight, which might explain why he's been so fussy and clingy lately.  He wants to be attached to me all the time, it seems.  I was getting frustrated, but it's more understandable if he's sick.

I played a lot of Skyrim, but now I'm not so into it.  The kids still like to go and watch me play sometimes.  They like killing dragons and catching fish and walking around in rivers and under the water. 

Also, I started posting to the MosaicBricks blog:  http://mosaicbricks.blogspot.com/  Casey M. started it, and now I contribute.

While we're on the internet link topics, here are some for my mom:

http://modelbuildingsecrets.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/clickits-kaleidoscope/

http://speakingjargon.tumblr.com/post/14169659474/lego-rainbow-dash-rainbow-dash-at-brickcon-by  (I didn't make it, but I was interested to see it posted)

http://maxi-malist.tumblr.com/post/14097587217/w1592760-by-eilonwy77-on-flickr  (One of my geometric drawings got blogged!  How's that for exciting?    )

The kids are all excited about time and numbers and odd and even numbers, about how many minutes it is till a certain time, whether the clock has three or four numbers in a row that are the same...  I feel like a bad parent quite often, but at least we do talk about a lot of learning things, even when we're doing other stuff.  We play Plants vs. Zombies, and Madeleine is learning about adding by 25s, and figuring out how much more sun we need to plant a plant.  I'm glad she has some motivation to learn these things. 

I know I've been a terrible blogger lately.  I hope my kids don't grow up and wonder terribly what happened in the last month.  Not much, really.  Too many video games, but then it's cold and cloudy and not fun for going outside.  Grandma Ellen did take Madeleine and me to the Nutcracker, and my mom came too.  Madeleine liked it, but got tired in the second half.  She expressed the most interest in the fog that was on the stage for the Snowflakes.  In the second act she really wanted to go home, but when people asked her after the fact if she liked it, she said she did.  We also ran into trouble in the first act, when there were loud cannon explosion sounds -- she's terrified of loud noises.  And we had trouble at intermission, because there was a long line for the bathroom.  I don't know if she really had to go potty that badly, but I think the length of the line scared her (especially since I said we'd gotten into a shorter line, but it wasn't that short-- just short compared to the people at the very end of the line) -- and by the time we got to the bathroom, she was crying and having a little breakdown.  But I think it was just a combination of being overwhelmed with everything... the people, the dancing, the noise, the experience, the line... and she was just a bit emotional.  After that we bought cookies and ate them together out in the lobby, and that made her happier.  She still wanted to go home, but we managed to get her through the second act.

I had a birthday... I'm 34 now.  I got my presents really early, and I'm having my party really late (10 days after the actual birthday), so it was pretty anticlimactic, but I got to go out for both lunch and dinner, and that was nice...

Well, I'm not thinking of much to write about.... so I'll be off to do other things. 

A few notes:

Last night we went to Mom's for the Apple Cup, and at one point Madeleine went to the bathroom. She was babbling about a lot of stuff in there (she left the door open), but at one point she said very loudly and clearly, "Huskies stop! Cougars go!" We thought that was hilarious; we hadn't taught her that... she was just doing it on her own. Anyway: Huskies stop! Cougars go!

Yesterday morning Madeleine said she was "too cold" to get herself a blanket or go upstairs to put her clothes on, and it became quite the ordeal, because I wasn't going to do it for her.  And then last night Grant threw a fit, because he wanted his sippy cup, but he kept telling me, "You go get it!"  After a bunch of that, he started crying and saying, "I'm too little!"  Really?  I was thinking he was just copying Madeleine and her little tantrums, but he was smart enough to come up with his own excuse as to why he couldn't do it.  That isn't one that Madeleine has used anytime recently.

Madeleine is dying to sit on my lap now, so toodles. 

11-22-11 

Grant saw snow on trees, and called them Christmas trees.  Then he saw snow on a school bus, and said, “There’s winter on that school bus.”  I really liked that.

Last night we were singing “Old McDonald had a school bus, oigy, oigy, oigy…”  and on his bus old McDonald had a prince.  And the prince went burp burp here, and burp burp there….  Grant is a funny kid. 

For the record, Madeleine threw the worst tantrum ever on Saturday.  Oh man.  She didn’t want to go to a restaurant to watch the WSU football game.  She might have been scared, but I’m not sure.  But the screaming was soooo painful, literally.  Our poor ears!

I’m busy playing Skyrim this week, so I’m not that interested in doing much else in my free time.  Though now I’m a co-author on the Mosaic Bricks blog, so I suppose I should post something! 

Also.... regarding the previous post:  Minty hasn't had her party yet.  She keeps delaying it.  Last night Madeleine told me that she wanted the party to be at 12:30 today, but I said we'd be at Grandma's house, and did she want to have it earlier in the morning?  And Madeleine told me Sweethearts (another pony) was getting married in the morning.  I asked who she was going to marry, and she said she didn't know.  Maybe Blossom.  Then she told me that Blossom is Sweethearts' daddy.  So I said that you don't marry your daddy.   Then Madeleine said she just liked to call Blossom the daddy, but she wasn't really, or something like that. 

Madeleine says Minty (a My Little Pony) is having a picture-drawing party on Saturday.  Madeleine says, "It's a morning party.  It's at 8, on Saturday."  Madeleine tells me that I can come too, to learn how to draw the pony way.  Apparently, the pony way of drawing is to draw a creepy shape on the paper, and then scribble all around it, and even on top of it.  Madeleine has shown me this.  Now she had me write down a note on a post-it that says, "Show Madeleine how to make a pretend cake."  Then she took it to Fluttershy to give to Minty, who will then teach Madeleine, I guess.  I said she could make a cake out of play-dough, and Madeleine told me, "No, sweetie," (just the way I say to her), and told me that they want to make it out of paper. 

Also, for the record, here are Grant's waking up times for this week:  3:30 a.m., 5:30 a.m., and 4:45 a.m.  Wow.  Yikes.