Tuesday: play-doh

Isaac fell asleep at about 10:45.  At 6:30 we heard him, "My clock isn't green yet!"  Sigh.  Three more times he hollered until his clock turned green.

He went to the bathroom and immediately started playing Play-doh.

He played a few other things throughout the day, but hours were spent with the playdoh.  And he took a nap.

Swimming lessons went really well for Joshua again.  He is so calm.  He kicks.  He floats in his life jacket.

Isaac was having a hard time falling asleep again.  So after about 30 minutes he called out "I can't fall asleep" and meant "I want some duplos!"  He yelled a few times while trying to get to sleep and managed to wake up Joshua too.  Yeah, I was not thrilled with that.  He won't be having any special duplos in bed in the near future.

Monday: Isaac's birthday party

Isaac had his birthday party today!  He was rather excited, especially by the time the party came around.  Luckily, getting ready for the party went much better than I expected.  Usually I feel like I'm prepping and cleaning all day, but this time the boys played well for a bit in the morning and I got everything done pretty quickly.  So Isaac's room and the sink even got cleaned. :D


Flurry's been escaping into the garage lately.  She likes the tops of cars.

Isaac decorated his cake with sprinkles.  There are a lot of sprinkles.

We had a sandwich bar.  I thought it worked rather well, as everything could be set out at once.

We had a sandwich bar because Isaac wanted peanut butter and nutella for his birthday dinner.  Then he barely touched his sandwich.

The kids' table.  Joshua was a bit clingy today, but was ok for the first half while he could still see me.

Presents!

Pinwheel!

Opening marbles.

Opening a craft that you paint.

The cake!

And ice cream in a cone, as requested.  But then he barely ate either of them.

Ben showing Isaac how to use his new flashlight.  It doesn't have batteries, because I'm sick of changing batteries.  And I thought he might like the winding feature.

Duplos!

After all of that, he was still so excited.  He really wants to play with his new play-doh things.  I went up around 10 because it had gotten dark in his room and he was still wide awake.  He had barely had any sugar, so it must have just been excitement.  I was feeling kind of bad for him, so we gave him his new duplos to play with for a bit.  I figured it was a compromise - he still got to play with his new toys but still had to stay in bed.  And he often falls asleep while playing with Duplos, so it isn't out of the question that he'll fall asleep.  However, with the amount of noise that is coming through the monitor right now, it might not be soon.

Saturday: Michigan's Adventure

The company gave Ben (and family) passes to Michigan's Adventure, an amusement park, as the company picnic this year.  Ben and I decided to capitalize on it and also got a babysitter for both boys.

We had an excellent time.  I've decided I don't love roller coasters with the things that come down over your head; I feel like my head get pounded back and forth!  But they're still fun and I did like the wooden roller coasters.  Although I was scared a bit; I'm pretty sure I wore a face that looks just like the one Isaac makes when he's really scared.

We also spent some time at the water park; this was my favorite part.  I really like intertubing through dark tunnels.  It's scary but not too scary.  The big funnel ride that had a big drop and then sent you through a tunnel was fun...and Ben had to go backwards in the ride, so it was extra scary for him.

I'll admit, we didn't have a bunch to talk about this trip.  But I enjoyed not talking and not listening.  I don't get to do that very much any more.

Friday: running

I found Joshua standing up for the first time in his crib.  (Ben found him once, but this is the first time I've found him.)

Today's activity was to move the furniture and run around.

We got the balloons out right before Ben came home.  It was surprisingly fun.

Today Isaac also kindly gave me a two minute warning.  I told him I'd watch the second episode of Super Why with him.  Near the end of the first episode he called out, "Mom, it's almost done!"  It felt a bit weird to get the warning from my kid, but I do it to him all the time.  And it worked well; I had just enough time to change Joshua's diaper before it started.

Thursday: life

Life was up and down today.  The boys played well in the morning.  Isaac has to get dressed, feed Flurry, and squirt the flowers.  He played with his train track while getting dressed and squirted everything on the deck during watering time...the flowers (hopefully), every deck rail, most deck boards.

I wasn't feeling great around lunch.  Joshua was a bit grumpy all day.  We took longer naps and Isaac just got some extra Ipad time.  We weren't able to do our fun activity due to someone tuning up the A/C in the morning, but our work activity was a car wash (and clean out the car).  Since we all love car washes, it was a fun thing.  And I had recently cleaned out the car, so there were only a few extra things to take out of it.

Wednesday: through the day

The day started with bagel toast.  It's really just toast, but Isaac has been enjoying bagels for breakfast and we were out of bagels.

We went to meet the dinosaur at the Fire Station.  It was fine.  Significantly less busy than last year with Curious George, but there also weren't any extra crafts to do.

Our fun thing to do today was take a scooter ride.

That's right.  We were going to take a scooter ride to the close beach.  Isaac got about two inches, not even out of the garage, and said he wanted to walk.  It surprised me because he's been enjoying riding the scooter across the driveway.  I was disappointed, but decided not to push it.

The close beach.  I brought our new umbrella and it was awesome.  It made the beach enjoyable.

Joshua slept through most of it, but it was good since he wasn't feeling like feeling the sand today.

