The boys and I love hanging out in our front yard. We had an impromptu Easter egg hunt when Jonas got home from school this afternoon.
Category: Xander
Buttercup Festival…
We loaded up and went to the Buttercup Festival this morning. The boys had so much fun in the bounce houses and at the petting zoo. Here they are loving on the sheep and goats.
Water Table…
The boys were so excited that it was warm enough this afternoon to bust out the water table!
Baseball…
Jonas had his first (coach pitch) baseball game of the season this afternoon. The game started about an hour late, but we enjoyed our time hanging out with Pops and Maw beforehand.
Roman pulled a nice one while we were there…I was talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in a while with Roman right beside me. The next thing I know this lady comes up to me and says discreetly, “I thought you ought to know his pants are down.” Goodness gracious… I have no idea if he had already peed, was about to pee, or had lost the battle of elastic with his pants…but either way…we all had a good laugh over it…and hopefully it gave some young mother hope in realizing she’s not alone. Ha! Atleast he’s two and looks like he’s one, so it’s somewhat excusable if not almost adorable…but still.
Next time, I’ll bring snacks and drinks (we had a snack before we left and I just didn’t think we’d need another one…but we did) and some sand toys for the little boys to play with in the dirt (they borrowed some from another little boy and it kept them happy and busy for a little while).
Jonas was so cute in his uniform. I love this picture of him with Coach Ed (who coaches his team along with Coach Josh), who has such a heart for Jonas…he was giving him a quick batting tutorial/pep talk here…and he hit the ball…he was so excited he almost forgot to run. Love it.
Gardening…
We are FINALLY starting our garden and are so excited!!! I don’t think I’ve been more ready for spring in all of my life.
The boys and I picked up a big bag of really good garden soil to work in (I have no clue what I’m doing…I just thought it might be nice to give back to our hard working garden) and some vegetable and herb plants (tomatoes, bell peppers, rosemary, and lavender) that we saw on sale this morning.
They were all big helpers to Mommy…transporting the plants and soil from the car to the garden, spreading the rich soil out, and planting our vegetables and herbs (and even a few perennial flowers we decided to add this year…echinacea and hollyhocks).
Big surprises this year are a three year old rosemary that didn’t make it through the cold winter, a few blackberry bushes that have come up voluntarily, and a handful of bulbs that we had to rescue and plant in pots because the waterlogged soil where they were planted was pushing them up and out of the ground (we’ll be moving those in the fall).
We’re also looking forward to planting our carrots, onions, and cucumbers that we’re starting indoors.
You know…it’s funny…when I was out planting a few of the tomatoes during nap time…just the smell immediately brought me back to childhood summer memories of working with my Grandpa in his garden. It was enough to bring up all of that missing him and made me want to cry. But how blessed is it sometimes to have our memories so attached to our senses that, from the simple action of putting a tomato plant in the ground in early spring, we can be instantly taken back to walking the rows of our Grandpa’s garden in the heat of summer with a stainless steel bucket, enjoying our quality time and watching carefully as he points out the ones that are just right for picking. A beautiful forever memory…hopefully we’re making some too.
Seed Starting…
The boys and I had so much fun today using the pot press MeMe gave us last year to roll newspaper into little compostable pots to start our carrot, cucumber, and onion seeds.
Xander…
Xander is loving his gymnastics class and is SUPER into making his bed (he’s the best bed maker in the house). He is starting to get along much better with Roman (and Jonas) than he used to and has really been showing more and more of his servant’s heart lately. He’s been interested in reading too, so we’ve started working on recognizing a few beginning sight words and have been checking out rebus books from the library.
Grandma and Grandpa ‘s Visit…
Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit with us this past week!!! We loved just being able to do life with them while they were here…preschool, gymnastics, music class, meal times, nap times, bed times, play times, fussy times, etc. Tom and I were so grateful to them for watching the boys for us for the weekend so we could go on a much-needed marriage retreat as well. Here are a few pictures of Grandma and Grandpa and the boys hanging out.
Dinner with Dad…
Jonas and Xander were VERY excited to have a special dinner with Daddy at preschool tonight.
Xan-Man…
Here are several of Xander’s most recent one-liners:
“Mom can I play with you for one million minutes?”
“Guinea pigs don’t need tails…they just need bottoms.”
Xander: “Mom, this is a shooter tooter.”
Mom: “What’s a shooter tooter?”
Xander: “They toot on stuff.”
“Mom, I made a bunch of creations for the trash because he needed some food…he said he was hungry.”
“When I grow up, I want to be a kisser.”
