water, and more water, and gastrointestinal crap (not necessarily in that order)

Travis's last T-ball game was this past week. Overall an enjoyable season, looking forward to next year. Travis loved loved loved his trophy, and we put it in his bedroom on the shelf so that a) Noah couldn't reach it (priority number one), and b) he can see it every night as he goes to sleep.

Last week Ben had an endoscopy to determine if there were any digestive / gastrointestinal problems we should be worried about. Doc says everything looks good, but as it turns out, we did determine that Ben is an animal when it comes to foreign objects being shoved down his throat against his will. They gave him a mild sedative, as per standard operating procedure, to relax him. I think what it actually did was take him to an alternate reality where he didn't really know what was going on, so he fought the process tooth and nail. Doc gave him five times the amount of sedative that he gives normal patients, and still barely got the job done.

So, they come get me, and on the way back to his recovery bed, the doctor is telling me about this trial and tribulation. We walk into the room where Ben is snoring loudly and the nurse casually mentions that he's sleeping. The doc actually rolled and his eyes, snorted, and said, "yeah, now he's sleeping..." I think it was quite the stressful ordeal for the poor doctor, thank goodness we (the collective we, I mean) pay him the big bucks.

At any rate, Ben finally, slowly, wakes up... and is as loopy as a can of peas. He kept trying to pretend like he didn't know who I was, and at one point said "I hope my wife doesn't show up". He also tried to pretend like he was 100% in charge of his mental faculties, which he most assuredly was not. Then on the way home, he asked about 40 times (I kid you not) about how the procedure went, did they have to biopsy anything, what did they find, etc. I finally just stopped answering him and totally ignored him.. he'd get a little cranky but in about 30 seconds would totally forget that he even asked me a question, so it was all good.

And of course, while on that car trip home, while Ben was at his loopiest, I got a call from the car dealer with the results of their diagnostics on the Mountaineer. I'm a fairly intelligent person, and don't really fit into any of those girly stereotypes... except that when it comes to car troubles, I'm about as ignorant as they come. So this mechanic is rattling off crap about computer upgrades, and rotor problems, and tire circumferences, and meanwhile my mechanically-inclined husband is all but drooling in the passenger seat. So I played the dumb wife card, pretty accurate in this case, and said we'd call them back in the morning when my better half could speak in full sentences again.

Other weekend news, we went to a party at a friends house with the biggest slip and slide I've ever seen.

Ben and I had fun too.

On the way home, we picked up some sparklers from a random fireworks store and played with fire before the kids went to bed. They loved it.

Finally, on Sunday, we went to the water playground, which Travis loved and Noah was somewhat conflicted about. He is still grappling with his feelings about water, in general. Overall I think he enjoyed himself.

Sophie in her adorable swimsuit....

That's about all the news I have. Fourth of July weekend coming up, sounds like we'll be heading to the lake and then possibly a trip to Indy to catch up with some friends.

Out.

Girlfriends and Pizza

Went on a playdate this week with Travis's little 'gal pal' from pre-school, Una. He and Una took a liking to each other right at the beginning of the school year. So on the last day of class, her mom and I agreed to get the kids together this summer, and this week was our first such event. So cute. I wish I would have gotten a picture, but I forgot my camera. We'll be doing it again in a couple weeks though, so I'll have to be sure to get a picture of him and his little girlfriend.

We also decided to go to the beach yesterday afternoon, always an adventure. Noah finally abandoned his reluctance to enjoy the water that he's seemed to have the last few months, and jumped in with both feet, so to speak.

We also went to my favorite pizza place of all time and enjoyed some good grub before heading home. Some pics of the kids enjoying Silver Beach Pizza (and playing with dough balls):

In other news, we have kitchen countertops ordered which will be our next project, Ben sold a boat today, then subsequently bought a Jeep (kind of a lifelong dream of his). He's also undergoing an endoscopy tomorrow so I'm hopeful that everything goes smoothly there.

