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.

Friday: family

Today we were with our family.  We got good donuts, played, took naps, and went to a playground because it was rather warm.  In the evening dad and pat showed up and we cut out cookies.

Wednesday: life

Ahh life.  Today was a bit busy.  (Busy enough that I didn't take a nap even!)

We did some errands and got Isaac some ink for some stamps that Cheryl had found.  He loved them!

After the picture we made a dinosaur party.  Isaac drew balloons and a cake with candles.  It's fun seeing that he can actually drawing things now.  He doesn't seem to realize that a drawing should really be a single moment in time and tends to make the pictures do things, like have the candles blown out or bites out of the cake.  But it's fun and who really cares?

Then he found the sheep.  Christmas magic is still at work!  Today there were four sheep and yesterday there were only three.  So it's getting closer to Christmas.

I ended up at Hope to talk with a student and realized that we had about a half hour to kill.  Luckily, Dad saved the day by providing some colored pencils and rings.  Joshua loved throwing the rings in the (empty) trash!  I wasn't going to take a video, but then he kept doing it over and over and over, so I figured I might as well.

Tuesday: found

1. Today I found one of Joshua's lovies.  It had been at daycare.  I've been looking for it since Wednesday, so it must have dropped out of the bag Tuesday night.  (Or, more likely, out of his hands.)  It was then put in the wrong cubby at daycare, and I just happened to notice it as I was putting away his things.  We were about two hours away from buying a new one...we have one and a half other ones that work for him, but having two good ones is nice.  (The half one was a desparate night one night when we realized one had been left at day care and one was missing.  I had the right materials in the closet, and so made one.  It's terribly put together, but it has the right feel.

2. Later today I found out that there had been a change to Moodle, the class site where the students upload most of their work.  Today there was an exam and there was an extra large file to upload. Moodle had worked fine in the past.  Of course, it didn't work fine today.  Students can't email me the file because it is too big.  Blah blah blah.  They ended up putting their work in a public folder and then I transferred the files into a private folder so I could delete the ones in the public folder.  Then I had to put them on flash drives for the graders.  It sounds so simple now, but trying to figure something out and trying to figure out why this was happening was a pain.  But hey, I came up with a solution, even if it wasn't a very good solution...that's half the battle, right?  (Also, I think the problem is fixed.  But it took someone with more background in the class 20 minutes of discussion with IT as to why it should be fixed.)

Monday: favorites

There's no question - our kids have favorite parents.  I'm Isaac's favorite, Ben is Joshua's favorite.

This morning I brought Joshua in bed with us, hoping for just a few more minutes.  He wouldn't settle and wouldn't settle and finally saw Ben.  So he flopped his way over to Ben and promptly fell back asleep.

Isaac loves me a thousand much and loves Ben three much.

The boys were racing between me and a wall yesterday.  Then Ben sat down next to me and Joshua rarely came to me anymore.

Now, this isn't to say that our kids don't like and enjoy the opposite parent.  But they do have favorites.

Sunday: a busy day

Today ended up being a bit busier than expected, partially due to poor planning.  I had nursery this morning and therefore had to wake Joshua up and he was not so excited about that idea.  So then we were running about five minutes late.  Not a huge deal, but I wanted to be on time and felt rushed.

Nursery was going well until one of the kids had a very dirty diaper.  The other helper was changing it and all the other kids decided to cry.  I could only help three at a time, which left one crying.  If I tried shifting them around, they all cried for a bit and the the one left out continued to cry.  Yeah.  I feel like nursery is either really boring or a bit too exciting.  I finally went upstairs to pick up Isaac and his room was completely empty.  I freaked out just a bit.  Not in a "I think my son is in danger" but a "I think my son might be wandering around this big church with tall people in it."  As I was going to get the person in charge I glanced in a different room and found him.  Phew.  They had just changed rooms.  I'm still not sure why, but next time I won't get worked up until I check both.

Bible study was at our house at noon.  The house was mostly clean still from Friday, but there was still some cleaning and prepping to finish up.  Ben was finishing getting ready, Joshua was extra sad, but at least Isaac was cleaning up his train track...we ended up being ready with out any problems (and even got some extra cleaning done) but it wasn't how I imagined that hour going.  The time with our friends was very nice though.

I had a nice nap and then Ben went to get his hair cut.  We had dinner.  We cleaned up the Legos (more pictures to follow).  After the boys' bedtime I happily retreated to my quilting though.  I was ready for some alone-with-my-own-head time.

