It's Out!

Benjamin's first tooth was quite a stubborn one!  It took a week from the time it started wiggling until it finally fell out on Sunday morning while I was in the shower.  I stepped out to find Benjamin standing there proudly holding it in his hand.  "Look what I have!" he declared, beaming.  I put it in a baggie since it's all I had readily on hand.  (Yes, I got dressed first).  And then I took a picture.  His new tooth is already so far out that the picture almost doesn't show there's a hole there.  But in reality, the adult tooth is quite a ways back from the hole.  Please let that straighten itself out on its own!

After church I gave Benjamin a little plastic treasure chest designed for teeth with the words "tooth saver" on it so we wouldn't lose it.  Of course, he insisted on carrying it with him everywhere and letting Bella and Christian hold it too.  I repeatedly asked him to give it to me so he wouldn't lose it, but a couple hours later he came to me wailing that it was lost.  "I lost my tooth and then I lost my tooth!"  We searched high and low for that little box but it was nowhere to be found.  Oh the stress - would the tooth fairy still come!?!?  He prayed and prayed to find his tooth, but it didn't turn up.  Luckily the tooth fairy was forgiving and still brought him a dollar and a little certificate which now proudly hangs on the fridge.  Luckily last night he had a bit of an anger management issue (read: temper tantrum) and ripped the cushions off the couch, only to discover his tooth!!  He was so excited. All's well that ends well.

Yesterday we discovered how to to get more bang for your buck at the zoo: confuse what time it closes.  Turns out the zoo closes at 4pm in the Winter, but I thought it closes at 5pm as it does in the Summer, so we were clear at the back of the zoo when I started to notice it was very empty around us.  However, it's winter so I didn't think of much of it and thought how nice it is not to fight the crowds.  We enjoyed the prairie dogs, the wolverine, the buffalo and the bald eagle, etc. and then we wanted to check out the polar bears and sea lions again - the kids love watching them swim overhead in their tunnel.  When we got there, however, the door was closed.  What?  Why would they close off the polar bear exhibit in the winter - that was the best time to see them!  We walked around a bit more and watched the bears and arctic foxes from outside and then an employee rode by on a bike.  I stopped him and asked why it was closed.  He looked at me funny and said, "Well, we close at four."  I looked at my watch - 4:30.  Ooops!  So here we were in the middle of the zoo 30 minutes past closing time.  So we headed out, but decided to take our time since no one seemed terribly anxious for us to leave.  We passed several more employees but no other visitors.  Not a single employee seemed to even notice us or even said anything.  We stopped at the camels, the ducks, the turtle and frog statues where the kids like to climb around, etc. and finally it was 4:55 when two zoo security guards came riding by.  "What are you still doing here this late?  Were you way in the back?" they asked.  "Yup, sorry.  Didn't realize what time you close."  They eyed me critically, said nothing more, but then followed us the rest of the way out.  Good thing they did, too, because all the exits were already locked!  In the end, we did leave at 5pm, just as planned!  Nothing like having a zoo all to yourself!  It was a fun afternoon.  The kids loved it but were a bit bummed that it's not like in the books where all the animals come out of their cages and have parties after all the visitors go home.  Maybe we just didn't stay late enough.  Guess there's always next time!

The End of an Era

We bid a sad farewell to nap time yesterday.  Christian has been fighting nap time for the last couple months but I've won the battle most of the time simply by putting him in his crib and letting him scream until he fell asleep.  Then the last three days he's screamed for over an hour an never fallen asleep.  Finally yesterday as I listened to him scream, it suddenly got quiet much earlier than I expected.  I thought that meant he'd fallen asleep, but the next thing I heard was the click of his door and the triumphant cry of "I get out of my bed!" That's when I knew it was truly over.

