Alex's cutting and a Tooth Necklace!

Alex surprised me last week with his scissors skills! He has mostly just used scissors to turn sheets of paper into confetti. Maybe he's cut something out during a craft prioject at church, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he was sitting by me cutting paper when he asked if he could cut out an A for Alex. He's been very into letters lately, especially the ones in his name. I drew an A on paper, and Alex cut it out all by himself! Then he wanted the L , E, and X. He cut them out all by himself too and put them in order on the floor. He was so proud of his name!

Molly lost her 2nd tooth today!
At her school, if a child loses a tooth during the school day, they are given a tooth necklace. The tooth on the necklace is a tiny container for them to keep their lost tooth in until they get home. Isn't that great?!?

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Funny Stories:

Alex is really talkative now. However, like most 3-yr-olds, he still has trouble with certain consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. He often substitutes a "t" or "d" sound for "ch", "g", "c", "th", "tr", etc., and he doesn't enunciate his r's very clearly.
Beause of this, there are many times when I find myself not understanding one certain important word in whatever he's telling me. He repeats it over and over, while I guess what word he's saying.

Yesterday we were in the car and Alex dropped something. He said, "Mommy, I dropped my dod, can't you please get it?"
I said, "Sure Alex. What did you drop?" I looked on the floor but couldn't see anything. He said, "My dod. I dropped my dod and I need it back. My dod that I made. I dropped my dod." No matter how many times I made him repeat it, I just heard "dod". I made a few guesses. Card? Did you drop your card, Alex? He was getting frustrated. He said, "No, not my dod (card), my DOD (whatever the original dod was)!!!"
I was lost. Finally when we were parked and opened the van door, we saw his Jesus craft from church. He was calling it his "God", saying he had dropped his God. Mystery solved.


This morning, he wanted to know where the sidewalk chalk went that Daddy bought, except what he said was, "Mommy, I want the tak that Daddy bought. Where is it?"
Tak. Hmm. So I'm left guessing what he's asking for. Clock? Truck? He was frustrated. Finally he pointed outside to the sidewalk and said, "The tak for the sidewalk", and then I got it. Chalk. Then I got to explain how it was raining out so we couldn't play with chalk even if we found it.

Easter

Molly and Alex got to go to an Easter egg hunt in Watertown. They hide plastic eggs in a huge pile of shredded paper, which I think is a really fun idea. The weather is usually too cold or rainy to have a good outdoor egg hunt, so having to dig for the eggs in the paper works well. :)

Alex with his basket of eggs he found.

Molly (in pink) searching for more eggs.

Family Easter photo. Hmm. Can you tell which person was not really wanting to cooperate? We did get one photo with all of us smiling nicely, but I thought I'd post these two just because they are funny.

Nice "smile" Molly! Wow!
I think Molly needs to take some lessons from Alex, who posed like a little angel. :)

Happy Easter!

Cruise!

Cory and I went on an amazing cruise vacation to celebrate our upcoming 10 yr anniversary in June. We flew to Miami and took the NCL Pearl to Roatan (Honduras), Belize, Cozumel (Mexico), and an island in the Bahamas. It was wonderful!

Cory and I got to hold monkeys at a monkey refuge on Roatan.

We got to climb up Mayan ruins in Belize.

We rode Segways and snorkeled in Cozumel.

We loved our cruise. It was great for us to get a week away. Molly and Alex had a great time with their grandparents in South Dakota while we were gone, too!

Catching up - Photos of Alex at Como Conservatory

On March 27, We met some friends at the Como Conservatory to take some fun photos and bask in the flowers and feel of spring. It's a beautiful place. Here are some fun photos of Alex there:

It's gone!

Yes, it's the tooth! Molly pulled it out this afternoon. She's soooooooooo excited! :) It's fun. Check out the roots on that baby. It's hard to photograh a single tiny tooth like that, but it has a lot of roots for a tiny incisor. When I was reading about permanent teeth coming in behind the baby teeth, I read that when that happens the roots may not dissolve well. I'm glad the tooth came out on it's own, and didn't need to get pulled!

New smile

Alex with his still slightly swollen lip and Molly with her new smile.

:)

More fun times

Molly went to a princess-themed birthday party yesterday. She was very excited to dress up as a princess.

Even princesses are silly.

