Happy Birthday Isabella!

Isabella turned 3 today! We celebrated with 3 days of festivities. Saturday we went to Greenfield Village to ride Thomas the Train.


They also had many other activities for the kids, like magic shows, tents with games and train tables, and a fun race track with pedal powered cars and tractors.


Of course, my kids always love the carousel and the horse drawn carriages.



Sunday was Mother's Day, so I got some recognition too, but we sang to Bella in Nursery and we spent the afternoon at the park. Then today we had cake and opened presents right when the kids woke up. They had been so excited about the birthday that they both went to bed with their outfits on so they'd be ready! She mostly got Disney princess stuff because she's crazy about "girly things" as she calls them. She also got a princess cake. I'd taken Bella to the store to pick out her birthday cake and she passed up the $40 Disney princess cake with all the princesses on it and chose the $6 Belle cake. Gotta love that girl.


Then we went to a farm and spent nearly the whole day there. Bella got to ride a horse, milk a cow, bottle feed pigs and goats, hold kittens, chicks, and ducklings, and go on a hay ride. She had a wonderful time. I was proud of her for being so brave. Some of those animals were very big but she showed no fear or hesitation. She's a tough girl.




Benjamin had a blast too.




For dinner, Bella chose to go to IHOP because she loves the pancake with the face made of fruit and the yogurt hair that she can design. It's where she wanted to go for her second birthday too. Look at how little she looked just one year go!


However, they'd run out of ice cream so they couldn't give her a birthday treat. When asked what she'd like to have instead, she decided on Mac'n Cheese! So they brought out a bowl of mac'n cheese and sang to her. She was all smiles.

Christian entertained himself by sucking on lemon wedges. We gave him one just as a joke to watch his reaction, but he loved it! He happily sucked on lemons throughout dinner. Even when Benjamin was messing around and one of those large coffee pitchers (which are behind him in the picutre) fell on Christian's head, we simply handed him another lemon and he instantly stopped crying, laughed, and happily went on sucking. I should always keep a lemon in my diaper bag!



This evening, as the birthday finale, Bella got a big girl bed with (what else?) princess sheets and her own room back. We'd had Benjamin and Bella share a room while Christian was little and waking up a lot at night. But now that they're all sleeping through, it made more sense to have a boy's and a girl's room. Mostly for the fact that Bella is a chatterbox and would keep Benjamin up every night with her incessant talking. He'd come out each night multiple times declaring, "Bella's STILL talking!!" So, tonight she chattered and sang to her heart's content while the boys snoozed. It worked out beautifully. She was also so excited to not have to share a closet with anyone. All the more room for beautiful dresses.

Happy Birthday Bella! You are a beautiful girl, inside and out. We love you so much.

I Love You Enough for Both of Us

I've talked to enough moms of teenagers to know that likely, at some point, my children will tell me that they hate me. Not that they really do, but the tension of the moment would drive them to say it. I expected it. However, when it came today, I didn't expect it. Isn't 4 a bit early?

Benjamin wasn't a big fan of the dinner I'd made. So after he'd eaten only a small portion of it, he started to play with a balloon Bella had received as an early birthday present from a friend at church. I asked him to put it away and continue eating. He did, but within a few minutes, he was back at it. So I warned him that if he didn't put it away, I would take away his dinner and he wouldn't get dessert. Within moments the balloon was back, so away went his dinner and his hopes for something tastier down the line. He was livid! He started screaming and crying. He threw the balloon at me and then he went over to the coloring supplies and wrote this:


The arrow in the word hate is his way of tying the two parts together. He originally thought that another letter needed to go in there, so he left a space to be filled in later. However, I, not wanting to miss a lesson opportunity even in such a situation, reminded him of the rule that the silent E makes the A say "AY" and that no other letter was needed. So, he drew the arrow, to ease my eyes from one part of the evil word to the other and to facilitate my understanding of his venomous feelings towards me. ;) Then he read it out loud to me, crumpled up the paper, and threw it at me. That's when he ended up in his room until bed time.

So, I guess another milestone has been reached. A little early mother's day present to me. :)

This morning, as we sat at breakfast, I looked out the back window to see this, the reason why we can never get our garden to grow:


No amount of fencing can keep these guys out. We've decided to just forget it and go to farmer's markets instead. Although, I read an entry in a friend's blog who has the same problem, and I thought her daughters' idea was adorable. Maybe I'll get Benjamin to write a note for me....this time with some of that anger directed at the rabbits.

So Cute!