I count my blessings that it took this long.  Benjamin was only 11 months old when he learned to climb out of his crib.  Bella about 2.  Christian took the longest and for that I am grateful because now that he can, he will never stay in there.  I tried many things to get him to go to sleep and none worked.  Today again we tried, and every time he simply climbed right back out.  Many times during the day he admitted, "I tired!" as his head lolled to the side.  Each time I encouraged him to go to bed and rest.  I promised special rewards afterwards and I promised we'd do nothing interesting while he was sleeping.  "We are just going to sit on the couch and stare at the wall and wait for you to wake up!"  Nothing worked.  We slugged through a very long, difficult day with cranky, tired Christian.  I don't know why he goes to bed at night.  I guess he's simply too tired to put up a fight after being up for so long.

On a different Christian related note, have you ever seen those stuffed animals that look like germs in stores?  I've seen them in museum gift shops and whatnot.  They have little plush versions of staph, salmonilla, etc.
 Like this: http://www.giantmicrobes.com/
I've seen these and never really understood the appeal.  The idea of hugging something that reminded me of something that could make me violently ill just didn't appeal to me.  However, Christian received one as a gift and has loved it!!  His generous gift giver is a veterinarian and she gave him a toy flea.  Which I guess isn't a germ, but is right up there with things I wouldn't want to cuddle.  I spent too many months scratching flea bites in Madagascar to ever spend a single penny on a toy version of this dreaded pest.  Never in my life would I have thought he'd like it either, but Flea has become a member of the family around here.  Flea goes everywhere with us now and I about laughed out loud as I heard him say today while hugging the little blood sucking pest, "I love you Flea" with the sweetest little boy voice you've ever heard.  Hats off to you, inventors of plush germs and vermin.  You know your audience.

Christian - never without his flea and his blankie.

Christian is 2 and a half

That half a year makes all the difference when you're young, doesn't it?  I remember so eagerly waiting until I could add that 1/2 to my age.  My kids are no different.  Christian added the 1/2 on Valentine's day and he's been reminding me and everyone he meets ever since.  "I not two!  I two and a half!  I big boy!"  For his 1/2 birthday we made blueberry banana muffins and sang to him as he blew out 2 and 1/2 candles.  Then we had friends over and built a couch fort they could play in.  Everyone had a great time.  This was the only view I got of him most of the afternoon:

Or occasionally this:

We also followed our tradition of having pink cream of wheat for breakfast and making personal mini pizzas with heart shaped pepperoni for dinner.  I was going to make heart shaped pizzas but decided to let the kids roll out their own dough which led to some very creative looking pizzas.  "I made a dinosaur pizza!"  But when you make it yourself, you love it and that's the key.

Christian continues to crack me up all day long with his growing personality and imagination.  Today his secret animal was a dog which he called "Sprinkle Doggy."  He spent long periods of time telling me all about Doggy's habits.  "He bark a lot. When I brush his fur, he bark. When I play with him, he bark.  I tell him he need be quiet because people sleeping, but he happy and he bark a lot."  "So, it's always a happy bark?" I asked.  "Yeah, always happy.  Except when he hungry.  Then it a hungry bark.  Then I feed him.  Then it happy bark."  This went on and on.

His other thing now is he loves the word "squishy" but he can't say it right, so he says, "wooshy."  So everything is "wooshy."  Jingle Bells is now sung daily as "Wooshy Bells, Wooshy Bells, Wooshy all the way!"  And the sippy cup with the soft straw is the "cup with the wooshy lid."  So funny.

Since it was Valentine's Day last week, Bella also had a little party at school where the kids sang while in a box they decorated to look like a package sent to us.  Benjamin spent quite a bit of time afterwards hypothesizing how a kid could actually send themselves somewhere.  He had all the logistics figured out except for that tricky little business of it being against the law.  We did, however, read together the story of the slave, Henry Brown, who managed to find a way to mail himself north to escape slavery.  That was a cool story!

Here's a little bit of Bella's valentine's performance.  I thought it was really fun to watch her and she participated much more than I thought she would.  She's very outgoing and showy when she's home or just with friends at school but she gets very intimidated in front of a lot of adults.  Her ballet recital was a disaster because she completely froze when she saw all the parents watching.  I have 15 minutes of video showing Bella standing, staring, and pulling on her tights while the rest of the class dances around her and her teacher makes encouraging remarks with no success.