I feel like I have more to say but am going through some kind of a communication block right now. I'll be back eventually.

Despair

As I type, it is nearly 10pm, and I am sitting down after my evening routine to unwind and relax before bed. Ben is snoring in the recliner next to me. In about 10 or 15 minutes, I anticipate that he'll awaken to begin his evening routine.

The two of us are so dramatically different in how we handle our post-dinner agendas that its a wonder we speak to each other at all after the hour of 6pm or so.

I am hardly the model of achievement, but for my part, I have to get my stuff done - and the earlier the better. I can't stand having my task list for the evening weighing on my mind. It is just too much pressure. Kids in the bath, dishes done, kids to bed, another load of laundry started (oh my god the laundry is ridiculous, I could drown in laundry in this house), general straightening, trash out for trash night, clothes set out for tomorrow, etc, etc... if I don't get it done early it just kills me.

Ben, on the other hand, prefers to 'catnap' in the evening and then wake up refreshed enough to get his stuff done. Like last night, for example, he had to go out to Menards to pick out the sink for our new countertops before finishing up the order. So around 7:15 or so I remind him, tell him he doesn't have to wait until after the kids are in bed, he can go ahead and go. He acknowledges and I assume he intends to leave. Around 8:15 or so, he's lying in the recliner. Asleep. The exchange goes something like this:

Me: Ben. Don't you want to go to Menards?

Ben: [incoherent grumble]

Me: Ben. Seriously. It's past 8 o'clock. Does Menards close at 9?

Ben: mm. uh. mmm.

Me. 9 o' clock? Don't they close at 9? As in, you don't have enough

time. As in, get your lazy @!@* up...????

Ben: mmuhnmm . Leave me alone.

Me: So you're not going to Menards.

Ben: I'm going. Leave me alone.

Me: Okay but don't you think you should go now?

Ben: I'll go when I go. Leave me alone.

Me: Fine but it just doesn't seem like you're going.

And so on. I positively drive him crazy, but in my defense, I justify it in my own mind by saying that I'm doing it for his own good.

He is the embodiment of the ever-so-eloquent Despair, Inc. demotivational poster currently hanging in my basement:

On the flip side, I fall asleep when we watch movies like its my job. It drives Ben nuts. But, I mean, it's night time. You can't yell at someone for falling asleep at night time, right?

Rebel squirrels

Wow, it seems like we've been busy a lot lately.

Travis had his swallow test last week, and the result is that a) all the muscles are doing the right things and b) his gag reflex is considerably far forward on his tongue, which is probably what is leading to the food sensitivity issues. Still on the waiting list to see the feeding therapist, but one positive outcome of this is that I feel a little better about not pushing the food issue any harder right now, until we can get some professional assistance underway.

Last weekend we had our first official camping trip. It was just a one night trip, to a campground near Lake Michigan, about an hour away from home. Nothing too dramatic but we thought we'd ease into the whole family trip thing. It was remarkably easy... far easier than it really should be with three children under four and a half years old. The kids had a great time, Ben and I did as well, and I'm ready to take on a real, full-fledged family vacation. Now if I only had any vacation time left. Blasted maternity leave.

The biggest problem we had on the camping trip was keeping Noah out of the fire pit. He was fascinated with it. I was literally on the edge of my seat, ready to leap thru mid-air, every time he came within ten feet of the fire -- he supposedly understands the concept of hot, but seeing as how the worst "hot" he's ever actually encountered is a slice of pizza that's a little too 'fresh' out of the oven, he doesn't quite grasp the severity of the situation. I, on the other hand, envision every stumble turning into a catastrophe defined by third-degree burns and permanent physical and emotional scarring. Thankfully, we survived the trip unscathed.

