December 20, 2013

Man, 'tis the season to spin your wheels and feel like you can't get anything done, huh?

The past few weeks I've been trying to do fun Christmas activities with the boys but not be too-TOO about it, wanting to enjoy the season, trying to fit in regular workouts again, dealing with behavior/discipline issues that are inherent in life with a three year old, trying to keep my finger on the pulse of where I want to take (or follow) Levi educationally (I say that very loosely) in the next year so that I'm keeping up with teaching him fun things but following his lead.  And trying to fit in fun ways to get out of the house and burn energy when it's just too cold to play outside.

Oh, but when it ISN'T too cold to play outside....!!!  Woot woot!!

Getting outside with even one person under the age of...four?  Five? is the ultimate test in grace, patience, and dignity.  Two things I have learned:

1.  What is worse that getting *EVERYTHING* on and smelling the Whiff of Death?  Stripping it all off and FINDING OUT IT'S A FALSE ALARM.

2.  Mittens.  Mittens on toddlers.  Putting mittens on toddlers nearly induces a fit of rage in me.  It most definitely induces a fit of rage in them.  Put your thumb in the hole. No, in the hole.  Okay, stick out your thumb and put it here. No, HERE.  DUDE, stickoutyourthumb.  Give it to me.  It goes HERE.  *HERE.* Nevermind.  Thirty degrees is warm enough to go without mittens.

Let's seeee....what else.....Levi loves candy canes - thank you Mrs. Koets for sending us home with some the other day. :)

Frankly, my dear....

Luke turned 15 months last week!!  I was pregnant by the time Levi was 15 months. Heh.  Not this time!! LOL

Luke is utterly hilarious.  He is going to be the family clown and will probably try to charm his way out of every troublesome situation.  He's alternately very sweet and very loud.  We're trying to curb the loud sooner rather than later.  He's fast, he runs, he climbs everything, 'helps' me clean, loves tackling Levi, initiates play with him, is trying so hard to ride the tricycle downstairs, eats with a spoon, throws his sippy with frustrating regularity, tackles the dog, loves his little stuffed monkey with fierce loyalty, dies laughing, sings, loves to play with any toys, and is just getting over his stranger danger.

But he will not utter a word.  An occasional ma-ma and pa-pa, he's said "Nana" once or twice, and a handful of other words once or twice, but other than that, a point and grunt works for him.  We do all the speech therapy things you're supposed to do - repeat a word three times in a sentence, give him two choices and try to get him to say which he wants, talk-talk-talk through everything we do, talk in regular grown-up terms and in full sentences, reeeeaaadddd...enh, it'll come out at some point.

Nevertheless, he just wants to be a big boy.  He loves wearing the construction vest and fire chief jacket like Levi.

Levi loves to read to him every morning.

He's very hands-on...he likes to play with paint and crayons and dot markers and all that.  Levi wouldn't do any of that until the past several months.  Luke is a lot more sensory.

This was this morning. Levi was putting construction hats on himself and me, and Luke was putting the fire chief hat on himself.

We've noticed lately that Levi's face is filling out and his body is more solid and heavy when we pick him up, and it's like...what the heck?  He's changed overnight from a toddler to a preschooler and it's just incredible.

He had been so into gluing and doing little worksheets for a spree, and now he's totally moved on.  A few weeks ago we did the letter M and I found some fun little activities that involved sorting - which he was never interested in - and he totally loved it.  He did some money sorting activities, we baked M&M cookies and he sorted the colors, etc.

Every morning he still asks for his morning project, but then he wants nothing to do with it - even if it's a project he requested.  So I've scrapped for the time being the things that we had been doing and am just engaging him in other ways to see what he likes to do or wants to learn.   He's VERY into books, and just in the past couple of days he's been very into painting, which is kind of new.  He loves to tell stories - usually a mix of anecdotes he's heard me and Matt tell, and he mixes himself into the scenario and retells it. :) 

This morning he requested a project with frogs.  Random.  I drew a frog last night and set out his paints.  It was the most vibrant painting he's ever done.

He already requested a project about birthday cakes for tomorrow.  :)

December 4, 2013

I wanted to post this a week ago but you know how that goes.  I need to catch up on posting but will just do this one for the moment!!  Josiah came over to play last week.  It was little boy critical mass in our house (which is easily reached because our house is little)!!

They painted hand turkeys - Josiah loves to paint and Levi likes to follow what Josiah's doing, so this was a hit.

