A week of snow days

Things have been very busy around here since I last posted for me and my schooling goals -- dissertation finishing and preparing for the defense. This past week, we had a combination of snow and cold temperatures that resulted in cancelled classes for the boys' preschool AND the two universities were my husband and I work, respectively.

Chaos is ruling, but it's a good kind of chaos.

New Year's Day.

Me and this guy went to church on New Year's Day morning (for us it's a holy day of obligation). After, we met Hal and Nathan for breakfast. 

That night, we had my parents, sister and her fiancé, and my grandparents over for an excellent dinner that Hal had worked very hard on. 

Happy new year to all!

Brothers: A tale of two pictures

Happy Halloween!

Our little fox doesn't say much, but he really enjoyed collecting candy during trick or treat in the rain tonight!



Luke recycled his costume from last year because who wouldn't want to be a rocket ship two years in a row?! Cheaper for me!!!



One day I'll get a picture of them together that looks nice. Obviously not today.

Famous!

We made it on the jumbo tron at the reds game last night!

(Luke doesn't like how loud things are before the game starts. Once it started he was fine.)

These kids!

A week or so ago, Nathan backed up while getting ready to go down our slide and fell about 4.5 feet from our swing set. I was standing at the ladder. I do not know how he was not hurt -- he landed on his shoulders/back/neck region. I seriously thought that maybe I shouldn't move him and just call 911. But, he was fine except that he bit his lip. Seriously, there is no reason that he was fine. It was awful. I called the pediatrician but by the time they called me back he was acting like his normal self. So much to be thankful for. 

Our swing set was the previous homeowner's and it was very old and unsafe and we had been meaning to take it down. But we didn't and just were watching to make sure the boys were safe on it. Well, that night I pulled the slide off with my bare hands and also broke the ladder rungs so they couldn't climb up to the platform. The whole swing set is now dismantled.

These kids, I swear.

Tonight, Luke, who is recovering from a cold, went to school today, and didn't nap, asked to go to bed at 7:30. Yikes. Nathan cried for an hour when he woke up from his nap (teeth and cold) and was mad when Hal put him to bed. I can't wait to see how they are tomorrow.

But then there are these moments. This picture makes me so happy. I looked up from checking email yesterday (my birthday!) and these two were like this. What a great birthday present. 



And here's Luke on the first day of school:

Luke hates his birthday, but he's three anyway!

I have no idea what happened to make Luke so anti-birthday this year. Was it the fireworks on "America's Birthday?" Was it that Nathan got all messy on his birthday? We have no idea. He was super upset about his birthday, though. He burst into tears the other night when I sang "Happy Birthday" to him! I did not think that the birthday hating started at age 3.

Due to major protests when we mentioned his birthday, we ended up having a "baseball party" or a "party for no reason." 

Instead of singing "Happy Birthday," we sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Could he look more glum about it?



BUT! He loved presents. He got all sorts of things, and especially love his automatic pitcher.





(He also got that bengals jersey. He is sleeping in it.)

We celebrated with family. I was proud of my photo collage I did for him today: 

Pool!

On Sunday, we got Nathan into Gammy and Pa's pool for the first time! He loved it! Luke is getting braver this year, too. He likes jumping off the side!

First Soccer Game!

In order to help Luke burn off some energy this summer and give him something a little structured to do, we enrolled him in a soccer program. It is a program for Under 4s and consists of a short lesson/practice session and then a 3v3 game.

We have been trying to prepare him for soccer for awhile now by talking to him about it. We have met lots of resistance because he would remind us that he is a baseball player, not a soccer player! He was also not impressed to be on the green team instead of the RED team (we convinced him that his team was called The Green Reds). He was unhappy when I brought home shinguards for him last weekend, but wore them to bed when we told him that catchers wear shinguards, too.

He has been iffy about naps lately, so I was surprised that he fell asleep for a nap on Saturday, the day of his first session. Which started at 4:30. And he fell asleep at 3. Yikes. We woke him up at about 3:50 and he fought us from that moment until he got to the facility. He cried the whole way there. We promised him if he didn't like it we didn't have to go back and we could get ice cream to celebrate his first game (sigh -- resorting to food bribery). He still didn't want to go.

Until we got in. And he saw the teams in front of him playing. Then he perked up. And then I gave him his uniform shirt, and he was convinced:

When the group before him was done, he ran out, grabbed a ball, and had a blast! So much of a blast that he didn't really pay much attention when they tried to do the lesson with them. I tried to go out there and hold his hand for a little while, but that didn't really help. I was just excited that he wasn't crying (several of the kids were).

The poor kid liked to kick the ball and fall down immediately. That reminds me of...me. I could never stay on my feet while playing. Poor Luke.

He is going to have to work on having nice hands. Luke gets great joy out of tackling people. That is not good. His pushing stressed me out! He kept going between pushing and hugging. I am hopeful that he'll learn to be less pushy by next weekend. I do think that by the end of the game he was doing less overt pushing and more of a soccer "lean-in" with the shoulder. Which is not better, but a step in the right direction!

The lesson was adorable (even if he didn't pay attention), and the game was really cute, too. Every time the kids did something right during the game, they got a stamp on their hand. It was fun to watch. 

He ran for an hour straight (the 3v3 game turned into an everyone v everyone game because so many of the kids were having a hard time just being on the field). He was a sweaty mess, but he loved it!

A weighted statement

Luke held the meat thermometer up to me tonight and said, "Mommy, I see how much you weigh." 

Me: "How much?" 

Luke: "Two years and 20,000 miles."

Great.

The Confession

I was laying with Luke to try to get him to go down for a nap. He was being very sweet -- kissing me and saying, "I love you just the way you are."

Then he said, "I tell you a secret."

He got very close to me and whispered, "I. Killed. Mufasa."

