Saturday: Christmas eve

Today we opened presents as a family.  (Unpictured: I got a new space heater for the basement and some legos and to sleep in!  The legos have a light brick that I'm excited to see. And since I slept in I didn't take a nap and so it felt like I had two extra hours today.  It was awesome.)

Isaac was as excited as a 5 year old can get to get the laser maze.  There was jumping and falling on the floor.

We went to pick up McDonald's for lunch.  I didn't make the boys wear their hats or mittens, but of course they were cold in the car.  (I did offer to let them wear them and they declined.)  I told Isaac to put his wipe on his head.  Even though I suggested it, turning around to see it made me crack up laughing.

We went to church, but getting out the door was surprisingly hard.  Joshua...I'm not sure what Joshua wanted but it wasn't to go to church.  Isaac knew he would have to go to big church and so wanted to bring laser maze and starting crying when we said no.  We got there in one piece though and it was a nice service.



J: mushroom?
I: maybe
J: Maybe?
I: Maybe it'll be a mushroom.  You'll see.
Joshua eats the mushroom that he already has.
I: The mushroom's all gone Joshua.  You put the toothpicks in here.
J: all done?  Oh!  It's a mushroom?
I: Meat?
J: Mead?
I: Meat.
J: I eat it?
I: Yes.
I: drop it.
J: drop
I: eggs?
J: Please more Isaac!
I: Eggs Joshua?
J: something one more, one more, one more.
I: eggs
J: Eggs

Friday: creations

We went to story time at the library.  During the sleepy bunny song Isaac went to cuddle by Joshua.

During play time, he made a rocket ship.  It had super boosters, so it flew from Earth to Pluto, where I was, in zero seconds.  Then he made a telescope so that man could look at the stars.  He found 100 new stars, including one really bright one.  The bright one was Jesus' star.

Joshua really wanted to cut the pretend food and waited very patiently for the knife.  We stayed around a bit extra at the end so he could fully play with it.

At home, Isaac made a snow plow.

He also got some snow.  However, the snowplow wasn't great at moving this snow.

Thursday: oh Joshua

Joshua woke up several times last night.

1. Something was wrong with the book.  I think he feel asleep on it and was unhappy about that.
2. That book was still in his bed and he wanted it out.  But he also wanted a different one.  Not a different I-Spy.  We settled on Elmo.  I won't tell you how long it took me to figure this out at 2am in the morning.
3. Blankets.
4. He wanted to get up.  It was 6:45 and so it was understandable, but the light wasn't green yet.  I brought him to the bathroom and then "settled" him in bed for a few more minutes.

Nap time rolls around and he is dead on his feet.  He can't finish the game we're playing because he just wants to go to bed.  Ok.  I put him in bed.  Nothing is right.  The wrong blanket is on.  Bear is missing.  He dropped his Duplos.  He needs a book.  Thirty minutes later I take him into bed with me and we finally get to sleep.

Tonight rolls around and Ben is putting him down. He wants a book.  He says an I-spy one.  No, one from his shelf.  No, that book is too big.  They finally find one.  As I'm leaving Isaac's room he calls me over, but is able to move the book out of his way by himself.  Five minutes later he calls, because he wants me to see him putting a duplo in the bucket.  A half hour later he calls, saying, "I'm grumpy" which is his code phrase for "I need my nose wiped."  We find his wipe.  We find Bear and Elephant.

And he finally falls asleep.  Hopefully I don't hear any more for the rest of the night.

Wednesday: outside, Flurry, train

Ethan and Leah came over today.  We let the older kids try their hand at sledding by themselves.  I wasn't completely sure it would work, but they seemed to have a great time.

The younger two were outside for about an average of two minutes.

Later in the day Joshua had a heart-to-heart with Flurry under the tree.   I think he was saying, "Flurry, get out."

The boys played with Duplos a lot today.  Isaac decided it was Giraffe's birthday and made a candle and cake, and then we all had (real) birthday cookies.  Joshua then decided that his lovies, Bear, Elephant, and Square, all needed to have birthdays too.  Square didn't have a face, so Isaac proceeded to put lots of faces on Square, with Joshua's oversight.

Tuesday: and puppy dog tails

Isaac has been spending more time than normal as Puppy Dog the last few days.  (He's woofing in the picture below.)

He also made himself a tail, that he wore for the whole afternoon.

In other news, one of the sheep from our nativity is lost.  You'd think that it would be smart enough to not hide from me, at the very least.  Isaac has figured up how they get to the tall places...they get sticky feet when they have Christmas magic.

slippers

Joshua's slippers kept falling off.  Last year I sewed them so that the opening was smaller, but this year he then couldn't get his foot in them.  I was about to do it again with a larger opening when I realized I had some elastic in my random box.

So I did this instead, sewing some elastic inside the slipper.

So far it seems to work much better.  They've come off a few times, but I'm not sure if that's because he took them off or because the came off.  They stayed on through his whole nap, which was a bit surprising.

I was rather proud of myself.

I wasn't so proud of the haircut that I gave Joshua today.  I looked up how to do it better tonight though, and I might be able to fix it still.  We'll see tomorrow.

Sunday: kids

Isaac made this fun man with the Blokus blocks.  He's good at playing the game, but it's also just fun to make designs with it.

Joshua also played with his Christmas present.  When I got in from snow blowing, he was doing fine.  Five minutes later Ben came out of the bedroom and there were crayon marks all over the floor.  His punishment was to help me clean them up.

He was ok(ish) with helping right before church, after his nap was a different story.  After sitting on the floor for ten minutes we moved to the couch.  I suggested cleaning the floor a few times but he threw a short fit every time.  So we snuggled for the next half hour.  I took cat naps and Joshua just sat there because he wasn't allowed to do anything else.  Isaac finished cleaning his room, and asked to watch TV.  I told him he could watch in his room, but Joshua also wanted to watch.  I told Joshua he could watch after the floor was clean and that finally motivated him.  (I thought we had covered that at the beginning of the hold-out, but maybe it didn't sink in.)

This was our first serious non-paper incident, possibly because Isaac doesn't really like to color.  The crayon came out pretty easily, but I wish it had been with our markers because they wipe up super easily.  Oh well.