Thursday: New Year's Eve

Happy New Year's Eve!

Today the boys and I went to a Happy Noon Year party, hosted by the library.

We put stickers on some hats,

Wrote our wishes for next year (I think the bell was upside down when he wrote his name).

 Went through the photo booth,

danced (Joshua actually had a pretty fun time dancing, even if you can't really tell in the picture),

 watched balloons drop at noon, and

popped bubble wrap.

My review overall - not great, not too bad.  They did an excellent job with so many kids.  However, the audio system wasn't great and it was kind of hard to hear.  I could definitely see going next year, but we might aim to show up a bit later.

At home I finished my kitty steps.  As our kitty is aging I am becoming afraid that the jump up to her food could be too much.  However, she did not seem interested at all in using the steps.  They are very solid.

Lastly, we used one of the Netflix countdowns to ring in the New Year before the boys went to bed.

Both boys enjoyed the sparkling grape juice, which wasn't very sparkling.  I have a great photo of Joshua drinking the juice from my wine glass and me looking slightly worried.  However, I decided not to post it...it seemed too much like I was letting my underage son have wine and not proactively stopping it.

Wednesday: 4 years

Isaac, er, Puppy Dog, turned four today!  How time flies.

 I think he had a pretty good birthday.  He had food that he loves and got more presents than I was really expecting. :)

Play: Isaac loves to play.  He especially loves Bucky lately.  (The pirate ship.)  Ben and I added a submarine with a treasure chest to it today because he really likes hunting for treasure.  This month he has also enjoyed Advent Game (Snap circuits...I don't know where the name came from) and Legos.  Isaac is good at playing by himself and with Ben and me.  Once in a while he does a good job with Joshua.  It's coming.

(Side note: do you see the band-aid on his wrist up in the air?  He couldn't do anything with that hand all night because it got a scratch.)

New things: Isaac is still doing many new things...although I'm not sure if all of them are new or if I'm just discovering them.  He is cleaning his own hair.  He really likes mazes.  He can deal with assorted problems on his own.  He has been putting two things together and then making comments that surprise Ben and me on their accuracy.

Imagination: Isaac is still a puppy.  Therefore, everyone in the house is a puppy.  He has a special puppy voice.  He frequently runs out of power.  That means that he needs some watermelon/strawberry or pomegranate flavored water.  (The former is walking power, the latter is running power.  If you mix them with lemon water you get super power.)

Sleep: The removal of naps still seems to be working very well for us.  He falls asleep pretty quickly and lately has been sleeping until between 8:00-8:30.

Family: I am obviously the favorite parent, but Ben is often good too.  Joshua is ok.  I think Isaac likes making him laugh but finds that he is in the way a lot.

Yesterday: 17 months

Joshua turned 17 months yesterday!

 

Speech: He now says "choo-choo", "uh-oh" all the time, and once in a while "neigh".  I also thought I heard a pretty good button today, but it was only once.  He is starting to understand what we are saying, and sometimes when I ask him were his toes are he will point to them.

Proper use: Joshua is getting very good at the "Proper" use of things.  He tries to put socks and shoes on his feet...or at least show you that is were they go.  Combs and telephones have been correct for a while.  Trains and cars roll along the floor.

Attitude: Joshua, unsurprisingly, likes to get his way.  If he doesn't, he throws a little fit and bangs his head on the floor.  He then starts to cry for real because it hurt.  We recently stopped reacting to this fits, even after banging his head on the floor.   He also likes to see what is going on.  I've started putting him on the step stool in the kitchen, surrounded by my body, so that he can see and I can have two hands.  It's been working well.

Sleep:  No real changes.  He sleeps from 8pm until about 4am, when I nurse him.  He then sleeps until about 8am.  He takes one nap of varying length.  He likes to sleep snuggled with someone.  He's still a light sleeper and if Isaac makes a loud noise in the family room he'll usually wake up.

Food: The way to Joshua's heart is through food.  He loves his food, but only certain things.  I feel like the list has decreased since last month as string cheese and some fruits are now rejected.  Chex mix was a huge hit.

Family: He likes Ben the best, but I'm pretty good too.  He sat with several grandparents that were previously taboo.  (I think food helped.)

