For Your Viewing Enjoyment

Since I've done such a pitiful job recording our activities of late, here are some pictures of the last month or so.

Curious Kids' Museum.... Travis on the volcano slide.

The kids 'eating' at the museum

Sophie admiring that beautiful baby! (And yes, that's Ben taking a picture and me recording video of the momentous event.)

Astronaut brothers

The four of trying to launch a shuttle. Its harder than you might think.

Travis the news anchor. He's a natural!

The Davidson brothers on TV

Coloring Easter eggs. Call me terrible, but Sophie was napping during this time and thus did not take part. Sometimes its just easier that way.

Travis getting ready to storm the field.

Waiting in line for the Easter Bunny, after the egg hunt. Sophie did good, she loves collecting things so this was right up her alley. She did try to put a few eggs in other kids' baskets, and at one point plopped onto the field and decided to take her eggs out one by one.... other than that, she hung with the big kids just fine.

Bowling night with some folks from work....is she cute or what?!?

Travis helping a co-worker bowl

Noah's first time bowling. He was extremely proud of himself. He also bowled in the wrong lane or on someone else's turn at least three times. Maybe a little over-zealous.

Sophie, Me, Ben, Megan, and a beer bottle shaped like a bowling pin.

Sophie's Vocabulary at 16 Months

"Mom" -- which she uses for me, dad, ya-ya, and anyone else from whom she wants attention.

"Up" -- when she wants to be picked up, which is generally all the time, and by any random stranger.

"Shoe" -- which she says repeatedly while I am putting her shoes on, or when she finds a shoe lying around that she can clutch in her little hands and parade through the house with.

"Thank You" -- which sounds more like "tinkyu", and generally is said when she is handing me toys one after the other. She offers me a toy and says "Tinkyu!"

"Here" -- used in situations much like Thank You. The two are practically interchangeable for her.

"Gog" -- meaning dog. Usually is followed by fits of pretend barking, normally while she is staring out the window of the front room, or playing in the backyard when the neighbor's dog stops by.

"Bye Noah" -- for some reason, whenever I tell Sophie to say bye bye, no matter to whom, she says "Bye Noah". Its one word to her. byenoah.

"Uh-oh". pause. "Oli-oli-o" -- This one is courtesy of Ya-Ya, who regularly says "Uh-oh, raviolios" to the kids. They all get a big kick out of it, but funniest is Sophie's rendition.

"Buh" for book. She loves books. In fact, right now she is lying on a pillow in the living room reading a fuzzy animal book and giggling. I tried to take a picture of it but, as per usual, as soon as Sophie saw the camera she shot up and did everything in her power to get it from me. I tried to get her back on the pillow and reading, but the moment was over. Noah, however, saw that I was not able to get the picture, so offered to act as a stand-in. Here's the scene, as re-enacted by Noah:

That's mostly it for now. She's constantly blabbering, but I can't tell what the rest of it is. I think its just nonsense, but in truth she's probably explaining Einstein's theory of relativity, or perhaps reciting Shakespeare.

P. S. Travis has a gigantic vocabulary, so obviously I can't list it all here, but he asked me to mention that he says "Cuckoo" a lot even though he is not a cuckoo clock. It's true.

Better Late than Never

Yes, I know. I have not been blogging much lately. I've done a pitiful job of maintaining this log of our family happenings to be recorded for prosperity. Fifty years from now I will look back on the winter of 2009/2010 and assume we just sat around in our pajamas eating popcorn for about four months with little to no activity of any import.

Which is not the case, of course. I'm not a person that likes to overwhelm myself with activity... I don't belong to a book club or a scrapbooking group or a softball league. I'm much more content with my low-key life and minimal schedule fillers. Right now weekly speech therapy, workouts at the gym, Fun Fair planning committee for our elementary school, and Travis's upcoming Tball practices are enough for me. With spring coming on I might start some occasional playdates again. Anyway, I'm kind of rambling here, but my point is that although I don't have a lot of organized activities that I and my family are involved in, we manage to keep fairly occupied.

