Thursday: 46 months

Isaac turned 46 months several days ago!

Emotions/attitude: it was a pretty good month.  We've had some problems with listening the last few days, but overall pretty good.  He loves Ben and me.  He often says to me, "I love you so so so so so so so so.....so so much."  Which is fun...most of the time.  Ben usually gets "I love you ten much" or whatever number Isaac is feeling like.

Time scales: Isaac gets his time scales all messed up.  He has two: all day and tomorrow.  All day can mean often, today, or all the time.  Tomorrow can mean yesterday, tomorrow, a long time ago, or in the future.  It is often hard to figure out what he's trying to say.

Imagination: Isaac likes playing castle.  He is a puppy all the time lately...and by default the rest of us are dogs too.

Learning: They are concentrating on a letter a week at school and I can tell he's picking up on it.  He can sound out the first sound of a word and sometimes can even figure out what that sound is.  He is starting to write his name without prompting...below you can sort of see his name.  He got a little messed up around the As and crossed one out.  It also kind of wraps around.

Praying: Isaac has started to pray aloud about one time a day.  They are good prayers (see the video from a few days ago) although they sometimes lack complete sentences.  The prayer at the beginning of the month was "Dear God, [Thank you] for everything in the whole world and [help] everyone not break anything. And [thank you for] Jesus and thunder and lightning Amen."

He also wanted to take a picture of the pretty star.  I'm just excited because he's willing to sleep under my quilt again.

Wednesday: Oobleck

Today I thought we'd make Oobleck.  It worked because it was a beautiful day out!  It felt like a nice day in September, not the beginning of November.

Anyway, I'd recommend Oobleck.  1) Easy to make.  2) It's messy.  We did it outside, which was perfect.  3) It is the easiest thing to clean up ever.  A lot of it can be brushed off.  If it can't be brushed off, it just needs to hit a stream of water and it dissolves.  Awesome.  4) If you add color too it it takes a while for the color to fully mix, so you can see the color swirls for a while.  Like adding food coloring to water, but slower.  (Note: however, I'd recommend against having your young child get red food coloring in the same place he hurt his lip.  It looks bad and as though you are a bad mom for not taking care of your child.)  5) Isaac and Joshua enjoyed it.  It lasted for about an hour, which is pretty good.

Let's see...what else happened today?  Oh, I found out why people don't use a walking lawnmower to pick up their leaves.  It doesn't work well.  However, the lawn really needs to be mowed so I did it anyway, emptying the bag every two minutes.  But now the bin is full of long grass that grew really well and chopped up leaves, and I didn't finish mowing the grass.  It meant I could take a nap, which I was completely fine with doing.

I won a game of racquetball against Ben, 16-14.  He proceeded to win the next game as normal.  Well, let me take that back.  He didn't actually win because we didn't finish it because the first game took too long and our time was up.

Tuesday: more videos

Isaac praying.  It's his new prayer.


Joshua discovered jumping.  He did it once by himself, probably by accident, and then thought it was so funny when Ben would jump.  Joshua kept trying, but it usually looked as though he was jumping down instead.


Joshua has also started bringing drinks to the couch at dinner time.  Usually he doesn't fall.

Monday: a new record

We had a new record today!  Two bloody lips.  Isaac must have had a split lip...I saw it in Meijer and he was completely oblivious.  I asked him if it hurt and he thought a bit and then said yes, but I kind of wonder if he said yes because he was hoping to get something out of it.  However, Joshua did a face plant and fully understood that something was wrong.  My first instinct with bloody lips, I've recently learned, is to rush into the bathroom.  I then decide that I need a paper towel, which is not in the bathroom and sigh to myself.  I should really think about what I'm going to do when I see blood before doing anything.  Or have some paper towel in the bathroom.

Ben and Isaac "played science" tonight.  The second machine was a hit...he laughed and laughed and laughed with it.

Flurry has been feeling left out lately.

Sunday: time change

The boys have been sleeping in pretty well in the mornings.  There have been a few where I haven't had to get up until 8.  (And on a weekday it feels rather scandalous.)  It may have helped that I set the heat so that it doesn't kick on until 7:45.

Anyway, due to this lovely sleeping in streak the boys did well today.  Joshua woke around 6:45 and started creaking.  I was vaguely aware of it but Ben got up with the boys so I got to sleep in even more.  It was wonderful.

Saturday: funny Isaac sayings, Joshua in costume

Ben:  ... and I was talking to Ben about the problem at work...
Isaac bursts out laughing.
Ben: what's so funny?
Isaac: you were talking to yourself???

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Ben and I are talking about random things in the car.
Isaac: we should paint our house
Amanda: oh really.
Isaac: yeah, we should paint it black.
Ben: the inside or the outside?
Isaac: the inside.  I don't like white.
Ben: but if we did that we wouldn't be able to see we'll.

Isaac: we could just put more lights in.  We should paint it black.

Ben: but we wouldn't be able to see well!

Isaac: but I have special eyes.

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Ben: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Isaac: a big dog.

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Isaac, to himself in bed: The Bible verse says you can have a treat.

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We went to Cheryl's house to trick-or-treat this evening.

This is when Joshua saw Grandma. :(  It was an instant run away.

Joshua slowly warmed up.

Joshua likes to pick up books and read them.

Friday: Trick or treats and more!

Isaac decided to take a picture of the coasters today.

Then we had Joshua's 15 month well child visit.  He weighed 20 lbs 4 oz (14%) and measured 30.5" (24%).  Everything seemed fine except that his hemoglobin was still low.  I'm hoping it's because the first month we didn't use vitamins "with iron" because when I got the vitamins I didn't know it would be low and after I didn't realize there was a with and without iron.  It does surprise me a bit though, since for the past month we've been pretty good at taking them regularly...we miss maybe one day a week.  However, it must not be too low since we're not checking it again until his 18 month appointment.

We went Trick or Treating at Ethan's church.  Like last year.  It isn't cold and isn't too much candy.  I was a bit sad to see Isaac take several harder pieces of candy...he's ok with suckers, although they still get a little sticky, but I'm not sure how laffy taffy will do.  I guess we'll find out.

Isaac was a Lego Block.  A black one, of course.  With a candy holder brick too.  He couldn't hold the candy holder with both hands because the box was too big, so Ben and I ended up holding it.  However, Ben managed to fit into the box, so I expect that we have several years with this costume. :)

Joshua was Winnie-the-Pooh.  I'm hoping to get a better picture tomorrow to compare to Isaac in it.  The hat didn't stay on very long.

We went to Wendy's afterwards, and Ben was trying to spell something to me...

Ben: Should I give Isaac a s-t-r-a-w?
Amanda: s.....t........a.........can you spell it again?
Ben: s-t-r-a-w
Amanda: s.....t.......a......r......w....are you sure it ends in a w?

We were talking about it later, and spelling things for me just does not work.  My brain cannot process the words in any sort of timely manner.  Whenever Ben does it he can see my brain break and it's true!  I tend to just say things because I don't like being spelled at, but maybe I can spell a few more things because Ben actually can understand it.