Alex always loves to make us laugh. This morning, he came up to Cory to ask him a serious question, only he was wearing his sunglasses over his silly halloween glasses. You are funny and you know it, Alex!

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During the week, Molly talked a lot about her loose tooth. One day we were in the car when Molly started talking about how she couldn't wait to see what the Tooth Fairy leaves her for her tooth. I said I thought it would probably be a dollar. Molly was very excited, and said something like this:
M: I hope I get a dollar. That would be great. A dollar bill. Or maybe it will be a HUNDRED dollar bill. Because you know how much I like hundred dollar bills! (what?!?)
E: I actually don't know, Molly. What would you do with a hundred dollar bill?
M: I would buy toys. I would buy a lot of toys that would cost a hundred dollars. Maybe if there was a Barbie that was 100 cents I could buy 100 of them. One hundred Barbies!!!! That would be so awesome!!!!
E: Nice, Molly. I think you'll probably get one dollar. You'll have to wait and see, though. :)

Teeth

Molly has been excited to start loosing her baby teeth, but last fall her dentist said it would probably be a year based on her x-rays, so we've been trying to tell Molly to just be patient because it could be quite a while yet.
Then, last Sunday night, I was brushing Molly's teeth when I saw something white behind her front bottom teeth. At first I thought maybe she had hurt her gums or something, but once she spit out her toothpaste I could see what it was. It was her first permanent tooth! It was coming in right behind her baby teeth!
I showed Molly, and she was SO EXCITED. She was bouncing all around and just couldn't wait to tell everybody at school all about it. We checked her baby teeth, and the one right in front of this permanent tooth was loose. I told her to start wiggling it so it could come out soon so the big tooth has room to come in properly. Molly was so happy!
I felt kind of sad about the whole thing, though. :( My baby is getting so big!!! Losing teeth!
I told Molly I wanted to take some photos of her because these could be the last photos of her smiling with all of her baby teeth. Those photos are below:

Big grin to show all of her perfect teeth.

You can see the permanent tooth poking up behind her baby teeth in this photo above.

Here's a better look of that tooth coming up. I guess it's pretty common to have this happen.

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We also had a tooth incident with Alex this week.
On Wednesday night he gave us a scare. He started running up the stairs and tripped on the first or second step. I heard a huge smack and then him screaming and ran to him. He was bleeding badly, and it looked like he had bitten all the way through his lower lip. :(
I could see a huge gash on the inside of his lip, and on the outside just under his lip there was a horizontal cut.
I wrapped up some ice in a wet washcloth and had him hold it to his lips while I called the Children's Hospital ER to see if I should bring him there for stitches. They said yes, and Cory arrived home from work, and we all took Alex to the ER.
Once we got there, the bleeding had stopped enough that we could see the cut wasn't all the way through his lip. He bit on the inside and outside, but the outside cut wasn't very deep at all so no stitches were required. The inside cut is bad, but they don't do stiches on the inside of the mouth. Apparently it heals fine on its own and there is less risk of infection if they just leave it alone. The doctor there checked Alex out, put some Neosporin on his outer cut, and sent us home. Alex was a trooper through it all, and Molly was incredibly sweet to him, bringing him anything she could think of to help him feel better.
That first day he had trouble eating and pretty much lived on popsicles and smoothies. The swelling has gone down quite a bit, and he seems to be healing really quickly, thankfully. :)
Lea, a babysitter at the Y, told me that Alex seemed really brave and proud of his injury. She asked him what happened, and he just said, "I tripped on the stairs and fell and bit through my lip. It bled a lot, but the doctor made it better."

Fun at Gleason's Gym

Gleason's Gymnastics gym has a few preschool-through-kindergarten open playtimes during the week. Alex has gone there several times, but we didn't discover Gleason's until this past fall so Molly had never gone. She had Friday, March 6 off from school, though, so finally she was able to go play at Gleasons. She loved it!

There are a lot of obstacle courses to climb through/over and trampolines to jump on.

Molly and Alex loved everything. Here they are hanging on a beam.

They have a big pit with foam blocks that the kids can jump into and climb through. Alex does this over and over and over. Molly though it was fun, too.

"shirt hats" and interviews

Molly and Alex with their "shirt hats" on.