Travis had his Kindergarten assessment test last week. We don't have the results yet but his teacher said he did well. Academically we obviously had no worries (I don't want to brag but this kid is on the road for mathematical stardom), but his extreme reservedness is something we want to consider when determining whether he's ready for that next step. He's an odd hybrid -- he's shy, doesn't necessarily initiate a lot of conversation, but participates in class, answers questions, gets involved. Its not like he's totally withdrawn, so that's a good thing, but he does need to work on his assertiveness.

Noah is going on three (although he insists he is five if you ask him...and no other answer will do), about four months until his third birthday. His terrible twos are subsiding somewhat, he's a little more amiable when something doesn't go his way, and at the very least his temper tantrums are getting shorter, fewer, and farther between. He's not yet potty-trained, I probably need to start that back up again, but I'm a firm believer in not pushing that process, purely for my own sanity. I don't have the energy to bribe my kid to use the darn potty, if he's not willing to do it himself that's his loss. Diapers are annoying, but more annoying is accidents at home and accidents in public and I just don't have the desire to deal with that. Thus, I'm waiting.

Sophie is still growing, still exploring and getting into everything, still melting hearts left and right. She is about as lovable as a toddler can get, she's got the absolute sweetest temperament combined with a stubborn insistence that people adore her. Plus, she's sweetly sensitive...gets her little feelings hurt when the boys don't want her to play with them (read: take their stuff and slobber on it) and melts into a puddle of Sophie on the floor when I tell her that no, she cannot chew on the iPod charger or eat that quarter.

As for me, I got back last week from my much-appreciated vacation in Italy. Ben practically qualifies for sainthood for agreeing to let me go (or more accurately, arranging for me to be able to go) on this trip with an old friend, while he stayed at home and handled single dadhood for 10 days. All survived and appear to be none the worse for wear. Ben might appreciate me slightly more, and I certainly am grateful for the whole lot of them. Sometime in the middle of the week I got a little emotional about being away from them for so long, and it was difficult to be on that fabulous vacation knowing that Ben would have so loved to have been there. Every so often as I was skiing down a mountain I would think, "if only Ben were here, he would totally love this" -- and that was tough to deal with. But, we'll have our chance. The trip was organized by the Ohio Valley Ski Council, most of whose members were in their 40s and beyond and had regularly gone on these trips for years and years on end. There was one couple in their late 60s, had learned to ski when they were 50, and had been going on these Europe trips ever since. They were such a fun couple, I just kept thinking, this will so be me and Ben.

Work remains a challenge, but for the most part a welcome one. Still loving my part-time schedule. Looking forward to camping season coming up... now that Sophie is another year older I think some parts of camping will be better -- others harder, but I'm ready for it nonetheless.

Well I guess that's it. See you in another four months.

Holy Crap its March

Well the month of February has come and gone. No blog updates in February, sorry about that, I'm just not sure where the time has gone.

So, for an update on the family, Travis is doing well in pre-Kindergarten, still somewhat shy but has developed a friendship with a couple kids in the class, and I think overall its going okay. He's sharp as a tack and reading like crazy (he read "Multi-Purpose" on my contact solution bottle the other day, I'm pretty sure that's above Kindergarten reading level), adding and subtracting easily now (the other day he told me if I had $100 in my bank account and bought something that cost $2, I would have $98 left..... he is SOOOO ready for those stupid story problems in elementary math textbooks) - he's fully grasped the concept of negative numbers, his vocabulary is just insane (last night he told me he heard some noises that "distracted him from sleeping" -- I mean, what 5-yr old says that?). So, I just need to get him a little more comfortable with interacting socially; I plan on getting him together with his little buddy Evan from school, and hopefully that will develop over the next few months or so. His eating is improving, he still struggles but will try new things more frequently now at least. Speech is still developing, vowels are still his primary issue, so jaw and muscle development are the primary focus.

Noah is mid-way through his terrible twos and on his way to being a seven-year-old. (By the way, he will not admit that he is two, he INSISTS that he is five just like his brother. "NO MOM I'M FIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!") He's not quite reading yet but I think will be an early reader like Travis was... he's very in tune with letters and all. Noah is my jokester... he is constantly trying to find ways to make people laugh. He's also perfecting the art of the temper tantrum. Last night, for instance, he was mad because he wanted me to read the book he picked out for bedtime story before I read the book Travis picked out. So he lay square in the middle of the floor, screaming. Now, my parenting philosophy is, as long as you're not hurting things or people, feel free to throw a tantrum and I will happily ignore you. So I did, and read Travis his book, and Noah starts screaming "MOM! You're making too much noise for me to cry!" In other words, I'm only crying because I want you to hear me and feel sorry for me. Talk about giving up your strategy, kid.

