Isaac-isms

Mom, you look nice. (Mumbling a little bit) You're probably a zebra? - (I am wearing an animal print dress.)

Yesterday while playing with a friend.

You are a patawan learner. I was a patawan learner once too, but now I'm a real jedi knight. I'll be your master.

(Good one Isaac)

USU Homecoming Parade

Every year we go to the USU Homecoming Parade, and this year we were lucky enough to have Trisha and her family come. As Trisha said, it is a terrible thing to teach children: run around in the road and pick up candy from the ground that was thrown at you by strangers. Nonetheless, it is fun, and our kids love it. Dave had to go help out with his Alumni group, so we went alone, and we had a little surprise half way through the parade...



I really can't complain about this kid. He is so good. He sat in the stroller almost the whole time, and laid on the grass for the rest of it. He's very sweet.


SURPRISE!!! There is my husband IN the parade. It was kind of funny.


And some cute videos of the kids dancing. I'm pretty sure we had the cutest kids at the whole parade, but we can't help it, can we Trisha?







And thanks to Auntie Kate who provided the Halloween pumpkin bags that we used to catch parade candy as well. Great buy!

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day.

Isaac's teacher celebrated this day with them yesterday by having them bring in different kinds of apples. I sent Isaac with one of the Macintosh apples off of our tree. He told me his was the biggest one! We have had an awesome first crop of apples from our tree. They are huge, and tasty, and we probably ended up with 50 of them.

Isaac's teacher (Miss Melanie) is awesome. She doesn't mess around with baby stuff, she takes Kindergarten very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously, but I love it. She taught the kids this apple poem, and I love that she is working with them on memorizing.

The IPOD

Lately my kids have been doing a lot of this.....



They watch movies on the ipod. They love it, they escape into their own little world with their own screen and headphones.

So today while I was cleaning, I resorted to this:



I don't know if you can quite tell, but I am sporting the 80's kids headphones that my mom gave Dawson for his birthday. We have two ipods, but only one set of ear buds. So after I snapped that picture of Isaac, he took this little sweetheart of me. Don't I look hot? Maybe Isaac will have a career in photography. Then he can buy his own ipod....

Dr. Appt.

Just got back from Dawson's 3-year appt. (better late than never) The highlight of the appointment was when the doctor asked Dawson what color the dinosaur was. Henry turned his head, looked straight at the doctor and said, "Green." I assured the doctor that it was just luck. We are still working on WORDS with Henry, not COLORS!

Dawson is only 33 pounds, which is 60% and 38.75 inches which is 70%. Not as much of a munchkin as I thought he was. He did great, and I was thrilled to have no concerns with him to report. Night trained, potty trained, eats well, sleeps well, and is healthy as can be. I may take him to get his speech evaluated, but other than that we are good to go!

G. Jesse's appointment was last week and he weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs (15%) and 25.5 inches (20%). The doctor was actually thrilled with that, and wrote "On the regular curve!" I thought he had grown quite a bit since I quit nursing, but I guess it wasn't quite as much as I thought. He just is so much chubbier than Henry, I thought he'd be at least 50%.

Healthy boys! Henry's 2-year appointment is next month, but since he performs so well for the doctor, I'm sure he'll do fine too. ;)

Mamo

Henry has had a thing lately for "Mamo". He discovered that his swim diapers had Nemo on them and carried armfuls of swim diapers around every day. I took pity on him, and so I decided to get him some Nemo paraphanalia. With Halloween coming up, I gave in and bought him a Nemo costume too. It is the cutest thing ever! When he runs around his little back fin wiggles back and forth and he actually looks like a fish. SO CUTE! He was very pleased with his Mamo costume and I can't wait until his other Nemo things come in the mail. He'll love them.

First day of Preschool

Today is a good day. I sent off TWO kids to school today. It was exciting. It was Dawson's first day of preschool. I decided to not do joy school with him, and send him to the Sport's Academy preschool with his cousin Naomi. I am so excited for them. When I taught tumbling at that preschool I had a little boy/girl cousin set in one class. It was so cute how they interacted, different than the other boys and girls treated each other. I hope it works out the same for Dawson and Naomi, that they can be great friends.