2/7 The Park

As part of my fitness goals for the year, I have decided to take a walk whenever it is above 50 degrees. My temperature requirement comes not from myself but because of the boys. I don't want them to be too cold just for the sake of me wanting to walk.

Well, Thursday was GORGEOUS. It was almost 60 degrees and I was able to walk with just a sweatshirt. We decided to hit the road when we got home from picking up Luke from school.

I made the impromptu decision to walk down to the park. I saw down because it's pretty much a huge hill down to the park. It's 1 mile away (I checked later with my car), which wouldn't be too bad except for the hill.

Let me tell you, walking down a hill while holding a dog and about 75 lbs of stroller is not easy. It was all I could do to keep the stroller from getting away from me on the steepest parts.

I should have paid more attention. But the stroller was too wide to see.

The bump.

A part of the sidewalk had sunk and left a several inch straight up cliff between it and the next piece of sidewalk.

I hit that cliff going fast because it was downhill.

My strollers wheels were too small. They stopped.

But the rest of us kept going! All of the sudden I was flying over the handlebars as the stroller pitched forward, almost going upside down. I fell to the side and hit the ground next to Nathan.

Layla was confused. A car traveling alongside me on the road paused perhaps a little bit longer at the stop sign and then kept going when it saw me starting to stir. 

I pulled myself up and struggled to upright the stroller. I pulled back the canopy and two sets of eyes looked at me. Not a peep. Luke had his hand on the ground, bracing himself. Nathan was just sitting there, and I'm thankful that we still had him in the shoulder straps or else he would have probably fallen out.

I got them upright. No one was worse for wear. My pride might have been a little hurt.

So we continued to the park. Where Luke climbed the crazy ladder thing like a big boy and Nathan loved the swing.

And then we walked home. Slowly. My shoulders hurt for days, and I had a big bruise on my elbow. But what an adventure!

1/2

On the second day of the year, we took a picture in some of our new Christmas clothes to send to our new aunt (my brother got engaged! They are both far away and I wanted to show her that the nice gifts she sent fit.)

Later that evening, we turned on some tunes. Luke loves music. He is especially into "pitano"(piano) music as performed by Ben Folds. Just in the past couple of days, he discovered Mumford & Sons. He contemplated their song "I'll be there," which he later sang while playing on the little fisher price piano.

J family 365?

We will see if I can take a picture every day this year!

From 1/1: chili parlor shenanigans.

Rocket Man!

OK, OK, I know it's not Halloween yet. But I had to share Luke's costume.

Luke has been obsessed lately with watching rocket ships. We watch the shuttle launches on YouTube constantly. I think he watched the shuttle Discovery launch about 50 times the other day.

When the topic of Halloween came up, Hal said, "Wouldn't it be great if we could make him a rocket ship?"

I had no idea if there was a rocket ship costume. I had no urge to make one (I have other things going on, after all!). I thought maybe we could find an astronaut costume, which wasn't ideal because Luke didn't quite know what an astronaut was.

But we found this costume. It's a Target costume, and was (even on sale!) more expensive than I would normally spend on a costume -- $25 on sale. But he was SO EXCITED about it. And it was the only thing we saw. And I didn't want to think about it anymore.

So we bought it. And he LOVES it.

In fact, he wouldn't take it off the day we brought it home. Even to play.



(I guess we'll take heart in the fact that Nathan's costume came from Once Upon a Child and was like $2.)

Luke Sings!

Luke is a rock star this week! Yesterday he had a silly hat and a guitar hero guitar at my mom's, and was singing "My Old Kentucky Home." The day before he jumped up on our fireplace, sang a bunch of Alleluias, and finished off with a rousing rendition of "Jesus Loves Me." 

 

Today, I was playing on the computer and randomly sang, "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy." To my complete surprise, Luke chimed in, "Here number. Call me maybe."

First Day of School (kind of)

Luke starts his 2 days per week preschool/Mother's Day Out tomorrow. We practiced tonight with his backpack and lunch box. If you are offended by character clothes/stuff, I apologize in advance! ;)

First: The "Teeth Smile" This picture cracks me up. :)


Luke's totally pumped and excited face!


I am so happy we found a place to send him to school here. I really was sad to leave his program in Bloomington. This new program is more structured and fewer hours, and I think he'll learn a lot.

Luke is TWO!

Luke's birthday is TODAY. He is a smart, silly, hilarious, and busy little guy. We are so happy to have him in our family.
Last night, we had his party at my parents' house. My mom's side of the family and Hal's dad come to celebrate with us. We had a lasagna dinner and cake and ice cream. Luke got tons of presents. He was a little unsure about everyone singing to him, and when his super cool bulldozer (which was battery powered) took off across the table, making everyone yell, he didn't like that too much (he told my mom later to put it in the trash, lol). He spent a lot of time saying "smile" when I asked him to smile -- instead of actually smiling! What a silly.
This weekend has capped off a very busy week of moving and Hal's "vacation" we went to the zoo twice. We bought a family pass to the zoo for Luke's birthday present (we also got him the movie Cars). Today we went to the aquarium and did the penguin encounter. The penguin encounter was my grandmother's mother's day present -- so it was all the girls on my mom's side of the family, and Luke and Nathan. There are plenty of photos under the cut!




Luke loved that his cake had toy cars on it.


Cheesing. This is his response to "Can you give me a teeth smile?"


He loves his new slide!


And he is pumped about his soccer goal!




Feeding the giraffe at the zoo was a huge hit.


Nathan is a little stunned at the zoo. It was very warm the first time we went.


At the penguins! Luke had to go in that carrier for the penguin experience (it was the aquarium's carrier -- Nathan is in my ergo). He wasn't too thrilled, but he was very good!





Touching the penguin!