Grapes! Cheese! I'm Happy!

Okay, so Sophie is naturally a good-natured, happy baby. But, I've just about never seen her any happier than when eating her grapes and cheese tonight.

Looks good ma!

Seriously, I could not wipe this smile off her face.

The only time she wasn't grinning ear to ear was when she was shoveling the food into her mouth.

pumpkin craft wednesday

So, for the first Wednesday in quite some time, I had no real plans other than trying to get caught up on laundry. Turned out to be a nice day but they just never turn out to be as productive as I hope.

Highlights of the day.... I got destroyed in "Ants in the Pants". Both boys ganged up on me and I didn't stand a chance. They're actually both quite good. Then we played outside for a while and then painted and decorated some pumpkins.

We had a conference with Travis's teacher this week, I do feel a little better about the situation. He's painfully shy, but I think it will improve, and even if he is always somewhat timid.... well, its not like thats unheard of and there's no chance of coming back from that. Ben and I were both shy as kids and I think we've done alright for ourselves.

Getting ready for Halloween this weekend, can't wait to get some pics of the kiddos.

Perfecting their technique

After their victory

"Mom! MOM! I'm in the bree-house!!"

Mastered the ladder!

Our pitifully tiny pile of leaves

Oh well, its still fun

Proud pumpkin creators

Henry and Moe

Sometimes Mean

One of Travis's classmates in Pre-K had his father pass away last week. They sent a little note home with all the Pre-K kids, explaining about the little boy's loss and that the school counselor had come into the class to explain what happened to the kids, and they all prayed for the boy and his family and then made cards for him for his return.

Now, Travis has told me about this little boy before, his name is Jarell, and Travis describes him as "sometimes mean". So, I decided to take this opportunity to explain that while Travis might think of Jarell as "mean", that no one really knows what someone has going on in their lives; and we talked about how it might have been very hard on Jarell if his dad was very sick, and that might be why he sometimes acted out.

So, last night, we drove out to my sister's house to see my aunt and grandma visiting from North Dakota. On the way home, Travis was kind of in and out of sleep. At one point, he woke up and said he had a dream about his old pre-school, about how he was afraid of the Blues Clues stamps on the first day (I can't believe he remembers that... it was a full year ago). Then he starts talking about this little boy Tyler who was in his pre-school last year, and about how Tyler was "sometimes mean and sometimes funny" -- which had always been his description of that little boy. Anyway, then he said "and his dad didn't die while we were in pre-school". I'm taking this to mean that the lesson he learned from our little discussion is that people who are sometimes mean probably have a dying parent. Oops.

Sophie has started waving. I'm very excited. I can't get her to clap for the life of me, though. She thinks I'm mildly interesting when I clap at her, but she treats it more as some idiotic gestures that her excitable mother is making and not at all as something she intends to emulate.

Noah and Travis are really starting to play well together. Noah is finally at the age where he is understanding more how to play with someone -- before it was a lot of just trying to do whatever his big brother was doing... which generally meant snatching toys away from each other. Now, they both do a pretty good job of finding ways to share or to play together. It's very endearing to watch. Take today, for example, both boys wanted to play with Travis's football field (a Christmas present from last year); but Travis actually agreed to let Noah play on his own for a little bit and even helped show him how to set the players up. In a few minutes, Noah brought the football players to Travis and said "Travis can play now!" I could see how proud of himself he was that he voluntarily turned the toys over.

On the calendar for this week: Pre-K field trip to the pumpkin patch; doc appointments for the kids; nephew's birthday party/costume party; friends coming up for the ND game on Saturday. Next week: my birthday.

punkins

Well, fall has fallen. Cold weekend, so we decided to forego the previously scheduled camping trip. Instead, took the kids to a pumpkin patch with some friends.

Travis, Holly, Katie, Ganon, Noah

Pumpkin fantasyland... Sesame Street style

Me and Sophie on the hayride

Afterwards, went back to a friends house to watch the Notre Dame game. Travis was very upset about the loss to USC. The game had a rather dramatic end (with a somewhat anti-climactic finish after all that drama), and when it was over, and he realized they had lost, he said to me "I did not like that game one tiny bit!", with furrowed brow and angry voice and all.

But, that was soon forgotten as he played with all of the Friends' cool toys. We stayed the night at their house, played in a shuffleboard tournament (I'm as bad as I thought I would be!), and Ben cleaned up in a game of Texas Hold Em. A good time was had by all.

Drove home this morning, then spent the afternoon playing in the backyard and pumpkin-carving:

posing with punkins

Hey! I'm cute!

The finished product

Happy Halloween

Check out our Halloween video...

road trip

what a crazy week this has been. Recap of the week below.

Sunday: Took two separate vehicles to church. Afterwards, Ben left with the kids for Angola to visit his family, while I stayed behind to head in to the office and get some work wrapped up since I was to be out of the office for three full days this week. Brought my gym bag, fully intending to get a work-out in once I got my work done. Didn't happen.... I worked from noon until 3:37 when I finally looked at the clock and realized I was supposed to be back at home around 4ish if I wanted to catch a movie with the gals. Made it home at 3:58, just in time for a friend to pick me up to meet the girls for a 4:30 showing of Couples Retreat. Enjoyed the movie and some DQ quesadillas after (what??!? Dairy Queen makes quesadillas?!?? Why, yes they do, and aside from the smothering in olives, they are quite tasty.) Thankful I had that outing as it was certainly a stress release for the upcoming week.

