I’ve written here about my friend Jacqueline who is a nanny for friends of Ella and Max’s family. We try to get together once a week with the kids because they love to play together (well. that’s not entirely true. but mostly they enjoy each other!) and we like to get together. It’s seriously so nice to have an adult around so that my entire days worth of conversations are not all:
Ella: “Katie I have to go to Australia today. For business. For work.”
Me: “Well great, have fun! … Hey, do you even know where Australia is?”
Ella: “Nope. But it’s just pretend Australia. By the front door. So I don’t need directions.”
So anyway we were talking about how we should do an art project with the kids this week and since it’s almost mother’s day we decided to search Pinterest for some fun preschool art projects for mother’s day ideas! Turns out we both found the same little idea that we liked and we combined our collective grafting goods to come up with the CUTEST mother’s day art project EVERRRRR.

Side note before I continue: can we discuss Ella’s painting of her name?!?!?! Pahahahahah holy crap I laugh every time I look at it. It’s abstract for sure. But The E, the two l’s and the A are all there! And she did all by her little self! She cracks me up.
Okay back to the project overall. While they turned out seriously to. die. for. cute … it was complete and total chaos. Herding cats. Such a mess (sorry Alex! I think we cleaned it all up! :)) and so freaking hilarious to Jaq and I. We laughed so hard almost the entire time and the absurdity of trying to get 4 kids under 3-years-old to do this. Painting all 8 little hands and all 8 little feet and rushing back and forth to the sink to wash each little hand or each little foot before moving on to the next. Because trust me, you DO NOT just paint both hands on a kid and hope that you get both hand prints nicely on the paper before they’ve covered the rest of their body and a 3 foot radius around them in paint. As soon as you’ve painted a kids hand they have an itch. or they have to sneeze. or they JUST HAVE TO TOUCH EVERY POSSIBLE SURFACE AROUND THEM.
So we were a hot mess of paint and hands and feet and naked kids (again with kids and paint – the less clothing on them, the less scrubbing of laundry you have to do later.) and running to the sink and scrubbing paint off and it was just crazy. Luckily they all were as great as infants and toddlers and preschoolers can possibly be during an art project! No one really freaked out about being painted (not even baby B, who’s picture is soooo tiny and precious and cute and perfect) and they all were as patient as their little selves could possibly be. And so while it was total chaos, it was also so fun and funny and they turned out so great it was worth all the effort Jaq and I had to put in! :)


Anyway that was just one little day in the last two weeks of fun so here are some pictures of all the other things we’ve been up to! … Like here’s what I like to call “teaching a cooking class to the most disinterested class EVER” (mostly unrelated to nannyland, but related to this photo: I have had a major life change in the last few weeks… turns out, I LOVE SWEET POTATOES! not even just love. Like looooove. I sing their praises to anyone who will listen. Most people won’t, but whatev. I love them. Max and Ella are unimpressed.)

Okay hair cuts for Max… He has had more bad haircuts in his 2 years of life than I have had in my 25 years. His hair is just SO hard to cut right. That is until we found the miracle worker that is Chase. He is a Max-hair-cutter genius and we love him. And ummm also how cute is Max getting a hair cut?!?! The cutest. ever. in the world.

Hugging nuggets. They love to hug. It’s presh.

Ella had some work to do at the office:

And they were really good helpers when we got a big watermelon and it was rolling around in the back seat. They would throw their arms out and “save” the watermelon when I would have to stop the car and it would roll forward. They thought it was hilarious.

This kid loooooves her some pancakes.

These were her two outfits the other day. The one on the left for gymnastics class and the one on the right after is her new skirt. She’s obsessed with twirling in it and I’m obsessed with how cute she looks in it!

The kids started swimming lessons two days a week and it seriously wears them out HARD. The other day Max fell asleep on the way home, slept through me taking him inside and taking off his shoes, slept through reading a book with Ella before nap, and slept while being changed. Just slept straight on through till the end of nap time!

Checkin’ out his hawk! LOVE this kid.

Max’s version of doing a puzzle:

annnnnd Ella’s version:

I recently took advantage of Ella being up for letting me actually do her hair and I first did this side braid which we call the JC braid:

And then the upside down braid and bun. She got SO many compliments on them!!! Which she of course loves.

When you’re two and you’re a little bit OCD this is how you play with your cars:

Love him.

Okay this is top 5 favorite pictures of them ever. Ever. And If I loved these two fools anymore I would just explode. Also. How cute are they in footie pjs and boots?!?

Here are the other photos in that series:

Happy Friday!!! ::KD::