Saturday: emotions

I've decided that I have my largest range of emotions in the shortest amount of time while playing racquetball.

Ready: about ready to serve and deciding to serve to Ben's forehand.
Dispair: As the ball leaves the front wall, I realize it is a perfect serve to Ben and he will probably do a great return...great for him, terrible for me.
Elation: I managed to return his return!  Go me!
Hope: Perhaps I returned the ball well enough that it will make it to the front wall...come on ball, you can make it...
Resignation: The ball didn't make it to the front wall before bouncing.  I lost control of the serve.

This probably takes about five seconds.

Friday: the day

We are having a lot of guests throughout the weekend, so I decided it was time to at least try and get the house in some sort of order.

It started by sending Isaac off to put some mail in the mailbox and put up the flag.  He did it!  So that is one more thing that he can do by himself and I didn't have to go out in the cold.

Then we did a bit of work - I feel like the boys understood that there was going to be a time where I wasn't going to play and sort of accepted it.  Then they helped with the floors.  Isaac actually helped, Joshua just looked cute.

During this whole week I've been working on laundry.  I really feel like I need a new system, but expect that system would involve me actually putting clothes away.  (This isn't all of it either...there is another load in the dryer and a small load still to be washed.  I'm not really sure how I got so behind, as usually when I'm behind I can at least get it all in the baskets we have.)

This afternoon I was cleaning up in the office and Isaac and Joshua were playing under my desk.  Joshua pushed the CD open button on the computer and jumped back in surprise with a cry when it opened.  I told him it wasn't a big deal and shut it.  Of course. that got Isaac's attention and so he figured out how it worked.  Then he trying to get Joshua to do it.  And when he's talking to Joshua, trying to help him, Isaac has the sweetest little voice.  Isaac finally managed to get Joshua to try it, but of course it back fired on him a bit as Joshua didn't want to stop after that.

We had the first two groups of people over today, one for lunch and one for dinner.  A very pleasant time was had with both, but nothing really of note happened.

Thursday: this morning

This morning I heard Isaac wake up.  Surprisingly, he didn't come say hi...I think he went to look at the Christmas tree.  Then he saw Flurry, and decided she had done something worthy of treats.  So he gave her a few of those.  (One daily chore that is actually enforced is feeding Flurry.  Therefore, he also gets to give her treats.  Usually the number is zero, two, or five.  She usually gets treats for not eating his yogurt.)  After that I didn't hear him anymore, but figured he was playing in his room.  Ben's alarm went off, so I got dressed and went to say good morning to him.

I looked in his bedroom: not there.  I looked in the toy room: not there.  I looked at the front door: still locked.  I looked at the basement stairs: the gate was closed and lights off, so it was doubtful he was down there.  I puzzled.  Then I saw it on the couch - a quilt covered lump.  It was Isaac!  This is the second time he has hid well and quietly from me.

He also can read the word Meijer.  He read it on a prescription bottle and then at the actual store.  I haven't tried it in a different font, but was still excited.

Tuesday: 47 months

Isaac turned 47 months yesterday!

(Joshua knows that quilts on the floor mean picture time, so he went from his quilt to Isaac's quilt.)

Attitude: Isaac's been pretty happy and more or less with it lately.  We haven't had a lot of behavior issues this month.  Isaac's been really nice to Joshua these last few days too.  Overall, he's pretty silly and full of energy.

Sleeping: we recently took out Isaac's nap and it seems to be working really well.  He's very ready to go to sleep at bed time (we sometimes put him to bed a tad early even) and he sleeps all night until about 7/7:30.  If he naps he stays awake for hours.  (Case in point - he took a nap at school today and is still awake at 11pm.  I might need to talk to them...)  During quiet time he has a drawer with activities that are just for quiet time....white board markers, assorted craft items (pipe cleaners, yarn, glue stick, trash pieces of Styrofoam, scissors, toothpicks), a few toys that he hasn't played with much, and some sticker books.  I'll have to be proactive about changing things out though.  He has been good about putting the items away at the end of quiet time.

Imagination: Isaac has started being a gate again after a few months of not being a gate.  He is also a puppy dog and also calls me mama dog all the time.  He loves his ball.  He still likes playing Castle and is always animating things.  Sometimes I think I talk more to toys throughout the day than I do to Isaac.

