Loving Our Life

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

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.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

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.

Tiny Tots Soccer

This year, when my mom asked what she could give my boys for birthdays, I asked that she send money, which we took to the rec center, all the while talking about what a great present this was from Grandma and Grandpa, and used to sign up for soccer. Jonah and Wyatt got to be on the same team--the 3 and 4 year olds--even though Jonah turned 5 four days after the season started. It was either that or go to soccer 2 nights a week for 6 weeks and I'm not that committed yet. There were some very cold games, and sometimes a lot of whining, but the boys liked it. It was definitely a hoot to watch because it is basically 10 kids all chasing after the ball, often interfering with their own teammates. Two little boys on our team would just stand in the center of the field as their parents yelled on the sidelines for them to "Get the ball!"