I subscribed Travis to a new puzzle magazine, because the kid loves puzzles and the like. He was looking at the magazine on the way to the campground, and in particular was enjoying the "What's Wrong With This Picture" page -- he loves those, where there are silly things like an ice cream cone for an umbrella and whatnot. So he points to this picture of a chipmunk on a skateboard, and he says, "Mom, ha ha, that's funny... that chipmunk is skateboarding without a helmet!" I got a real kick out of that, that what's funny to him is not the idea of a rodent on a skateboard but rather the lack of safety gear of said rodent.

Sophie is officially 6-months old, as of today. Wow, that's hard to believe. She's doing well, starting to eat some more exciting things, like rice cereal, pureed fruit, and carpet lint.

Gearing up for my day off tomorrow. I love Wednesdays.

That's all for now.

Coping, Schmoping

I broke the front door today.  You know, the glass storm door in the entry way?  For some reason, the latchy thing that actually closes the door would not move when the handle moved, so it was stuck permanently in a closed position.  I say "was" because it's not in that position now.  Because there is no latchy thing.  There's no door handle.  There's no glass.  All of the above has been removed and tossed aside somewhere (except the door glass, which was ever-so-gently deposited in its resting spot).  Ben is currently at some hardware store buying a drill bit because of the 15 drill bit kits we've got lying around the house, none of them appear to have a 3/8" bit.  At any rate, the point is, I broke the door, and Ben inherited himself a project.

The further point of this story is that I have officially reached the end of my rope of coping mechanisms.  Which means a broken front door is the type of problem essentially equivalent to the house burning to the ground.  I encountered said broken door as I was trying to let my mother and Travis into the house after a quick jaunt to the library, and she was going to stick around and watch the kids while I went to a luncheon at my office.  I couldn't let them in.  The door was broken.  They finally entered through the patio door in the back, I left for my work thingie, and cried most of the way there.  About a broken front door.  Or, at least I think that's what it was about.  I can't really be sure.

I always forget about this post-partum crap until I'm right in the thick of it.  I also forget that Sophie is only 6-months old, not even, so it's not really unusual that I'm going through this right now.  I'm also finishing up nursing right now, partially for reasons partly out of my control, which I'm really struggling with -- but all things considered it is the right decision.  Nonetheless, it means more emotions, and more turbulence, more instability in my mental state.  I've taken some steps recently to get back under control, however, which is good - because up until now my only remedy has been a strict regimen of chocolate... which doesn't help any, but darnit, I love chocolate.

Bedtime Stories

I found out today that Travis believes all baseball catchers are named "Strike". I determined this while we were playing a makeshift game of T-ball this evening, where Travis decided he was the catcher. Noah went to try to pick up the catcher's mitt and Travis said, "No, Noah, I'm Strike..." So we had a little conversation about it, I asked him if his name was Strike, he said yes, because I'm the catcher. I asked why that meant his name was Strike and he said, "Because that's what the guy says whenever the catcher catches the ball."

Clever little fella.

As I was putting the boys to bed tonight, first Travis decided he was very sad because he left his little stuffed dog Cupcake at ya-ya's house. Now, mind you, he has only cared one whit about this little dog for about 26 hours. Before last night, it was just another stuffed animal cluttering up our house. But he stumbled across it yesterday and decided he loved it, we named it, and he's carried it around obsessively since. If you know Travis, this is not a surprise. Let me give you some background. Up until about 2 weeks ago, Travis had a veritable litter of stuffed animals that he insisted upon taking to ya-ya's house daily. Ya-ya even bought him a good sized cloth bag for transport. Let me introduce you:

• Moose: a staple since Travis was 11 months old, Moose goes practically everywhere. Never to pre-school or other places where there's lots of kids, or on shopping expeditions and the like. But for the most part, where Travis goes, so goes Moose.

• Boxer: a do-it-yourself Build-A-Bear creation, Boxer is a little stuffed dog that Ben bought at the store one time as a reward for completing some sticker chart. I can't remember which. It might have been potty training. We put it together ourselves, the stitching is a little primordial so I'm not sure how much longer he'll hold up.