Some moms may disagree with me, but I think there is no cuter baby than Christian. He is the smiliest, happiest baby I've ever known. Smiling his big one-tooth grin. He is laughing all day long and is so easy to entertain. I adore this little guy. We enjoyed the spring weather today and spent the afternoon at the playground. Christian sat happily on his blanket, playing with grass and leaves and Benjamin's sunglasses. When I picked him up and put him on the swing or took him down the slide, he laughed his adorable baby laugh and Benjamin said, "Our baby has the cutest laugh! There's no baby that's cuter." I fully agree, Benjamin.

The Beginning of a New Season

I'm not talking about Spring, I'm talking about soccer season! :) I have been really excited about Benjamin getting involved in soccer again. He did a "Little Kickers" class when he was 2, but this is his first team. He and I play all the time and he's pretty good, so I was excited about this. He was too, until we arrived at the field. He took one look at the hoard of kids running around and he wanted to go back home. But he was a trooper. He found a friend from church and a friend from school on his team and he did pretty well.



He did all the drills and even part of the game. But as the designated positions disintegrated and the entire team moved as a pack around with the ball, his issue with crowds won out and he spent the rest of the game like this:


For his first time, though, I had to hand it to him. He did quite well. He just needs to get used to everything. He's not terribly shy, but big groups of people get to him and he's not one to mash himself in the middle of strangers. Once he gets the hang of things and gets to know the coaches better, I think things will get even better. And hopefully I'll remember to take my camera off the indoor light setting so my pictures will turn out better too! :)

Yesterday we had a playdate with a couple German friends of mine who had babies in the same month as Christian. The babies ate each other's socks and had backwards scooting races.


The older brothers played the Wii.


Poor Isabella didn't know quite where she fit in. However, she managed to have some fun too.

Happy Easter!

I know, Easter is over, but this is the earliest I could get to posting these pictures. We had a great Easter. The day before, we went to the Zoo for their Easter day. Oh my, the crowds!! I really wanted Kelly to be able to come with us, so we braved it, but I will not do that again any time soon. Mid-week zoo trips are definitely where it's at. Although, I often joke that I don't have a zoo membership, I have a playground and fountains membership because that's really all my kids care about. Benjamin even asked before we left, "Will the frog fountain be turned on?" Not, will the giraffes be out or can we be sure to go see the tiger. He only cared about the fountain. He even made sure to remind me to bring his flip flops, just in case. Sadly the frogs were not squirting that day, but they still spent 95% of their time here:


and here:


Whatever makes them happy. We had a fun time as a family, regardless.

On Sunday we went to church first. Then afterwards, I gave the kids their Easter baskets and then sent them out into the back yard to search for the eggs which I'd hidden the night prior. Unbeknown to me, the backyard animals had been on their own easter egg hunt and had discovered the ones with chocolate inside! Thin plastic eggs hold no power against those sharp little teeth! Luckily, being me, only a few rare ones held edible items, so most eggs were spared. The kids had fun running around finding them and then rushing around playing with all their new loot. Then, we took advantage of the beautiful day and took a family bike ride to the playground and spent the afternoon enjoying the beautiful weather. Such a wonderful day. I hope everyone else had a great Easter too.

Here's the two oldest in their fancy Easter duds. Bella looks tired in that picture for some reason and Benjamin's hair hasn't been fully tamed. Not their best picture, but it's all I had time for in the rush to get to 9am church, and the idea is to see the clothes and they are adorable, don't you think?


Here's the youngest hanging out at the playground. He loved playing like the big kids.



Next big event: Bella's 3rd birthday in two weeks! I've gotten all her presents, but I've already forgotten where I hid some of them!! :)

Skating with the Easter Bunny

A nearby skating rink had a special preschool easter skate activity today, so I decided to take the kids. It included skate rental, skate lesson, lunch, easter egg hunt, and pics with the easter bunny for $6/kid. Can't beat that. I remembered to keep my expectations low, though, after the last time I took Benjamin skating and he got two feet from the rental area, fell down hard, and refused to skate again for the rest of the afternoon. Luckily, he's older and stronger now and Bella is much more of an optimist, so things went better this time.

Not at first, though. I got their skates and Bella was upset because they weren't pink and also much heavier on her feet than she'd imagined.


Benjamin wasn't the slighest bit interested in skating because they had arcades and TV. He spent 30 minutes playing arcade games without inserting a single coin. I really started thinking that maybe my expectations were still set a bit too high - I had actually assumed we were going to skate!