Sunday: sore, clean, but put together

I went to the gym yesterday for the first time in about a week and a half.  I am super sore today.  It's pretty crazy actually...I didn't think I had worked that hard.

We've been hiring one of Ben's cousins to come over for about two hours once a week to help around the house.  It's been rather nice.  Today she dusted, took down many of the Christmas decorations, filled all the water bottles, and then played with the kids so that I could do some of those things that are hard to do with kids around.

Tonight we started putting together Joshua's play thing.  The boys enjoyed taking the pieces out of the box.

Joshua also really, really wanted to use a screwdriver.

Oh, and look at this other picture I found.  I took some selfies last night because I really liked how my hair looked.  It was post shower and just kind of happened.  I don't know how to make it do that on purpose.

Saturday: boxing day

It really seems as though should be called unboxing day.

We took out/put away many of the presents today.  There are still some in boxes to spread out the fun.  We played quite a bit of pirate ship.  The ship has a name... and I can't believe I can't remember it now.  It seems like the first real name that Isaac has given something.  (As in, it isn't called "Ship" or "Shippy").  The name starts with a B.  Maybe Bucky?  We also pulled out an alligator whose eyes keep coming out (by design).  I've liked the addition of the alligator.  I feel as though attacking, and possibly killing, mean animals not unethical.  Attacking and killing mean people toes the line, so we don't do it in our house.  But Isaac knows it happens and yeah...

The package was also missing the projectiles and the flag.  So I contacted Fisher Price.  (This is the second time, by the way, and I've been very happy with their customer service both times.)  Here is the fun response we got.

"I'm so sorry that your flag was captured and your pirates are out of ammunition! I know how important it is they get back to their sea adventures, so I'm sending you out a new flag, some projectiles, some extra swords, and even a couple of extra guys to join your crew. You should be ready for the high seas in no time!

The captain is sailing over with everything now, so he should be there within 7 days!"

Friday: Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We started out the day by discovering that the animals finally found Jesus.  Isaac took a few additional pictures too.

We opened some presents as a family.

We went to Ben's parents' house and had brunch and opened presents.

Joshua was very excited to have his own alphaberry.

 Isaac's favorite was the pirate ship.

Playing the the paper was also a lot of fun!!

The whole day was excellent and truly merry, but my favorite part was at the end.

They went around and around and around.  Sometimes Isaac joined them and sometimes Isaac was a half lap behind singing "We wish you a Merry Christmas".  It was so cute.  At one point everyone stopped following Joshua and he turned around with a puzzled look on his face, wondering why no one was behind him.

Thursday: Joshua

Joshua has really had a change in personality this week.

*He has sat with previously unliked grandparents.  (They found out the way to his heart is through food and exploited it.)
*He started waving to everyone, even strangers in the grocery store.
*He blew kisses to his grandparents.
*He started saying mommy instead of mama
*He started saying choo-choo.
*He identified three different trains.  (One in a book, one mega-block one, and a duplo one.)
*After identifying the choo-choo in the book, he went around to all the grandparents and told them it was a choo-choo.  I've never seen him so social before.

It's been fun and cute.

Wednesday: leaves

Well, we finally finished our raking today.  Our neighbors have some trees that don't lose their leaves until about two months after normal trees.  It was slightly wet but rather warm.  We were all in light coats without hats.

Tuesday: pictures

It turns out that camels like pomegranates.

...so much so that they sneak into your refrigerator to be close to them.  (It even happened that Isaac found the camel and he is rarely the first person in the fridge in the morning!)


This happened when Isaac decided to clean the front of the refrigerator and Joshua decided to stack the groceries.  It was loud and messy.  I don't actually mind the grocery stacking, but coupled with the magnets it was a bit much.

I do really, really love my kids, but I also enjoy being away from them.  I pondered that quite a bit today and decided it is just one of life's paradoxes.  And I'm ok with that.

Tuesday: houses and movies

We made graham cracker houses today.  Well, Isaac and I did.  Joshua just ate the ingredients.

He was too busy eating in the picture below to look at me.