Color: His favorite color is still black, hands down.

Random things: Isaac has started sounding out syllables for words when we don't understand what he's saying.  It doesn't always help.  He was talking about someone at school (which is also a new thing) and I said, "his name is roman?" "No.  Ro-"  "ro"  "ing"  "ing?"  "Yes."  Ok, great.  He has a friend named Rowing.  It turns out the name is Rowen, so I was pretty close.  We talk a lot about what letter starts assorted words.  He can often give me the sound and sometimes correlate that to an actual letter.

Monday: 16 months

Joshua turned 16 months a few days ago.

Talking: Joshua still doesn't have many words, but mama, da, more, ni-ni, and ba (ball) are ones that are commonly used.  There is also a sign for "all done", but he frequently uses it only to put more food in his mouth immediately afterwards.  We've been trying to work on a sign for please, but he is resisting.  Often he will even resist us making the sign with his hand.

Ideas: Joshua has his own ideas of what should happen and isn't afraid to let us know if our ideas are different from his.  Case in point, I left one of the car toys in the car today.  He wanted to bring it in the house and cried for several minutes after finding out that wasn't going to happen.  Now that he is walking better, Joshua has also found more independence.  He is more happy to go into the child care place at the gym if he can freely walk in by himself.

Sleep: not many changes from last month: still sleeping about eleven to twelve hours at night and waking once to nurse.  He naps poorly at daycare and sometimes ok at home.  He is still a light sleeper and wakes up several times at night but will go back to sleep without my having to get out of bed.

Eating: Joshua is nursing two to three times a day.  He (and Isaac) enjoy spinach smoothies, so I've actually been able to get some vegetables into him...and good ones at that.  I need to remember to give him a snack in the late afternoon so that he remains happy until dinner.

People: Joshua is still rather serious around non-family members.  But it is possible to get him to laugh on command a bit more.  Isaac remains the funniest person.

Playing: Joshua likes to be chased.  He plays peek-a-boo while getting his diaper changed.  It's really rather cute.  He covers his eyes, I say, "Where's Joshua?", and then he uncovers his eyes.  He likes balls and going down the slide and sometimes reading.  He likes the Ipad, but doesn't always have a very long attention span for it.

Sunday: church and evening

We had communion today in church, and this time everyone walked to the front to receive it.  I was sitting in the back row and noticed that all most all of the men let their wives and possibly children go ahead of them.  I know that Ben often does it, but I didn't realize how common it actually is.

This evening Joshua was fussy so I went to pick him up; it was a mom day today.  He proceeded to say "ni-ni" to Ben and pointed very clearly to his bedroom.  When we were in his bedroom he pointed to his crib.  Really?  It was a bit surprising, but if he was tired and knew it than I wasn't going to argue.  It was only about an hour early, so still a reasonable time to go to bed.  I'm glad that night-night is one of the few words he knows...it's come in rather handy a few times.

It worked pretty well...we put ornaments on the tree and it was probably easier to do without Joshua.

The mouse got his normal place near the bottom. :)

Saturday: another Thanksgiving meal

Today's Thanksgiving meal was with the other side of Ben's family.  It was nice as always.

Joshua playing with the balls.

Isaac playing with the black (of course) play-doh.

Playing "Where's my water" on the I-pad.  It isn't really a multi-person game, but they were doing really well with it.  On Wednesday one of my "chores" was to get more ducks to unlock the next meta-level so Isaac would have more levels to play. :)

Friday: lego day

Today was Lego day.  It went pretty well...Isaac enjoyed playing with the treasure chests and a spring loaded grabber thingy.  Joshua didn't play with the legos much.  At one point he just went back and forth between Ben and I for kisses (we were happy to oblige) and he worked on his sliding.


Ben is working on a flying boat and I'm building a robot army.  This is what it looked like at lunch.

We also started Christmas decorating this year.  We got some new lights...LED rope lights.  It makes the tree look different, but not bad.  We'll put up ornaments later...baby steps as always in this house.

Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving

First of all, there are so many things to give thanks to God for.  Ironically, I find that Thanksgiving tends to be so busy that I don't think about them much on this day.  But I am very aware of them.

It was also Ben's birthday.  ...I didn't do much for him today.  I didn't even give him his present.  This could either win me bad wife of the year award (because it is in my closet) or shows you how busy the day felt.

After our Thanksgiving meal we started our Lego weekend.

