January 27, 2014

Whoa - dinner's in the crock pot...the laundry is folded....groceries are put away...both boys are asleep!!!!....

Do I really have a chance to blog??!!

Gonna blow through a January blitz because I have totally dropped the ball here at keeping up on this. 

 A few weekends ago we made an impromptu visit to my parents' house on a rare sunny day.  We brought the sleds and snow suits and the boys had a riot totally dismantling their house (my mom's an avid fancy teddy bear collector, and to the boys I'm sure it just looked like one big toy store with all these bears everywhere).  Thankfully they are gracious and didn't mind the disarray.

We even sent Levi down the icy driveway on his sled.

Trekking through the back yard with Grandpa.

I took this picture on January 14th. This, my friends, is what the natives call "grass."  It is green and fluffy and can be cut with machines.  Evidently this is what it looked like before Canada violently threw up all over the Midwest.

(note that not surprisingly, Luke is having a cow about something in the background)

We inherited a trampoline, and it has saved everyone's sanity.  We received ours for free, but if you have an extra $30 and small children, do not delay in obtaining one.  Now, yours will not be nearly as special as ours.  You see, the elderly woman who originally bought this trampoline has a thick Dutch brogue and a penchant for TV preachers.  Late one night, Jimmy Baker convinced her that THIS trampoline would not only save her joints but her soul as well.  She bought it immediately.  Her daughter about died when she found out and said, MOM - he's a swindler.  "Oh, no!" said her mudder in her thick, thick brogue.  "He is a good, VONDERFUL Chrrrristian (rolllll that R) man."  When her daughter (who is a dear friend of mine) sold it shortly thereafter, this precious/hilarious woman wanted to make CERTAIN that she got a good price because, vell, this IS a Jimmy Baker CHRRRRISTIAN trampoline.  As it turns out, the person who bought it didn't use it, and, praise Jesus, passed it on to me.  Perhaps one could say that this trampoline is now sanctified: it is being used exactly the way it was created to be.

So here's Levi on the holy, Christian, sanctified trampoline.

As if anyone in the Great Lakes needs to see more snow, but for memory's sake I need to put up some pictures of it.  I honestly love it but I honestly am going nuts with this cold and the inability to just. get. out. I don't want to talk about it because I'll burst into tears, like I started to do when our pastor's wife asked how I was REALLY doing yesterday.  If you're a mom I know you're giving me a resounding amen.

Don't see this much: a pickup hauling a wheel loader with a tow strap.  Caught that at lunch today.

My attempt to be a really fun mom: I used painter's tape to make roads all over the living room and built a 'city' with the boys' stuff. I think I got more into it than they did. Levi was being obtuse that day and wasn't interested in playing with it, but Luke really got into it. :)  So did Molly.

Levi forked the table the other day and as a consequence I told him he needs to learn exactly what it means to take good care of our home.  So he's doing house work with me every morning, and funny enough, he loves it and does it really well.  I'm teaching him to do laundry (he loads it in, and then I sit him on the washer and hand him the soap and show him what buttons to push), he wipes down the table, cleans the windows, wipes down the bathroom (not the toilet, though), and helps me put away laundry.  Here he's stacking cloth wipes.  It's been such a success that now instead of heading to watch his truck video after breakfast, he has to help me and earn his video time.  Next week I think I'll start paying him a small allowance and we can start teaching about tithing and saving.  So overall, the forked table was worth it. I suppose you could call that serendipity.

My breakfast buddy. Luke was sacking it in one morning.

Sorry for the food face, but this is CLASSIC Luke: the sign of a meal enjoyed is his scrunchy smile at the end.

Again, sorry for the food face but he had such a nice smile today.  Poor kiddo's running a temp but otherwise seems fine...just his normal, dramatic self. :)

My dad came down last week and painted our little school room area!!!  I have a ways to go to set it up the way I'd love it to be, but the walls were by the far the WORST part.  Now I'd like to get a nice piece of carpet to cover the whole floor, some nice storage/shelving, a project/craft table, maybe an art easel, bean bags, and some great stuff to put on the walls...but man, are we glad those walls are scraped and painted!!!!  The boys LOVED having "Papa Mark" around!

Before (particularly atrocious because it was becoming a dumping ground)

After!  Yes, that is an unused training potty just sitting there on the shelf.

I let Levi borrow my head lamp.  In return he had to listen to me regale him with my stories of cross country skiing at night with aunt Renee and the time I hiked into a lava tube near Flagstaff, AZ with my friends on my 26th birthday, and they surprised me by pulling out a box of Hostess cupcakes and we had a little impromptu birthday party there in the darkest dark that ever darked.