Anyone wanna volunteer to scrape the rest of the paint off the wall and repaint it for us?? ;)

Then I left them to play in the basement for a bit (if I leave the door and the laundry chute door open I can hear what's going on!).  They were building a "house" with just about everything in the basement, and it was fun to listen to them work on something and problem solve together.  Once or twice Josiah came up to tell me that Levi wasn't being kind, and a few seconds later Levi would come up and say, "Um, Josiah, I'm sorry I got mad at you."  So funny to hear their exchanges.

They were very proud of their house.  They did a great job helping me clean it all up too!

Seriously I think this is the best picture ever taken of them together.  They are both smiling genuine smiles (it's hard to get Levi to give a genuine smile with a camera).

I pulled out the Christmas decorations and let the boys "decorate."  Josiah went right to work, and might I say that he has quite the gift.  Observe:

Enh?

Lunch time at the little boy table. :)

What you can't see is that Josiah has construction goggles on too with that fire chief jacket.  It was a very fetching look.

November 21, 2013

Well I confessed/commiserated with a number of friends/moms a couple of weeks ago that I feel like I have a major anger problem.  I know I'm in good company when I say that never did I realize that I could reach boiling point so quickly until a three-year-old showed up in the house.  Thankfully, the past couple of weeks have been better, primarily because I know that there are a few people praying for me.  I hefted out a parenting book I had read when Levi was much littler, before the rubber hit the road, but I THOUGHT the rubber had hit the road, ya know?  It was a good reminder about the value of teaching them to obey the first time, something I sort of have struggled with because in my mind it sounds so....dictatorial?  Or something like that?  In addition to the fact that it's not how the Lord treats me, handing out a consequence if I don't follow His lead immediately (though, now that I think of it, there ARE inherent consequences to not just following Him as soon as we sense His leading).  Anyway, it was a struggle.  I'm learning, though, that it's in everyone's best interest.  I boil over with frustration after I've nagged Levi to do something - Buddy, I keep TELLING you...STOP it...I SAID to...IF I HAVE TO TELL YOU ONE MORE TIME....(thankfully, I refuse to count. I WILL NOT do the "Okay, I'm counting to THREE....OOOONNNNEEE.....TWWWOOOOOO..." thing).  So I told him the new plan is when I instruct him to do something, and he doesn't follow through the first time, he will get a consequence (time out speaks to him...losing privileges or beloved items like his construction jacket does too).  I remain calm, I'm not frustrated, and he's caught on right away to the fact that when I tell him to do something, I mean right now.  He knows that he doesn't have at least two or three more clenched-teeth 'reminders' before he really needs to spring into action (granted, he still tries to see if that'll work a few times a day, especially if he has an audience). So all that to say - I know there are other moms with preschoolers who are nearly bald from pulling out their hair and feeling rotten for getting so angry...if you haven't tried some technique to teach your kids first-time obedience, maybe it'll help a little bit???  I've also tried to be transparent with Levi that I struggle with anger and self-control and that's evidence of sin in my own heart that points to my own need for a Savior....and he has my permission to keep me accountable to that - so if I start to yell or show a lot of anger, he can say, "Mama, please stop yelling." I just don't want to be a yeller.  There are moments when it's necessary to get their attention, but not as a habit.  I want peace in our home, and it sure is hard to teach your kid self-control when you are hardly demonstrating it yourself. :/

I'm learning that it's helpful to teach them WHY they need to obey too.  I remind Levi frequently that I have things to obey as well - first and foremost being God Himself, but also laws and rules and stop signs and traffic lights and policemen - and it's my job to teach him to obey so that he will know how to obey laws and teachers and policemen and, of course, God.  So I'll ask him, "Why does mama teach you to obey?" and he mumbles, "So I obey Jesus and teachers and police."  And then I'm inwardly rolling. LOL

Anyway, on another subject, it is so much fun to approach the holidays with a preschool-aged kid.  Just about every day he asks if tomorrow is Christmas - and mainly because we told him that at Christmas time he can stay up late one night and watch The Polar Express, and he's so excited about that.  We've been learning about Thanksgiving this week and checked out some great books from the library about the Pilgrims and turkeys and thankfulness.

This morning while the boys ate breakfast I made a hand turkey and told Levi that Grandma Mark used to make hand turkeys with me.  Secretly I just take any opportunity to color because it's so relaxing! hahahaha  He wanted to make a turkey as well and decorate it with glitter.  Well that was messy.

We had a turkey hunt one morning - I hid these turkeys around the house and then he had to match them up with the numbers on the cookie sheet.

