Sign Making

This is sort of Jack's new thing, since he is very proud of his phonics skills, he likes to write signs. He makes them for everything he is playing pretend with, like the fake grocery store, he makes them for the neighborhood kids about twice a day, he makes them for me. It is very cute. Just like everything else he does, it uses a lot of paper! A few days ago Sam was messing up Jack's crafts and it was driving Jack nuts so I took Sam to the bathtub to remove him from the scene for a bit. After a few minutes Jack slipped the following sign under the door:

Sound it out a few times, and you'll figure it out for yourself!

Christmas Program

Jack being a ham as always


Video: Where is my mom? Where? Where? Oh there you are!

Jack's Christmas Program was this morning and it was really very cute. Here is a few of the videos and pictures from the big show. I will put another few pictures up later after I figure out how to get the red eye out! Please note, if you listen carefully you can hear Keith say all of the following to me (1) That some ladies rear is in his way (2) That some kid looks like a troll and my personal favorite (3) "Man someone farted.... bad.... was it you?" Unfortunely for you a few of those quotable quotes might be on some of the videos that didn't make it here, but I'm sure you'll hear at least one. Hope you guys have a very Merry Christmas!




Video: Some Extreme Jack Swaying



Video: Counting the "little angels"



Video: Jack is SO HAPPY to have Santa surprise them

Words Lists

Lets just be honest here, you really have to like my kids to care about this. I acknowledge that and I am not offended. But Keith and I were looking at the comparisons and to us it was interesting.

We made these lists of the words they can say when they really start talking, which for both of our kids was around this age, after 18 months.

Jack's is 3 1/2 columns and Sam's is 1 1/2 so that already tells you the major difference. But, it is also interesting to see how much of Jack's personality now is evident in his list. He still loves animals. Letters and counting are still high on his things I really enjoy list. And he still is ahead of some others his age in areas like reading (he could read all those letters that he could say on his list at that time, too).

What does that mean for Sam? I would say that he is definitely more of a trains and trucks guy then Jack ever was. "Choo choo" is one of his favorite words as well as some of his favorite things to strew about the house. Will he still have a propensity for saying "Poo poo" several times a day in a few years?

Sam has also taken to calling me "Leeeh-Saa" throughout the house (thanks, Keith). He will make a huge mess, say, throwing out all the DVDs from their cases, and call me in to check it out with several chants of "Leeeh-Saa". Mama must be a thing of the past (at least for this month).

One of the sweetest things Jack would do at this age is that when we put him down to sleep at night he would say "Bye-bye, See-Ya, Luff You." Then he would just lay right down and go to sleep. Sam is more about some incessant cries for BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK and then a few minutes of gentle rocking. You are lucky if you are left with an open mouthed kiss, which is something Jack would have NEVER done. I have heard Sam whisper "Ni-ni" back to me a few times as I leave his room, on the occasions when he is tired enough to fall right to sleep.

Anyway, I still love reading over Jack's list now that he says everything and does not call the number seven "Debbie" which we thought was SO precious. So, if you have kids this age or younger, I encourage you to write it down. You'll be glad you did.

Visit with Santa

No one is screaming. It is a miracle.

Not quite so weekly Jack Art

Keith had a birthday so I assume that is why we all have our ages displayed. I do not know why Sam is "1A" instead of 1 or why I am "28B."

Some Christmas music for you to enjoy.

It was Col Baby, in the Billiard Room, with the Candlestick

Sam has taken presents number 11 and 12 out of Jack's stash and apparently made them evaporate. Jack has woken up for the past two mornings (at the crack of dawn) and come in here to find his gift and been unsuccessful at locating the desired number. Let's just say there are some pretty grumpy people up in here at around 6:00 a.m.

Like living with a mini Mary Poppins

Sometimes I just don't know where Jack gets the way he phrases things. A lot of it is, of course, modeled after the way I say things (thank God, mostly not how Keith says things, though Jack did say "What the hell" in the grocery store line recently, don't get me started...)

Nana is perfect and has made the kids these gift baskets yearly where you open one small gift daily from December 1st until Christmas Day. He LOVES it, of course, and lives for the time of day when he can open a new one. Today, right when we got home from school, he went looking in his bag for the number 4 to open for today. I was in the back, and he opened it and brought it in. It was a Christmas themed notepad.