However, Bella got over her dull tan skates and got excited when she saw the Easter Bunny. She agreed to skate over to him and have her picture taken and then she was willing to skate with me around the rink. She was so cute.


Then we found Benjamin (still at the arcades) and had lunch together. After lunch, he was willing to try to skate too and did a pretty good job. We went around the rink together and then we had the skating lesson. The teacher came over to him and tried to show him some moves, but after a couple of falls, Benjamin had had enough of this stranger telling him what to do. He agreed to skate over to the Bunny and have his picture taken with him, but then that was the end of it.


I was pleased. It was much better than I'd hoped for. Both kids showed quite a bit of patience and diligence with such a tricky new thing. The final activity was the egg hunt. They loved running around the place (since neither of them were wearing skates by this point, they were faster than the other little kids) and they went home gleeful with an armful of eggs. It was a very fun experience all around. At dinner time they both said it was their favorite part of the day.

What's Wrong With This Picure?

It's the fact that it was taken on the first day of Spring Break! Snow during Spring Break!?! At least we had a lot of fun...well, at least for a while. Then Bella got too cold and went inside and you can see how Christian felt. But we did manage to make a cute little snow baby. May it please get warmer soon!

8 Months!

Our little man is 8 months old now. What a sweetheart he is. He's a mix of the other two, it seems. He has the more calm disposition that Bella had as a baby (where did that go?!) and the lack of motivation to do a lot of moving (no scooting or crawling yet), but he has that same intense interest in the world around him that Benjamin had. Just try to feed him while the others are around. You'll see what I'm talking about. His head whips around so fast and furious trying to follow everything they do that feeding is out of the question. I often have to send them out of the room so that he'll eat.

He's by far the smiliest of the three. He loves to be the center of attention and loves to give big grins with his nearly toothless mouth. He's finally got one tooth on the bottom and possibly the start of one on the top. That's just like my others - late teethers. He also loves technology. I cannot text or talk on the phone or work on the computer with him anywhere nearby. He will pull them out of my hands or rip at the cords. Give him a cell phone and he'll be happy for as long as you need. Sorry if he accidentally calls any of you while I'm making dinner! :) We sure do love you little man!

A Rare Warm Day

It rained all day yesterday and is supposed to rain tomorrow, so when the sun came out this afternoon, I grabbed my kids and out we went. It felt so good to play outside. We played in the yard for a while and then decided we needed more space, so we headed over to the playground nearby. We rode bikes and played baseball and spun on the merry-go-round. Bella has entered the phase where she will only wear a dress or skirt, regardless of the weather or activity. So, she was wearing a pretty spring dress when it was time to go outside. Her compromise with the cooler weather was this darling ensemble:


I think the renaissance princess crown from her Halloween costume just makes the outfit, don't you? What's great about Isabella is that although she's a diva and a princess, she's not too prissy to get dirty. She enjoyed the puddles and the mud pies to the fullest.




It wasn't until we'd been there a few hours and she got tired, that she realized she didn't like being wet and muddy. That's when she broke down and threw a fit of massive proportions all the way back to car where I got her cleaned up. The whole "If you don't like being wet and muddy, then you shouldn't play in water and mud" lecture was lost on her.


It was a great day, though. Benjamin hit multiple baseballs into the outfield and rode his two-wheeler bike all around the park without any help starting or stopping. Christian is on day 3 without a nap but was still pleasant and happy the whole time. Not sure what his deal is, other than he's one of my kids. (Bella went down to one short nap a day at 6 months.) Hopefully it's just a phase, though. 7 months is a bit young to stop napping, don't you think? Here's to hoping the weather forecast for tomorrow is wrong and we have another fun sunny day.

Oh, and as an afterthought, I mentioned a while ago that I played bank with my kids to help them understand money a bit better. To give you a variation on that game, I'll tell you that yesterday, Bella wanted to play bank again but Benjamin wanted to play astronaut, so we decided to combine. We pretended that we traveled from planet to planet and had to refuel at each stop at the bank, which doled out anti-matter particles in the shape of coins and dollar bills. To help Bella keep practicing her numbers, I gave her a control panel (remote control from the tv) and called out headings at each departure. "Ensign, set in a course for Jupiter, heading 2.5.9 mark 6!" Yes, I'm a trekkie. She was totally into it, though, so whatever works, right? In the end we finally reached Pluto, where we withdrew money and donated it to the "Gloomies" (Benjamin's invented name for the aliens there) so they could buy flowers and beautify their cold, dark planet. Benjamin played the President of the Gloomies and Bella and I were the ambassadors from earth who approached his complicatedly constructed throne (he used every cushion and chair in our house, it seemed) and presented our gift to his planet. Yes, at our house, Pluto is still a planet. It made for a great game. He'll find out the truth soon enough. :)

General Conference Weekend

I love General Conference. Not the least reason being that I don't have to prepare a lesson for church or put on a dress or deal with squirmy toddlers by myself in sacrament meeting. However, I also LOVE listening to the prophets speak and feeling the spirit and hearing the choir sing. So we set up our living room like in King Benjamin times with our "tent" facing the prophet and tried to pay as close attention as possible with three little kids.


