Saturday Afternoon Videos

I broke out the video camera on Saturday primarily to get a shot of Piper walking around while she's still wobbly. I ended up videoing the kids for about thirty minutes just playing.

In the process, I discovered that if you shoot enough footage, you can make about any kid look smart in a short clip.

Here's Piper putting together two cups to make a barrel.



Pure genius.

Here's Rosemary putting together a slightly less structurally sound barrel.



Henry gave it a shot.



Like I said, you can make almost any kid look smart, but there is a limit on what you can do with editing. You can only isolate the moment of brilliance; you can't create it. It's a good thing he's cute.

Piper started to get a little upset towards snack time, so I gave her a little peek-a-boo for entertainment. Then, I didn't want to leave Rosemary out of the fun, so I did a little one handed patty cake with her.



I've been doing this peek-a-boo thing for almost a year and I still can't get over how idiotically simple it is. I only believe that children like it because they laugh so consistently.

Here I am. . . Now I'm gone. . . I'm back; "peek-a-boo!". . . Laugh. . . Repeat.

It almost never fails to please. Piper was totally upset and I turned her around with peek-a-boo. I'm going to start doing peek-a-boo at angry adults to see if it has an equally positive effect.

You may notice that Rosemary is only loosely participating in patty cake with me. Rosemary generally doesn't do the patty caking; she directs that patty cake be done. In this case, I had a camera in my hand. She normally requests that Heather or I patty cake by clapping her hands and then she watches us do the whole routine while she looks on approvingly without partaking. After we throw the imaginary pastry in the imaginary oven, she usually requests that we do patty cake again by clapping several times. Life could prove to be disappointing for Rosemary after being able to control two adults like puppets by clapping her hands.

I actually don't know if the imaginary pastry is a cake of the patty variety, or it one pats a regular cake, making the game "pat-a-cake," not "patty cake." I don't think one pats a cake in the process of making a cake, so it can't very well be pat-a-cake. Then again, I've never seen a patty cake in a bakery, so I can't be sure this is correct either.

After the barrel making, peek-a-booing, and patty caking (or pat-a-caking as the case may be), the kids had their afternoon snack. When Henry was finished with his snack, we did a reverse peek-a-boo with him doing the hiding behind a dish towel.



And, I got my shot of Piper doing a wobbly walk.



It won't be long before she's not wobbly anymore, so I don't want to let the wobbliness slip away without documenting it.