So far Joshua's been doing ok.  We're still watching him closely though.  Oh...he can also go down our slide by himself now!  We did it in nursery this morning and then he did it all by himself tonight.

The end of the first hour.  It is getting messier faster this year, partly because we have four people and partly because Ben dumped one of the buckets out.

 We ended up watching part of a movie for the last half hour before bed.  Isaac didn't manage to go to sleep until 11:15pm last night and has a bad cold.  He was exhausted.  I kept checking to see if he had a fever because he was rather flushed, but his temp was fine.

Wednesday: home alone

I'm home alone today!  Since there is no school for the kids tomorrow, I asked if they could go today instead.  I feel like I've gotten so many things checked off my list!

1. I got some fabric for the back of a quilt.  This was a super fast stop and didn't involve buying giant smarties.

2. I didn't get Joshua's wall painted, although I did try.  I can't get the paint can open.  But...now I know what the next step has to be!

3. I cleaned the kitty litter.

4. I cleaned the inside trash can.  I am pretty sure there are no more fruit flies, and it's getting cold out, so it'll be nice to have an inside trash again.

5. I paid some bills, sent some emails, did some Christmas shopping.

6. I made of movie of Joshua's first year pictures.  I made a similar one for Isaac.  I'm obviously not a professional photographer by any means, but it's still fun to see.  Joshua was much more cooperative in staying on his back for at least one picture!



7.  I relaxed.  I ate a quiet lunch and took a nap with no one around to wake me up.

8. I took pictures of a quilt. (And hope to post them soon.)

9. I rearranged Isaac's room for his new quiet time.  I think we'll have a drawer with a few activities that should only be opened during quiet time.  I also printed out some more mazes for him to do.  I also looked at the pictures of towers he made from a set of Duplos during the last rest time.  They're great.  Why am I making the towers for instructions when he makes such cool ones?

Monday: the time has come

The time has come to help Isaac not take a nap during the day.  At least, not when he's at home.  I've noticed that if he does take a nap lately he is then up for several hours in bed, unable to fall asleep.  So rest time is changing to quiet time.  He only has to stay in his room and we'll slowly accumulate more options of things for him to do.

It worked out well today.  He did some mazes.  He colored on the white board.  He built some duplo towers and took pictures of them.  He may have played with his marbles, although those have been out for a while.

Afterwards he still gets his screen time.

So overall a success, although kind of sad.  It was always nice to hope that everyone would take a good nap.

Sunday: changes

1) I got a haircut yesterday.  I mostly like it.  I chopped off about seven inches.

2) I moved the nightlight from our bedroom into the kitchen.  I know, it feels like an odd thing to mention.  But makes so much sense!  It makes our bedroom darker and lets me better see as I stumble to a child's room.  (It also lets Isaac see better if he needs to use the bathroom.  I'm pretty sure I don't wake up when that happens unless he calls me.)  I should have made the change a while ago, but didn't think of it.

3) Our winter lights are up.  Lights are my favorite part of the Christmas season, but this strand is really to help light up a corner that has no other great lighting.  The odd thing was that we received the package today...Sunday.  I guess the shipping season has started, but for some reason it makes me a bit sad that you can receive packages on Sunday.

Saturday: first snow

It snowed today!  Not as much as predicted, but it was nice and wet.

The first time we were not out for very long...Isaac seemed more excited about playing with the snow inside than about being outside.

For the second time I clothed Isaac much better and got out the sand toys.  I really need to remember to not put them away for the winter...I always end up digging them out of the garage when it snows out.  Joshua was complaining that he didn't get to go outside too, so I bundled him up.  He can't walk all that well to begin with, so the boots and snow pants were just too much.  He was out probably about four minutes.  Isaac was out a bit longer.

Friday: hmm

Hmm.  I had something profound to say...but I can't remember it now. :p

We went over to Betsy's house.  Isaac and Ethan had a good time playing...and there were only a few tears.  I'm still not sure what the tears were about, but the dog barked which made Isaac laugh and then everything was ok again.  I had a wonderful time too...it is nice to be with other people and makes the day go by so much faster.

I was going to put up our winter lights today but then they were completely dead.  How??  They were working when I took them down at the end of the winter.  It frustrates me.

Thursday: life lesson

Don't start a routine in which your young child gets a few minutes of Ipad time first thing in the morning.  They may wake up at 5am and then scream for a bit because they think it's Ipad time when it's really sleeping time.