Between sessions we made sure to get outside and play. We shot off rockets (old film containers filled with water and alka-seltzer), played baseball, and went to the playground. The rocket was funny because we put the tablet in the water, put the lid on and then all backed away quickly. Uh-oh...who was supposed to grab Christian? Luckily the rocket shot in the opposite direction. :)


Baseball was fun because it was the first time Kelly played along and Isabella even tried to do a few things too. It almost felt like a real team, not just me playing 5 positions simultaneously.

On Friday before Conference, I took the kids to Kensington Farm to see the baby animals. I go every year around conference time because that's when the animals are born. We saw 5 lambs that had just been born the day before. So incredibly cute!


Benjamin wanted me to take a picture of him with the one sleeping.


Bella kept trying to pet this one, but it would never get close enough.


We also saw baby pigs (who were much more willing to come close),


chickens, and goats. And then Benjamin discovered something I'd never noticed before - a maple syrup production area right next to the farm! I had overlooked it every other time. We had fun walking through the forest and looking at the sap dripping into the buckets and the various machinery they use.


Of course, Benjamin's big thrills were wielding his gigantic stick ("Make sure you get the whole stick in the picture! Did you get it? The whole thing?")




and jumping around on fallen trees. ("Take a picture of me while I'm jumping! Did you get it?")


That's a boy for ya.

I hope everyone else had an enjoyable conference weekend, felt the spirit, and now has lots of new ideas for how to be better. Benjamin loved that one of the speaker's names was Benjamin. He got excited every time his name appeared on the screen. I loved several of the talks, but I will have to listen to them again without kids to understand them better. The kids tried really hard to be quiet and did way, way better than I ever remember doing at an even older age, but still, it was hard to focus. I love that I can view them again on the church's website already and don't have to wait a month for the Ensign (the church's monthly magazine which always publishes the talks from conference)! That's going to be my scripture study for the next week.

Last, but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear sweet husband tomorrow!!! He'll never be as old as I am, but he's getting up there! :) Hope you have a great one...while at work all day! ;) So not fair. Everyone should get their birthday off automatically. I guess, another thing to add to my list for when I run the world.

Underpants!

Guess who's been wearing underpants since Friday? This little girl has finally potty trained! The turning point came a week ago when in desperation I asked for the thousandth time, "Why won't you poop in the toilet?" Up to this point I'd always gotten such inane answers as, "I don't want to," "Because I like pooping in my diaper," or "I don't know." But on that day I got, "Because my potty seat hurts my legs." Finally, an answer I can work with! When I asked why she won't use Benjamin's former potty seat which is much softer than hers, she replied, "Benjamin's potty seat is soccer and I don't like soccer." She refused to sit on the soft seat because she objected to the soccer ball print. For someone who sits in her own excrement all day, she's quite particular. In any case, this was finally getting somewhere. That very night I ordered a pink princess potty seat which many users had commented was "very soft" and 48 hours later (even with no shipping costs!), we had the key to potty training success. From the moment it arrived, she was willing to start using the toilet and within 24 hours, she was out of diapers for good. Thank you Amazon.

We have had a couple accidents, but only minor ones. Like on our walk on Saturday, for example. I wanted to revel in the arrival of spring and so I took the kids for a walk in the woods to look for the first signs of spring growth in the forest. Neglected to consider that someone potty training might not be excited about the idea of squatting in the woods. Thus the angry face in the picture. We changed pants, though, and still had a fun time on the playground afterwards while Christian slept in the stroller. That why he's crying in the picture. Really should have taken a picture at the beginning of our walk.



Despite this, though, she's even stopped watching tv and has come in from outside to use the toilet. Those are clear signs, in my opinion, that we are home free. So I took her to the store today and let her pick out a set of underpants. (She was wearing Gerber training pants these last few days.) Of course, no surprise, she picked the Disney Princess ones. She looks so incredibly cute running around in her little panties. What a wonderful thing to be back down to only one kid in diapers!