Sophie, bless her heart, is desperately trying to be one of the big kids. Her little feelings get so hurt when the boys won't let her take their puzzle pieces, or steals a checker from the checkerboard. She's very dramatic, tears streaming down her face, full open-mouth wail, melts on the floor in a sad little pile when she feels she's been slighted. The boys do a fairly good job of trying to include her, but she still slobbers on stuff a little too much for their liking. She's now big into dancing, she loves music. The sound of anything remotely resembling music (Noah banging on a few keys on the piano, a TV commercial in the background, the dishwasher) causes her to start nodding her head and bouncing up and down in her little dance-y way.

Ben and I have been enjoying the winter; went on our annual ski trip to Crystal Mountain last month which was a blast, a weekend minus the kids (who I love dearly but make quality ski trips a little difficult), excellent ski weather and good friends. I'm battling through the guilt of leaving him for about 10 days while I go on a fabulous trip without him -- one of my best friends and I touring and skiing in Italy. It was his idea that I go, his birthday present was to me was to pay the deposit for the trip, and he insists that I'm not a horrible person for going. You see, we are not the kind of family to vacation separately. In fact, Ben is my favorite person to go vacationing with. So, this is difficult for me. But, I'm moving past that, the trip would have been nearly logistically impossible if we were both going and having to worry about leaving the kids for that long; so now I'm just thankful that Ben is so unselfishly letting me do this and I fully intend to have a super-fabulous trip. I leave in three days. I should probably be packing.

Fender Bender

I feel sorry for all those other parents out there who think their kids are the greatest, because they're clearly deluded. My kids are the greatest.

I've not blogged much about Sophie (or blogged much at all, lately), which is unfortunate because her personality is just exploding. She has personality oozing out her ears. She's such a good-natured, happy baby (....or toddler, I guess, now that she's a year old maybe I can't call her a baby anymore), but there's just something special about her. She's becoming very social these days. For instance, I took the kids to my backup babysitter's for a few days while my mom recovered from emergency gallbladder surgery. Melody said that Sophie was in a great mood all day....until her husband Tom came home. He was covered in sawdust apparently, thus couldn't pick her up, and Melody said she just melted. This week we were in the waiting room while Travis was in speech therapy, and she really took to this guy that worked there...just kept walking up to him and smiling and blabbering and waiting for him to pick her up and cuddle her. She's got this attitude of, "if I walk up to you and smile, I know you're going to love me. You have to. I'm impossible not to love."

So I rear-ended a guy in the mall parking lot this month. Just what I needed. I was going to the mall to spend my Abercrombie gift certificate that I got for Christmas (thanks Virginia!) ... I never go to the mall so decided to do it on a Sunday evening at about 5:30, after I'd spend most of the weekend in the emergency room with my mom (re: aforementioned gallbladder issue). Knowing the mall closed at 6, I knew I'd have to pretty much get in and get out, which is my kind of shopping. I'm not much of a shopper. Anyway... I get to the mall, am driving behind this ridiculously slow driver so its taking forever and I'm getting a little annoyed. So he stops at a stop sign, I stop behind him. He begins to pull out into the intersection to turn left, I'm following, only instead he just creeps forward a little bit and does not actually turn. Bam, I run into his bumper. Now, mind you, I had not even hit the gas, merely let off the brake. I was probably traveling a quarter of a mile per hour, if that. His bumper was a little scuffed. He gets out of his car (a 2010 Lexus SUV by the way, I sure know how to pick em), examines his bumper, comes back to me and says we need to file with insurance. Yep, no problem. We pull off to the side, I gather my insurance information, bring it to him, and he says "we have to call the police". Now I didn't want to be argumentative but that seemed a little ridiculous to me. I said, I thought we would just exchange insurance and contact information? But he insisted. So, okay, police are called. The officer takes a look at his bumper, kind of snorts, and explains that there must be $1,000 worth of damage to file a crash report and there's clearly nowhere near that amount, so yeah, we just exchange insurance information and move on. Of course, by the time all this has happened, it is 5:58 and the mall is nearly closed. No Abercrombie for me.