Jack: holding it at arm's length "Today's gift (really, gift?? not present??) is really QUITE boring."

Me: "But, Jack, it is a pad of paper. And yesterday's gift was a set of markers. So if you go get the markers and use them with the pad you can make pictures with them." (Have you people forgotten he is art crazy??)

Jack: eyes light up "Well, then, it is not really too too boring AFTER ALL"

that pretty much says it all

He wrote this by himself, too.

Coffee, Anyone?

It is not just a drink, it can be a food too! And it works great on the hair.

You try answering these questions!!

• "But how did Harpo [the cat]GET to heaven from Nana's house?"
• "Well why can't God and Jesus just give him back?"
• "What MADE him die?" "Well, so what he was old?" "Just because you are old, you die?" "Well if you are sick, then you die?"
• "Well, I AM GOING TO ASK God and Jesus to just give him back from heaven. Because if they took him there, they can just put him back."
• -after a lengthy discussion on when it would be alright to push the car alarm button... "Well, if a bad man comes and makes me dead, then can I push it?"
  

We just NEVER CAN TELL What Sam wants

Family Art

We haven't had family art on this blog for a while now. This one was worth posting to me because every person is labeled correctly. Daddy has stubble and Mom has long hair. My favorite though is that Jack has written "GAP" on himself because of his new GAP sweatshirt. He also noted that "If you look closely, mommy, my arms are Ts".

An attempt to take Christmas Card Pictures...unsuccessful attempt

My brother used to wear these smocks when he was their ages. Jack's is a little high water but I still think they are really cute. Keith is not so much a fan of them at all. My mom hand stitched all the patterns on the front. Pretty appropriate that Sam's is a train seeing as though one of his favorite things to say is "choo choo".

Have yet to even come close to getting a good picture of both of them. Can I just get a good picture of each on and splice them together? That is A LOT more likely!

Some Customary Halloween Type Pictures

I have been feeling like a real slacker for having none of these Halloween pictures on my blog... so here you go! I was not feeling well on Halloween so Keith took the pictures of the boys that night in their costumes and so there are not many. But there are plenty of other things to make up for that!

All of us at a pumpkin patch... gotta have this picture and the kids were REALLY cooperating well here.

Sam eating some of his trick or treat bounty and not making a mess at all...

The monkey and the chicken off to cause some trouble. Jack insisted on being a monkey even though he was one last year. We were sort of happy about this because we got off cheap on the costume.
The chicken gathering his bounty.


Jack in his school's Halloween parade.

Sam and Keith in the corn maze.

Alicia and Jack in the corn maze.

Jack with face paint at a festival.


Keith and I dressed up as Kerri Walsh and Michael Phelps to go to a Halloween party a couple of weeks ago.

Mrs. Flatt, Jack's teacher, telling all the kids a Halloween story.

Favorite Foods

You know, Jack is into asking us what is our favorite this? What is our favorite that?

He asked us yesterday what is our favorite food. I told him Japanese fried rice and noodles. He said no, he didn't think so, he thought it was "Meat Lettuce and Cheese only and a Medium Coke". (They listen in the drive thru line!)

That wasn't nearly as funny though as what he said to Keith. Keith wasn't playing the game to liking because he kept saying "I don't know, I don't really have one."

Jack kept saying "Yes you do, daddy, I know it, keep THINKING about it."

Finally, after not succeeding in egging his daddy on to come up it himself, he said. "You really do have a favorite food daddy! BEER!"

Sigh

I was mostly kidding when I wrote the bad baby bubbleducks post about Sam hitting Jack and causing him to get stitches. Not kidding about the incident, but kidding about Sam being mean.

I have some bad news. I might have laughed too soon.

Jack was SUCH A CHALLENGING TODDLER. I cannot overstate this. He was mean to other kids. He bit EVERY kid in his path for a while, even if they just looked at him wrong. For a while, I couldn't take him to do anything where other kids were going to be. We are talking about like a six month span where he was basically quarantined and if he was taken out I regretted it. But we are talking about like a more than TWO YEAR span in which he was not to be entirely trusted around other children. It is only now, at four and half that I can rest reliably sure that he is not going to use physical force against another child if he disagrees with them over, say, what shape a leaf is, or who should have a red ball vs. a blue one.

