Flappy

 

These are some pictures of when we rescued a bird who got tangled in our soccer net.  His wing was tangled up pretty bad and sadly, our rescue was not enough.  "Flappy" passed away before we were able to get him to a wildlife rescue worker.  The boys gave him a lovely funeral service and burial in the woods at the end of the street. 

Hilarious website

I found this website yesterday and it pretty much made my day. Suddenly the holes in our doors and the fork stabs in our kitchen table don't seem so abnormal. And after one incident when Coulson was 2 and found a Sharpie in our car... well, I've been lucky enough to remember to keep the Sharpies out of reach (tip - Magic Eraser is really magic, sometimes). And thankfully, Casey managed to revive his Blackberry when Charlie poured a cup of water on it.

I won't refer to it by name, but here's the link to the website.
And here are some our own incidents...

Charlie finds old coffee grinds in the trash.

The boys decorate a cake.

Charlie loves his peanut butter sandwiches!

A pillow transforms into "snow!" (notice the bare mattress "slide" in the background...)

A Sweet Lullaby

I didn't set this up, the boys started this on their own...

Weeks 3-5

His brothers enjoy playing with him on the floor in his butterfly activity mat.

One month old, sporting his cute diaper cover.


I've got a great video of Charlie and Coulson singing to him here, I'll have to upload it for you soon...

I try to make sure he gets some chocolate milk everyday - it's does a body good. I took this picture today - just over 5 weeks old.
(P.S. Of course, when he gets chocolate milk, it's probably Nestle chocolate. The Hershey's shirt is just in honor of our former home; In practice we support the much superior family business.)

The first couple weeks

Here are some pictures from when Carter is about 10-20 days old. I'd like to blog more about the first month, but I don't often have 2 free hands at a time and when I do, I'm either doing laundry or washing dishes or spending some quality time with the other 3 boys in my life so they don't feel left out. But I'll try to make it a priority sometime this week so I can blog about these first few weeks before I forget them.

I love how their arms are in the same position as they sleep. This moment of peace didn't last long - Carter woke up soon after I took the picture.

more brothers

This is a picture of the very first time that the big brothers get to see their baby brother.

Brothers

On your mark, Get set, GO!

My friend recently started a new blog, Foodwise, Childwise, for moms to share recipes and ideas for getting little kids to enjoy healthy foods. I submitted a "guest post" to share some of my ideas and I thought I'd cross-post the entry on my own blog too.

When our son was about 2 1/2 years old, we wanted eating plain cooked broccoli (my husband's favorite choice for vegetables, thus a very frequent side dish at our home) to be a fun and enjoyable experience instead of coaxing and bribing. So we started to have "broccoli races." Everyone at the table gets a piece of broccoli on their fork, someone counts "1, 2, 3, GO!" and we all eat our broccoli at the same time. When we're done eating, of course we display our open, empty mouths to the whole table. The goal is for everyone at the table to finish, not necessarily to finish first. My boys love this game and it turns any "blah" food into an exciting adventure. We still use it for broccoli, but we also use it when we're learning to eat a new food.

Another game we play to make eating fun reveals the depraved mentality of our boys. This game is called "Don't eat me!" and my son invented this game when he was almost 4 years old. Sometimes our food talks. It usually talks in a high pitched squeaky voice and says something like, "Please don't eat me! Whatever you do, don't eat me! Please!" At which point the boys gleefully take a bite of the food and laugh as the food screams "AHHHHHHhhhhhhh!" The scream fades away as the food gets swallowed. My boys, now ages 6 and 3 1/2, LOVE this game!

Note: Due to the high "giggle factor" in these games, it could pose a small choking hazard, so be attentive and chose foods that are appropriate to your child's chewing ability. For example, don't play these games with a bowl full of grapes.

Random

Here are some random photos that I wanted to share...


We went to the Dixie Classic Fair back in October. Casey and I always look forward to the fair and have a great time. Don't the boys look thrilled too?

When it was time to open presents at Nanna and Grandpa Bud's house (Casey's parents) the boys wanted to be the first presents to open, so here they are waiting under the Christmas tree for their grandparents to come and "open" them.

Coulson's taking swim lessons right now and Casey captured this great shot the other night. He's come so far in the past year!

And life gets even crazier!

Here's a conversation we had with the boys last week. It's about 1 1/2 minutes, but it's totally worth watching. Coulson has some funny lines.