Better luck next time.

Not just a hat rack

The other day, Travis bumped his head on something and was whining about his forehead hurting. As I normally do, in my oh-so-sympathetic way, I asked if he wanted me to cut his forehead off (hey, I'm not raising any weenies). Now, normally I'll do this if he's stubbed a toe or something...imagining a forehead being removed is a little complex for a 5-year-old, but he responded, as per usual, "no, mom, i need my forehead!" The remainder of the exchange went something like this:

Me: Are you sure? What do you need a forehead for?

Travis: It holds my brain in! If I didn't have a forehead, my brain would fall out!

Me: Ahh. Well, what do you really need a brain for?

Travis: For thinking!

Me: Oh, yes. Well, what do you really need to think about?

Travis: .... well .... what if I have to think about where I left the iPhone?

Hmm. He got me on that one. We could NOT live without the iPhone.

still here

no, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. We're still here, all five of us, just not had much opportunity to blog. This December really kicked my tail.

I now have a one year old, and a five year old, and two birthday parties to prove it, along with multiple Christmases and a New Years party and some ski trips and other random stuff all since I last posted.

I'm working on a video of Sophie's 1st birthday party, but the Flip software "flipped" out on me and then our computer became inaccessible due to reasons primarily fully in my control but that I'd rather not talk about since Ben is still kind of mad at me about it. I'll give you a hint....unfinished drink, left in Sophie's proximity, near a keyboard. So Ben must fix the keyboard before I can finish my video project. And in the meantime we of course had Christmas and Travis's birthday pary that both also need recorded for prosperity.

So, let the countdown begin. T-minus 59 days until my ski trip to Italy.

world wide web

Tonight, Travis told me that at the bottom of the world, everything is upside down. Then he said if you sailed to the bottom of the world, you would fall off. He reflected on this for a moment and then asked if someone fell off the bottom of the world, where would they land? I said, "where do you think they would land?" He said, "I don't know. Let's go to 'www dot whats under the world dot com' to find out!"

on a side note...

...I hate the BCS as much as the next guy, but THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

What a disgrace.

That sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his grave.

Link: House Subcommittee passes college football playoff bill

no cavities!

Busy day today. Travis went on a field trip, I did not attend this time, to see a Christmas play, which he described as being about "bad kids that turn good".

After school, took all three kids to the dentist. Only Travis and Noah had actual appointments, Sophie's 2 and a half teeth just aren't enough for them to be interested in yet. This was Noah's FIRST dentist appointment, and we conquered this milestone quite nicely. We practiced last night to get him a feel for what would happen, and he did very well when it came time for the real thing. I was quite proud. Travis has been there before, he got a full-blown cleaning with flouride and all, did great (picked cookie-dough toothpaste for them to clean his teeth with, blechh), and dentist said both kids have great teeth and no issues. Hooray! (He also said 1 in 3 kids Noah's age have tooth decay already, which I'm guessing means Sophie's doomed since the first two have been decay-free....)

So we left the dentist office armed with two new toothbrushes (identical, by the way, they have similar taste...I guess I'll have to engrave their names on them or something), a couple of new toys, a Polaroid commemorating Noah's first visit, some kiddie-flossers, and about 40 stickers. Went outside in the ridiculously blustery wind, 50mph gusts, carrying Sophie in her bulky car seat, holding Noah's hand who is holding Travis's hand, trying to avoid ice patches in the parking lot. Went for lunch at ya-ya's house, then packed everyone back up in the car for a trip to the library. I literally sat in the library parking lot thinking, I should just go home rather than unload and re-load everyone in this horrible weather that is getting worse as we speak, but I had to turn our books in and the boys really love getting new library books, so we decided to try it and it went off without a hitch.