Molly's typical after school routine usually involves eating a snack, watching an episode of Cyberchase (her favorite TV show), and then taking her school clothes off and wearing only underwear until bedtime when she puts on pajamas. Yes, at 5 1/2 years old, she STILL prefers to wear as little clothing as possible (underwear are required in our house). Of course as soon as Molly starts removing clothing, Alex joins in on the fun and copies his sister. They do it even in the coldest weeks of winter. I'm wearing 3 layers inside the house and they are running around mostly without clothes.
One day, Molly and Alex randomly decided it was time to remove thier shirts, only they didn't pull them all the way off. Instead, they left the shirts dangling from their heads. They ran around yelling about how they were wearing "shirt hats". They were giggling and having a ton of fun together, so I had to take a photo of them in their "shirt hats". :)

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Interviews

One of the notes that has been spreading all over Facebook is an interview with your child. I interviewed Molly and Alex, but I thought it would be more fun to post their answers here rather than doing it on Facebook.

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I interviewed Alex, age 3 (my comments are in parenthesis)
February 27, 2009.

1. What is something mom always says to you? “I love you”
2. What makes mom happy? “I love you mom” (I am happy when he tells me that!)
3. What makes mom sad? “When I opened the graham cracker box.” (This morning he opened a new box of graham crackers after I told him we already had an open box and he could not open the new one. He opened the new one anyway and got a time out for it. I’m impressed he remembered!)
4. How does your mom make you laugh? “Wiggly worm” (It’s a tickling game – my fingers are wiggly worms coming to tickle him.)
5. What was your mom like as a child? “like Alex?” (somewhat!)
6. How old is your mom? "4?" (ha!)
7. How tall is your mom? “Big!”
8. What is her favorite thing to do? “Play the bunny game” (It’s a wii game he makes me play – Raving Rabbids)
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? “I don’t know”
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? (No answer – I don’t think he understands “famous” yet.)
11. What is your mom really good at? “playing with me” (I’m happy he thinks so!)
12. What is your mom not very good at? (No answer – I think he’s getting sick of these questions.)
13. What does your mom do for her job? “Takes care of Alex.”
14. What is your mom's favorite food? “salad”
15. What makes you proud of your mom? (No answer – I don’t think he understands “proud”.)
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? (No answer)
17. What do you and your mom do together? “play the bunny game” (Can you tell he asked me to play the bunny game with me right before I started asking him questions?)
18. How are you and your mom the same? “same coats” (We both have red coats.)
19. How are you and your mom different?
20. How do you know your mom loves you?
21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

(He had totally lost interest by question 19 and did not answer 19, 20, 21, or 22.)


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I interviewed Molly, age 5 (my comments are in parentheses)
March 1, 2009
1. What is something mom always says to you? “It’s time to get ready”
2. What makes mom happy? “When we do what you want us to do.”
3. What makes mom sad? “When we do NOT do what you want us to do.”
4. How does your mom make you laugh? “By doing funny stuff!”
5. What was your mom like as a child? “I don’t know that one.”
6. How old is your mom? “30”
7. How tall is your mom? “I don’t know”
8. What is her favorite thing to do? “Take care of me and Alex”
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? “Play with Alex”
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? “I don’t know.”
11. What is your mom really good at? “Taking care of us.”
12. What is your mom not very good at? “I don’t know.”
13. What does your mom do for her job? “Take care of me and Alex.”
14. What is your mom's favorite food? “Tacos”
15. What makes you proud of your mom? “I don’t know”
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? “Scooby Doo” (I don't think Molly has ever seen an episode of Scooby Doo in her life.)
17. What do you and your mom do together? “art projects”
18. How are you and your mom the same? “’cause we both have long hair”
19. How are you and your mom different? “I don’t have glasses and you do.”
20. How do you know your mom loves you? “You say it every time.”
21. What does your mom like most about your dad? “He loves you.”
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? “To the Y”

Molly's Asia Song

Molly's kindergarten class studied Asia and learned a song listing all of the countries in Asia. Here is a video of Molly singing:



Hmm. It's sideways... I can't get it to rotate without the sound getting all annoying. Did you notice the Africa song was a little big painful to listen to? My software makes it sound kind of piercing and "tinny" when I rotate the image and save it that way. Can anybody recommend a free video editing program that will let me rotate it without messing with the sound? Thanks! :)

Alex's "big bagel"

Our church is fortunate enough to get free day-old Panara bread on Sundays, and often there are plenty of leftover loaves and bagels for the church attendees to take home for their own use. Usually right before we leave church, I ask the kids if they want to help me pick out some bagles, and we usually grab a bag of random bagels and sometimes bread loaves.

