March 25, 2014

Have two weeks seriously gone by?

Here's a summary of what happened during that time: boogers, coughing, and more boogers.  About nine nights in a row of little to no sleep thanks to....coughing and boogers.  Oh!!! I did have a fun little girly getaway with one of my besties during one of those weekends.  We stayed in a condo at the Grand Traverse and ate like it was our job and shopped our faces off (her words).  I brought my camera but forgot it everywhere we went.  But during that weekend we both started to come down with colds and, as she put it, we slept like we were in the mountains. If you've ever gone from sea level to 8000ft and tried to get a good night of sleep, you know exactly what that's like.  It was my first night away since before Levi was born, and Matt's first overnight with the boys.  He was a trooper. :)

Anyway, I captured some randoms over the past couple of weeks.

These honker boxes from BB&B were vastly entertaining for a few days.  Levi loved sitting and watching his morning video in them.  Luke doesn't like to sit and watch videos, but he did just so he could sit in the box with Levi.

We sort of did the letter W last week. Ish. I'm not terribly capable of coherent thought or productive activity if I don't sleep well, so it was pretty survival-oriented.  But the boys like to paint, so we learned a little about wallabies and I gave them some wallaby pics to paint.

I have a fantastic recipe for play dough and recently the boys are very into play dough.  It takes less than ten minutes to make a decent-sized batch.  I add glitter to it because we all need a little sparkle right now!!  Levi's favorite game is "play dough construction site."  They play quietly for a mind-clearing amount of time. :)

A must-do: cut shapes out of craft foam and use them as bath toys. Maybe everyone does that and I am slow on the uptake and think that I'm a genius.  I stick the shapes on my forehead and act like I have no idea what's there, and Levi has to clue me into what it is (sneaky shapes lesson), and both boys laugh uproariously (it's a great game to play at the breakfast table too). I have a bag of shapes that I glued googly eyes onto and drew random faces that are not for the tub - but they are fun for hiding around the house for shape hunts, and we can sort them by shape, color, mood (frowny face, smiley face, silly face, etc).  Problem tho: Luke loves to pull off the eyes. I have yet to find one (ahem) in his diaper, but based on the fact that I've found sequins in there, I'm sure it won't be long before there's a little googly staring at me.

Last Friday was the first Friday I did a farm run without it being forty below.  The little space heater by the bulk tank in the silo does very little to keep my keester from freezing off while I fill my milk bottles.  But Friday!! Glorious Friday!!! It was actually warm enough to get the boys out and let them play a little bit while we were there!!

One of the many reasons I love our farm:

The goats were out and about.  The furry ones were too. (I joke that going anywhere with two little boys is like having two little pygmie goats with me.  Very cute and fairly well-behaved but EVERYWHERE.)

Luke staring down the goat.

Trying SO SO hard to get a pic of the two of them looking at me...but...pygmie goats.

Never mind.

That same day we played in the back yard and the snow had finally melted enough to be able to take the cover off the sand box and do a little cleanup.  I was happily working when I suddenly realized: the boys were playing happily together.  Outside.  No one was crying because he can't walk and is stuck on the grass.  Or wants to play with the toy lawn mower but can't walk.  Or wants a bottle but can't reach it. Or is just plain frustrated because he can't climb.  I didn't have a baby strapped to me who needed to take a third nap for the day.  We were all just having fun outside. And it was utterly, unabashedly glorious.

Levi got some tablet time yesterday and wanted Luke to join him to watch a wolf video on ABC Wildlife.

Doing the letter X this week is actually kind of fun!!!  I thought awwww mannnn the letter X is SO LAME - but it's actually not. There are some fun things to do with it!  Josiah was supposed to come today but Aunt Mary is sick and didn't want to drive across town or risk spreading it to us, so this would've been a fun project to do with him too. We missed you, Josiah!!!

We did a quick little lesson about bones and looked at pictures of x-rays (funny enough, yesterday before we even talked about x-rays Levi saw a little cartoon of an x-ray and, "Mama, look! A picture of a lady without her skin!"  That was the perfect way to describe an x-ray!).  Then we cut animals out of play dough and put "bones" on them made out of Q-tips.

Then we drew pictures of our hands (Levi wouldn't let me trace his hand so I just drew a rough one) and used Q-tips as the bones there as well.  Levi's looks more like a devastating picture of multiple severe puncturing fractures, but I didn't say anything.

