A Boy and his Dog

Christian still has his dog walking job 4 times a week and Peter nearly always joins him.  Up until now, though, Peter has been in a stroller.  This past week, he insisted on walking along and also on holding the leash.  It was absolutely adorable to hear him talk to Coco in his little squeaky toddler voice.  "Stay on path, Coco!" "No Coco, this way!"  "Good Coco."   When Peter got distracted by leaf piles or garbage trucks, it was Coco who kept him in line.  Despite Coco's tiny size, when she pulled on the leash, Peter lunged forward and sometimes got a little ticked that she wasn't going to let him watch the garbage man any longer.  Such a funny dynamic!  The two of them both had a wonderful walk around the block together and neither wanted to go home.

First Snow of the Season

 Peter is an absolute eskimo.  He hates jackets, hats, gloves, etc.  No matter the level of cold, he absolutely refuses to put them on.  He seems unbothered by cold.  On Sunday it snowed for the first time and he wanted to go out with Christian and play.  I wouldn't let him go until he put on snow clothes.  Granted, it was so little snow, it probably didn't matter, but I thought that it was a great chance to set the standard that when it's snowing, we wear warm clothes.  Luckily, seeing Christian wear boots, jacket, snow pants, etc. convinced him to do the same.  When he finally got it all on, he was so delighted by how he looked, that he pranced in front of the mirror for a while before going out.  Again today, also, the one time I managed to get him in a jacket, he immediately said, "Go look in mirror!" and ran off to admire himself first.  I agree, he is adorable.

The boys and I had a wonderful time playing.  Christian got out his homemade pvc marshmallow gun and we had a blast shooting it, especially from high up in the tree fort.  Peter discovered the delight of snatching a few and eating them before (and after) they become ammunition.  Let the winter fun begin!

Band Concert Videos - Better Late Than Never

 It has taken a while to make the time to upload these, but here they are:

Bella's piano solo:

Bella's saxophone solo (0:48 - 1:02) :

Benjamin's band songs:

(he's percussion in the far back right)

Great Dalton Bake-Off

 Kelly and I both had the idea to bake bread today - he in the bread maker and me in the bosch.  He came up to do it just as I was starting.  Great minds think alike. We decided to each make a loaf and see who had the better bread.  Peter voted for Kelly because he loved lifting the lid and watching the bread maker knead the dough.  He was laughing the whole time.

In the end, though, the votes were split.  Benjamin, Christian, and I voted for mine.  Peter, Kelly, and Bella voted for Kelly's.  However, it was a miracle Kelly's got votes at all because something went wrong with the machine (toddler interference?) and it rose too much and spilled into the space between pan and heating element and filled our whole house with a terrible burning smell which lasted for hours.  I was sure the whole bread would taste like smoke, but it turned out ok.

We're trying to institute a no screens after dinner rule in our house.  Benjamin fights it every night and nearly always refuses to follow it.  The others have been more willing, though, and the other night boredom led to a night of ballroom dancing.  Kelly taught Bella the Viennese waltz and everyone wanted to try it.  Peter mostly just wanted to flop.  It was a lot of fun, but we discovered that our living room is very cramped for such a dance.

In an ultimate act of living vicariously through my kids, I signed Christian up for tennis lessons.  Then I try to watch while taking care of Peter and try to learn too.  He was excited to start and the first lesson went well so far.  

One day this week, I got out every roll of toilet paper in the house and Peter and I spent the morning doing all sorts of activities with them.  We practiced jumping over them, stacking towers and knocking them down, bear walking around them, crab walking around them, laying them in certain shapes, etc. etc.  However, his favorite thing was building a wall and then being a human wrecking ball on the scooters.  When Christian came home and saw the mess, he wanted to try too.  So much fun with just some rolls of tp.

Halloween Week

 This past week was Halloween - my 44th birthday.  My mom came for the week because it was also full of band concerts, soccer games, and football games.  We had a great time together.  Peter, especially, couldn't get enough of Mimi.

Christian stressed about his costume for weeks.  He didn't want to pay any money but he wanted a good costume but he didn't want to make anything, etc. etc.  So, in the end, he paid Benjamin $10 for the use of his old Halloween cloak and wore black clothes, sunglasses and the cloak and called it a Halloween costume. It worked fine.

Peter didn't want a costume.   He screamed when I tried to put it on him.  It wasn't until we got to the church trunk-or-treat Saturday night and he saw other kids in costume and he allowed me to just put on the police jacket.  Christian wore this same costume with hat, belt, handcuffs, etc.   Peter wasn't having any of that.  Just the jacket was a win.  But our little police officer went to every car.  He seemed really perplexed about what was going on, but he was a good sport.  We didn't go actual trick-or treating because it was a Sunday.  I'm looking forward to next year when he's old enough to get it and we go to houses, not just cars.