(Amy, in light of our conversation last night, you'll get a kick out of this ;-)

Playmates

Occasionally in the past couple weeks, my boys have been displaying behavior that is quite frankly strange in our household.
If you've ever spent much time with my oldest child, you know that he is relationally very intense. Meaning that he doesn't play well by himself; he needs companionship pretty much all the time. When he was a toddler, I noticed that often his playmates would get overstimulated and naturally need some down time to play by themselves. But no, Coulson never need that quiet down time, he always wanted interaction with other people. Early childhood development experts talk about "parallel play" where young toddlers play next to each other, but not "with" each other. Coulson skipped this phase of development and went right to playing "with" the other kids (kids his own age didn't always appreciate his intervention, but he played well with older friends).
Anyway, all that to say that I don't get much time to myself while Coulson is awake. I purposefully put the playroom right next to the kitchen because I knew that he would never use a playroom upstairs. But even being in the room right next to me is too far away, as he spends most of his time in kitchen begging me to play with him. Anytime I can get him to play by himself with his toys in the playroom for more than 5 minutes, I consider it a victory. I've always been jealous of other moms whose children actually play with their toys without needing to threaten punishment.
Well, now Charlie is getting older and becoming a better playmate for Coulson. When they first started playing together, Coulson would tell Charlie what to do and most of the time he would do it, but fights were frequent because Charlie wouldn't understand or he'd simply rather "parallel play." Then as Charlie got older, he got more opinionated and thus more arguments would ensue. So I've been happy that they're playing together, but not too happy about the referee role. (And teaching kids to get along and work out their own problems requires a lot of patience; they don't learn those things quickly.)
Okay, anyway, lately, they have had moments where both of them actually work together and get along, often for up to 30 minutes at a time. And they're playing together upstairs in their bedroom! Today I was able to completely clean up from breakfast and prep dinner (it was a slow cooker meal, so was making dinner in the morning) and take a shower in complete peace. This is unheard of in our household. And they did it again before dinner tonight and didn't even notice when Casey came home from work (also unheard of...)
So what are they doing upstairs in their room? When I went to make my bed this afternoon (doesn't everyone make their bed in the afternoon?) I noticed that all my pillows were gone. The sleeping pillows, the decorative shams and the throw pillows, all gone. This has also been happening lately. They take all my pillows, all their pillows, all their blankets, even the comforters on their beds and pile them into a mountain on Coulson's bed. Then they take turns standing on the nightstand and jumping into the mountain of bedding. (I'm a responsible mom and I tell them to not get hurt.) When they get tired they turn the mountain into a fort and settle in and Coulson will "read" books to Charlie. Or last night they went into the closet and pulled down all their clothes (I don't think they'll do that again.)
So for my peace and quiet, their room looks like a tornado hit it several times, but the rest of the house is starting to look a little bit better. Everything's a trade-off and I'll take my peace for now because who knows how long it will last.

Road Trip

Long post, but scroll down for pictures if you don't want to read it all...

Casey thought I was crazy, but I actually wanted to take the boys on a road trip by myself. I wanted to visit my brother in New York, but I also wanted to take the time to visit some friends from college, and trying to arrange for a trip that length with Casey's work schedule wasn't possible, so I decided to go alone. The logistics and details kept changing - I had planned to leave on Monday or Tuesday, but on Friday I worked out a plan with my dad to leave on Saturday, the very next day, very short notice for me. When we went to Florida last October, I meticulously planned for the road trip portion of the trip everyday for over a week prior to the trip. But I must have absorbed all that preparation, because I basically "winged it" for this trip and we did fine. My dad joined us for the first half of the trip.
Along the way, we met up with Anne, one of my college roomies (and the friend who first coaxed me into blogging). She had just visited us a couple days before and the boys were already great fans of her adorable baby, so they were super excited to have dinner with her. Then we travelled on to Harrisburg PA and stayed at a hotel that night.
The next morning, we drove around and I showed Coulson the hospital where he was born and the apartment we lived in. (A few weeks ago I had pointed out the hospital where Charlie was born and Coulson was curious about the hospital where he was born, so I was hoping to sneak in a trip to Hershey on this trip.) He was impressed with the hospital, but visibly disappointed with the apartment building. Then we went to our old church and saw some old friends. Casey and I helped this church get started about 9 years ago, so it will always be special to us. Then I took the boys to my favorite free tourist attraction in Hershey - Chocolate World! We enjoyed the short ride about how chocolate is made, especially the free Hershey Kisses at the end. After that we met up with one of our friends from medical school for lunch. Unfortunately his wife (who was with me at the hospital when Coulson was born) and daughter were out of town that weekend, so I didn't get to see them. Then we were off to my brother's home in NY.
We had a great time with my brother and his 2 kids. We stayed for 4 days (well, we took a one day break to visit NYC). We enjoyed his small town life, walking to the park and the country store for some ice cream, eating yummy healthy foods (well, I don't think the boys ate much of that strange healthy food, but they did load up on Cheerios in between meals, oh, they did chow down on some fresh local black raspberries and blueberries), playing with chickens at a friend's barn (my niece is a bit of a chicken whisperer), swimming in a cold stream and playing soccer with the cousins. It was great to be with my niece and nephew again and give them some auntly hugs and kisses.
My dad and I and the boys took the train into NYC one day because I thought Coulson would like to see the Statue of Liberty. It was a great day. We found a parking spot at the train station and made it on the train, awkwardly but successfully navigated the subway system with a double stroller, got the in short line at the ferry for Liberty Island because I bought tickets online the night before, Charlie took his nap in his stroller while we toured the Ellis Island museum and we made it to my friend's apartment in Greenwich Village exactly at 4pm, which was my uneducated estimate of when we might get there. Charlie even got to chat with Spiderman at Battery Park (where the ferry for Liberty Island docks).
I had a great time with my friend and her 2 kids. I knew her when I was in high school and she was in graduate school. She graduated from my alma mater and was probably the biggest influence on my decision to go there myself. I hadn't heard from her in years, but "found" her on Facebook, so it's been fun to re-connect with her. Coulson and her 4-year-old son had a fabulous time inventing new Super Heroes together.
My dad left our journey to visit his brothers on the other side of NY and I started my journey back down South. On the way, I stopped in the northwestern suburbs of Philly to visit another old college roommate and her family. Actually, her husband was Casey's college roommate (for 3 years! I guess they got along well) and the reason I met Casey in the first place. I was in a class with his roommate and he introduced me to Casey (twice, because I apparently didn't remember him from the first introduction). Anyway, we spent a day with them and their 4 year old son and 2 year old daughter, playing at the park, eating ice cream and swimming. It was a relaxing day and I had a wonderful time staying connected with good friends.
On the way home, we took our time, stopping at Chuck E. Cheese for lunch, playing at the rest stops and taking a short detour to visit Casey at work. Coulson was missing his daddy so much, it was pathetic in a sweet, loving sort of way. So we stopped in to see Casey and even got to watch the helicopter land to transfer a patient to another hospital.
Then we went home. Finally.

