Cold Day Fun

Iowa is cold! I know my last posts show a lovely warm spell in late November, but besides that the winter here is cold, cold, cold. It really messes with your senses because when it gets up to 30 degrees you think, wow, it's really warm out! We do venture out as much as we can, like last night when Jonah really wanted me to go out and look at stars with him at 7:00 at night. Wyatt ended up wanting to come too, so the three of us bundled up and went into the backyard. We never took our tree swings down, so after finding Orion's belt and Mars (I think) they wanted to swing on the swings. Children must not be as sensitive to cold because it couldn't have been any warmer than the 8 degrees it is as I type this at 3 in the afternoon, and they kept wanting to be pushed higher, which to me just meant having freezing cold air blow in their faces. I was happy to be the pusher.

So we spend a lot of time inside.

Here's proof we sometimes do bundle up and brave the snow.

Annual Christmas Tree Hunt

This year's hunt was very different. It was so warm we didn't even need jackets. If the deciduous trees weren't bare I swear you'd think it was just late summer in these photos.

The winner! Who knows how tall of a ceiling we'll have next year, so we have to live it up while we can. This one came within centimeters of the ceiling. It was beautiful!

This is just me playing with our new wide-angle lens for fun.

And here are the men toting the tree. Just think, with 3 sons I may never have to carry a sappy tree again. My mom and dad flew in the day after Thanksgiving so they got to come along. It was fun having them here for all the Christmas decorating.

November Camp Out

We had a really nice warm spell in November and so Max took the boys camping. Emmett and I stayed at home, but went out for a visit early in the morning. The boys love camping with Dad. This time, Wyatt was especially excited about getting to drink hot chocolate for breakfast! When Emmett and I arrived they were all at a pond fishing. Jonah and Wyatt each caught a small fish and Jonah even gave his a kiss before throwing it back in the pond.

Six Months

How does six months for the third child seem to go by so much faster than six months did for the first child? Time has flown and suddenly Emmett turned six months back in November. Here are my two favorite photos from the 4 photo sessions he and I had trying to get the first one.

Just so I remember when I go to make his first year scrapbook:

At six months Emmett could easily roll over--he had been rolling over to sleep on his stomach since he was three months old. He was already sitting up and was just starting to make his first crawling moves. At the time of this post, he's just over eight months and he crawls everywhere and pulls himself up on everything. Just the other day I found the stair gate had been left open and Emmett had made it down to the third stair on his own. I don't know exactly how he was doing it, but there he was three steps down. Jonah and Wyatt both took several falls down stairs when they were young, so instinctually I didn't let Emmett continue on his own long enough to see how he was doing it. In the last two weeks Emmett has started dancing--mostly shaking his head side to side whenever he hears music. I love that dancing is so natural in children. No one ever taught him this, he just has to move and groove when he hears music.

Leaves

Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. It definitely rivals Christmas as one of my favorite holidays. Maybe because it is close to my birthday and birthdays were always fun with costumes or haunted houses. This year I turned 31 and eating my cake was much better than on my 30th birthday when I was pregnant with Emmett and could barely keep anything down. See how happy I am about this.

How can you not love Halloween when you get photos like these.






This is the ward trunk-or-treat. Max and I are always some of the VERY few adults to dress up. But I don't get to dress up for much else so I milk it for all it's worth and luckily Max plays along. As you can see here and from the above photos, Wyatt's costume is a little snug. It was supposed to be his costume last year, but he wouldn't have anything to do with it. This year, I tried to get him to wear something else and all he wanted was last year's dragon costume.
Jonah went as a knight and Emmett rocked out with his parents.

Here, you can see Jonah dressed as a pirate for both a community event,

and for his preschool party.

On the night of Halloween, however, the costume was upgraded and Jonah became a Knight Pirate. Wyatt passed up the hot-pants dragon and expressed his inner being, a Wild Thing.

Late Summer Fun

We borrowed a canoe from one of Max's teachers and took it out on nearby lakes a few times. The boys like water, which is a good thing in our opinion because we hope to take them on many a river trip.

Max has done this with all of our children. Jonah and Wyatt could balance on his hand around 5 months. He tried it earlier with Emmett, I think some where around 4 months and low and behold....

Here is Emmett trying some of his first solid food. He sure warmed up to it quickly and now eats just about everything we give him. He wasn't so sure about the broccoli I tried to give him the other day, but we'll try again.