Lukie J's 18mo checkup was last week - he's 23lbs 6oz and doing great.  I asked about his language but his doc wasn't concerned in the least.  At that point he had the bare minimum of his 5-15 words that kids this age are supposed to say, and even since then he has started to say more words more consistently.  When you have a brother who saddles up to the table and says things like, "Mama, what a delectable lunch!" I guess you don't really need to speak. ;)

March 7, 2014

"T" week last week was super fun. There are so many cool things that start with the letter T.

"U" is for uninspiring.  Haven't done anything with that this week.

It was so much fun during a very cold and blah day last week to do fun things with Matt's tools.  It kept the boys happy and entertained for quite some time.

Foam blocks from the craft section at Meijer and a bag of bright golf tees - that was easy

Levi doesn't normally get into something like sorting, but he really enjoyed sorting the golf tees on his plates that just happened to match perfectly

Who doesn't use screwdrivers to teach counting and size sequencing?

Our art projects for the week: teeth, treasure, trains.

Thankfully, Luke's bout with whatever-the-heck came and went in about five days.  He only needed three neb treatments and slept very well every night.

Bath before nap = bed head.  Amber, if you're reading this you're probably on the verge of staging an intervention.  Their hair is awful right now.

I realized the other day that Luke has been in an unusually sunny mood lately - and then I realized, hey! He's almost done cutting teeth for the time being and he's not sick!  The REAL Luke is really fun and sweet! LOL

Luke is very into doing everything with Levi.  It's so cool now that he's less "baby" and becoming more "kid" and will do anything alongside Levi.  They disappear and quietly play with trucks or pretend they are flying an airplane upstairs by lining up chairs, or gather their books and read next to each other.  We are loving this stage.

Luke turns 18 months next week which is entirely unbelievable.  I was 4 or some odd months pregnant with him when Levi was this age and the thought of being pregnant and chasing a child this age now is inconceivable.  He still doesn't talk much - pointing and jabbering in Chinese seems to suit him well.  He's an excellent communicator, just not with words.  He says maybe 5 or 6 words fairly consistently, and has said many, many words once or twice. Sometimes he has even pulled out a two or three word phrase....but never will it be uttered again. I know this is typical for second born boys but it's frustrating because we KNOW he knows words, he just doesn't see the point in saying them.  Then again...maybe I don't really want to know what he has to say.  I have a feeling he's opinionated.

Levi turned into more of a boy - not even LITTLE boy, a BOY! - this past week or so.  Little things.  He's potty trained but #2 is hit or miss still. :/  He tries to dress himself and the other day he put on his own socks (socks seem to be challenging, so that surprised me).  This is mildly embarrassing, but we never pushed him to drink from a cup - he's always toting his Nalgene sippies.  On Monday he saw a cup he wanted at Meijer and at lunch he just...started drinking from it (we had practiced before, but it wasn't very successful nor was it a huge priority to us).  He helps me with some chores and gives Luke a hand with some things.  He's always been a very verbally expressive kid, but even the things he says are starting to sound more mature.  It's just strange. I remember bringing this little baby home, and now he's a full-blown KID.

Yesterday the boys were bored and tempers were flaring.  I pulled out the bin full of beans and they loved it.  Luke flung beans all over the living room. ALL. OVER.  Awesomesauce.

I made blue sparkly play doh.  Because...I'm a girl and we need SOME sparkly in this house!

And THENNNNNNN...Grampa Mark came and brought a new project bench he made for the school room.  It's eight feet long!!!! The boys felt very important helping put it together. I made lunch and listened to the radio in blissful peace.  I told Dad he can come every day at lunch and do a project in the basement!!

Summer project: putting this room together and making it sa-weet.

Thoroughly unrelated: have you seen on FB those links for making your own salads in a jar?  I love to eat salads but I usually don't have time during lunch to do all the veggie chopping/assembling amidst the sippy-throwing, constant requests, reminding to (clenched teeth) sit-down-on-your-keester, etc, so I usually throw together a sandwich.  Today I assembled a couple jars for the weekend.  I have this link on my Pinterest board to remind me how the layers go.

I also stopped by my buddy Krista's house today on our way home from our farm run to pick up a scoby for brewing my own kombucha.   Very exciting.  I geek food and beneficial bacteria and (as my friend teases me) breastfed chickens and stuff like that so humor my oddities. :)