• Blueberry: Blueberry was a gift from an ex-co-worker of mine, either for my baby shower while I was pregnant with Travis, or shortly after he was born. A light blue stuffed dog that says "My First Puppy" on the collar, Blueberry was another one of those that no one really cared about until a few months ago.

• Brownie: A stuffed giraffe that Travis and Ben made at the Build-A-Bear at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago about a month ago, Brownie has now been added to this group of treasured animals. I would note that Travis spends essentially zero time playing with, cuddling with, or otherwise engaging with Brownie, but insists still on having him make the trek between houses.

• Goose: A stuffed pink duck that Travis won at his soon-to-be new Pre-School's school fair this spring. A duck named Goose. Love it.

• Tomato:  See previous blog.

• Milk: A tiny stuffed kitty cat that was also a gift from a co-worker, received at my baby shower for Travis. He's always kind of liked this cat but only recently has it made the hot list.

About two weeks ago, I decided I'd had enough, and told Travis he could pick two animals to take with him to ya-ya's. I mean, I felt like I was constantly counting stuffed animals, or gathering them up, or saying "whoa I think Noah just threw Blueberry in the recycling," - it was getting ridiculous. And he seemed to be adding animals at an exponential rate. So now he takes Moose and some random animal -- today Cupcake. The rest stay in Travis's bed. My life is so much easier now.

Back to the story, we could not find Cupcake when we left ya-ya's house today. (He's about the size of a jumbo jellybean, after all...) Travis was mostly okay with this until bedtime, when he got sad again. To help him feel better, I told him to try to think of the funniest thing he could think of. We came up with a tomato frog eating tomatoes in a tomato tree. Then he cracked up laughing and rolled over, and went to sleep.

On my way out of the room, Noah told me he wanted "Pickle the Tar". It took me about twelve guesses to figure out that he wanted a song -- "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". A little serenading, and he's sleeping contentedly as well.

Sophie's sleeping also, after a full bowl of cereal, bottle, and bath. Yippee.

Now its my turn.

Milestones

Sophie is on the move...... backwards. So far her only scooting motion is in reverse, meaning once you put her on the floor, in about three minutes she's scooted herself backward into a corner, or under a table, or some other unfortunate resting spot. Oh well, progress is progress.

As I type, Noah is playing the "guess which one" game, where he picks some random toy and "hides" it in his fist. Generally the toy is two to three times the size of his tiny hand. Right now its a matchbox car. So he closes his fist as best he can around the matchbox car, then holds out both fists and says "which...one...izzit?" I, of course, always pick the hand with nothing in it first, so he throws open his empty hand with a delighted smile on his face. Then I'll pick the other hand and he gets even more excited and says "Yyeeesssss!". He's probably starting to think I'm a idiot. I never guess the right hand first.

Today, Travis and I made a frog out of red fleece, pillow stuffing, purple card stock, green pom poms and googly eyes. It was a craft from his National Geographic Kids magazine that we read today, and red fleece was the only kind I had available at the house, and we didn't feel like trekking to the store. So a red frog it is. His name is Tomato. Travis carries him everywhere.

Oh, and my other accomplishment of the day: I managed to delete all our May videos from the computer. Fabulous. I was trying to make a movie of all our spring activities, and accidentally deleted the whole darn batch. I spent about an hour in a state of emotional despair, then finally decided to forgive myself. I told Travis his dad was going to be so mad at me, and he replied "no, he always loves you". To his credit, I think Ben could tell how distraught I was by the whole ordeal (could have been the tearful voice mail message I left him), so he didn't berate me too much. Recovery attempts are still underway, to no avail as of yet. Travis has been consoling me by saying we can do everything over again, and take better videos this time around. What a kid.

