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Friday, July 10, 2015

June

Both boys love to be outside. Our oldest loves his bike and the slides.

Our toddler loves pinwheels and watching cars. He points to cars as they approach and waves as they leave.  Sometimes it's nearly impossible to actually go anywhere as he just wants to stand and watch the cars.


They do sidewalk chalk a lot, especially with daddy. So it finally occurred to me that he was ready for the chalkboard. He loves chalk. In the last picture he's telling me "chalk". He's been enjoying coloring with crayons more too.


Our toddler loves when they do bubbles in nursery. So we've done the bubble gun and our preschooler enjoys blowing bubbles. Our toddler wanted a turn too, of course, he wouldn't let me hold the container so that was a messy situation.


Our playdough has seen a lot of action this month. I'm glad our preschooler enjoys it so much.
The middle picture here is a snowman.

Parking lot:

Our toddler enjoys it too. He especially loves playing with things, like animals, that we make for him.


Ms Denice from the county school system comes to play once a week and the boys enjoy her.


One morning I was super tired and I made a comment to my husband that although it's probably a good thing they never want to watch movies, some days it sure would be nice. So before he left that morning he talked to them about watching a movie and we watched Cars. My toddler wanted to cuddle with me a lot and that was sweet. About a half hour in he hopped down in search of our toy Lightning McQueen and Drip (from Planes II) and I realized he probably hadn't known they were TV characters.


They love eating out.


He loves the fish at my midwives' office, he even gave them kisses.

A little bit of crazy.


My cuties having fun together.


Our toddler lines up cars all the time now.  And often plays with them similar to big brother in other ways too.

He threw up in the van on two separate trips down to Virginia :( This time I hadn't even packed wipes so we had to stop at a store so we could clean him up a bit.


Hot Cup's birthday is July 1st and we celebrated the weekend before with our families.  Love him!  He requested the same delicious cake he had last year.


Our toddler loved the slide in my parents' backyard. I must have helped him 30 or so times before getting the camera.  He did most of it himself but we felt he needed a spotter, he could have kept at it all night.


Our preschooler is a big helper and sometimes it surprises me.  He puts groceries away without me even asking.  And he's been great about picking up toys so I can vacuum.
He agrees to say prayers with our assistance.

Our toddler is growing up.
One morning at the beginning of the month I couldn't find his pacifier.  It was just wedged next to his mattress but we didn't finally find it for a whole day.  He saw me looking for it and understood I couldn't find it, so although he complained a little he was okay about it.  So it seemed okay to stop giving it to him and he doesn't get it anymore.  He was easy to put to bed and it didn't seem to disturb that.
He holds his wrist with his hand to fold his arms and has gotten to be pretty good for prayers.  His big brother has mentioned him closing his eyes a couple of times.
He's catching on to numbers from seeing us use our fingers to illustrate simple math for big brother.  One day he started showing me his fingers and I was really confused.  But pretty soon I realized he would do that when there was more than one of something.
He's talking a lot, at the end of June I'd written down about 40 words and 20 sounds.  (And the list has grown lots since then.)  He says about 4 colors with orange being probably the first and certainly the favorite.  He loves pointing out orange stuff.  Yellow, green, and blue are the other colors he says.
He knows at least 5 letters, with F being his favorite.  I knew he'd been interested in letters but hadn't determined which he knew yet, but one day I wore my Finn's Friends Cystic Fibrosis shirt and he pointed to them and said F! F! F!  The main reason he knows E is because I had to convince him it was different from F.
There were a few days where he hated brushing teeth and having baths.  I'm not sure what the deal was with baths, but I think he was getting multiple canines so I imagine that having something to do with the brushing of teeth.  In working through it he switched from sitting on the counter to get his teeth brushed so standing on a stool like his big brother.
He loves stools.  He often keeps one with him and would take it places if we let him.
He loves giving kisses, and we love his kisses.  They have become real kisses and are usually accompanied by ugga muggas and hugs.  He kisses objects too.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Little Brother

The boys are getting a little brother in November!  Here's some pics from the June 25th ultrasound.


Our preschooler had guessed girl and it took him a few hours to accept that it was a boy.  But he continues to be sweet to the baby (and to me!  It's nice that he understands and doesn't get upset when I tell him I can't do something because of my belly ... that'll be even more useful in a couple months I'm sure!)

