September 24, 2013

So I discovered today that you can cut the stroller commute to the park in half if you wear rollerblades.

Luke shrieked like he was on the best roller coaster ride ever.

And I also discovered that pushing 65lbs uphill (two boys + the stroller = roughly 65lbs) on inline skates is....a whoa-baby workout.

The fundamental differences between these two is particularly highlighted at the park.  Levi wouldn't go down most slides or climb most of the equipment before this summer.  He's just very cautious and calculated.  Luke is more....ready-fire-aim in his approach.  He LOVES to play on the equipment now, but he's just unsturdy enough (and daring enough) that I have to follow him very closely.  So I have to follow him up the steps, and then literally sprint around to the other side before he dives face-first down a slide.  He has zero sense of caution.

There was a little girl there who was being very sweet with him, trying to be all gentle and talk baby-talk to him, and I'm thinking, oh sweet cheeks, you better get out of his way...!!!!  He turned on the Luke charm, though.

I took the boys to the library this morning.  It's impossible to take a toddler/preschooler to the library and have it be anything other than embarrassingly loud.  Levi is so sweet but he's a typical kid who has one volume of voice in a quiet library: embarrassingly loud.  Enter the library: MAMA!!! (peering down to the lower level) WHAT'S DOWN THERE? HOW DID THOSE PEOPLE GET DOWN THERE? CAN WE GO DOWN THERE?  Push the button on the elevator (starts the agitated jig - he's afraid to cross the crack between the elevator and the floor)  OHHHH!! OHHHH!!!  CARRY MEEEEE!!!! CARRY MEEEEE!! Get off the elevator: (sees the turtle tank) WOOOOOOOWWWW!!!!! (finds a truck book) MAMA!  BUY THAT!  CAN WE BUY THAT?!  (sees the Matchbox car collection of the month) LOOK AT THOSE CAARRRRRSSSS!!!!! I'M GONNA GO SIT ON THE BOAT!  MAMA, CAN I SIT ON THE BOAT?  MAMA?! MAMA!   MAMA THE LIBRARIAN'S NOT HERE! WHERE DID THE LIBRARIAN GO? MAMA!  While I'm trying to nonchalantly remind him through clenched teeth to speak in a soft and respectful voice.  The librarian came up to me and said, "I just love his voice! He's so enthusiastic!"  Yes, why yes, he is very enthusiastic.

I bought some new letter and number puzzles and set them out for Levi's "breakfast challenge."  It sure helps to give him something to keep busy while I make breakfast.  I piled all the letters and numbers together and he had to figure out what was a letter and what was a number and put it on the appropriate puzzle. This stumped him a little bit and took a few minutes to figure out.  He gets letters and numbers mixed up sometimes. It was a good challenge. :)

He wanted to do Play Doh today. I made him a mat with his letter and tried to show him how to shape the Play Doh to the letter but he wasn't terribly interested in that.

He did want to color and dot paint so we had the lunch time mess again.  It was a little more controlled than the last time, though.

This is what happens when you mix purple crayon and slobber:

He looks like a wreck because he cried REALLY HARD about the hooked-finger crayon-ectomy that I performed on his trap. He was really enjoying that tasty crayon.

And yes, I'm going to shamelessly brag: look at what Levi did without any direction from me!! He was really proud of all his little 'projects.' :)  I'm just having a ton of fun seeing how his fine motor ability changes by the week. It's fascinating.  Little kids are just cool. :)

September 23, 2013

We had a nice, tame, understated birthday party for Lukie this weekend.  The sweet spot was to sleep him up and fill him up, and have it in that two-hour interval between morning and afternoon naps. It worked perfectly. He had a nice nap, ate a good lunch, and then the partiers (i.e., grandparents) showed up.  We ate sandwiches and cupcakes, opened a few presents, let the boys play a little, and then back down for naps.  And that was a wrap.

Yummy GF cupcakes made by moi.  They were good but I should've gone with Cupz instead, which is what I usually do.

Pre-party lunch. :)

Opening his presents...

Favorite gift: super-soft polar bear from Grandma Mark.  Luke will face-plant on anything soft and like there, belly-down, with a drunken grin on his face.  Which is exactly what he did.

He nibbled politely on his cupcake for a few minutes and then ditched it. Sorry, I don't do the stripped-down messy-frosting pics.  Not my style.

Their colds are finally clearing up.  Levi took the brunt of it this time, and I counted that I was up multiple times a night with at least one coughing child eleven nights in a row.  I honestly have slept better with newborns in the house.  So we skipped church on Sunday.  Their noses were still running, and technically they aren't supposed to go to the nursery as such, and honestly - I want my kids to have just one week cold-free.  And this mama just. wants. sleep.

Levi woke up with a very wet bed this morning (which is pretty much a nightly occurrence, yes he's still in dipes but he's a turbo-wetter at night), so I plopped both boys in the tub.  Baths are usually done in the evening, but since Levi was so wet, and Luke was nearly swan-diving into the tub with his jammies on, I figured why not.  They don't typically bathe together so they had a riot.  I did my hair while they played.  Win-win.  Dig the Tarzan pants I drew on them?

Levi was very proud of himself for completing his word puzzles by himself at breakfast, so he grabbed his phone and called Dr. "Be-kowski" (his pediatrician, Dr. Rutkoski) to tell him all about it.

Then he retired to his room to read a book (and keep Luke out of his hair, I think).

