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!

Baby Frustrations

We think Christian might be teething because he was super cranky today. Wouldn't sleep, wouldn't eat very much, and cried A LOT. At one point Benjamin turned to me and said, "I just want to kick him in the head."

"I'm getting to that point too," I admitted. "The problem is, it wouldn't make him stop crying."

"Yeah, it would just make him cry more. I wish Christian were dead."

"Don't say horrible things like that." I scolded. "He can't talk. This is his only way of communicating. He can't help it. This is one reason why I'm not such a big fan of babies."

"Me neither," Benjamin commiserated, "But I am a big fan of chocolate!"

Ah, a child after my own heart.

The Water Obsession Resumes

Oh I love that Spring is coming! It felt so wonderful today. Low 50s but felt like mid Summer. It was wonderful. As we left gymnastics today, I couldn't bare to return home despite the craft I'd planned for today. We ended up taking an impromptu trip to the playground to celebrate the first warm, sunny day and the first trip to the park in months without coats and boots. Of course, without fail, my kids are drawn to the puddles and before long, this was the result:




So it begins again. I guess the water obsession hasn't abated. Luckily, as always, I had a change of clothes with me. I know these kids too well. (Although Bella had the foresight to take off most of her clothes before going down in it.) They just can't resist. And judging by how intently Christian was watching them, I'm guessing he'll be joining them soon.

With Spring comes the need for new clothes too. Thanks to the generosity of friends, I've not bought clothes for Bella yet. Nearly 3 years and she's been fully taken care of. However, we've now hit a point where she needed some new shoes and so I took her shopping. I've known for a long time how different Bella and I are, but shoe shopping with her hit it home. I was looking for a shoe she could wear to church with any dress and so I'd pick up something cute and sensible, like this:


Princess Bella would frown, shake her head, and pick up something like this:


or perhaps this:


Again and again we exchanged shoe suggestions. Bella's love of all things glitzy and bedazzled knows no bounds. Alas, in the end, the one with the money made the final decision. Luckily she's also very fickle and by the time we'd bought my pair, she'd forgotten about hers and actually ended up liking my choice so much she wore them to bed. I think, when she's a teenager, to save myself unnecessary stress, I'm just going to find a comfy spot with a book and have her come to me when she's found what she wants to buy.

Let's Play Ball

My kids have come up with some fun things to do these past couple days. Today Bella said, "Let's play ball!" I was shocked that she would suggest this since she's usually not a fan of ball games. But I wanted to encourage this in her and agreed. I quickly realized I misunderstood when she started prancing around the room in her dress-up outfit. Ball didn't mean base ball or soccer. She meant ball as they do in fairy tales - a grand ball, ie. a dance. I was somewhat disappointed, but this still seemed fun, so we pulled out the cd player, put on a primary songs cd and danced. She assigned me to be the queen, Benjamin the knight, and she was the princess. It was so much fun to be silly together. I danced with both the knight and the princess, with them taking turns coming over and asking, "May I cut in?" I insisted that royalty must be proper. :) Then when I got tired, I "became faint" and they had to call in the doctor to help me. After he did, they allowed me to rest as they performed various dances for me. Kids this age are so fun. No inhibitions. Just pure joy. It was a wonderful dance filled afternoon.



Some other things they've wanted to do was make soft pretzels. So we did that and they didn't turn out too bad. While they were baking, Bella decided to finger paint on the counter top with the egg wash. Not so happy about that but luckily she didn't eat it.


Another day Benjamin wanted to take his toys for a swim in the sink, so he got a big bowl and his animals and dolls and set them swimming, with a sponge boat to float on. They both had a blast with this and of course, got soaked head to toe. I think this was inspired by one of his favorite books, The Tub People by Pam Conrad. Very cute book.


I also wanted to see how much the kids understood about money. In Kindergarten Benjamin will be learning a lot about counting money and so I decided to play bank. I got out some pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, as well as 1, 5, 10, and 20 dollar bills. Then we took turns being customer, banker, or security guard. The customer came into the bank, filled out a withdrawal slip (just a blank piece of paper with one line on where they'd write the amount), then took it to the banker who gave them that amount of money. Then the customer would steal from the banker, get run down and killed by the security guard (Benjamin's favorite part) and the money would be returned. I was impressed with them. Benjamin needed help counting out the money, but he knew what each coin was worth and that you can, for example, give 5 pennies or 1 nickel, etc. Even Bella did a great job. When she was customer, she wrote three circles on the paper, brought it to Benjamin, the banker, and said, "I'd like to have 79 cents please." It was so cute.

So we've had fun trying to survive what is hopefully the last of cold winter days.

Progress?

I hate to blog about things too early because I tend to jinx myself, but we're making slow and steady progress around here and I have to share the joy. Bella has been the queen of stubborn regarding potty training. Besides the brief novelty of the new toilet, nothing has been able to get her interested. Sticker charts and bribery be damned. She couldn't care less. So we've started with small steps, just like we did with Benjamin. She can poop in her diaper, but she has to be in the bathroom. If nothing else, it gets her in the habit of going to the right location. She's been faithfully doing this for a few weeks now. However, if I don't come in there quickly after she's done, she starts causing trouble. I've cleaned up sunscreen, zit cream, and hydrocortisone cream from all surfaces in my bathroom at various times. Nothing like seeing your expensive zit cream smeared all over the shower curtain. So when she went in there yesterday, I quickly followed her in and asked (as I do every day), "Would you like to poop in the potty?" Usually I always get a "no" to this, but yesterday I got a "yes." And she did!! It was fabulous. A quick flush and done. So wonderful. Needless to say, today was back to old ways, but there was, for a brief moment, a glimmer of hope and I will cling to that. She may potty train after all! :)


Other note of progress - Christian slept through the night!!! And there was much rejoicing in the land. It was not without tears, mind you, but it happened! 7pm to 7am! He had started to seem uninterested in eating at night, but was still waking up. We decided it was time to put an end to the insanity. The first night he cried for 2 hours but finally went back to sleep. The second night it was 1 hour. The third night it was 30 minutes. Then success!! It is glorious. Finally I'm beginning to feel like a normal human being again. Of course, now I won't be able to blame any of my memory lapses or idiot-moments on sleep deprivation. ;)