Travis and Ben are off to go bowling now. Sophie and Noah are napping. I think I'm gonna go make some hot chocolate.

the musical stylings of the davidson boys

"twinkle twinkle little star" by Noah

"the alphabet song" by Travis

Happy Thanksgiving, and some mummy talk

I'm thankful for:

• Travis's love of reading
• Noah's charming smile
• Sophie's never-ending curiosity
• my fabulous husband who can be an insensitive brute sometimes but still supports me in the ways he can and puts up with me more than he should
• my job
• christmas lights
• the new iTouch
• my gym membership
• comfy pjs
• cheese and crackers
• the public library
• Colts football
• my mom, who watches my kids every day
• ski trips
• pinot grigio
• not driving a mini-van
• new washer and dryer
• babysitters
• date nights
• euchre
• snickerdoodles
• DVR
• suspense novels
• the muppets Christmas album (and muppets in general)

Not an exhaustive list, but that pretty much covers the important stuff.

Today, on the way home, Travis says to me "At school we learned that people wrap dead people in toilet paper". I was not quite sure how to respond. Further inquiry appeared to reveal a conversation with a classmate regarding mummies, presumably in reference to Halloween. I'm assuming this wasn't part of the standard pre-K curriculum.

Time to start planning birthday parties for Sophie (her first!!) and Travis (his fifth!!) in December. Gee, isn't there something else in December we have to buy presents for?

Obstacle Course Sunday

- The balance beam

- Shoot a basket

- Crawl across the loveseat

- Leap over the mat

- Jump onto the bean bag / pillow pile

And, on an unrelated note, Travis's happy face:

Back in the saddle

Its been a while since I've posted. Strangely, I feel like I have a million things to blog about, but somehow, its not seeming to find its way from my brain to my fingers. Plus I've been feeling just a little overwhelmed lately, and not really interested in laying that all out in a blog, so its a little difficult to get my mind in a place to write about interesting things.

But here goes.

Let's see, when we last met, I was talking about Travis's food sensitivity, and his ability to distinguish between granola bars. So, for a food update: 2 weeks ago, his speech/food therapist got him to eat bananas with peanut butter; last week, apples and peanut butter. He's since been eating apples on a somewhat regular basis...although we've taken a slide backward in the last couple days since he's been sick. This whole food thing is a terribly slow process. Wow. Who would have thought I'd be so excited about getting the kid to eat a gummy bear, for pete's sake.

I've started getting Travis working on his Christmas list. The first thing we did was sit down and talk about what Christmas is all about, and why we celebrate. Then we talked about being able to make other people happy, from buying gifts for people we love to helping out others less fortunate. Travis is a pretty thoughtful kid, so this stuff resonates with him. So then we get to making out his own list, and its like pulling teeth. He can't think of anything he really wants. We looked through an entire kids toy magazine and there was barely anything he truly cared about. Its kind of heartwarming, actually, to see him developing into a primarily unmaterialistic kid. That's something that is pretty important to me.

Highlights (and lowlights) of the last week: many of us battling illness -- slight fever for Sophie and me, stronger one for Travis, runny noses and sore throats all the way around. Ben in Indy for a technology conference this week. Had a gorgeous weekend last weekend and did some tailgating, Ben went to ND game. Pics below:

Noah posing for the camera

Travis playing kick the can

The family (minus Sophie)

Ahh, there she is.

A tale of two granola bars

This morning Travis asked for a granola bar. I told him that I only had the kind in the blue wrapper (Aldi's brand), and he quietly and sadly said, "no thank you". He's turned these down before, he much prefers the Wal-mart brand. So Ben and I decided to put him to the test.

We showed him two granola bars.... blue wrapper and brown wrapper. Ben took the two of them to a secret location, unwrapped them, put them on a plate, and brought them both to Travis and asked him to pick which one he wanted. Incidentally, both granola bars were of the chewy chocolate chip variety, but the Aldi's brand one was much chocolate-ier and in general looked better. But at this point Travis didn't know which was which. He looked them both over, then decided to go for the better looking one and said "that's the brown wrapper one". He took one bite and said "nope, its the blue wrapper," put it back, and grabbed and ate the other one. I'll be honest, I was a little surprised he could tell so quickly -- I thought it might be more psychological than anything else -- but his little sensitive mouth can seriously tell the difference, and fast. So, he won that battle.