La joie de la papier bulle (The Joy of Bubble Wrap)

Seventeen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ah ah ah

Noah can count to eleven. I'm astounded by this as he's still a good 2 months away from turning two years old and he's been doing this for about a month already. I think one time he made it all the way to twelve, but today he was counting cards (not as in gambling, but as in playing with Elmo Go Fish cards and counting them), and he said "nine, ten, eleven, circle, SEVENTEEN!" I'm pretty sure that was a circle in there, or at least something that sounded remarkably like it. So beyond eleven starts to get a little random.

It's an astonishing difference between Travis and Noah in terms of language skills, because Travis's apraxia meant his ability to express himself was somewhat delayed, and the entire process of learning speech and language has been at least a minor struggle for him, up until recently - I'd say four or five months ago - when it stopped becoming a task for him. From the beginning, this stuff didn't come naturally to him and we had to practice and work on it to get him to the point he's out now. It's amazing to see how far he's come and I'd venture to say he's caught up with others in his age group now. But it's crazy to see the difference in Noah since this stuff does come naturally to him; thus there are so many things he can do easily that it took Travis a long time to learn how to do: speak full sentences, sing songs, stuff like that. Thankfully, Travis's apraxia was truly minor, and it just took a little bit of coaching to get him back on track.

However, now that the speech problem is less of an issue, our next step is a feeding therapist. I've hoped and prayed that Travis's picky eating stage is just a phase that he'd grow out of, but it's becoming apparent that this is not the case. And I truly believe that what he's going through is more than just being a picky eater. He's physically unable to eat certain kinds of foods. I don't know if it is an overactive gag reflex or his own mental psych-out, but whatever it is, we need help in overcoming it. I'm hopeful the feeding therapist can help us out, otherwise I see a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my future.

Oh, and so as not to leave anyone out, news on Sophie: she's close to scooting. Not quite crawling, but she will lift herself up on arms and try to pull herself forward. She's also really getting into the Exersaucer. Today, she was sitting in it, Noah was spinning her around in it and giggling hysterically and she was squealing with delight. It was very sweet.

Well, that's all I got.

Happy Mothers Day, indeed.

So, not to sound cheesy, but I am really the luckiest woman in the world.

I made reference to the mother's day present Ben got me, a gym membership, and with every passing minute I get more excited about it. I went this morning for my first trip, scheduled my fitness assessment and familiarized myself with the facility, worked out a little bit. I'd forgotten how much I really love to work out. I had an awesome time. The best thing is, the gym is in my office building, so I can easily go before or after work, or on lunch break even. My goal is to do before work a couple times a week, and lunch break a couple times a week. Ben offered to drop the kids off on the mornings I want to head in early, or pick them up if I wanted to stay late. I can't imagine I'll do much after work though -- I'm not very energized that time of day, plus that will mean more time away from the kids.

But, the point of this story is that I am so grateful to my wonderful husband for coming up with the idea, not backing down when I tried to protest, and making this happen. I've not always been the easiest person to live with these last few years, as I have been riding the hormonal roller coaster of pregnancy, nursing, general motherhood -- but he does an excellent job of putting up with me and I truly don't deserve him sometimes. (This doesn't make it any better when he leaves his dirty socks in the middle of the floor for the quadrillionth time, I'll still probably nag him about that.)

Just a Normal Day

Watchin' Grey's Anatomy right now, where the intro monologue is about how its the 'normal' days that turn out to be the big ones, the ones that really impact your life.

So I'm trying to think about how today, by all accounts a totally normal day, might end up being a big day.

 - Woke up this a.m.  Realized I'd had a fairly good nights sleep last night.  Hooray.  Took a Vicoprofen last night to help with the horrendous back pain, doc gave me the greenlight even though I'm still nursing. Not sure I believe him, but I also got the go-ahead from some reliable Google sources and my genius pharmacist sister, so I 

went ahead with it.  Wow.  What a difference sleep makes.

 - Dropped the kids off at ya-ya's house.  Nothing too noteworthy here. The boys insist on their regular morning granola bars and milk.