I did work at the Sports Academy Preschool when Isaac was a baby teaching tumbling. I always swore I would send my kids there as I do think it's the best preschool in town. But since I was pregnant the last two years there was no way I could drive Isaac across town all the time. So Trisha and I are carpooling, and I am feeling better this year with definite plans to NOT be pregnant this year. The Sports Academy Preschool have an incredible program. They swim for an hour on Tuesday and tumble for an hour on Thursday. And they run an incredible preschool for the kids for the other two hours. I can't wait to see the things they come up with for the kids this year, it should be awesome.

So this morning I got up with Isaac and started getting him ready. I came out of my room to find Dawson on the floor in the hall wrapped up with a blanket with it over his head. That's not out of the ordinary for him. He doesn't wake up very well. The first thing he said to me was, "Preschool's not that fun." I assured him it was and it would be worth waking up and getting ready. Well, somehow Henry woke up early, which hasn't happened yet since Isaac has been in Kindergarten. So when I walked Isaac to the bus stop Henry screamed the whole time, sure I had abandoned him forever. At this point I did have Dawson convinced that preschool WAS fun, so he was cooperating to get ready. Oh wait, jump back to the walk to the bus stop. I walk out the door holding Isaac's hand and he says to me, "It smells like a good day mom." "No Isaac," I said, "that's horse poop." But his good mood couldn't be dampened. "Well it smells WET, and that's a good thing mom." He's a good kid.

Henry was not happy about the neglect of his mother getting older brothers ready for school. He was panicked about his "paa-paa" (backpack), his shoes, and his bottle. And I just ran around getting Dawson ready. When Daws was finally ready, I walked him outside to take some pictures, and I could scarcely get a picture without Henry in it. Here is what we got. (Notice the little red croc over the blanket sleepers)








Go ahead and enlarge this one. It's worth it.


I am thrilled to have two kids gone today, and I think I'll go get some things done before the baby wakes up. Bye.

First stitches

There has to be a first for everything, right? Well, we had our first stitches of the family. Isaac was using a knife to cut a hole in a jar for a bug to breathe. Makes sense, right? Forget about the five million times I have told him not to use knives, or the 2 million times he's reminded me that he can't use a sharp knife. All that went out the window when the bug needed to breathe. So he wound up with a nice size hole in the webbing of his forefinger and thumb. Remarkably, it didn't bleed much, and we learned that area of the hand is actually hollow, so you could see right in there. I tried taking pictures of it, but the didn't turn out that great. He was actually playing at a friend's house when he did it, and happened to be wearing a superhero costume (I'm too clueless to know what superhero he is). I kept snapping pictures of him and he said, "Mom, why are you taking so many pictures?" I told him I thought it was really funny.

2 stitches was all it took, and we were on our way. Everyone laughed as I took him out of Instacare, I told them that even superheros get hurt some times.

Hemy

One of the highlights of raising young children is witnessing them learn to talk. I absolutely love it as they learn to say new words, some of which don't come out quite right. Isaac was a pretty early talker, with pretty good pronunciation. Dawson said his first words even earlier than Isaac, but took a long time to really talk. Henry has taken his time, not really feeling any urgency to talk. Just when I started to worry, he started catching up. You can actually see the progression day by day. One day he came to me and said, "Cookie please?" I had a bowl of cereal in my hands. I figured that was close enough though! The next day he started saying, "Sheeall please?" Today the word "banana" has been substituted with the word "cupcake." Dude, I'll give you a cupcake any time you want!

He has just recently learned how to say his name, which is so fun. "Hemy" is what he calls himself. When I am passing out food for the boys if he is last he will say, "Ahh Hemy?" In other words, "What about me mom?" My other boys had/have deep raspy voices. Not Henry. He has a tiny little munchkin voice, which matches what a little munchkin he is.

I put this picture at the top because it is so classic Henry. He loves to stand and watch tv, rarely does he sit. You can see how teeny tiny he still is, especially those legs. He has a very petite build. He actually still wears some 6-12 month pants because he is so skinny. I think G. Jesse will catch up fast. The little bun hanging out on the right side is pretty funny too. I ran out of diapers and he is wearing a size 2, which apparently don't fit that well. But the most classic part of this picture is those shoes. Henry has always loved shoes since he was a baby. He is completely obsessed. He wears these shoes to bed, and almost all day long. He panics if you try to take them off him. We went camping as a family a few weeks ago and I heard Henry sleep talking. Do you know what he said? "Ahhwaa shoe." The boy even dreams about shoes.

I couldn't love this boy more. He makes me so ridiculously happy I can't express it. I have never met a child as fun and dear as this little Hemy. I'm very grateful for him!

PS He just took a bath.... with his shoes on.