Air Guitar Hero

We got Guitar Hero last week and it looks like we have some future rock stars. I can totally see them trashing hotel rooms and smashing guitars on stage.

Haircuts

So I finally gave in and let the boys get haircuts for the summer.

Backyard Buddies

Okay, so it's not the most exciting video, but I love to hear the boys laugh, which you just can't capture with a regular picture. This was a toad named Hoppy that Casey found on Friday night and captured so the boys could enjoy him the next day. After we played with the poor toad for a few minutes, we let him hop away.

And the week before that, Casey found a turtle under the deck. I'm used to seeing box turtles around, but this was a slider turtle. After the boys played with him, Casey tried to hide him under the pine needles, but he found his way out and then Chester discovered him. At first Chester was stunned with curiosity, but I figured that the curiosity would wear off and his natural instincts would kick in, so I transplanted the turtle to our neighbors yard, safely out of range of Chester's electrical fence.

(Yes, I let Coulson dress himself.)

(Yes, the boys desperately need haircuts.)

Oh, the silliness!

So the other night at the boys' bedtime, I randomly started speaking in PeeWee Herman's funny voice, which brought on loads of giggles and then brought on loads of questions. What is that voice? Who is Pee-Wee Herman? What else did he do?

Well, that led to the introduction of the Word of the Day. For those of you lucky enough to have not been a viewer of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, a regular, everday word is chosen to be the Word of the Day. Whenever anyone says that word, everyone starts screaming and acting silly. So now we have our own Word of the Day. Yesterday's word was "apple" and today's word was "jump." At first only Coulson fully participated, with Charlie being very confused at first and finally joining in on the scream at the end. But now he has caught on and actively enjoys the scream from the beginning and has the funniest look on his face while screaming. We did have to make a rule that we can't play Word of the Day in the car. Now I have to think of a word for tomorrow - suggestions welcome...

In addition to all that silliness, we also had a backwards eating day. It all started with a "breakfast for dinner" conversation I had with Coulson and I thought, "why only breakfast for dinner?" So at breakfast we ate sandwiches, at lunchtime, we ate dinner (last night's leftovers) and then for dinner we had pancakes (swedish pancakes, a family favorite from my mom). Coulson thought it was so much fun, he told all his friends at preschool. They were rightly confounded.

Well tomorrow we go back to eating our meals in the correct order, but Word of the Day will probably live on!

Snow Day

Here are some pictures from our short-lived snow day!

DSCF2746

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I know it's been a while since I've blogged.  It's been a busy Christmas season for us - busier than previous years, but I'm sure that's just going to increase each year as the boys get older.  This year we've had decorating, gift buying, cookie baking, preschool programs, church programs (which Coulson refused to participate in, but thankfully his cousin Lauren did a great job as a last minute stand-in wiseman!), bell-ringing for Salvation Army, cookie swaps and preschool parties.  We've had a great time preparing to celebrate Christ's birthday. 

I hope you all have a blessed and joyful Christmas or Hannukah!

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