 - Off to work. Spent the morning playing catch up from my day off yesterday, not sure I'll ever get used to Wednesdays off.  Also had some nice conversations with co-workers where I realized it is really nice to work with people that you truly enjoy spending time with.  Let everyone know about Sophie's 4-month checkup yesterday, where she weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs 2 oz, and has moved up to 95th percentile for height. No one cares about this as much as I do, but they pretend well.

 - Picked the kids up.  As per usual, Travis is hiding behind the couch to 'surprise' me when I get there.  Noah is swinging Sophie in the swing and laughing hysterically.  Travis shows me the flowers that they planted today, and then we get loaded up and head home.  Again as per usual, Noah runs three times around the car before I'm finally able to grab him up and deposit him safely into his car seat.

 - We try to look for new and exciting things on the way home.  No success, except Travis sees a weiner dog hiding in a bush.

 - Back at home. I remind Ben about the pre-school art fair we have on the schedule for tonight.  I'm pretty sure he has no idea what I'm talking about, although he pretends to be right there on the same page.  He gets dinner ready for the whole brood, thank goodness.  I feed Sophie and worry about the whole nursing thing, not sure how much longer it will last.  I'm just starting to get emotional about it, but then its time to go.

 - Pre-school Art Fair.  We all load up and head to Travis's pre-school to see the art displays for all the pre-school classes from the year.  

Travis gets excited once we get there and starts showing off all his stuff.  Got a few good pictures, and some video.  Cute pic of Travis and his speech teacher.  Brought the stroller in for Noah, who insisted he wanted to ride in the stroller until six seconds after we get there, when he starts insisting he wants to walk --- meaning we have to push the empty stroller thru the pre-school.  I carry Sophie in my front carrier and get a lot of "cute baby" smiles and comments from other parents.  Overall a very happy trip.

 - Home again.  Play for a little while, and get Sophie to laugh a bit.  Now its time to get the kids to bed.  Ben reads books to the boys. Meanwhile I decide rather snarkily that its Ben's turn to take the kids to bed since I did it last night.  He does so, pretends to be a little begrudging about it but is mostly on board. Primarily his argument is about the dirty diaper, but he's nowhere close to winning that argument based on the pure ratio of dirty diapers I've changed vs him.

 

 - I decide to turn the monitor on to the boys' bedroom - not something I do every night since most nights they'll work it out on their own. Hear Travis complaining about not being able to sleep because Noah's being so loud.  Except I hear that for six straight minutes and meanwhile don't hear a peep out of Noah.  Finally I go upstairs and Travis informs me that his legs hurt, and "this is a big problem".  I tell him I'll rub his legs, he needs this every once a while, and then go straight back downstairs.  Done.

 

 - Ben confesses his Mother's Day present plan to me -- he can't convince himself to buy it without talking to me first.  Its a gym membership to the gym in my office building.  At first I resist and complain that there's no way I'll find time, but I'm pretty sure that's mostly just excuses.  He finally gets me to realize that and, as it turns out I'm pretty excited about it.

 - We watch some Survivor, gee I wish it had been Coach voted off tonight, that guy drives me crazy.   Ben tries to convince me to go the hot tub, for some reason I resist at first.  

 - End of the night.  Turns out I've been convinced, I'll be heading out to the hot tub in just a minute.  

So, there it is, my ordinary day.  Full of a bunch of tiny little big moments. Gotta love it.

I'm sleeping like a baby. Really.

Ben and I went to a derby day party this weekend.  And it just so happens that in two, separate, completely random drawings, we got Mind That Bird as our pick for the winner.  We thought, hey this is a good sign ... then we saw the 50:1 odds on Mind That Bird and we thought, well crap, there goes that.  And then the race happened.  And I watched this horse come out of nowhere and blow everyone away, and it wasn't until after the race ended that I even realized that was our horse. Our winnings amounted to $50 cash and a bottle of Kahlua.. nothing to write home about, but better than a kick in the head, that's for sure. 