Changing Wheels…
Tom surprised Xander yesterday with a bicycle (thank you, Freecycle!). This morning, he put the training wheels from Jonas’ bicycle on it, and Xander had a big time trying it out. Roman has been flirting with Xander’s tricycle for a while now (which will pass to him, even though he’s not quite big enough to ride it yet…although I’m sure Xander will still ride it some), and he loved just sitting on it with his feet on the pedals, ringing the bell. And Jonas enjoyed the adventure of trying to ride his bicycle without the training wheels. (You know…watching that process was as thrilling, if not more so, for me as watching him learn how to walk. He’s not there yet, but I’m so excited for the freedom that will come for that wild little boy when he gets there.)
Climbing Wall…
Tom is working on building a climbing wall in our garage this weekend. I love these pictures of each boy taking a turn, scaling the wall, with Daddy close behind.
Picnic Time…
The boys just love having picnics with their stuffed animal friends. I guess it’s the boy version of tea parties. Here Xander and Roman are with their morning setups (and yes…I had to convince Xander to put some underwear on for the picture…ha):
Marshmellow…
We brought home Xander’s class pet this morning for the weekend…Marshmellow the guinea pig. The boys just love her…they scoot their chairs over to peek into her cage to check and see how she’s doing, they wave at her and say hello from across the room, they’re absolutely delighted to hold her, and they enjoy helping me with her daily care. Yay for class pets, and yay for super sweet boys to love them!
Xander Lately…
Lately Xander is all about: buttoning (his favorite pajamas and shirts to wear are button-down); changing clothes (he changes clothes just for the fun of it several times a day); running naked around the house (as much as he’s into the mechanics of clothes with buttons and zippers and changing his look, he’s even more into stripping down and streaking the house); writing his name; working puzzles of the United States; doing jumping jacks (he gets a big smile on his face and says, “Mommy, can I show you this?” and launches into the most joyful set of jumping jacks you’ve ever seen); and measuring his fullness at each meal by placing his hand at varying heights on his body and saying, “I’m full up to here.”
Here are a few of his most recent sayings:
“What happens when you be with God? I want to be with God because I love God.”
Mommy: “Are you a free spirit?”
Xander: “No. I’m a naked spirit.”
“Georgia! That’s where (Curious) George lives!”
Writing…
Xander has exploded onto the writing scene all of a sudden. On Thursday, when I picked him up from school, I saw the sweetest art display in the hallway outside of his classroom, where his teachers had written the names of all of the children in their class and the kids had tried to write their names above the teacher-written names. I was totally floored to see that Xander had written his name!!!
He’s been working on writing different letters here and there since this summer, but this was the first time I’d seen him write more than one letter in succession. I guess when it clicks…it clicks. (His preschool teachers started the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum this semester.) It’s funny how things go…I had just picked up a HWT workbook and flip crayons from our preschool director a few weeks ago and talked with her about Xander’s learning style. She had some brilliant suggestions for working with his personality including letting him try letter writing on cookie sheets filled with salt or shaving cream, chalkboards, dry erase boards, or magnetic boards because they’re not as committal and permanent and intimidating as pencil and paper. Amazingly enough…without having even talked with Tom about it…he brought home a combination chalkboard/dry erase board easel that afternoon that he found on free cycle for the boys. And they are all having a blast with it…Xander especially. Here he is with a few things he came up with this weekend:
Discovery Center…
The boys and I spent the morning at the Discovery Center checking out the Curious George exhibit. I was so grateful for the free admission in honor of MLK Day…but, in retrospect, my anxiety level was so high from trying to swim through crowds of kids and parents with all of their activity and noise…not to mention attempting to keep an eye on all three of my little boys who were exploring in three different directions in the midst of it…that I think the $25 would have been well worth it to go on a different day with way fewer people. I still hung in there with it, and they had a blast checking everything out. And then, when we were all feeling over it, we enjoyed spending the rest of our time outside…eating a picnic lunch, playing on the playground, and walking down the boardwalk over the natural wetlands.
Feeding the Ducks…
After we dropped off Jonas at preschool this morning, Xander and Roman and I went on a duck feeding adventure. There’s a great little duck pond in the next town over that we like to visit when we have a stash of stale bread heels to share. The ducks were a little aggressive when we were passing out the bread, so Roman kept saying “Hold, hold!”. I held him most of the time, while Xander sweetly herded the ducks toward the water (by the end of our time there, he had most of them swimming in the pond).
Ice Globes…
The boys and I tried a fun winter experiment. We filled up balloons with Koolaid powder and water (I totally splashed blue and purple water all over myself more than once…next time I’ll wear an apron…ha), left them outside to freeze, cut and peeled away the balloon, and enjoyed playing with and looking at our colorful ice globes (next time we’ll ditch the purple and try for brighter colors like the blue).
Snow…
We woke up this morning to a little bit of snow, so the boys and I bundled up and headed out to play. They had fun trying to spoon snow into baking tins for painting later. Jonas enjoyed the snow scooping challenge the most, Xander loved eating snow by the spoonfuls and could’ve stayed out there forever, and Roman was not long for his mittens and as a result not long for the cold. But we had fun and enjoyed a warm cup of hot chocolate afterwards.