Today, Alex asked if he could have a bagel, and he got a sesame seed one for a snack. I thought he was eating it. Then Molly got home from school. He ran to the door and said, "Hi Molly! I'm eating a really big bagel!" I didn't think much of it. Then I walked into the kitchen and looked at the table. This (photo) is what I saw.

That is NOT a bagel. LOL! (Yes, Alex ate ALL of that. It is an enormous loaf, too!)

 

Probably more than you wanted to know...

(warning - poop story)

Just now, Alex said he had to go poop (and he makes me go with him to the bathroom because he won't go to a different floor of the house alone). We ran upstairs, but instead of going into the bathroom, he went into his bedroom. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was just getting something. He got a crayon, his Star Wars lunch box where he keeps his drawings, and a notepad and brought them into the bathroom. He then said, "Mom, draw my poop."
I said, "What?"
A: Draw my poop.
E: I don't want to draw your poop, Alex. Yuck.
A: Not with my poop, with the pencil (it was a crayon but he said pencil).
E: I don't want to draw your poop with the crayon Alex. Just go. Hop on the potty now.
A: Draw my poop. Do it. Draw it with the crayon. (still not on the potty)
I decided the fastest way out of the bathroom would be to just draw it so I drew a little turd on his paper.
A: (looking at my drawing) No, that's a banana. Draw my poop. I have a big poop.
E: Just get on the toilet now.
Alex does and poops. After he's finished and we've wiped and washed hands and all that he looks at the drawing and says he's going to fix it because he has a long poop. I left, and he sat there for a while working on his drawing. Lovely.

Valentines and other things

Molly's "homework" for this weekend is to fill out Valentines for all of the children in her class. She is supposed to neatly write her name and their names on all of the cards.

I have a lot of card-making things, and I thought making homemade Valentines would be a fun project for us to do together. I also thought it would give her more room to write names (have you seen how tiny and junky the standard store-bought Valentines are now?). We've been discussing store-bought vs. homemade for a few days now. I told Molly how we can use a bunch of heart stamps and paper, but she is STUCK on the idea that the girls in her class need princess Valentines and the boys need Spiderman ones.

Here's what I can remember of our conversation this morning.
Cory and I were hanging out together on the couch in the basement, and Molly ran downstairs and said, "Mom, Dad, we need to go buy our Valentines at Target NOW!"
E: Molly, would you like to make Valentines with me instead?
M: Well, we can give the girls in my class princess cards and the boys can have the home made ones.
E: Molly, I think if we make home made ones we should make that kind for your whole class.
M: Ok, we can just put princesses and spiderman on those cards.
E: We don't have those stickers, Molly. We can use a lot of heart stamps and the words, "Happy Valentines Day" on them, though.
M: (thinks for a second) I know! I will DRAW spiderman and princesses on the homemade cards. Let's do that. Let's do it now. Can we go do it now????
Cory: Molly, I don't think you can draw Spiderman on 20 cards...
M: Dad, I would just draw Spiderman on the boys' cards and draw princesses on the girls' cards.
E: Molly sweetie, you are a very good artist for a 5-yr-old, but I don't think you can draw spiderman or princesses.
M: Yes I can!!! I can!
E: I think we should just go to Target, then.
M: Ok, let's go RIGHT NOW. Let's go now. Can we go now????
C: I don't think Target is even open yet Molly...
M: That's ok. We can go right now. We can get there early and just wait in the van until it opens. Then we will be the FIRST ONES in the store!!!
C: Why do you want to be the first ones in the store?
M: Because I really want Spiderman for the boys and what if we are last and all the spiderman ones are gone and then I have to get Superman? I really don't want to give them Superman Valentines!!! Can we go now????
:)

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The other night Molly was playing with her food while we were eating. She started waving her fork around all over, and I asked her to stop waving her fork and just try to eat. She looked at me and said, "Mom, I was just getting funky with it!"
What? Where does she hear these things?

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Oh, and I have an update on Alex. It seems that the Madeleine's magical nap spell only lasted for 7 days. Life is back to normal (he won't be in his room without me again, and even if I lay down with him in his bed he won't fall asleep anymore. No more naps... and still no quiet times.... sigh.)

Random January Fun

Here are some random photos of fun times in January.