Jonah Turned Five

Back in September, my baby turned 5! Jonah is very creative. He loves to make up stories and loves to hear stories, particularly Dad's stories. He has an incredible memory, especially for books and poetry. He can "read" a lot of books to Wyatt just because he has them memorized. Jonah is also very loving. He comes in and gives me good-morning hugs every morning and if he sees me crying, he goes and gets me a drink of water and tells me that it will help.

One thing Jonah does not like is getting his picture taken, so these photos are the best I could get. The others are all grumpy faces or the back of his head.

For the past year, Jonah and Wyatt have loved playing pirates, so for fun, we made two pirate ship cakes in the middle of a cannon duel.

Wyatt's birthday, back in July, was supposed to be at a local park that has some small carnival rides. Sadly his party was rained out so we ended up at home making an obstacle course and eating cupcakes that looked like basketballs, baseballs, and soccer balls. Even more sad is that I can't find any photos from Wyatt's birthday party, not even photos of the cupcakes, which I'm sure I took. Poor middle child.

We tried again for the park for Jonah's birthday and this time it worked. Jonah is a very social person. Everyone, young and old, is his friend. Because of this, when we were making the birthday party list, I had to stop him at 15 kids. He would have gone on and on, but 15 was already more than I thought I could handle. Since we had the carnival rides, we went with a carnival theme (and I can thank Pam's post about her summer carnival for all the ideas).

This is Jonah holding hands with his friend Daphne. They were in the same preschool class and Daphne loved to be the princess or the mermaid and Jonah was more than happy to be the prince or the pirate. Now they are no longer in the same class and alas, their fanciful relationship has fizzled. Perhaps the second photo was more telling of future events than we thought at the moment.

The birthday boy.

Wyatt, have just as much fun as if it were his own party.

We had face painting,

tattoos,

silly mustaches,

and not shown, but still a lot of fun were the fishing game, the shoot-the-ball-off-the-tee-with-a-watergun game and the clothespin drop game. The kids earned tickets at all the games and then used their tickets to buy party favors. Definitely a fun party.

Corn

Fun photos of us in Iowa corn, just after Max returned from Alaska...thus the very large beard.

The beard left in stages, luckily this stage only lasted a few hours.

Milestones

Jonah missed the deadline for kindergarten by 4 days. I felt he needed a little more than a two-day a week mom's preschool like we did last year so I got up very early the morning of President Obama's inauguration back in January to get him registered at a great preschool. I'd heard that there was always a line to get the registrations in so if I wanted in, I'd better get there early. I did. I was first in line...got to listen to 45 minutes of NPR's coverage of the inauguration preparations before another parent even showed up...and can mothers go to extreme lengths to get what they want for their children? Yes, we can!

Here he is on his first day.

Wyatt still has this year and next before starting kindergarten so I decided to do a mom's group this year with him and hopefully a preschool next year wherever we move.

This is at our first field trip to a local petting zoo.

And this is our second field trip to a local apple orchard.

Wyatt loves his preschool friends and talks about them a lot. Just the other day he thought for a moment and told me, "There isn't anyone in my preschool whose name starts with an E." Which reminds me that I should record for my own memory that Wyatt is already reading! I started a Hooked on Phonics book with Jonah during the summer because it seemed he was really ready. Since I don't feel there is any pressing need for him to be able to read before he starts school we worked on it every once in a while, only for as long as he wanted, which some days meant about 2 minutes. He's now started the next grade level and is doing really well. Just when he was about to finish the first workbook, I realized that Wyatt was sounding out the word "mop" in a little game we have, so I started the workbook with him and he is about 1/3 of the way through. Wyatt often surprises me like this. I don't know if it is because I'm more focused on the developmental steps of Jonah because they are all firsts for me as a mother or because Wyatt is often so silly and goofy that I don't expect it, but he is one smart cookie mixed with a lot of playfulness.

Here's a cute photo of Emmett taken around the same time the boys started preschool. His milestone was rolling over just before he turned 3 months old. This is much earlier than either of his brothers and it made me nervous because the doctors always tell you to put your baby on his back. Emmett became a stomach sleeper on his own at 3 months and there was nothing I could do about it. And yes, I kiss those lips as often as I can.