He's also been working on keeping his bowls in the correct position.  Plates aren't working so well though, as we found out at dinner.

And I cleaned the inside of the Subaru, which is finally back in our possession.

Something funny happened in racquetball, but I don't remember what it was.

Isaac might be going through a growth spurt based on how much he's eating.  He was on his second helping of peanut chicken (which I think he has barely touched in the past) when he decided he was done.  Ben took the bowl and got about two steps away when Isaac cried, "I'm hungry again!"  It sounded like it was close to tears.  So he got his food back to finish.

Tuesday: 47 weeks, spider webs

Joshua is 47 weeks!  Moving all over the place, pulling up all the time (but then getting stuck there), and babbling a lot.

I told him it was time for pictures, so he moved over to the quilt and sat on it.

During swimming lessons today the instructor was really impressed that all four limbs seemed to be moving independently.   Score.

This morning we made spider webs.  We started with a baby one for Joshua, but he really was too big for it.

Then we made a big one.  I have some cute pictures and Isaac had a great time with it.  However, Joshua had a really hard time with it so we took it down sooner than I had been planning on.

Monday: up up

Making a gliding robot was today's fun activity.  Isaac thought it was cool, although it went a little faster than I was hoping.

And Joshua has been pulling up on all sorts of things.  Today it was under the table...he barely fits.  He was crying until I came to find him, so he might have bonked his head a bit.

Sunday: Father's Day

I was grumpy today.  I felt rather selfish about it since it was Father's Day, but yeah.  It happened anyway.

I got one bad picture of them today.  It was really cute, but there was a window in the background and I wasn't about to ask them to move.

Saturday: random things to remember

*Isaac requested peanut butter and nutella for his birthday dinner.  So now every time we talk about peanut butter and nutella he reminds me that it's his birthday dinner.  (And we're going to have a sandwich bar so that not everyone has to have peanut butter and nutella.)

*Joshua has found his loud scream.  It's loud.

*Isaac has been stuffing his car seat strap into the holder.  The first time he did it I was a little annoyed because I just saw the loop and thought he had changed the settings...then I pulled it and realized it was a trick.  A good trick.  But now he does it all the time and still thinks it's tricky even though it isn't.

*Joshua likes playing in Isaac's room.  He scoots over there with purpose.  To be fair, the balloons and duplos are there and they are super fun.

Saturday: racquetball and sand

Ben and I played racquetball today.  We changed it up a bit - instead of having the hard serve game first, we had the hard serve game second.  It worked nicely, at least today.  I played better for all the games today.

I brought the boys outside to play in the sand this afternoon.  Isaac swam across our cove several times; he loved it.  It's fun to see him grow.  And Joshua played a lot better than I expected.  He sat on the sand for a while and then loved playing in the shallow water. 

Thursday belated: funny but embarassing

Yesterday Ben and I were playing racquetball and I had an itch on my non-dominant hand.  A bad itch.  I couldn't itch it well because my other hand was gloved and holding a racket, so I used my teeth.  It hurt, and I decided that there probably could have been a better way to do it.

Later last night I found a bruise on my hand.  Important lesson learned: don't bite yourself.

Friday: what we did today

So yeah, today didn't work quite as well as yesterday.  But we survived.  We really only had to survive until 11am, at which point activities started.

We went to TimberTown with Betsy and family.  The boys really liked it.  It is a playground geared for slightly older kids, but Isaac and Ethan did well.

Joshua and Leah did well too.

Joshua really likes the swings, even though you can't tell from the picture.  Isaac was banned from the baby swings as of today because he got a little too stuck.

The boys loved going back and forth on the black thing, although it took them several times to realize that they liked it.

Our fun thing was to get ice cream.  Isaac was looking forward to it all day.

Joshua didn't get any.  Hmm.  I look cute in the picture.

But he did get a spoon!

Thursday: a good day

Today worked.  It doesn't always happen, but is so nice when it does.

The day started out.  Isaac was enjoying playing with his rock crayons.  Not coloring with them, as one might expect, but moving them in and out of the box and divider.  Joshua was enjoying playing with a ball and a balloon and in Isaac's room.  So I enjoyed actually getting a few chores done without people waiting for me to do something with them.

Then Joshua went down for a nap so Isaac and I did the work activity...put up a curtain in the guest room.  We had drawn this once before and only managed to get the pieces, but this time we got it up.  Isaac did a good job helping...handing me stuff, plugging in the extension cord, and putting the curtain on the rod.

Here is his photo of the finished product:

and here is mine.  Black balloon had taken on a personality at some point within the project and wanted his picture taken too.

Our fun activity was water colors.  I thought that Joshua might enjoy it too, but he didn't.  I think I took him away from a balloon he was really enjoying chasing and never made the transition.  After putting him back on the floor to play I made triangles.

Isaac attempted triangles too, but some of them got silly.

Finally, I noticed this on an invoice today...hmm, I thought I had rotated it.  Anyway, the name says "Amanda Killgore."  I think I'm going to give that surname to Amalle, my WoW character.  It seems appropriate as she is a healer and really wants to kill gore.  But it still sounds menacing.