One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about parenting is to think creatively.

Gus had been hating baths for quite awhile, about 6 weeks, if I remember correctly. He screamed if we tried to get him to take a bath or a shower, like something horrible was happening to him. Before this, he had been enjoying baths, since I made bath paint, so we’re not sure what happened. Either way, it was very frustrating, obviously not a good experience for him, and  time to make him like baths again.

I had an idea– to buy him a bath toy. But, this never works well if I intentionally drum up excitement with him. If we had gone to Target and I had said, “I will let you pick out any bath toy if you will take a bath”, he probably would have agreed at the store and then when we got home, just stared longingly at the toy while telling me “no thanks” on the bath. In my experience, it needs to be “his” idea.

Instead, I bought a $4 pack of bath crayons without him knowing. One evening, I took the crayons and sat on the side of the tub (fully clothed– in case you weren’t sure 🙂 ) and just started drawing all over the walls.

After just about a minute or two, Gus came looking for me. “Whatya doin, mama?” “Just coloring.” “Can I color?” “Yes, but only in the bathtub”. “Okay”. So, I put him in the bathtub, fully clothed. Almost instantly, he said “Can I have pants off?” “Sure!” But, keeping his shirt on, in a totally dry bathtub, he colored. I kept on coloring, too, like I was just enjoying myself and this was what people do– sit on the side of the bathtub and color.

After several minutes, I got up and got my camera and took a few photos of him.

In his own little world.

He kept turning to me and saying “whatya fink, mama? whatya fink?”

And, after a few more minutes, he said “Mama, can I have some bubbles and maybe some water?”

Bingo. That is exactly what I wanted!

And since then, he’s been regularly asking me for baths. One day, I picked him up at school and he informed me, “I need to take a bath tonight.” After we had been in the door for about a minute and it wasn’t even noon, he said “can I have a bath now?” My personal belief is that there’s no bad time for a bath, so of course he got it!

Although he’s enjoying them again, I’m being careful to be completely respectful about his wishes around bath time, taking him out just when he asks or letting him decline a bath if he doesn’t want to take one a particular day.

I love a little parenting win. I don’t expect things to always be this easy, but it’s nice to get it right for a change with just some bath crayons and a bit of patience!

When I first showed Gus his Halloween costume, he was SO excited.

A few people asked me where I got it. I got it on Yoyo, which is part of the Soap.com/Diapers.com family. If you haven’t checked them out, you MUST. They offer free one or two day shipping on most items and always have coupons for around 20% off.. They don’t have as much as Amazon, but they still have lot. Anyways, here’s the link. Watch the price– at the time of writing this blog post, it’s listed at almost $40. I paid about $12, with a couple of coupons, although the list price at that time was much cheaper, too. Anyways, just had to share about them. Not getting compensated in any way for it, but I just love them.

So, back to the story, the costume. I put it on him and he instantly turned into a fierce lion, playfully attacking me.

I asked him if we could go outside and take a few pictures.

I really wanted the cute, cowardly lion face, which I got when he saw a spider.

We just ran around the yard, being silly. I ended up being very glad that I took these, as he wanted to have nothing to do with his costume, come Halloween. Fortunately, I was able to convince him that costume = candy, but he didn’t want to wear it beyond that.

RAWR.

There’s a lot that I don’t love about Halloween, but I do wish that I had more excuses to dress my children up like furry animals. Love my little king of the forest.

Gus has been enjoying his sister’s dresses lately. Not sure how this got started, but he goes up and put them on. Then, he comes to me and says, “can you zip please?”

Ah, when did he get so big?

The cute just kills me.The very best part was when he told me “I look kind of pretty, mama.” And I replied, “you look SO pretty.”

Awhile back, I wanted to play around with double exposures. It’s an interesting photo technique, exposing a photo twice. There are some incredible examples on Flickr. Technically, what I am doing is a digital merger of two images, unlike a traditional film double exposure where the film would have actually being exposed twice.

This can be done with photo editing software or in some DSLRs. I was playing around with it in-camera, but I’d like to play around with it some in editing as well.

Lena modeled for me first. She is my go-to model, because she’s the best at taking direction and standing still.

This is how one of these exposures looks straight out of camera, no editing applied.

Once Reed saw what I was up to, he wanted to be turned into a rock person, too.

Here’s how his looks, fully edited.

We also took this one and I merged the two photos together, so his body is double exposed, but his close look normal. This is so he’d really look like a rock person.

It seems to work best with textures. I need to experiment more with it, but it’s lots of fun.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week. It’s not uncommon for Aaron to work on a Saturday, so Sunday is the day that either, we do something as a family or I get a little bit of kid-free time.

I’ve been itching to go back to the International Forest of Friendship. We had so much fun there last year. We were planning to go back two weeks ago, but when our van died, that was no longer an option. Instead, we went last weekend.

We had so much fun playing under this gorgeous Red Maple tree from Rhode Island last year (left picture). I was sad to see it with almost every single leaf off already this year (right picture). We actually went one day earlier this year than we did last year.

Instead, we found a different tree to play under.

Reed and Lena decided to roll down a hill. “Let’s roll down holding hands!”

Aaron and I just sat there and watched them roll down the hill. Eventually even Gus joined them.

We walked by this bench. I love the message.

Gus is quite good at the resting part. He was carried for a good portion of our walks today and often requests to be carried like a “baby”.

We also went on a hike in a conservation area. Rocking some 3D glasses, looking for void stuff. 🙂

The left is Reed on his “throne” as he called it. The right photo, I had just told Reed that he was a cross between a monkey and a mountain goat, in reference to his excellent climbing skills.

I took a couple of shots of all 3 kids together. Both boys really need hair cuts, although neither of them seem to particularly want them.

At some point, the boys got way ahead of us on our hike. Lena and I were just chatting.

She is such a lovely person.

Aaron told the kids about tree rings.

Reed said, “So this tree is older than me?!” And I explained that most trees older than him!

We found a geocache at the end of our hike, but these two would rather just sit in the leaves.

It was a nice day of rest, at least rest from the daily grid of work. We did lots of hiking, though!