Luke retired to the front entry to twang on the door stopper. :)  Dooiiiinnnnnnggggggg

We kicked off 'D' week with a foam dinosaur 'D' that admittedly looks more like a turtle.  We did other stuff too, but the dino was the cutest.

Happy anniversary to me and Matt!!! Seven years today of bliss, bliss, bliss. ;)  I love you, Matt and I *can't wait* to see what the Lord has for us in the next seven years. 

September 19, 2013

Mary and I were planning on taking Levi and Josiah to the zoo this morning, but of course for the first time in a couple of months it actually rained.  She had even made scavenger hunt sheets, with pictures of animals and shapes and colors for them to mark off.  So we went to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum instead.  Their featured exhibit right now is "Kidstruction", a play construction area that I was certain Levi would be all over.  Oddly enough, he was pretty nonplussed by it. Well, not totally nonplussed, but not as enthusiastic as I would have thought.  It WAS more like a glorified sand box, and he actually wants to play with EQUIPMENT.  If the excavator that was doing real construction outside the museum were up for grabs, I'd still be trying to tear him off it right now.

At any rate, he had a great time flitting from one activity to the next.  He had to orbit the place a few times before getting into anything. When we go again, he'll have it cataloged from all of his orbiting and will be ready to attack it more.

He kept walking around holding his hard hat on.  Hard to do construction when you have to hold your hat in place.

He did love hauling this little train around.

Oh, buddy.  Working through your lunch break.  I've eaten more sandwiches than I can count that way.

I think this was his favorite.

My shoulders and neck ache just looking at the lady in the background with her baby in a Bjorn carrier.  She would be so much more comfortable with an Ergo.

Play kitchens are always a huge hit with this little guy.

"Here, Mama - I made lou lunch."  Can I have some dessert? "Not until lou have a few more bites of your lunch."

A giant Lite Brite board!!  Remember Lite Brite?

Hanging magnetic apples with Josiah. :)

September 17, 2013

Not much has happened in the past week, except, oh, that OUR LITTLE BABY TURNED ONE!!!!  Our little Luke James, our mighty warrior.  I would love to write on and on about him...but to celebrate his birthday (belatedly), I am going to save the words and move on quickly so I can soon enjoy something I did NOT have exactly a year ago: sleep.

We gave him his presents in the morning, but his party (cake, grandparents) will be this coming weekend.  We gave him a blinky-blinky-noisy pull toy, and a set of his own cars to play with.  I was actually surprised that he was more into the cars; he usually goes after the blinky toys.

That afternoon we went to the beach.  Originally I did this because it was "B" week and Levi had been asking quite a bit to go back to the beach to see the boats.  I thought, well, isn't that convenient.  The BEACH to see BOATS and BIG RED!  Then I invited Nana to come with us, and it was a fun way to spend Luke's birthday too.  

How these boys are different can be summed up by their reactions to the seagulls that were scoping our lunch.  Levi: very cautious, then very alarmed that the seagulls might want to eat his lunch.  Quickly convinced that the seagulls were going to come and take his lunch rightnow.  Whimpering a lot about the seagulls daring to take his lunch.  Nana did a great job talking him down from his very concerned state.

Luke: Forget lunch, and who cares if anyone steals it.  He jerks, arches, twists, and slides off my lap, and takes off as fast as he can so he can look at one of the seagulls lingering on a nearby picnic table.  If that bird had walked up to him, Luke would have swan-dove on it.

...and who needs to eat lunch when you're sitting on a bunch of sand anyway??

Levi did get his brave back on and wanted to explore the little dune between the beach and the channel. It was way, way too perfect of a day for it.

We did celebrate Lukie's birthday that night with brownies and ice cream. :)  Our "party" this year will be pretty low-key.  I realized during Levi's first birthday party that first birthday parties are pretty unsuccessful from the baby's point of view.  Levi, who didn't have a lick of social anxiety, was overwhelmed and slept through half of his party. Luke has had a little more a lot more stranger danger than Levi ever did (the first time ELI came over, Luke cried and looked at him like, Do you even have a SOUL?!  I was like, Luke, HE'S FOUR).  So ya, scrap the big party for this one.

"C" week this week - and I didn't plan a lick.  Both boys came down with colds last week, I worked (ish, got downstaffed) over the weekend...but, you know, I don't have to be planny-planny all the time.  SOOOO....I busted out some word puzzles for Levi and had them sitting out on Monday morning.  Just figured a fun little challenge would be up his alley while I made breakfast.  I was right. :)  He's never been interested in these puzzles, but this time he said, "Can I play with these?"  I had put the letters in the puzzles already, but he took them all out and placed them back in himself.  This morning I set out different puzzles and had the letters all in a pile next to them, and he placed them all himself again.

We're listening to "Who made you? God made me" this week.  A very catchy tune about Genesis 1:27.

Today we did creative writing. I printed off a picture I took of a tree at the park nearby.  I figured it would be perfect for this type of activity - it had a little squirrel hole in the bottom and another one way up the trunk.  I showed him the picture and asked, "Who lives in this tree?" and a few other prompting questions, and in true Levi style, he wove his tale about a donut-baking skunk who is afraid of the loud garbage truck who will go to Tip Toes to get a construction jacket when he goes potty on the potty, and who of course loves suckers.

Here he is teaching Soft Doggy how to write.

And then we went to the park. :)  Luke showed that he is a hamster in a baby suit after all - he could not get enough of playing in the tube.

WHAT.