I was SO SO SO hoping to avoid this fate the second time around. You know the kids at the playground who sit calmly off to the side and sort of observe everyone else while sucking their thumb? I would LOVE that child. It would mean no embarrassed apologies, no constant vilegence, and no debates about whether or not to bite him back.

Sam was the easiest baby in the world. We were so pleased with ourselves. Oh, he is going to be just the opposite of Jack, we said. Easy at every turn. Lies all lies. He is a crazy toddler, just like J was. He might even have MORE energy and certainly a higher propensity for upending full buckets of toys and making messes. He is fighting me on his afternoon nap. He's teething and not happy about it.

We went to a playgroup today with about 15 toddlers. I saw my future with him, laid right out in front of me. Nuts. The kid was nuts. I actually heard myself say "Sam, don't be a bully" within the first two minutes. He stole toys. He threw balls at kids. He tried to hit a baby. He tore off down the hall with a forbidden cup of M&Ms. He took at least 6 kids' sippy cups.

At one point, a lot of kids were quietly (quite is relative here) playing in the living room and he sort of stood up in the center of it all and turned around in a circle. I got an eerie feeling that he was surveying the landscape to see what kind of havoc he could possibly reek next.

And so here we are. Just please please let us NOT let the biting begin.

Adventures at the Bad Baby Bubbleducks Corral

He looks so innocent, with his sweet curls, but we all know the truth. Deep down he is a mean machine. His favorite word lately is "na na na na" accompanied by a sweeping motion with his hand to convey the message, "Not just no, absolutely not." He is also fond of "my" for mine and "peas" for "Give me that now, I don't really care if it is yours or not."


His intentions were confirmed last night when he hit Jack on the head with a doctor's kit (please note the irony) hard enough to split his head open pretty good. Then, we assume in an effort to conceal the evidence, while we were contending with a fountain of blood and screams, he toddled into the playroom to squirrel away the evidence back in the toy box. By the time we turned back to him, he was contentedly playing with his piano, smiling like he had nothing to do with it.


While he fell right to sleep in bed with a clean conscience, Jack and I headed off to the Urgent Care center where he earned himself his first set of stitches.


At the ER, when asked what happened, Jack at first remained mute on the subject. Then, finally, he says, "Someone slapped me." The doctor sort of looks at me curiously. Then Jack follows up with a quiet whisper, "it was my baby."


Luckily all seems o.k. this morning at the corral. When Sam woke up I said to him, "Sam, you have to be nice to Jack!" Jack looked up and said, "But Mom, Sam didn't do any-fang to me.............yet...."

J Art

Every week in Jack's preschool we get a page with a letter on the sheet and you have to practice writing the letter then fill the page with things that start with that letter. He has had some good ones in the previous weeks, but I thought this one was particularly impressive. I mean, look at how neat his printing is getting! Plus the drawings are really cute, the jack in the box has a little stem (be it pink), the juggler has three balls, and the jack in the box is in a box just as he should be. We are beyond the scribble scrabble days, it would seem.

He is also really into states lately and today read "Virginia" by himself. Crazy smart child, whatever floats your boat.

Sounds about right to me

in the car

Jack: "My stomach really hurts, mom!"

Me: "I'm sorry. Does it feel like you need to poop or does it feel like you need to throw up?"

pause, considering

Jack: "It really says it wouldn't like to do any of those things."

Umm, yeah

I spent three hours the other day, no really THREE HOURS STRAIGHT, cleaning up the boys' playroom. The same day I go to my room for about 10 minutes to put away clothes and come back to this..."But Sam wanted some CEREAL mommy and we were HUNGRY!"

Baby Einstein Animals

I tend to have children that are freakish about animals. Sam is developing right on course. He LOVES dogs and cats. He has never watched any TV show, but here is the video of the first time I showed him the Baby Einstein with lots of animals. You'll have to judge for yourself if you think he liked it.

Update on my inchworm

The second swimming class was yesterday and again the inchworm made some progress. He only refused to do one thing and even did that finally once some concessions were made to assure that his face had the least possible ability to touch the water.