Our loosely structured school plan is working well so far...we're working a lot on numbers and shapes, listening to our Questions with Answers song every morning, and doing lots of puzzles.  He LOVES puzzles.

A shape matching project he totally enjoyed - he had to match the shapes on the clothespins to the shapes on the wheel.  A few months ago he couldn't grasp how to pinch the clothespin, and now he does.

Typical morning scene: working on his I Spy puzzle, listening to his catechism song, coloring a picture (we're talking about the fruit of peace this week, and he wanted to color a picture of Jesus, so I printed off a picture of Jesus calming the storm)...and eating breakfast, of course.

I bought an app called Monkey Math School Sunshine that he really enjoys - it totally frustrated him at first because he didn't recognize any numbers, and it IS a little more advanced, but he kept choosing to play it during tablet time - at first with a lot of help from me, and now he does it on his own pretty well.  It's really helping him learn his shapes and numbers, so I'd recommend it!!

January 7, 2014

Ugh. Luke got a cold a couple weeks ago, and he's JUUUUUST getting over it but ever since catching it he sleeps like an hour and a half during nap time.  His usual used to be 2.5-3 hours.  Now he wakes up exhausted still but screaming and screaming and screaming without relent.  Even mild colds in infants and toddlers are exhausting.  The fallout is at least two to three weeks long.  And then if you're lucky, it starts all over again.  If you're really, really lucky, you can have a dear child who needs steroids and nebulizer treatments around the clock every time a cold strikes. Thankfully, this is not my experience but man there sure are a lot of people for whom it is. :(

Today was a slightly less eventful day - ish.  We had the usual drama, but that's a daily thing.  Low expectations help. ;)

We made bird seed 'cookies' this morning.  (The kind you hang out on your tree as little bird feeders.) I wanted to make them over Christmas but we didn't get around to it.  So I thought they'd make sweet little gifts for our "love" week.  Levi loved helping me make them, and we even had an opportunity to talk about ways we can love the creation that God gave us is by helping to take care of it, ways we can show love to others is by giving them gifts, or a note of encouragement, or to pray for them.  Levi is onto the 'earn a cherry for a loving act' thing and actually has picked up his and/or Luke's toys without being asked "so he can get a cherry." No, it's for showing love, but po-TAY-toe/po-TAH-toe.  Here's your cherry.  Or he'll say, "I showed you love by eating all my lunch. Now I get a cherry." Ummmmm..... 

I wanted them to be all hearts but then saw that the recipe said to leave the cookie cutter there until they dried.  So I had to fish out a handful of cookie cutters.

Checking out what the finished product will look like.

Levi is very into puzzles lately so I've been using them for his morning projects.  I may help him with one or two pieces, but other than that he does them independently.  I put out one puzzle this morning from a set of four, and he went ahead and did two more on his own while I made breakfast and he listened to "Who Is God?" from Questions and Answers.

Our fort.  Two little kid tables and a tunnel leading into it.

After lunch I noticed how quiet it was, and suspecting something treacherous I investigated.  Nothing treacherous: just Lukie playing quietly with his pound-the-balls-into-the-holes toy from Nana (which he LOVES) and Levi doing some kind of construction project in his room (he emptied the contents of his closet but I didn't care).  I love how they both play quietly by themselves sometimes.

I just realized Luke will be 16mos on Sunday!!!  In the past few weeks he has refined his ability to say "Mama" (vs. ma-ma-ma - now he yells it very demandingly, "MAMA!"), Dada or Papa, Nana, the other day while we were gone Sarah said he burst out with "Mama bye-bye!", 'woof', he's starting to say 'fish', and he has a little word for toothbrush which sounds like 'broof.'  Today when I was asking him body parts he pointed to my mouth, nose, eyes, and hair.  Incredible how much they change in a matter of weeks.

His new puppy cart. :) That thing is FAST.

January 6, 2014

In junior high I had a mystery book that had two endings.  You came to a certain point and if you wanted to find out what happened if ______ ,then turn to this page.  If you want to find out what happened if ______, then to turn this other page.  Yah?  We've all read at least one of those.

Here are two proposed tales of my morning.

Proposal #1

Eat breakfast, morning project, blaaaah blah blah.  When I'm done with housework Levi eagerly asks what the morning project is.  I've got it all set and ready to go!!  I explain that we're starting to learn about the fruit of the Spirit, sing him the fruity song that I remember from VBS at my grandma's church when I was about eight years old (it lists all the fruits of the Spirit), and he's very excited to paint his fruit.  I had bought packs of unsweetened Koolaid so the dried paint would be sort of scratch n sniff, mixed them with a little water, and there you have it: smelly water colors.  After painting I trace his body on a big sheet of paper, explaining that each week we'll add another one of his pieces of fruit to his body. The top of the sheet will say, "Levi is filled with the fruit of the Spirit."  It'll be a nice visual.  Together we listed examples of what it would look like to show love to each other, to our family, to our friends.  He eagerly pasted his newly-painted cherries (to represent love) on his life-sized tracing.  Then we played charades.