He's had fun with the rest of his projects - making a Mayflower out of shapes, color-by-number (which pretty much means color-whatever-he-wants), categorizing food and people, and arranging the Mayflowers according to their size.  On our Meijer trip this week I gave him his own "grocery list" and he had to mark off the items with a dry-erase marker as he saw them. He LOVED that and felt very important with his own list.

In other news, did you know that a Pack n Play turned on its side makes a fantastic fort?  The boys had a riot going in and out of their fort, and using their tools to "build" it.  

(I know, Luke's shirt is FULL of drool.  I don't even own bibs though because he won't keep them on.)

We were outside the other day and Levi wanted a shovel.  I gave him one and went into the back yard to do something (we were talking to each other through the fence), and when I came back out of the yard, he had cleaned up nearly half the driveway and piled the leaves together!!! It was awesome!  He's such a project-doer that cleaning up the yard this year has been way easier with his help. :)

Baby Bear loves to help too.  Mostly he likes to ride on the tarp full of leaves when I drag it to the curb.

I pulled this little table up from the basement to see if it would fit in the play area. It was my table when I was little.  Levi wanted 'his' (old, not super-functioning) laptop on it (Luke loves to play with the little Fisher Price one).  Cracks me UP because I sat at this very table when I was about this size, "typing" on one of my dad's old Commodore 64's.

I love, love, love this space.

November 13, 2013

I am pleased to say that it was a delightfully uneventful day.  No plans, wore sweats - wait, I wear those every day, never mind - no huge meltdowns (only the usual ones).  Score.

Levi runs out of his room every morning now to see what his "project" is.  This morning was just the dig-the-numbers-out-of-the-rice and match them to the numbers on the kangaroo (I admit that coloring the kangaroo last night was a relaxing outlet for me).  He enjoys that...but what he enjoys even more is gathering his trucks afterward and digging in the rice.

Then he glued jewels on a crown to put on his foam "K" - but he wanted to crown Luke first.  Remember when we used to call Luke "The King?" hahahahaha  I keep remembering some of his kingly demands from when he was a young baby, and at the time it seemed like it would never end.

Made banana blueberry muffins this morning. Levi was in charge of banana mashing.  Luke was tired and wrapped around my knees so I strapped him on my back.  When he started to snore I put him to bed.  Some mornings you just still need a nap.

I'm not gonna lie: Luke sleeping + setting Levi up with a learning app = a surprisingly refreshing few minutes to myself! (And clean up the kitchen.)

I have noticed lately that I am no longer called "Mama."  I am "Heymama."  Heymama, where is my water?  Heymama, what's for lunch?  Heymama, is it nice outside?  Heymama...Heymama....Heymama...

After every single ingredient I added to the muffins, Levi ran back into the kitchen (because he runs out as soon as I turn on the mixer.  I like Aunt Mary's mixer better.  It's quieter, he says) and asked, "Heymama, are the muffins ready to eat yet?"  No, Levi, I just added the baking soda.  Heymama, are the muffins ready to eat yet? Nooooooo......

It was well worth our while to bundle up and head out today for a little bit. 

He has dirt on his nose because he licked dirt off a plastic shovel.

November 12, 2013

Luke's fourteen months old today! And he had his first haircut!!

 

 He screamed the whole time loved it!

I just have to pause and say that this pretty much sums up the boys' personalities.  Levi did not love his first haircut, but he quietly accepted it with a slightly distressed look on his face. 

(Levi's first cut, December of 2011 - almost the same age as Luke)

 

 Luke screamed while I got MY hair cut AND his...until Amber started popping Smarties in his mouth.  Thankfully, even though he was loud about it he sat still.  He just made it very apparent that he didn't LIKE it.

Poor little warrior. He was so tired from crying that I nearly had to hold his head up.

The Smarties were like magic.  His face is broken out and blotchy because he's cutting molars. :(

 

 

 He does look very handsome now.  I feel like I put my baby on the chair and pulled a little boy off when it was done. :(

Speaking of, we moved the oh-so-faithful rocking chair out of the living room last night to make more space for the boys to play where the toys are stored.  We LOVE our rocking chair but we aren't rocking babies to sleep anymore, and every little bit of space counts.  I put the town/road rug out that we bought when Levi was a baby but he never got into it...and funny enough, now that it's in a new location, both boys were SO into it this morning.  The rocker is upstairs where Luke sleeps adjacent to our room, and when he moves in with Levi we'll use that space as a little reading room.

 

 

 Love this of Luke.  Except the drool coming off his chin, which is pretty permanent right now.

This was Matt's idea this morning: match the letter with the object.

Levi was only mildly interested at first, but said he wanted to leave it out so he could work on it later...which he actually did do.  So I guess it was a success. :)