That isn't the best part, however, that was after swimming.

Walking to the car

Mom: Wow Jack you sure did great today! I was so proud of you!

Jack: Yeah, mom, I was swimming and I told you to watch me, but then you didn't. Why didn't you?

Mom: Oh, sorry bud, next time I'll make sure I am watching you when you call me. But I'm still so proud of you for being such a big boy and being brave!

Jack: Yes I was so brave

Mom: And I was so proud of that. Weren't you proud of yourself?

Jack: Oh yeah, I love myself.

The inchworm

The word Keith would use for it is stubborn. He says it is because he is like me, and on one hand, I think that is the right way to look at it, but somehow it seems different to me as well.

Jack has always been his own person. You think you are going to have a child and imagine them into a certain way of being, but very often that is not how it happens. To some this can be a disappointment. I wouldn't say it has been, however, for me. It has taken some acceptance on my part and has led me to search for ways to parent the person Jack is instead of the person I might have thought he would be, so I guess in a way that is a very positive thing.

Since we moved here, we have been doing gymnastics. He has taken gymnastics since he was two in several locations, and he has always loved it. Really, it is just an energy burner, I am not expecting him to learn flips or leaps or anything of that sort. When he was two the class was pretty gender neutral, but the older he gets, the harder it gets, and then it seems, more and more geared toward little girls. He has always hated the bar at any gymnastics. When he was littler he would tell me it "hurt his tummy." Now he just refuses to do it at all. At his new class, they also do a lot of stuff on the beam. Since this was new to him, he sort of tried walking on it once. That was the end of that, and now he refuses to do it at all as well. So the last hour I spent at the gym watching him, he did about 10 minutes of stretching and warm-up, then about 5 minutes of jumping up and tumbling onto a block and running down a path. After that, the class spent about 20 minutes on the bars, which he just stubbornly shook his head a firm "no" any time they said it was his turn, and then 15 minutes on the beam, which he also refused to participate in at all.

I have always sort of had a hard time with where to go from here. I am tempted to step in and pressure him to try something that he might not want to do at first, lest he enjoy it once he tried. I know from experience that the harder you push with him, the harder he'll push back. So, I try to just not bother with it at all. I don't really care if he does it anyway, if I think about it like that. So I ask him, "Did you have fun at gymnastics?" He says, "Yes mommy." "Do you want to go back?" "Yes mommy." Well then, okay.

Yesterday was our first swimming lesson. It was interesting too, in the same way. He is very afraid of having his face in the water, and swimming is different from gymnastics to me in that it is important to me that he learn it. The teacher calls the kids over, and they get started without much fanfare. We had already done swimming in the summer and it had been a bit of a battle, and he had been in quite a battle of wills with his teacher then too. This time, the teacher tells him flat out, "Look, if you don't want to do something, you don't have to do it. Just say no and that will be the end of it." I raise my eyebrows, knowing my son, but sit back to watch. Two of the six kids can already full on swim underwater from the beginning. When it comes his turn to put his face in, he won't go for it. The teacher handles it well, asking him twice then moving on. Then the kids are supposed to push off from the wall underwater and swim about 5 feet. No dice. Next is the back float. He hates that too and I'm expecting another refusal. Timidly, he reaches for the man, and does a great attempt at a back float. I'm surprised but happy with this small concession.

This is the kind of progress that gets made with him, and the kind of slow going that has to be celebrated. You have to keep your eyes open wide, or you might miss it altogether. But, when it comes so rarely, the joy you feel about the littlest accomplishments can be amazing. It's only one back float, but it's a step.

Happy Mardi Gras

Sam is obsessed with some Mardi Gras beads that he found in our neighbors' garage. He flips out if anyone else touches them and he wants to wear them ALL THE TIME:

Umm, yeah

I think we need to start having a regular "Umm, yeah" column here on Raising These Crazy Boys with all the weird stuff my kids do.

This morning, I told Jack he needed to take a shower. They have been preferring to take a bath in our bathroom lately in the big bathtub but I didn't feel like dealing with that so I told him to get in the hall shower, in his bathroom.