Benjamin has become a jump rope fanatic.  Two weeks ago I had him jump rope while doing his spelling words like in the movie Akeela and the Bee and it's completely taken on a life of its own.  Now he's jumping all the time.  At first he couldn't do more than 4 or 5 jumps in a row, but now he's up in the 30s and he loves it.  I love that he gets rid of excess energy while getting his school work done! :)

He's also got his first loose tooth!  He's so excited.  His adult tooth has already started growing in behind it which freaks me out a bit because he's had such perfectly straight cavity free teeth and I was starting to believe he'd never need braces.  Seeing this adult tooth coming in screwy from behind has been discouraging.  However, the baby one is on its way out soon, we hope.  Benjamin prays every morning and night for it to fall out.  It's been 2 days so far, so we'll see how long it lasts.  I'm excited for him.  I still remember loosing my first tooth.  I remember it better than I remember my baptism or several other events that theoretically should have been much more significant in my life.  However, that first tooth will never be forgotten.  I called relatives to inform everyone and I still remember finding that silver dollar under my pillow in the morning.  So exciting!  Well, so exciting once my dad explained to me what this large heavy coin was and agreed to exchange it for some "real" money. ;)  Bella's been avidly testing the solidity of her teeth for days as well now.  No loose ones yet, much to her dismay.

Freezing!

I am not one to complain about cold.  Our house is always set to 64 degrees, I almost never wear a jacket, and we do a lot more complaining about heat and sweating than we ever do about cold.  However, these last couple weeks have been terrible!  It's the first time in many years that I've uttered the words, "It's too cold to go outside!" So this has been the month of museums for us.  Ann Arbor Hands-On museum, Detroit History Museum, Michigan Science Center, Henry Ford Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts have been our main hangouts.  We've also been to multiple libraries, the Heritage Park Nature Center, and gone roller skating.  Basically anything that gets us out of the house, but not technically out of a house.  We've had a great time.  My kids love museums and the amazing thing is that every single one we went to was free or at least free on the day I went, thanks to a membership.  In some I took tons of pictures and in some I took none.  No idea why. Here's a sampling.

Detroit History Museum:

Old Fashioned Drug Store/Soda Shop:

Horse-drawn fire engine.  Not sure this was for climbing on, but no one was around to tell us otherwise.

Huge display of toy trains that could be controlled by the kids.  So fun!

I love this one - Benjamin mixing Motown music complete with hoodie on.

Henry Ford Museum:
Being a hot dog next to the Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile.

Christian loves nothing more than to pretend to drive cars.  The Henry Ford museum is hard for him because there are sooooo many cars there, but only about 2 they'll let you get in.  He managed to find this one and wouldn't be dragged away for 20 minutes.  The guide working this area and I became BFFs as I tried to pass the time sitting in the back seat being chauffeured by my cute driver.  I ended up learning a ton about early cars and their design.  So interesting.  Thanks Christian, because I would have likely simply walked on by.

Benjamin has been taking a class through the Nature Center at Heritage Park.  When we come to pick him up, we all hang out a while and play.  The kids' favorite part is this play campsite.  Countless tea parties have been had in that tent already and bears attack on a regular basis.  (See the black bear on the ground?  Clifford took him out that time.)

Christian has a toddler playgroup each week which he loves.  Last week it was at our place and I set up this little spider web for the kids to play on.  They were supposed to walk along the web, step over the books (spiders) and pick up the legos (save the flies).  The toddlers did it once and moved on, but my older kids played it for two days, timing each other, making more and more rules to make it harder, etc.  At least it got some good use.