Proposal #2

Eat breakfast, morning project, blaaaaah blah blah. When I'm done with housework Levi eagerly asks what the morning project is.  I've got it all set and ready to go!!  I explain that we're starting to learn about the fruit of the Spirit, sing him the fruity song and he's very excited to paint his fruit.  He paints a few of the fruit pieces that I had drawn but uses so much 'paint' and force on the paint brush that they nearly tear. Of course he wants to taste the Koolaid paint, and to our dismay it was horrifyingly bitter.  Bummer. So much for edible paint (then again, is Koolaid really edible??? Ugh).  Luke wants to participate, so I mix some food coloring into a little bit of leftover yogurt for him to "fingerpaint."  Oh dear.  Levi wanted me to help him paint so I did about half of it with him. That was fun. 

 

 

 

Well that was a five or ten minute project that made my kitchen look totally blown up.  And my baby.

Then we went to the living room to trace a life-sized Levi.  I don't have huge rolls of art paper on hand so I used a roll of wrapping paper.  Levi unrolled the whole thing.  Chastised him for unrolling the whole thing.  I traced Levi, and started to explain what we'd do with it. He's running away from me.  Ah, a teaching moment!  Levi, one way that you can show love is by listening -  Levi, stop (he's going nutty).  No, STOP.  Levi, one way you can you love to mama is by lis - LEVI. If you continue to be this rude and disrespec- Levi just go to your room. By this point he and Luke had unrolled the whole roll of wrapping paper down the hall and were stomping all over it.  Luke's running on the Levi tracing and drooling purple drool on it.  Levi's screeching because he's in time out, and even though he knows screeching or screaming - happy, angry, or otherwise - is a cardinal no-no, he does it anyway.  I lose my cool and start yelling.  Luke's running around naked because I had to take off his clothes (see above) and haven't had a chance to put anything else on him.   Dressing him is like dressing a seizing octopus running for its life in a category four hurricane; I literally sweat. I crumple up the rest of the wrapping paper and throw it away.  Finish cleaning up the kitchen.  Levi gets a swat on the keester for continuing his screaming.  I tell him he's not coming out of his room until he stops screaming and will remain quiet for a time out, and if that's the rest of the morning that's no skin off my nose.  I'm grossed out by the purple slobber on the life-sized Levi picture so I throw it downstairs. Fine.  I'll do something ELSE with this Koolaid fruit.  Levi finally remains quiet for three minutes - though it took thirty minutes to arrive at that point - and I can go in and talk with him.  In my best Claire Huxtable voice I quietly and firmly explain - AGAIN! - that disrespect and screaming will absolutely not be tolerated in this house, am I perfectly clear?

Now.  What was our lesson? Oh, love.

Indeed.

Well, I'll let you pick the ending that you think really occurred.

At any rate, I cut up our fruit and put it in a fruit bowl.  I put out a bowl of cherries and each time he does something loving he may have a cherry.  I didn't come up with these things on my own, I'm copying from Amanda at ohamanda.com.

It's hard to be three, it's hard to be cooped up inside for days in a row with weather that would make a polar bear cuss.  So I did what any other mom searching for sanity would do:

Here ya go, buddy.  Jump until you're ready to sleep.

It worked. ;)

January 5, 2014

Perhaps in the new year I can do smaller posts more frequently so I can avoid these huge photobombs and overgeneralized updates every three weeks??

We had a fun Christmas - I was scheduled to work Christmas Eve but was put on call, so that was a happy Falalalala. :)  For the fifth or sixth year in a row we spent Christmas Day at my Aunt Sue and Uncle Dave's house north of Muskegon - which just happened to be the teeny spot that got super-dumped with an unbelievable amount of snow a few days before Christmas.  The weather wasn't great heading up there - and my parents made the unprecedented decision to stay home since it was snowing so badly along US-31 to the north, but it sure was beautiful.

Christmas was a little more magical with a three year old in the house; before Thanksgiving he had started asking if Christmas was tomorrow.  We did do the Santa Claus thing but tried to more heavily emphasize the fact that Santa was actually a real man who loved Jesus and showed tremendous love and kindness to others (true story).  I had Pinterest-filled dreams of homemade advent calenders and special festive activities each day that were never realized.  We did have an advent calender, and I did wrap up a million Christmas books and he got to open one each day...but honestly I wouldn't do that again because many of the books didn't hold his interest for more than one or two readings, and he was totally expecting a present every day. Enh.  It was a neat (Pinterest-inspired, of course) idea.  He also got to stay up a little later a couple of nights and watch The Polar Express with us.  There were some scenes that were a bit more intense than we had remembered, but he processed it well and loved watching it.