This evening we brought Isaac to his first movie, The Good Dinosaur.  He got some money for Christmas and said that he wanted a movie or maybe dinosaurs.  So we got this one in before it left theaters.  (It wasn't really that good.  The plot was pretty standard.  Not bad...just not great.  However, prices dropped at the Star, so we were pleasantly surprised about that.)

Isaac did well at the movie and seemed to enjoy it, although there were some scary parts.

Sunday: double squish

Saturday: morning

Last night was a bit rough.  I think I finally got to sleep around 3am.  First, I was up a little late. then Joshua has moved his night wakeup back to 1:30/2 and that just doesn't work for me so I let him do more crying, but still had to check on him a few times.  Then Isaac started crying because he didn't have his wipe.  Oh, 7am is going to come so early.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up at 9am!  I got up with Joshua (he woke me up) and then went to Isaac's bedroom to at least open the door.  Hmm...he wasn't there.  I felt as though I had heard him getting up, but he never came to find me.  I looked at the couch, and there was a big quilted lump...oh no...I hope he hasn't been hiding from me for over an hour!

Nope.  He had just fallen back to sleep in the light of the Christmas tree.  He slept until 10am, which meant he had a record streak of about 14 hours.

We also took some in front of the tree pictures.  They're both smiling and Isaac doesn't look like he's strangling Joshua!  Also, Joshua's shirt was actually 3/4 sleeve, so most of the day it felt like he was in a girls' shirt.  But luckily it doesn't look like that in the picture.

Friday - star wars - no spoilers

Ben and I went to see Star Wars this afternoon.  We were going with a bunch of people from his work and thought it might be packed.  It wasn't.

How's that for no spoilers?  I didn't even tell you what I thought about it. :)  We did forget to pick up Ben's car on the way home though...blah.

It also snowed today!  Isaac was so excited.  He found me, said it is snowing really hard so that means it's winter and that means it's December.  I didn't quite follow the logic on the last part but went with it.

Thursday: grading

Grades are almost done.

I was hoping to finish by 4pm today.  It's now 12:49am and I'm done.  There are still a few little parts to deal with (after multiple reminders, the wrong files still got uploaded), and I actually have to put in the grades, but it's mostly done.

Hooray.

Wednesday: cupcakes vs. muffins

Isaac gets muffins and cupcakes mixed up all the time.  So as we were talking about them today, I said that muffins are usually a bit healthier and cupcakes have frosting on them.  Isaac wanted to know what would happen if you put frosting on a muffin.  An excellent question.

He has also realized that 6 and 9 are the same, only upside-down from each other.  So there have been assorted comments, usually rather insightful and funny, because of that.

Tuesday: book

Every year our church recommends a book for the church to read around this time.  At first I didn't pick it up.  Then last year I read it because our Bible Study was reading it.  This year I read it on my own.  I usually only read fiction in my free reading time, so, I'll admit, I felt pretty proud of myself.

I read this book in a slightly different way from normal, and it really worked well for me.  Instead of trying to read a large chunk once every other week I read a little bit every day or so.  This helped me think about what was in the book a lot more and it didn't feel like such a daunting task.

I'll have to do it that way next time too.

Old news: legos

I never gave a summary of our Lego creations.

I made a robot army.

Isaac played with a bunch of things, but also made assorted creations out of banana pipes.

Ben made a cool boat.

And we had dumped out all the bins this time and found a lot of non-Lego items.  It surprised me, because last year we made a point of taking out all the non-Lego items.  And there were still a ton left.

Sunday: last day

Today was our last day with family.  It was sad to leave, but I'll also get to see Nathan before too long so it wasn't as bad as normal.

After a yummy breakfast we went to a playground and to see the original fort of Fort Wayne.

Saturday: presents

Today started out with bagels and eggs.  Afterwards we opened presents...so many wonderful things!  It's fun to fund things under the tree that I had forgotten I had put in the list for me and the kids.

We played with the toys quite a bit.  A cash register was popular with both boys.  Isaac really liked a circuit building toy and Joshua really liked his remote.  Some of the other toys just stayed out away...they will be a lot of fun another day.

Joshua was a bit out of it, so he took an early nap.  After everyone was up from naps we went for a walk because it was about 70 degrees out.

We frosted our cookies, ate dinner, and played with the toys again.  A lovely and relaxing day.