Benjamin decided he wanted to play with bubbles but it was too cold outside, so indoors works even better!
Although, we did go outside one time to test the theory that the bubble would freeze.  That was cool!  It didn't look any different when it floated, but when it popped, rather than popping and disappearing, it shattered and bubble shards fell to the ground.  We were too cold to do it for long, though. ;)

Benjamin wanted to pretend camp, so we had our tent sent up for a couple days and he slept in it for 2 or 3 nights.  During the day they were king and queen of the tent kingdom and I was the court jester who had to perform puppet shows and other antics or be sent to the dungeon.

When the weather warmed up a bit one day, we headed out immediately.  Benjamin decided it would be a good idea to climb on the roof of the day care center at the end of our street when I wasn't looking, to see what he could see from there.  Then he was unable to get back down.  He ended up jumping into my arms for lack of a better idea and no one got seriously injured, thank goodness, except for a sprained pinky finger on my right hand that is still a bit stiff two weeks later.  Better than a broken leg, though.

Don't know why I took this picture other than that I think he's just the cutest little 2 year old on the planet.  He loves his "babies" as well.  "Bear" and "Elephanty" come everywhere with him, especially bed, where they each get to pick a good night song and where I can often hear him telling them his own goodnight stories long after I've left the room.  He is soooo cute!

His imagination is also really taking off.  A couple days ago we had this conversation:

Christian:  I have to tell you a secret.
Me: What?
Christian:  I whisper it in your ear.
I lean in to let him whisper and he lowers his voice conspiritorily.
C: I have a monster in my pocket
Me: Is it dangerous?
C: No, it just a little monster.  See?
He pretends to reach into his non-existant pocket and pull out his monster. He holds his hand out open to me, showing me his empty palm.
Me: Oh, I see, it is just a little one.  What's his name?
C: Mon. Ster.
He emphasizes each syllable distinctly.
Me:  Is he nice or will he hurt me?
C: He not hurt me, but he hurt you.
He proceeds to lunge at my ear with the "monster" in his hand and make a munching sound.
C: He eat your ear!
Me: AUGGHH!  Help me!
C: I help you!  I get ear out of monster's tummy.
He digs in his empty hand with the other hand making grinding noises and pulls out my "ear" which he then rubs around on the side of my head.
C: There.  It okay now.  You feel better?

This continued for quite a while and Mon Ster came back many times over the next few days.  It was a riot.  Other things have turned up in his pocket as well - pennies, animals.  Monsters have also terrorized our basement and bathroom.  He routinely tells me, "I hold your hand so you not be scared.  We go downstairs together."  or "Watch out! Monster in there!  Not go there!" as I'm about to use the bathroom.  Then he'll run ahead, make a bunch of noise and come back out, "It okay.  Monster gone.  I scare him away for you."  Honestly, how do I deserve this cutie?  Love him!

Happy New Year

I can't remember a holiday season passing as quickly as this one did.  I guess that means I'm getting old - time seems to be going by faster and faster.  We had a great Christmas.

Traditionally we set up our tree on Christmas eve (the same one we've had for 11 years since our days as poor college students), read the bible story, act out the nativity and generally try to keep that evening as Christ centered as possible since we know Christmas morning is all about the toys.  Benjamin wanted to make the star this year so he secretly went downstairs and spent a long time constructing and painting it before returning with his contribution to the evening.  He then sweetly let Christian place it.   My favorite part of Christmas eve is acting out the nativity with the kids.  This year I expected them to use a doll as baby Jesus, but Christian wanted that role again.  They were so cute and all did a really great job.  Of course, we ended up doing it at least 4 times.

Christmas morning was a blast too.  Kelly and I slept in the living room so we wouldn't miss the kids coming in.  The kids loved their presents and I loved seeing their faces light up.  We had our traditional breakfast (ham and egg croissant sandwiches) and spent most of the day playing with all the toys.

Then we had to get out and play in the snow that fell on Christmas eve.  Kelly hooked up ropes to the sled like a harness and he and I took turns running the kids around the yard.  It was a blast as long as no one tipped and face planted in the snow (read: Bella...poor thing)

The kids also wanted to snow paint.  I filled some squirt bottles with colored water and they had a blast.  This picture was taken before my fingers went numb from filling water bottles in sub-freezing temps, so it looks plain but it got quite colorful out there.