We haven't said much of it to our younger boy but he's catching on anyway.  He likes to point to my belly/belly button and say/sign baby.  And the other day he pointed to a doorknob and said shhh baby, then he closed the door and said shhh baby again.  I'm not really sure where that one came from but it was cute.

I love my little boys and am super excited to be getting another!

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Preschool Graduation

We held a little graduation for our preschoolers the first Thursday of June.  It's been a fun year with the 6 little kids and we'll miss getting them together twice a week.

Us moms took turns being in charge of parties & field trips throughout the year and graduation was the "party" I was in charge of.  I also got them the two class days before graduation and we spent that time preparing for the big day.  Here they are on the last day before graduation.


They performed a few nursery rhymes: Mary Had a Little Lamb, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Simple Simon.  (I wish I'd taken a video of a rehearsal because even 4-year-olds get nervous performing in front of their mom and friends' moms/teachers.  They still did amazing and were super cute though.)  Then they got their certificate packets.

Since I was sort of in charge I wasn't able to use my camera through the program, and when my silly preschooler saw me get it after, the stinker immediately reached to remove his cap.  But he did agree to a selfie with me.


And here's a pic my friend took of all the graduates :)


My preschooler helped his dad make mint & Oreo ice cream for the party.  We also had mini cupcakes, mini pies, and fruit.


Then we colored cardstock rockets and took them outside to launch them.  Hot Cup came home from work to help with that and they loved it.


Here are all the awesome moms we got to do preschool with! (And all the younger siblings besides mine. How none of them were running wild at this moment, I'm not sure.) After about 20 minutes I brought out some blankets for them to sit on, I didn't think we'd be out too much longer and wasn't sure if it was silly to do, but they ended up launching/chasing their rockets for an hour. Minor repairs were often needed since the ground was pretty wet.

Later we made playing outside conditional upon posing for a picture first. Because that's what works around here.

What else was in the folder:
-- A silly group picture on a paper that they'd all written their names on.
-- A survey I'd done with each of them on one of the last days (their favorites, what they're good at, what they want to be, etc.).
-- How much they grew this school year (we took their height & weight the first and last days) with a first day group picture and last day group picture. My preschooler grew 1.5 inches and 3.2 pounds.

And now, if you like, (uncut) videos another mom recorded. Not sure I'll be able to resist noting the differences from rehearsal.

I want to say my voice is weird but I think I sound exactly like my cousin so I guess I can't, but it's weird to hear it.  And sometimes I say weird stuff.

Let me know if you need the password.

Mary Had A Little Lamb

Note: They'd never hesitated to jump down and play with the lamb. And the children had been pretty awesome with their speaking part too.

The Lion and the Unicorn

Note: Possibly partially my fault for the having them move over when they weren't standing in front of the crown, but their fighting is not how we rehearsed. And the townspeople had been more forward about giving them the bread and pointed for them to leave. And after that, the lion and the unicorn would run behind the couch and hide and eat it. (They thought they were being funny/sneaky and I'm not really surprised they dropped that for the performance, but it was cute when they did it.)

I'm not sure I realized how much my younger boy was in those first two, and while I maybe should have moved him, he sure is cute!

Simple Simon

Note: During rehearsal, when the pieman left Simple Simon she'd go hand out imaginary pie to her classmates and they all say "here's a penny!"

With their caps


Graduation!

from 2ndof5 on Vimeo.

May

Selfie with sunglasses.


Waiting in an elementary office to meet about Pre-K next year!


With their daddy! I think this was the first time our baby did rounds of kisses with everyone. We sure love when he's giving out kisses!  (He has since learned to pucker :)


Last day of preschool that wasn't at our house! We got in some bike riding on big brother's bike that he generally doesn't share. It's a secret.

Our boys love all the pinwheels in our neighborhood.


Baby's first time with a cart! They're super fun.


Baby's first time in one of these too.


Eating chocolate fish while shopping is awesome.




We went to the Tire Park with the preschool and my preschooler thought we should eat our lunch in a tire circle, very clever. So we did. And then my phone (camera) died. Our preschooler's favorite thing to do was climb up and slide down the wide metal slide.


The beginning of a summer of homemade desserts, thanks to daddy.
The second picture is of what has been known in our home since our firstborn was little as "booping". Kind of like toasting with food.  We originally did it to encourage our firstborn to try stuff.


Daddy made both the cookies and ice cream for these ice cream sandwiches. Yum!