Some weeks after we moved here I started noticing that the hall bathroom that Jack uses smelled like pee. This isn't all that surprising since Jack is male and four, I figured he was just not aiming too well. I went through the usual suspects, cleaning the toilet, washing the bathmat. None of that helped, so one day last week I was going out for a while and I asked Keith to mop the floors and he mopped that bathroom. It is made of like real rocks but the mopping seemed to help and I forgot about it for about a day.

Then a few days ago I realized it still smelled bad in there and it was really strong. I didn't know what else to do but was thinking maybe it was because of the rocks, like they were holding the pee in or something. I was baffled but weighing my options.

Back to this morning, I go to put Jack in the shower in there. I pull back the curtain and look in the bathtub. Obvious dried pee is in the tub and in more than one place.

Me: "Jack WHAT THE HELL, MAN?" Ok, ok, I didn't really say that but I wanted to.

Me: "Jack did you pee in this bathtub."

Jack: "Yes, mommy, I really did, that is the truth."

Me: "WHY??????????????"

Jack: "I don't know mommy, I just did pee in this bathtub."

Me: "But the toilet is RIGHT THERE!"

Jack: "Umm, huh."

Me: "Please, Jack, Don't Do This Anymore. This is very gross."

Jack: "Ok, mom!"

I don't know what planet these guys come from except for planet male.

Junk Food

As you all know, we are on a program to get Jack to eat healthier and also eat a larger variety of food.

When I picked him up from school today he happily said, "Mommy I have chocolate AND a lollipop!" and Mrs. Flatt, his teacher, said "Yep, they are really treated out today!"

The whole way to lunch he begs me to eat these things. I say no, we are about to eat lunch.

I took him to the Pizza Inn buffet before gymnastics. So, first I got him some stuff from the salad bar that he eats (cheese, pineapple, honeydew). He tasted each on his own and then did his classic move where he brings his shirt up to cover his mouth and said that each one was "yucky."

On my second trip to the buffet, I got him some plain noodles, which he will usually eat, and a breadstick. He ate most of both of those but said he didn't want more and was still hungry. Though we were at a pizza buffet, he doesn't like pizza at all and I decided not to press it.

On my third trip to the buffet, I got him some club crackers and some saltines. He loved these and asked for more.

While I am finishing my pizza he asks to taste this piece of chocolate chip pizza, and I reluctantly agree even though I have already told him we could walk to Checkers and get a chocolate shake to waste the rest of the time.

He tastes the chocolate chip pizza but doesn't like it.

We walk over and get the milkshakes, which I know he loves. As we are walking back to the car he says to me, "Gosh mommy, you are just ALWAYS trying to give me all this junk food, and it is just not healthy for me."

Sure I am, Little monster :-)

Brother Factor

At Chick-Fil-A

Jack (frantically looking around the table): Mommy, where is SAM?

Me: In the playground [this is about five feet away but through a glass wall]

Jack: By HIMSELF?

Me: Yes.

Jack (Looking at his food longingly, then back at me): Well can I please go keep him safe for a little bit?

Me: Sure buddy.

Lucky little guy, that Sam Mike.

The case of the pillow case

What do you think happened to this pillow case?
a. I washed it so much it started to unravel on the sides
b. It got tangled on the washing machine agitator and thus frayed
c. Jack cut it with his "snissors" and I just didn't notice til after I washed it and put it back on his pillow?
After school, I presented him with the evidence.

"Jack, did you cut this pillow case with scissors?"

"No mommy."

"Jack, I am not angry. Tell me the truth."

"The truth is no, mommy." Door closed.

-two minutes elapses-

Door opens.

"Mommy, I like the pillow this way."

"So, JJ, did you do that to the pillow?"

"DON'T BE ANGRY!!!!!!!!! I like it like this?"

"I'm not angry (totally even voice, don't care at all). I just want you to tell me."

"I cut that with snissors, mommy."

Wow, so surprised.

Feeding Time

Jack doesn't eat too well. It is another one of those typical complaints about toddlers. With Jack, we have never been through one stage that people talk about being problematic and then just got of easy there. Like, it isn't like potty training him wasn't that bad, or like he was always calm, or he slept well as a baby, or wasn't an aggressive two year old. Every stage with him is a battle, and that is just his personality. So, the eating thing has been long standing around here. He won't eat any meat of any kind or any vegetables. He has a specific set of things he eats in rotation and eats most of the same things day in and day out. While this isn't necessarily unheard of for his age, it drives us nuts and we keep saying we are going to do something about it.

