Dinner and a Movie

This is what it looks like when LeBret men watch a Star Wars movie during dinner. They finished up their Father/Son Original Star Wars Trilogy viewing with Return of the Jedi last night. Seth is surely being "trained up in the way he should go," in regard to the force. Joel has also had to start keeping an eye on his beer - Seth's a sneaky little devil and has scored a couple swigs on the fly from a lonely bottle left on the table. Last time I caught him he gave me a big grin with a twinkle in his eye and pronounced "I like it!"

He wasn't so sure what he thought of Jabba the Hut.

But he got pretty excited when Oola the Twi'lek started dancing in Jabba's Palace. Of course, all men do. But Seth couldn't keep from gettin' a little jiggy himself.

Catching Up

Since it's been almost two weeks since my last post, I thought I'd catch up on what the kids have been doing. Seth was such an involved helper with planting the garden that I decided I needed to build covers for our raised beds. So I made box frames with bird netting, which will keep out the birds, cats (we have about 20 on our street), and little Seths. We'll have to find another place for him to be a boy and dig in the dirt. When it gets hot we go inside, so Seth has also been busy at the kitchen table. His watercolors usually lean toward a gray color scheme. This time he painted so hard that we lost a few color chips out of the tray. Why is this child always in pajamas?

Benjamin gets bigger every day. He loves it when Seth helps him bounce in his jumper, which of course encourages Seth to do it even harder. We usually have to put an end to it at some point before Benjamin ends up with whiplash or pinched fingers. He isn't very content to lay down or just sit anymore. He likes to be upright and as mobile as possible, so he can see everything that's going on and jump to his heart's content. In fact, it's hard to get a good picture these days because he's either crying to get into his jumper or jumping so fast the pictures are blurry.

He's also found his thumb more over the past few weeks, but hasn't completely turned into a thumb sucker. Seth went through a phase like this too, but eventually switched to chewing up everything in the house like a little puppy until he was two and a half. We love our boys.

What a Cutie

These portraits turned out considerably better than at two months. He's actually quite a smiley guy these days, except I think he's starting to cut teeth. Seth's first one popped through at 4 1/2 months, so Benjamin might be just a little behind.

Playing Nice

Seth is becoming quite a nice big brother most of the time. He's learning to be a lot more patient and can't seem to get enough of his little brudder Benjiyen. Benjamin thinks everything Seth does is funny and follows him with eyes constantly - he starts to whimper whenever Seth leaves the room. Luckily our house isn't very big and Seth is constantly in motion, so he comes back into view the next time 'round the circle. Seth wanted to sit with him while he watched a movie the other morning and I got some pictures of this new-found tolerance of little brother - it's fun to see them start to interact.

Photoshop Fun

My second attempt at a background is much better. If you didn't check yesterday, you missed the other one and it will never be seen again! There's incentive to check my blog regularly.

I was online for quite awhile looking at free digital scrapbook paper but didn't find any I liked. So I went up to my paper stash and scanned some in. I think my blog is much more "Betsified" now. I also spent more time exploring Photoshop, but have only scratched the surface and still don't really know what I'm doing. I did find some cool things, but am wary about forming yet another addiction. I only have so many hours in a day - probably less than you - and I can't spend them all at my computer. If I try, Seth stands next to me with a book and an incessant stream of "read it, read it, read it." Or the famous "wotcha movie! Puppies! Puppies!" How many times can one child watch 101 Dalmations? I think it's likely we will find out. I'll keep you posted...

Rough Pastels

You see before you my first attempt at designing my own blog background. I followed directions that I found online and it worked well except that I found out (after the fact) that there's no way to get around the problem of different sized monitors. Hmph. After some reworking and resizing this is what I came up with. It's not quite right on my monitor and probably has huge problems on a large monitor, but it was a learning experience. It had been a long time since I used Photoshop for anything other than resizing pictures, so it was fun to play around with all of the filters. I have ideas for better ones, so I'll probably change it when I have the time. Yeah, it might be a while.

A Real Weekend

Joel is still working Tuesday through Saturday, getting his unofficially mandatory 50 hours in every time. But now that he is done with his third (and last) year of Greek class, his weekends are once again family time. No more cramming for vocab quizzes on his only day off. Needless to say, I am a happy camper. While Joel was at home with Seth today playing in the yard and reading books, I took Benjamin to get his 4 month portraits and then to his 4 month doctor visit. He's still holding at the 75th percentile for height and weight and the 25th percentile for head circumference. I'm sure he'll still be smart.

Here is what it looks like hanging out on the weekend in the LeBret household. All the favorites are there: Star Wars and dinosaurs.