I decided trying to do home school lessons during Christmas time was a wasted effort so we declared it science project week and we did fun science projects every day.   This one involves lighting a tea bag on fire and watching it shoot up in the air as the hot air inside drives it up.  I love this picture because Bella actually really loved this experiment and wanted to do it again and again, but nothing can push her to stop sucking her thumb, not even fire flying through the air.

I realize I actually didn't take too many science project pics.  Sadly, I think I was too busy running them.  This one was fun, too, though.  It involved putting tiny, tiny gel balls in water and seeing how they expand as they absorb the water. We also did a similar one with sodium polyacrylate.  That stuff is a lot of fun and cool for science projects too.  We tested how adding sodium chloride disrupts its ability to bind water and why.

January 2 was Benjamin's 6 and 1/2 birthday.  Half birthdays are big around here.  He got to have a cake, decide the entire day's menu (oatmeal for breakfast, grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, spinach soup and hot dogs for dinner), and have some friends over to play.  No real party, but a fun play date.  He also kept reminding us all day whenever he didn't get his way, "You should do what I want, it's my half birthday."

Then this Sunday, Christian was so excited because he was going into a new nursery class and Bella was so excited to start CTR 4 class and no longer be in the youngest class in primary.  They felt like such big kids and kept asking, "So this will be my class for the whole rest of the year!?!"  They both really love their teachers this year too, which is great.

Now everything is getting back into its normal routine.  Piano, swim lessons, school, etc.  It all went so fast, but we had a wonderful holiday season.  Just wish we could have had a bit more family around with whom to celebrate it.

Excited for Christmas!

Today was the first day of Christmas vacation and although in our house, that merely means that Bella doesn't spend her usual 2 hours at preschool in the morning, it changed the feel of our home entirely.  We spent the entire morning in our pjs, listened to Christmas music, made Gingerbread cookies, finished our present for Kelly, and played in the first snowfall (more like snow dusting) of Winter.  Such a fun day!  I love this time of year.

We had a snowball fight outside and the younger two wanted to ride bikes.  Christian discovered that it's kinda tricky riding a tricycle snow pants and boots.  It made him quite cranky at first.  He finally got the hang of it, though.

Bella is in the process of learning to ride without training wheels and so I took the pedals off her old little bike so she could use it like a balance bike - just sit and walk it with her feet to practice balance.  She's loving it and I'm happy I saved all that money not buying a balance bike.

We did homeschool during Christian's nap and Bella was so excited to join in.  She has a much harder time with math than Benjamin does, but she's right where he's at in spelling, despite her age.  So I had Benjamin read to us to practice reading, then I made up a spelling game to play together, and then we did separate math activities.  Bella amazes me with her determination.  She had a super hard time with the math but she never gave up. She just kept sitting there and struggling and making mistakes and I kept explaining it and trying different ways of making it clear to her.  She's a tough girl.  So different from Benjamin who just flips out when something doesn't make sense immediately and he doesn't get a 100% on the first try.  I was really proud of her despite her problems with it.  She really enjoys learning and school work.  She comes to me all the time with papers on which she's written her own made up math problems.  "Mommy, 5+10= 15!!" she'll declare proudly, holding up her paper with the numbers written in bright orange highlighter diagonally down the page.  So cute.

We're also doing a really fun unit this week on ocean animals.  Every few weeks, I sit down with Benjamin and we plan what things he'd like to learn about.  I have him give me topics and then he brainstorms questions within those topics that he wants to research.  For this week's unit he said he wanted to understand better how fish in the deep parts of the ocean handle the pressure and lack of sunlight.  He also wanted to understand how a giant whale could survive by eating something so small as krill.  We did the deep ocean stuff earlier this week and today we researched the whale.  In researching it we found tons of cool interactive websites on whales and lots of other information that brought up questions we hadn't even thought to ask.  Both Bella and Benjamin were really into it.  I love when that happens. To finish it off, just for fun, we watched the part of Finding Nemo where Dory and Marlin talk to whale and then get swallowed by it.  The kids were laughing so hard.  I love that we can all be together like this.  It makes me so happy that I have this time to spend with them and that they can be with each other more too.