We have tried before. A few weeks after Keith came home from Afghanistan, so like last year about this time, we decided he'd eat with us or he wouldn't eat. For three nights in Okinawa we made him eat what we ate. All three nights he threw up. We made all the mistakes then that I don't plan on making now, like almost physically forcing things into his mouth. By that point he was so worked up that puking was almost inevitable.

Lately, Jack has chilled out a little. It was bound to happen eventually, we only had to wait 53 short months for it. When we moved to Charleston we decided that we had to also nip in the bud the whole sleeping outside our door thing. We spent about a week making him sleep in his room and now it is pretty much solved (OK FINE he does still come sleep on our floor almost nightly but not til almost 4 am, and who cares at that hour anyway??). We put him to sleep, he goes to sleep, we can do what we need to do in the evening. Light years better than tiptoeing around him. We had already said that we wanted to get him to try to eat a little more normally too, so we decided it was about that time.

This morning we made up a chart with stickers and a rule chart for dinner and went over all of it with him. Right before dinner we went over it again. You aren't getting separate food from us. We are all eating the same thing for dinner. You can't call anything yucky. You don't have to like any of it but you have to taste it all. The sticker system is that he gets one for not whining or having a fit and another one if he tastes everything. He is REALLY into the sticker thing right now from school anyhow so I knew he'd like that. Rewards have always been motivating for that little tyke.

Alright, Dinner. I was almost sweating. We cooked some Korean rice dish, so we didn't even start of with something cheating like sandwiches or chicken nuggets. He eats rice, so I thought that was at least a small provision. We gave him rice, a tiny bit of the pork and onion in sauce mixture, and a piece of blueberry banana bread. Even sitting down he is in a remarkably good mood even though he seems to understand he has to eat this food that would have elicited a fit any other time I can think of.

He eats the bread and loves it (easy peasy). He eats the rice and makes a mess (no shock). He asks for regular chocolate (chocolate milk). We give it too him holding our breaths and determined not to pressure him about it. I say nothing. Keith cuts him a piece of onion and encourages him to eat it. He frowns and puts it in his mouth and swallows it, drinks the milk. Umm, WHAT?

Next, the pork. He thinks it is chicken, we don't correct him. He isn't happy about eating it at all, is hemming and hawing. I ask to be excused as incentive and leave for a minute then come back. We try to just hang out without making it obvious what we are waiting for as we know that will make it worse. He still isn't really complaining more than a general "I'm not hungry anymore. Really mommy. I don't want dessert."

We stick to our guns. Taste everything.

Maybe 5 minutes pass. Possibly 10.

He eats a (small) piece of pork. He doesn't gag. He drinks the milk.

"We are so proud of you buddy."

"Can I have my stickers please?"

Alright. Who is this kid and where is ours? Maybe I just love four.

Keep Out

Our Jack has always been fairly tolerant of his brother's shenanigans, especially for being four. Sam pretty much worships him, and he not only deals well with it, he actually enjoys his brother a lot too. They play a lot just the two of them, and Jack will beg me to wake Sam up from a nap sometimes, or if he is eating say "Mom, I really think Sam is done now and wants to play with me." They fight over "stuff" a lot, you know, the usual. This is my toy, that was mine, I was sitting there, but I want to hold that. Really though, I still feel blessed to be on this side of sibling rivalry for now. The other day, though, Jack must have had enough, because while Sam was asleep he wrote a lot of signs and then posted them up around the house. He said that the one on the wall of the playroom said "Stop" and when Sam saw it he couldn't come in. He said the one on his kitchen said "Stay Away." I told him gently that Sam wasn't going to understand, but I still thought they were novel attempts at getting some peace around here from the human tornado.

My rain guys

Gonna go out there dude?

I love Sam looking up to the sky here like "What IIIIIS it?"

The Hair we Lost

In case you missed it, we got Sam's Haircut. It was really sad. Here are some pics of how beautiful it was :-) Hard to really see his hair, but I needed a tribute. The new hair is acutally growing on us a bit.