Month: April 2013

Finally MDO offers school pictures! I was excited to get the notice and even more excited to get the pictures. I was told we would get four pictures of each child and I got quite a few more than that plus a color and black and white of each pose. There was no mention that if you had siblings they would be photographed together – what a happy surprise!

And my favorite picture by far…

The pictures were done by Alison Ziebell.

Wade and I planned a morning at the water park! He had never been and I thought having two adults might be best for my first time with two kids. We all had a great time. Teague loved the water fountains and watching everybody. Alex loved the small water slide and running around with Daddy. We got him to go on the big water slide once (just like always). After that he remembered that he was scared and would’t go again. As soon as we got home Alex was asking when we could go again.

There is no high chair (or rather hook-on high chair)! Although it is a wonderful convenience I always rejoice when it is no longer needed. No more collecting crumbs in the seat. No more having to take it apart to wash (and then finding what has gotten hidden between the clamps and the counter). Yay!!

Today I convinced Wade to empty out my compost and mix it into the raised beds. Alex of course wanted to help. I didn’t realize later that he had taken his trucks to play in the muck, but oh well. Why not.

We spent the entire day outside except for nap. It was pretty incredible. (The funny story of the day – When Alex has his head buried in the “microphone” on the playground he is yelling “HOLY SPIRIT” over and over. No clue why. He never explained.)

Wade has been working hard on Alex’s training. Tonight it all paid off..

Do you see what I see? I spy a couple of 20s. Thank you Jerry!

(In case you don’t know the history of Jerry and the $20 read here)

We are enjoying every minute of this weather!

Alex is normally predictable with his breakfast choices (a bar or maybe two – usually nutrigrain – and apples). Occasionally he will ask for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Today he really threw me for a loop. He wanted a single piece of bread with the peanut butter and jelly not touching. The first description had the jelly on one side and the peanut butter on the other. We finally decided that might be too messy to make and to eat and came up with the half and half solution.

Being a four year old must get exhausting. Alex has been counting down to my birthday for weeks. He couldn’t be more excited if it were his birthday. Earlier in the week he told Wade that decorations were needed. Thursday night Wade took the boys to the Party store and bought decorations. I had strict instructions this morning to sleep in while they did some serious decorating.

The boys couldn’t wait for the presents to be opened so we did that immediately – even before breakfast. Then we spent the rest of the day being a family and having fun – with our silly hats!

Alex has been asking to go to Monkey Joe’s for weeks. (I have no idea why since we haven’t been in almost a year.) We finally arranged a playdate there with Riley. I was curious to see what Alex would do. He is sometimes rather hesitant and sometimes ready to jump right into new activities. For the first 30-45 minutes he wanted to “look” at the games in the arcade area. Then he finally went in the smallest of the bounce areas. By the time we had to leave he was having a great time!

And just for my birthday tomorrow we got snow – real snow coming down quite hard (but not sticking)!

Alex has really been into stickers and coloring lately. Today it was stickers and he was adamant that the water from the water hose had to actually be putting out the fire. That’s a vast improvement from just putting the stickers all over the paper…

We like to say that Alex didn’t sleep the first 9 months of his life but has made up for it since. He has always been a great napper. (The boy still took two two hour naps till he was 22 months old.) Alex currently takes a 2-3 hour nap and sleeps 11 hours at night. Imagine my surprise when a few days after his four year check up he suddenly developed night terrors. We quickly realized what they were and thankfully they don’t last long, but he gets them 4-5 nights a week. I called the doctor just in case there was something we could do to prevent them. The first question they asked was whether he could be needing more sleep. I told her his schedule and the nurse laughed and said a lack of sleep was definitely not the issue. She gave me a few tricks for dealing with them (most of which haven’t proved helpful) and told me good luck. Thankfully Alex doesn’t remember a thing the next morning. Wade seems most effective so he normally goes in the room and speaks VERY loudly to Alex. He eventually stops screaming and snuggles back down without ever saying a word. Night terrors are freaky. Very freaky.

I am not the creative one in our house. Thank goodness Wade is. He came through when a homemade camera was needed for kindermusic class.

It was warm enough to be outside and the rain (which has been a constant in our lives for the last few weeks) took a break for a few hours so we had an outside play date! Could this be the return of our normal spring/summer routine? I can only hope. It’s obvious the boys have missed it. And have there ever been more typical boy pictures?

We had a lot of fun this morning getting dressed for church. I wasn’t sure how Teague would react to wearing a tie but he loved it and stood very patiently (much more so than Alex) while his was being put on. Alex actually had to be convinced to wear a tie and bribed to wear a belt. (Alex did have a lot of fun with Teague’s tie before getting dressed.)

I love snow. Love it. I have been living in Milwaukee about five years and have never seen snow on the ground this late in the year. Happy Sunday morning to me! (I tried to wake up Wade to at least look at it and he refused to acknowledge it existed.)

When we were in Boston the research doctor asked if Teague played with his peers yet (as opposed to parallel play). I kind of laughed and said no. At the time I was only thinking of my observations of him at MDO or play dates when Glenna or Grant are present. Then the last few days I have watched how he interacts with Alex. They are definitely two years apart but they definitely play together. It’s quite adorable to watch.