Baby Love

Baby J, how do I love thee. Let me count the ways...I love the way you cross your eyes when you're concentrating. You're trying so hard to figure out what that camera is all about. It's lucky you haven't figured out how to work your hands well enough to grab it.
I loved watching you learn to suck your thumb. It kept you entertained for days, and now that you know how to do it, you have started to sleep through the night. Let's just hope you don't love it too much in the future. I'd hate to have to break out the Tabasco sauce.
I love your crazy hair that stands straight up no matter how much I comb it. I love your rolls, your rubber band wrists, and the dimples on your hands, elbows, and knees. You're so squeezably soft, I'm surprised I haven't popped you yet.I love your sweet squinty eyed, dimpled smile. I love how easy it is to make you smile. I love to watch you try so hard to talk to me. Don't worry, you'll learn how to work those vocal chord better soon enough. It's fun to listen to you experiment with them.
I also have to admit that I love to torture you little baby. I couldn't convince you to like the hat or the chair, but you were so cute crying there, I had to snap a photo. I hope you forgive me someday for all the crazy things I have done and will do to you in the future.

I like to tell people that if babies weren't so cute, we'd throw them out the window. They are a lot of work and sometimes I'd much rather stay in bed than go feed you, thank you very much. I think our Father in Heaven knew what he was doing when he created these little things. I am thankful every day for this sweet little guy, and I am sad to see how fast he's growing. Babyhood doesn't last nearly long enough.

For the Love of Trash Cans

Our little Mr. S has quite an obsession with trash cans. I'm not quite sure if it's garbage trucks or trash cans, or the combination of the two. Either way, I think there needs to be an intervention. Here is my proof:

-Tuesday is trash day, but the trash excitement begins Monday afternoon when our neighbor across the street puts out her trash cans. As soon as he sees it he tells me he will be putting out the cans with his daddy when daddy gets home for work. "daddy take out trash cans after work."
-We don't recycle enough to put out our recycling can every week. We could go two weeks for our regular garbage can, but diapers in a can for two weeks really start to stink. The weeks the blue trash can doesn't go out are quite tragic. Much screaming ensues when the blue one is left behind.
-Tuesday morning starts early. Mr. S wakes up and trots to the front window to watch for the garbage truck. When the garbage truck comes he runs to the window in front, then moves to the window in his bedroom so he can view the truck making it's way around our circle.
-Everyday is spent playing trash man. It's amazing what he calls trash cans. Duplos stacked two high (in matching colors), a chair to his table and a baby doll high chair, little counting bears, our hampers...
-Last week he dumped all his toys into our hampers, pretending they were trash cans. that was a fun mess to clean up. His toys are the trash, although the play food is his favorite thing to use as a trash can.
-Mr. S doesn't watch TV and movies. He watches youtube garbage truck videos. They are videos of garbage trucks doing their thing. I was able to give him his first decent haircut while he watched a garbage truck video. When they end, again, there is much weeping and wailing.
-We went to Target the other day and found a megablocks garbage truck. It had a recycling can and an arm to lift the can into the truck. Mr. S would not let the thing go. I was able to sneak away with it and put it back. He noticed and blamed Chad. "Where's garbage truck? Daddy take garbage truck. Daddy mean." This was repeated multiple times throughout the next few days. It was a fun few days since generally he prefers his daddy over me.
-I embraced the garbage truck love the other day and built a city for Mr. S. Each house had a trash can and his garbage truck went around and picked up trash. Although it turned into cleaning the Webelot castle with a toothbrush. Two year olds are a riot.

Summer Swimming

I have always had a hard time remembering to take pictures of things I do with my kids. Blogging has helped me a little bit with this. We'll be doing something fun, and I'll think "I need to blog about this" and then I'll think "I should take a picture." So in reviewing my picture gallery a ran across a few events I wanted to blog about.

Before Jare Jare Binkys was born (Chad came up with that one. I think it's funny. We're nerds.) I took the kids swimming. I have a very very awesome friend who offered (or maybe I begged) to let us come swim with them in the morning at her mom's house. I wasn't about to go to a public pool 9 months pregnant. So three times a week we joined her teenage son and two girls to swim for an hour. It was awesome.

My kids are naturally competitive, and I think hers are too. So we all made great progress. Kiwi wouldn't let go of the edge of the pool at the beginning of the summer. Both my friends girls were using floaties, and Mr. S screamed the first time we got in the pool and wouldn't let go of me.
By the end of the summer, all three girls were swimming without floaties. My friend's girls were jumping off the diving board. First Kiwi learned to use floaties (she refused to try them previously). Then she started swimming without them for short distances. She still won't jump in, but hopefully we'll get over that fear next summer.

Mr. S was swimming and jumping off the edge of the pool with floaties on by the end of the summer. He wanted to swim like his siblings. I would take him out to the middle of the pool and he'd insist on "swimming." I'd let him go and he'd wiggle his whole body and call it swimming. It was super cute. He also had a superman towel with a hood that made him look like a Jawa (more Star Wars references for those who don't know). We called him Super Jawa.