Christmas with a three year old, while fun, is also exhausting.  Levi woke up at 0520.  Luke was pretty close behind.  Neither boy took a nap and both were running on crazy fumes by the end of the day, and took at least two days to wind down and reset themselves.

So here's Christmas morning - 

We gave the boys a couple of trucks to share (heh. aheh.) and a caterpillar tunnel, just because it's fun.

Luke's special present was this wooden puppy cart that made him do triple flips at the toy store.  It's just a little cart that he can fill with his toys and it has a puppy head with a jingle-bell collar on the front of it.

Levi's special present was his own backpack filled with Berenstain Bears books.  About fighting, manners, and strangers.  Deliberately chosen themes. ;)

He was most excited about his books, as usual.

Both boys received an educational gift too.  Levi's was a magnetic mosaic set and Luke's was a wooden peg shape sorter.

Like I said, the drive up north was p-r-e-t-t-y snowy.  This is just their driveway!!

Best Christmas venue ever. :)  Thanks so much for hosting us all again, guys!

2014 resolution: get Levi to look at the camera. LOL

We love the snow.  If the temp is above, oh, fifteen now, and the wind chill doesn't freeze skin on contact I try to get the boys out, even if it's just for 15 or 20 minutes.  They severely need the energy burn!

Bear hat from Auntie Lisa - he LOVES it!!

Direct quote from Levi after I had unintentionally heaved snow on him with my shovel:

Dude, that was pretty mean throwing snow on me.

Luke loooooves to help.  No, Molly is not doing her business there.  She's mid-leap but it sure looks like something else.

The snow plow (Nana calls it the Flying Dutchman, LOL) went by.  Can you tell?

We call Luke "Dinky Person." He's such a PERSON but he's so....dinky!!!  Just this little compact body housing this enormous personality.

Levi decided it was time to start potty training the other day.  I followed his lead.  It was an epically exhausting start.  I don't want to violate his privacy by going into any details, but he has had a great amount of success and wow...another step into boyhood.  

I scrapped our "schooling" activities during the holidays partly because it was just the holidays, and partly because I could tell he was getting bored.  He'd ask for his morning projects but then didn't want to do them and was resisting doing much else, so I let it go (less work for me, anyway!).  I did some planning over the past few weeks, retooled, and developed a new plan for the upcoming months - which will probably be pretty fluid as those months go by.

I'm still going to have a letter of the week, but it's not going to be THE letter of the week, as in that's not going to be the theme.  Levi was getting a little bored with the redundancy of that (and honestly, so was I).  He's picked up his letters more than I thought he would by this point.  (*The following is not my attempt to be all, "Look what MY kid can do!", it's for my 'scrapbooking' purposes so that I can remember what he did and when.)  He can identify them in words, identify them by sound, list words that start with a given letter, and tell me what letter a word starts with.  So I'm not going to hammer that over and over again.

I'm scrapping scripture memory for the time being - not that I for one second don't think it's important, it's just that I want to be teaching him things that immediately apply, and the verses each week weren't necessarily helping me out with that.  I'm going to go back to our Questions with Answers stuff and teach him the catechism (truth about who God is, how He created everything, what He's done for us, etc).

Our theme each week is going to be the fruit of the Spirit.  He's reading chapter and verse lately from the Three Year Old Book of Disrespect & Defiance and I want to hit on character qualities and how we can demonstrate them in our lives.  Thank you Mary for introducing me to OhAmanda!!  That'll take eight weeks, and then I'll start weekly lessons that will teach him the gospel, leading up to Easter.  I pray that his tender little heart is being prepared for seeds of Truth to be sown into it.

I'll continue with our morning projects (he's been asking for them again, and lately he's VERY into puzzles), focus on shapes and numbers a little more than we have been; manners and minding; helping out around the house; and reading. Lots of reading.  Oh, how he looooves to read. :)  In the background will be a letter of the week, and if he wants to do projects above and beyond our fruit of the Spirit projects he can do the letter printables I've run off.

Lukie will join our fun projects. He loves to paint and even color and do some puzzles.  

I SO can't WAIT for summer - I'm incorporating Hiking Tuesday and Farm Friday (I drive to a farm to pick up our milk on Fridays, and summer will be a riot for that.  Right now it's just bundle-drive-drive-drive-home.)  Woooooooot.

Loving his puzzles

He loves the I Spy puzzle game he got from Grandma and Grandpa Gouveia!!!

Sorry for the long boringness.  It's more so I can flesh out my thoughts and look back on them later on if I need to!!! Bear with me!