April, summed up by Kristen's random camera shots

I am not the professional photographer around here (that would be John), but despite that fact, my husband has bought me more picture-taking and picuture-manipulating gadgets than any non-professional (unprofessional?) photographer should have. I don't have the talent to accompany these gadgets, so I just end up with a huge conglomeration of poorly taken photographs on really nice equipment. It's a shame, really.

Because the month of April has flown by (How? Nothing's marked on our calendar, so that must mean we've been sitting around twiddling our thumbs. That, or someone didn't write anything down this month. Ahem! John.), I haven't uploaded my digital photos in weeks. The horror! I forgot to post my witty rant about the time I took the boys to the park one evening while John was taking pictures at one of the dozens of weddings he'll do this year. I'm thinking specifically of the time that Quinn showed me he'd learned a lot from Bryce in the past year about interacting with other children, and how much of a reaction you get from other kids' parents when you follow one-year-olds around with your hands on your hips shrieking, "I'm a superhero! AAA!" Yeah, that was fun. It was really fun when the other mom looked at me like I was one of those trashy, drunk moms who sits back while her kids bully the other innocent park-goers. Hey!! I don't let my kids bully. (And I wouldn't be trashy if I had time to brush my hair, which I don't, due to my kids' incessant demands. And if you had my kids, you'd be drunk, too. Don't judge.) To escape the awkward glares, I indulged the kids' neverending demands that I turn my biceps into liquid jello and push them on the swings for 12 hours (or maybe 15 minutes, I don't know - it's all the same to me).

Now that I think about it, maybe I never wrote about this fateful day because it ended with me lecturing the kids ALL THE WAY HOME about how when we talk to people, we don't pretend to be superheroes, we just "pretend to be ourselves," at least until we get to know them for the love of god. The response I got to that eloquent speech? From Bryce: "But the little one-year-old liked it when I was being a superhero, she didn't think it was scary at all!" From Quinn: "I WANT LACKALONI CHEESE FOR DINNER! LACKALONI CHEESE!!!!"

Mmm-hmm. I had mentally blocked out this excursion until I saw these photos again. Well, at least the only evidence is of them having fun. What you can't see in the picture is how many extra calories I burned that day by strategically pushing each swing in a rhythm that would allow me to run around the swing set and snap pictures of them at opposite ends of their swing spectrum. (Those two I posted were my only successes. I SUCK as a photographer.)

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The other thing that's been keeping us busy this month (and by "busy," I mean trapped in or near the bathroom by the newly-interested-in-potty-training Quinn) has been Quinn's knowledge, or lack thereof, of his bladder and bowel functions. I think he is finally getting a grip on how early he needs to get to a toilet, but for the past few weeks, he's looked at us with a panic-stricken face while we're in the middle of dinner or cleaning or watering the grass and has let us know in his, well, quite blunt fashion that he needs to use the facilities: "Water's coming out of my penis! WATER! COMING OUT OF MY PENIS!" We haven't been taking the time to correct his phrasing because we're always so ecstatic that he suddenly KNOWS this about himself, and we've just dropped whatever it is we're doing and rushed him to the nearest toilet. Things are better now, but for a while, in a disappointing finish, we'd get him to the toilet and then...nothin'. To pass the time, John taught Quinn his favorite method of dealing with this issue:

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And as Bryce's first real school year comes to an end, his school is engaging in all manner of frantic fundraising efforts. They held a jog-a-thon the other day and invited all parents, but our summery spring weather turned back into something resembling fall, and so not very many people showed up. I was quite proud of myself for being there, and when I saw Bryce again at home that evening, he ran up to me and said, "Mom, I was SO GLAD you came to my jog-a-thon today!" And I was glad too, because I got to see how many 1/6 mile laps it takes to deplete Bryce's seemingly endless supply of energy (five laps, running the whole way). Check it out:

After this genius event, the all the kids in the class were quiet, and still! I vote for more jog-a-thons!!