He's just trying to get the chlorine out of his nose. It stings ya know.

G-man was swimming at the beginning of the summer and at the end was still swimming. He did learn to hold his breath under water and touch the bottom of the deep end. He also learned how to horse around in the pool with a 14 year old boy. He had a lot of fun.

I couldn't have survived the summer without swimming. It's amazing how water takes the pressure of the body, especially my back. I have a feeling the J-baby will be a super swimmer with all the time he spent in a pool before he was born. And no, I will not be posting (and do not have) any pictures of me in my suit. I'd just rather not. Thanks Megan for letting us swim with you guys.

Living Off The Land

We've been having a fun little food adventure at our house. It involves eating weeds.

Has anyone ever heard of purslane? Here's a picture:
It is growing all over our backyard and has been since we moved into this place. So, naturally, we decided to start eating it.

One of Chad's coworkers told him about it after receiving it in her CSA box a few years ago. He's been trying to convince me to eat it since. I was a little wary, seeing as I've always been taught not to eat weeds and other random foliage that may be growing in the yard. It may stem from a serious reaction I had after eating lawn mushrooms when I was four (how was I supposed to know they were poisonous? The neighbor kid who dared me to eat it obviously didn't). I would just ignore Chad and pick those darn weeds. They pop up every year after the monsoons and are pretty annoying.

After seeing a blog post with a recipe for it (inspired by a woman who received it in her CSA box) I started thinking more seriously about trying it. Then I looked it up on the internet and apparently it is full of a lot of Omega 3 something or other and is actually good for you. So I looked up a few recipes. We've mixed it in with our salad at dinner. I've mixed it in with a potato salad. Today we had it with some zucchini and tomatoes. The results are promising! The older kids think it's fun. It doesn't have a very strong flavor, so it's great to add to any vegetable medley you've got going on.

Maybe you happen to have this weed in your yard. Or maybe you're the type to care for your yard and not allow weeds to grow. In that case, come to our house and pick some! There's plenty to go around.

Here are some of the recipes I tried: The second link has some information with recipes at the end. We tried the potato salad. It was fabulous.

www.perrysplate.com/2010/08/everyone-meet-purslane.html

www.culinarymusings.com/2008/06/purslane-not-a-weed-but-a-wonder/

Getting Wet

There's nothing quite like a pouring rain in August on a Saturday afternoon. It sure helped Chad and I get through the rest of the day.
I'm not quite sure why they both decided to stand on one leg and stick there arms out. They both did it simultaneously without discussing it beforehand. I'll have to ask them.

Smiles and Loves

Jared is now one month old and smiling! He's pretty smiley if you catch him well rested right after he has eaten. Wait too long and he'll be grumpy because he's bored. I forget how much work it is to entertain a baby.
This kid is very loved. His siblings constantly want to hold him. It's can be kind of annoying since most of the time they want to hold him when he's cranky and usually he sits and cries on their laps. But they keep asking, so I guess they don't hold it against him.
J's hair is pretty awesome. It prefers to stick straight up despite my efforts to comb it down. This picture is immediately after his bath and it's particularly bad. He looks like a little mad scientist. Throwing a temper tantrum. Angry Baby! I love this kid.

Off to School (x2!)

I officially have two kids in school! Kiwi started kindergarten and G started 2nd grade. I feel very lucky that we are able to have them at the same school. G-man tested into GATE (the gifted program in our area) for first grade and goes to a school in a different neighborhood. He is in a self-contained GATE classroom with other gifted kids. We were really happy with his experiences last year and are continuing at the school. Almost all the kids that were in his class last year have returned. He also has a male teacher this year. I am so excited for that. It is so rare to get a male teacher in the younger elementary grades.

Due to the extra support from the GATE program and it's title one designation, the elementary school also was able to keep full day kindergarten. When G-man started kindergarten I was frustrated that I didn't get a half day option. Now that I have two kids in school plus the two little ones at home, I'm so glad Kiwi has full day kinder. It would have been such a pain to pick up kids from school twice a day.

Kiwi had a great week. She didn't know any of the kids at the school. I think she's slowly making friends. Although apparently her favorite past time at recess is chasing boys. The second day Chad took her to school, intending to walk her to the area she lines up. When they got there she hopped out of the truck, told Chad she remembered where to go, and ran off to the playground equipment. She is such a brave, independent little thing. I think it took half the year for G to let Chad drop him off outside his school when he was in kindergarten. By Wednesday I had G-man picking Kiwi up from her kindergarten class so I didn't have to unload the boys from the car.

It's amazing how fast these kids are growing up. I think I may have to walk to pick up Kiwi a few times a week just so I don't feel like she is growing up so fast. But I'm so glad she was able to go without being afraid. I'm so proud of my little girl!