Honeysuckle and Pansies

I love taking pictures of the kids that I can embarrass them with later in life and Jaden just sets himself up all the time! He tries very hard to be 'cool' but his definition of cool and Adam and mine is very different. He had a phase of wearing fingerless gloves all the time, and then he lost one, so he just wore the other for extra 'coolness'. Then he came home with a studded leather bracelet and my favorite was last week when he found this top hat in Nicolas' dress up clothes. Nicolas was given it at a birthday party where he had to be 'fancy'.

Jaden decided that he would wear it to be cool (and he's just commented on this being a picture of him in his 'awesome cool hat'!) but he just looked very strange! Mom let me wear all kinds of awful things that I thought were great - the worst being skin tight jeans that I'd poured bleach all over and definitely did not flatter my chubby 10 year old thighs - so I try very hard not to discourage the kids from creating their own identity. Sometimes they make it very hard not to laugh at them but so far, apart from Kirsten getting highlights in her hair, they haven't made any mistakes that we can't fix.

The honeysuckle started to flower this week and Jaden and Kirsten both like to eat the flowers. Adam showed them years ago how to lick the stamen to get the sweetness, but they ignore that and just eat the whole flower.

Nicolas and Adison were confused by the whole concept of eating a plant, but Jaden tried very hard to convince Nicolas it was good.

Adison quickly lost interest and went back to picking the flowers rather than eating them.

I've given up trying to stop her from picking my flowers. She holds on to the petals for hours in her hot little hands so she does appreciate them.

She knows that she shouldn't be picking them as this 'I'm pretending you aren't there' face shows.