Monday: toilet training and mail

Joshua did a great job with toilet training today.  While we weren't accident free, there weren't any urine accidents and he was able to go on the toilet easily.  Hurray!  Daycare said I could send him in underwear tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.  I'm going to have to let him start wearing pants soon.  Summer has been nice.

Isaac decided to make me a lot of mail today.  The first one he stapled all around a sheet of paper.  Then he opened it for me.  Since there were about twenty staples, it took a while.  It had a bunch of cut up pipe cleaners in it, as he recently realized he could cut pipe cleaners.  The second and third came together.  One was well taped in a piece of white paper...it was a folded piece of paper on which I could draw a map and return it to castle.  The second one was also well taped, but the outer layer was just folded in half so it was a bit easier to open.  It was a ball of pipe cleaners that I could use for Puppy Dog to fetch.

In other news, it was gymnastics day.  Joshua loves hanging on the bars, Isaac likes the balance beam.

Sunday

Today was a rather rough day.  Sundays seem to be the hardest for some reason.

We were on the deck at the end of the day and Isaac wanted a picture of the sunset.

And Joshua loves to do whatever Isaac is doing...in this case acting silly.

Saturday: funny mail

Sometimes, you just wonder what the companies are thinking...and why it took them 6 months to notify Ben that I had requested access to his medical records.

Friday: apple picking

Ben took off work a bit early today and we all went apple picking.  It was a wonderful time to do it.  There were only a few people there...it was cloudy and warm, but not too warm.  They had some wheelbarrows that were very easy to use, so the kids got wheeled around for most of the time.  The only downside was that most of the honeycrisps were already gone, but there were still plenty of good apples.

Isaac had just studied apples in school, so he could tell us things like, "The best golden delicious are the yellowest ones."  We weren't sure what kind(s) to get, so we did a sampling and I think everyone enjoyed how they all tasted so different.

Oh yes, Isaac got a massive hair cut today.  It's a bit shorter than normal, but we went to a different place and I might have given them the wrong number for the cut.  But he suddenly seems to have a bald spot in the back of his head, and we have no idea what would cause it except for him pulling out his hair.  So it needed to be short enough that he couldn't pull.

Joshua didn't really care about picking apples but just wanted to eat his apple.  By the end of the trip most of the skin was off.  He just happily sat there, eating away.

Look!  Ben's here too.

The restaurant wasn't busy at all - we could sit right down - so we ended up eating there.  Joshua loved pointing out that there were airplanes and drinking out of the cup with a straw.  (Usually at restaurants if there's a straw we hold the cup because the positioning isn't very good.  But this time it worked.)

Wednesday: slides and teasing

We went to the Grandville mall today to meet up with a friend.  The boys love the little play area there.  It has surprised me because it's not really that big and it hasn't been a huge hit past years, but this month they're excited about it.

Yesterday on the way to drop the boys off at school I looked at Joshua and it looked like he was asleep.  (Sunglasses make it so hard to tell!)  I said, "Joshua, are you awake?"  No response.  "Joshua, are you awake?"  Still no response.  I was going to give up since he was already asleep, but Isaac started the chant.  "Joshua, are you awake?"  "Joshua, Joshua?"

I glance back one last time and see a huge smile on Joshua's face.  He hadn't otherwise moved, but he was pretty proud of his trick.

Tuesday: email

Saturday night my previously free email app on my phone changed to a paid subscription of $50/year.

I was very sad.

And so now I've been trying all sorts of different ones and none of them are "just right".  There's one that's pretty close, but for some reason it doesn't turn on the LED notification when I have an email.  There's a second that's pretty close too, but it isn't color coded like I like.

I'm still sad.  And have spent way too much time on this.

Monday: a full day

Today was a rather full day, but not necessarily busy.

It started out with Joshua only waking up once in the night and sleeping past his alarm clock turning green.  And the wake up was just because he was cold, not because of unknown causes, so he went right back to sleep.

We had gymnastics in the morning.  Joshua still wanted to be picked up a lot in the beginning when we were doing some new things, but once we got to the things that we did last week he had a lot more fun.  Isaac did well too, but I only watched bits and pieces.

Then we ate lunch and went to Closest Beach.  (Not to be confused with Close Beach.)  We had a sort beach time last night so I said we could go again today.  It was rather warm, but nice.  We made volcanoes and tickled each other with water.

After rest time we watered the flowers.  I had been hoping to make banana bread today too, but we didn't quite have enough time.  Oh well.  We'll see if the bananas are still good later...they've been on the edge for a while.