 

Cory took Molly and Alex geocaching. Most of the caches are some kind of waterproof contaner hidden in a tree or similar, but the kids were thrilled to see this creative one. It was a monkey hanging from a tree! The monkey had a peanut butter jar glued inside of it, and it was hung up in a tree by a cord that you had to unwind to let the monkey decend. Molly and Alex loved it! :) Geocaching has to be the best family-friendly hobby out there.

 

Molly had her first school concert! It was really fun to see all the little ones and hear all the songs they had prepared. :) Molly is in the center of the first row.

 

We made it to the zoo a couple of times. Alex and his buddy Isaac posed for a quick photo on a tortoise. I'm so glad the MN zoo has so much to see indoors!

 

Alex hiding in some toy tubs. :) He's always trying to get a laugh.

Funny Stories:

Alex stopped napping in early September. He wasn't 3 yet, so that is pretty early for a child to stop napping, but he just would not fall asleep anymore. Also, on days when I successfully did get him napping, it would mess up his bedtime and he wouldn't be able to fall asleep until around 11. Not good.
Alex also has always hated being by himself and would pretty much have a full blown panic attack if I tried to get him to stay in his room for "quiet time". Even as a baby, when he'd wake up in the morning he would just start screaming hysterically instead of happily babbling in his crib like most babies. We just accepted that this is how he is, and for 6 months I've just had Alex with me all day long every day. There were a few days in the last few months when Alex was really overtired or sick, and I TRIED laying with him in his bed to get him to nap. He just screamed and would have nothing to do with it.

Then, everything changed last Thursday. It was the weirdest thing. Alex's friend Mado came to stay with us for a few days because her new baby brother was born early Thursday morning and her parents were at the hospital. Madeleine still naps, and on Thursday afternoon we were getting Mado ready for her nap when Alex announced he wanted to be like Mado and take a nap too. I doubted it would happen but played along of course. After Mado was settled, I went with Alex to his room. He had a CD he said he wanted to play and put it in his CD player. Then I told him he could climb in bed.

He looked so confused. It was honestly as if he had never even heard of the idea of napping before. He asked, "I get into my bed with my clothes on?" (Rather than putting on pj's) I said, "Yes, Alex. That's what we do for naps."
Then he asked, "It's dark outside?" I said, "It's nap time. Let me get that blanket on you. Good night Alex." He was still acting really confused, but he stayed in bed.

I walked out the door... and they NAPPED!!!

When we gave the bedtime warning, Alex again looked confused. He said, "Again???" He really couldn't figure out why it was time to sleep again.

Alex has now been napping consistently again. Crazy, huh? He still acts very confused and often asks about putting on pajamas or if he should eat his vitamins (which they do before bedtime) or brush his teeth. I am in shock that he actually stays in his room by himself! Wow.

We're still trying to play with waking him up after an hour so it doesn't affect his bedtime sleep, and he HATES to be woke up. It makes him really cranky and emotional. So I guess I'm not sure what he should be doing - napping or not napping - but for now I'll try letting him nap for a while and see what happens...

It's official...

It's official. We've only gotten through 4.5 months of kindergarten and already my daughter is smarter than me! She's only 5, and she knows something important and useful that I do not know. She can now list off all of Africa's countries. I can sing the North American and South American Countries songs, but I can definitely not do Africa. There are a LOT of countries in Africa! I thought maybe by 4th grade or so she'd be learning things I didn't know, but Kindergarten?!?

OOPS, I thought I had uploaded the video here, but I guess I picked the wrong one. I'll try again.


!

p.s. I really do love comments, and I also like to know if anybody out there is even reading this blog. Anybody? Anyway, there's my shameless plea for comments. You don't have to comment on this particular post... just sometimes on some of them it would be nice. I promise it will make me smile. :) Thanks

Light Saber battles and more

 

Molly and Alex both got Star Wars light sabers for Christmas. They think it is fun to have little battles. So far no one has lost an eye. :)

 

Molly made us a Thank You card in Kids' Church a couple of weeks ago. I asked her teachers about it, and they said they had talked about thankfulness and had the kids write something they were thankful for in the card. Apparently many kids listed toys and other things like that and this was Molly's own idea. It is kind of funny to get a card like this from your 5-yr-old - incredibly precious and sweet, don't get me wrong - but still kind of funny, too. You are a sweetheart, Molly!