Monday night: Home from work, am now faced with having to be out of the office for three full days in Indianapolis. Two days of ri-dic-u-lous classes and one client meeting. Am not prepared for client meeting but don't have any more time to get things ready so head back into the office Monday evening to square things away as much as possible. Get back home just before eight, load the two young'uns into the car (Travis stayed home with Ben so as not to miss school), and made the three hour trek to my dad's house. Collapsed into bed. No workout today.

Tuesday: First day of worthless classes. Had to leave class for about 20 minutes to fix a problem back at the office but didn't miss anything. I could have taught this class. In my sleep. And by sleep I mean in a coma. Tuesday night went to Mongolian barbecue for dinner with a friend from BSU that was suffering thru this class with me, and his friend and co-worker. Ate cheesecake. I love cheesecake. Also, no workout.

Wednesday: Second and final day of worthless classes. Left a scathing review on the course evaluation because I've now sat through five of these mind-numbing, shoot-myself-in-the-head, I'd-rather-be-pouring-acid-in-my-nasal-cavities classes and feel like someone has to pay for this near torture. But, I'm fairly certain I passed (read: if I didn't pass I'll need to consider fleeing the country out of humiliation) and now have some letters after my name that should supposedly make people feel more confident in my ability to assess risk for public schools. Now, don't get my wrong, I'm good at that...but no thanks to these courses.

Wednesday night went to go visit some old high school friends with Noah and Sophie. Had a nice dinner and dessert (apple pie) and catching up, then back home to fall asleep on my dad's couch at 9:30. And, no workout.

Thursday: Head to downtown Indy for my client meeting in the morning. Meeting goes fairly well. Meeting ends just before noon, call up a friend that works downtown on the circle and we meet for a nice lunch. Then back to dad's house to pick up the kids for the long drive home. Eat some KFC on the way home. And (you guessed it), no workout. Thursday night got into a fight with Ben because I'm too stressed and totally taking it out on him. Sorry, Ben.

Friday: dragged my sorry behind out of bed at 5:30 a.m. against my better judgment (and by that I mean that very convincing and hypnotizing voice in the back of my head that says "c'mon...just stay in bed...what's the point? So you miss one more workout....this week is a waste anyway, no need to pretend you can redeem yourself today...." and do indeed fit in a workout and actually a fairly good one. Being out for three days this week did indeed mean my desk was a mess today, but somehow I still was not as productive as I intended.

So, this weekend, our camping trip has been re-designed to just a hanging-out-with-Friends trip, since weather does not look to be cooperative. It should be enjoyable. But, I probably won't get in a workout.

Nicolas, what are you thinking?

Last month, I took the kids to the library to pick out books. Normally, we pick out a stack of books, then sit in the corner and read them and decide which ones we want to take home. Sometimes we decide some of them are not as enjoyable as we first hoped, but usually, most of them make the cut. So anyway, at this particular visit, we had picked out our books and were packing up to head out. I was strapping Sophie in and rounding up Noah, so Travis did a little wandering, and he came up to me with a book called "Nicolas, where have you been?" So I flipped through it, the blurb on the cover indicates its a lesson about not judging a group based on one bad experience, a little mouse named Nicolas that is told not to like birds and then meets a group of super-nice birds and realizes that birds are good. Okay, sounds decent, into the stack it goes.

Then we get home and actually read the book. Its okay...Nicolas and his field mice friends all believe that birds are bad and then one day Nicolas gets picked up by a mean bird...who ends up dropping him in a nest with a family of birds that take him in and feed him and love him. Soon he realizes its time to go home, finds his field mice family and starts to relay the story. As soon as they hear he was abducted by a bird, the field mice literally declare "War on the birds!" and on the next page there appears a full-color spread of field mice wielding weapons and bludgeoning birds, one field mouse actually stabbing a bird to death with blood spurting everywhere. It was horrible. Now, at the end of the story, Nicolas finally explains to his family that the birds took care of him and were his friends, and they all calm down and come to the realization that you can't pass judgment like that, one bad bird does not make a flock, and all is well. Subsequent online research on this book has revealed that it is touted for teaching conflict resolution and offers a valuable lesson on compassion and understanding. And that its recommended for kids as young as 4.

Now, I'm not one to shy away from difficult conversations with my kids, and I do try to find ways to teach lessons out of unfortunate circumstances. Still, I have a hard time reconciling such a violent image in a kids book...I mean, we're not just taking anger here, we're talking death. That was a little much for me.

So, we kept the book, read it a few times, but always skipped over the evil page. And we did talk about how the mice learned that one bad bird did not mean that all birds were bad, and that they should try to be more understanding of those that are different from them and all that. And I don't think the page of death got burned into his memory or anything.

I guess the moral of this story is, never again will I leave the library without reading every book in its entirety. Yeesh.

vocabulary lesson

The other day I was talking to Travis and trying to explain what "unpredictable" meant. So I told him what it meant when something was "predictable". I illustrated the concept by saying "Say you're watching a Colts game. The Colts are pretty predictable.... you can be pretty sure that they're going to win. Now, say you're watching a Notre Dame game. They are unpredictable -- you never know if they're going to win or not." He responded "unless they're playing the Colts! Then you know they're going to lose because the Colts always win!" I think he gets it.