Bella went as a ghost to the trunk-or-treat.  She went around with Peter for quite a while.  She was really cute with him and had a fun time that night even though most of her friends didn't come.  Benjamin refused to dress up and didn't want to go, but Kelly made him so he sat in the back of our van and snuck candy all night.  You can see him in the picture behind Kelly. 

Bella's band concert was a costume concert.  She went as a lifeguard. Tomorrow I hope to find time to post some videos of her playing and also Benjamin's concert.  She played a saxophone solo and a piano solo in addition to songs with the band.

What you find when Bella takes your phone:

Fall Football

The last game of the high school football season was yesterday.  Benjamin has been involved with marching band for two years now, but given that the first year was Covid, it was very different then.  This year has been far more time-consuming and intense.  Originally I didn't want him to do it because it's very hard to have such a busy schedule at a school so far from home.  He was set on doing it, though, and now that it's nearly over, I'm sad to see it go.  Marching band really was a great thing for him.  It created a sense of community and purpose.  It provided something that he could do completely independently from us at which he could excel.  It provided a great opportunity to get off the screen and do something fun with others.  It was worth all the driving I had to do to get him to everything - games, practices, camps, etc.  I took Christian and Bella to the game last night to cheer the team on.  Benjamin had told me, "Don't come.  I don't want you there." I promised him he'd never see me.  I just never got a picture of him in his uniform because they didn't wear them during Covid and this year he always refused to put it on for me.  I wanted to get one before the season ended.  So all my pictures are when he was looking at something else and he never saw me.  I was like a spy.  We quickly realized, though, that the better seats were in the visitor team's stands because the home team's bleachers were sooo crowded!  So we sat with the Novi fans.  When Churchill made an interception and ran 90 yards for the touchdown, I was about to throw my arms up and cheer.  Bella noticed threw her arms around me in a bear hug and shushed me violently.  I looked around at all the devastated Novi fans next to me and realized, I'd make a terrible spy.  I had to sit on my hands to keep from clapping at all the wrong times.  At half time we had to hurry back over to the Churchill side so we didn't have to see it from behind. They did a wonderful job.  Churchill ended up winning and it was a really fun night.  Benjamin was happy and smiling nearly the entire time.  When I came to pick him up, he was surprised to hear I'd been there!

A few happenings in Peter's life: his art class has ended.  We've been going to a toddler art class for 7 weeks now.  It was a terrible class and I regret paying for it, but it gave us something to do which he seemed to take pride in.  He has a class to attend, just like his big siblings.  The final day he was to paint a pumpkin and he chose this knobby ugly one that all his siblings are repulsed by, but he seems to really love.  He wanted to paint the bumps. He tired quickly of that, though, and then he realized the joy of ripping paper.  The first time was an accident as he was actually trying to cut it, but then he really got rolling with it.  He was laughing and loving the sound it made as it tore.  Four pieces ended up in bits before he was done.  Such pure delight in such simple things.

Also, we made one last trip to Greenfield Village for the season.  The close of  GFV always makes me sad.  April and their reopen can never come fast enough. It was unexpectedly cold and we were ill prepared so we didn't last long and spent most of the morning in the Henry Ford museum instead.  It was my first time since Covid and sooo many of the good stuff has been taken out because they were hands-on things.  Not a lot left which would interest a two year old, but he was still smitten by all the cars and the commotion. He sat in the engineer's seat of the huge, black Allegheny locomotive, he watched the model trains for a long time, he loved sitting and climbing around in the Rosa Park's bus, and he thought the Wiener mobile was hilarious.  He loved the president's cars - Kennedy, Reagan, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, etc.- the best for some reason.  He didn't want to stop walking around them and looking at them and the corresponding pictures of the presidents in them.  He's so cute the way he loves trains, cars, and big machines, but he's also so sweet and tender with all the flowers he passes.  He wanted to stroke and admire every one.  It was a fun morning.

Jack-O-Lanterns!

 I love carving pumpkins.  It's my favorite thing about October.  Getting all the kids together and being creative and messy and having fun.  I love the slop of the seeds and I love eating roasted pumpkin seeds afterwards.  It's a lot of fun.  This year, for the first time, Benjamin refused to participate.  He sat in his room and came out to check out the progress from time to time but was never willing to carve.  For Peter, it was his first time and I expected him to be a little grossed out by the mess inside, but he dove right in and seemed unperturbed.  He couldn't understand that we dump the seeds into the bowl, though. He preferred to fling them all over the place as he violently shook each handful off his fingers.  To each his own.  He lost interest and went off to play on his own long before we finished carving, but the other two stuck with it and I finished Peter's and we are pretty happy with the result.