Here's where I often find my three: 

This is a division wall between my living room and kitchen area.  They will push a chair over, all three climb up there, and call it "the train."  Then they'll play up there and make up all sorts of stories.  Christian will scream out "All aboard!" at random intervals and they have a blast.  It always makes me laugh.

My boys also love to cuddle together.  Yesterday Benjamin was cold and huddled under the blanket on the floor when Christian walked by with his milk.  "Want to come cuddle with me?" Benjamin called to him.  "Okay!" Christian responded excitedly and crawled under.  It lasted about two minutes before Christian became bored laying there, but they really are so cute together.

Can't wait for Christmas!  Only a few more days!

Our Weekend Vacation

Hello?  Anyone still out there?  Sorry about the long silence.  Sometimes life just simply gets the better of me and certain things fall off the radar.  I'm back now, though, and in full Christmas-season swing.  It has been so fun around here ever since Thanksgiving.  We've been celebrating Advent every Sunday, making cards and crafts for people (I think Bella painted on herself more than on any cards, though), listening to Christmas music, reading Christmas books, etc.  I've loved it.  And all my Christmas shopping is done!  Yay!

With the end of the year also comes the last of the vacation days, so Kelly took a day off and we took a trip to the glorious metropolis of Toledo, OH.  ;)  After our 23 hour drive to Yellowstone, we decided we wanted something a little closer to home.  The one hour to Toledo was perfect.  The first day we visited the Toledo Zoo and saw their "Lights Before Christmas" display. That was lots of fun. Like Temple Square at night and the Zoo in one.  We got to pet snakes, ride the train and the carousel, get right up to a snow leopard and a bear (through glass, thank goodness), and watch some fun light shows too.  Of course, as usual, the kids also loved jumping on every statue they could find.  By the end, they were all quite tired, especially Benjamin.

That night we stayed in a hotel of which we only required two things - be close to the zoo and have a pool.  Luckily they didn't change their location on us at the last minute but they did decide to drain and completely refill their pool hours before we got there, so that pool was COLD!  Reminded me of a time I was in a contest to see who could stand in a near freezing river the longest and I won because I simply stayed in until my feet went numb.  Benjamin was a trooper and swam quite a bit, but Bella, Christian, and I mostly hung out in the knee deep parts and then spent most of the time playing around in the exercise room.

The second day we went to Toledo's children's museum - the Imagination Station.  A really great place with tons to do.  We liked the live science demonstrations the best.  Every hour someone would come on stage and do 20 minutes of science demos.  Those were amazing.  The kids also loved being able to make gingerbread houses because I'm a mean mom and have never let them make one at home. :)  There were a bunch of other really fun things there too like a bike up on a high wire, a giant mouse wheel, and a house that was built to look slanted on the inside so as you entered, you had the constant feeling that you were falling over.  It was so crazy to know that you're not falling and have seen the outside as stable, but no matter how hard you tell yourself that it's only an illusion, you can't get your body to stop feeling like it's falling.  People were crashing against the walls and screaming and straining to escape.  It was the wildest thing.  I was nauseous for a long time after I finally got out.

The whole trip took just over 24 hours and yet it felt like much longer.  It was fabulous.  The kids had a blast and want to go back.  The cool thing is that we can!  Nearly anytime! :)

The other day as we were making Christmas cards, Christian came to me asking me to put the CD case on his back.  I couldn't figure out why he wanted it, but asking a 2 year old why he's doing something is such a waste of time, so I just strapped it onto him.  "I'm CD boy!" he exclaimed and started dashing around like a super-hero.  Cracked us all up.  (And much better than "naked boy" which is his alter ego who fights crime every morning in our house.)