The middle one is supposed to be a cat sitting on the moon, but it looks more like a G or maybe a squirrel.  Either way, it was fun.

The funny story is how we got the pumpkins.  I had planned to buy some but forgot and so we were pumpkin-less on the afternoon we'd planned to carve. I was driving home with Bella when we passed a local insurance business.  There was a sign out-front that said, "Free Pumpkins" and there was a huge pile of pumpkins on the sidewalk.  I stopped and the insurance salesman said, "Welcome!  Pick a pumpkin.  You can get one each!"  He probably intended to try to sell us insurance but just as we were looking, his large inflatable Frankenstein started to blow over in the wind and he was so busy trying to right Frank, that we found our pumpkins, thanked him, and hopped back into our car before he could say a word.  That left us a pumpkin short, though, so I changed my clothes, did my hair differently, switched cars, and got Christian to come with me and we drove by there again.  This time he wasn't there at all but the pumpkins all still were, so we got one each again and drove back home, now with all the pumpkins we needed for all of us to have one.  It was absolutely perfect. Free pumpkins for the whole family. (Addendum: today, three days later, there are still about 20 pumpkins in front of the building.  Not sure what his plan is, but I'd be happy to take a few more off his hands.)

This week, also, Bella helped a fellow scout troop member complete her eagle scout project.  They built owl nesting boxes for local parks.  The girls worked for many hours and it went really well.  I was proud of Bella for her efforts and I love that she can do scouting in addition to her church activities.  It's a great program.

We May Never Leave

 Why every shopping trip takes hours to complete:

I was just there to buy a package of diapers, but we stayed for an hour.  Every item was interesting. Every item had to be investigated. My favorite was this, though, when he pulled out two tubs and invited me to lay and relax in the second next to him.  He also insisted we try out the potty seats, the step stools, and every baby toy he could reach.  Ah, the old days when he was willing to sit in the grocery cart.  Those days were gone too soon.  Joking aside, though, I really do love going places with him (when I'm not in a hurry) because everything is new and exciting to him and it allows me to rediscover things through him.  Get down on his level and everything is a huge, unexplored wonderland.  It's been fun to have an exploring buddy.

Fall Fun and A New Bedroom

 Fall is here and it's been so fun.  We've spent a lot of time outside playing tennis, raking leaves, and riding bikes.  My kids have always loved this time of year when all the pine needles fall in our yard and they get to play in the kiddie pool as we gather them up and dump them in our backyard forest.  Here are some cute pictures of Benjamin and Christian when we did this years ago.  

Peter was up at the crack of dawn this morning and started asking to play outside.  So, even before the dew was off the grass and only barely after the sun was up, we were outside playing.  I decided to get some work done as  long as we were outside anyway.  Peter had a great time.  Still in his pjs, he joined right in on the fun.  We built a little nest in our pool, gathered balls to sit on and pretended we were birds sitting on our eggs in our nest.  We flew out on excursions to find bugs and worms but always made sure we were back to keep our eggs warm.

The tent in the background is because Christian decided he wanted to sleep outside last night in the wonderful fall weather.  Also, Peter had been coughing during the day and he didn't want to be woken up by it at night.  He enjoyed it so much that he's out there again tonight.

Christian likes to gather pine needles onto the trampoline and slip and slide around on them as he jumps.  Peter thought this was pretty amazing too.

I remembered some scooters I'd gotten for scout games and pulled them out of the shed.  Peter has loved rolling around the house on them.  

He'd gotten soaked playing in water outside, but didn't want to get dressed before he had a chance to roll around some more.

I took Peter to one of my favorite playgrounds this week.  I hadn't been there in 10 years and I was excited to play there with him.  It was a cloudy, drizzly day and so we were pretty much the only ones there.  He had a great time. I was sad to see that it hadn't been kept up as it should have been, though.  A lot of equipment was broken and shabby.  Fun memories there, though.

Here are the others at the same place over 10 years ago:

During nap time on Saturday, I took Christian bowling.  It was for a scout fundraiser for Benjamin's troop, but Benjamin didn't want to come.  I felt bad not going, so I took Christian.  We had a great time.  I won both games but only barely.  We're both pretty terrible bowlers.  As usual, though, we cheered each other on and enjoyed it not matter the score.

The biggest news is Christian and Peter have a new room downstairs!!  So exciting!  Kelly reframed the basement, put up new walls, doors, closets, lighting, flooring, etc, and it looks really nice.  I'll post pictures when it's completely done with new curtains and all the tools finally gone, but Christian's first addition was a desk.  He wanted a place to work in his new room and he's super excited about it.  Feels like I have three teenagers now.  Not much longer.