Now, I'm not much of a horse racing aficionado, in fact that may have been the first actual race I've watched in my lifetime, but I feel like there has to be a lesson in there somewhere.  Like, don't give up even when the odds seem stacked against you.  Or, it pays to root for the underdog.  Or, there's no problem that fifty bucks and a bottle of liquor can't solve.  Okay, that's probably not it.

As for the rest of our lives, I'm mostly at the point where I'd give just about anything for a few consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep.  I think its just been too many years, it just seems harder to deal with these days. Could be the three pregnancies in less than five years (technically four, I suppose, but that's a post for another day), it feels like I've not had true dominion of myself for way too long -- and lack of sleep only exacerbates that feeling.  

Last night at about 2 a.m. I was awoken by calls of, "hep me, mommm.. Hep me, mom.. HEP ME MOM!", which was of course, Noah beseeching me to come to his aid.  Which I did, and when I entered his bedroom I encountered a large fleece blanket sitting straight up in bed. Or rather, Noah covered entirely by a large fleece blanket, sitting straight up in bed.  Truthfully, his calls were remarkably calm considering he was essentially trapped inside a soft, fleecy cage. I quickly rescued him, he informed me he wanted to go for a walk, I was luckily able to remind him it was still bedtime, and he rolled over and promptly went back to sleep.  I, of course, am not so lucky when it comes to returning to slumberland, so I tossed and turned for an hour or so until Sophie woke up and begged to eat.  I tried to convince her to go downstairs and fix herself a sandwich, but she had none of it.

Also, I appear to be on the verge of throwing my back out, which makes for more rough sleeping, and generally being slower at just about anything I do.  And since I am nursing, there's nothing I can really take to help with that, so I just lie around and complain a lot.  In fact, I'm close to perfecting that.  It's an art, really.

Spongebob Football

Ahh, a little mom time. Noah and Sophie are both napping. Travis is playing an imaginary football game in our living room.  He stops about every 5 minutes or so to introduce me to a new game of some kind or another that he's just made up in his head.  For instance, just now he brought me over two plastic keys that kind of lock together at the notched end, and we are supposed to play a kind of tug-of-war with them.  He won most of the games, so he dramatically informs me that "you're supposed to use your muscles, mom".  Then he's back to his football game.

Sadly, T-ball was rained out today, but he did get to partake in the opening day parade and spend some time with his favorite mascot, Swoop.  (If you're not a South Bender, that is the Hawk mascot of the South Bend Silverhawks, our local minor league team.)  He's a little disappointed about the rain-out, but mostly I think he's picking up on my anticipation of his disappointment, rather than actually feeling that way.  

And now that he's not all dressed up in his baseball gear, he decided to dress for aforementioned imaginary football game.  Which is an interesting endeavor indeed.  Behold...

Nothing too extraordinary, but its the light blue socks and the spongebob shoes that really pull the whole outfit together.

Roommates

So my boys are officially sharing a room now.  It seems like such a big milestone, moreso than I realized until we actually took that step.  I wonder if, years from now, I'll remember this bittersweet feeling surrounding this otherwise non-newsworthy event.  I love to see the two of them going through this stage: excited about sharing a room, eager to sleep in their 'new' beds, chatting happily with each other before falling asleep.  At the same time, I am somewhat nostalgic to note that my little Noah has outgrown his baby bed, and that this step is just another of many as the two of them grow older.

Speaking of growing older, Travis has his first T-ball game tomorrow.  Its funny, things like that make him seem so big and so little at the same time.  When I see him on the field with the 5 and 6 year olds, he looks so small.  And when I pick him up from pre-school and see him with all the elementary school kids, he looks like such a tiny little boy.  But he also just seems so much more grown-up these days.  I feel so priveleged to be able to watch him grow up and turn into such an amazing little kid.  And now Noah is at the age where he's becoming more of a little boy and less of a toddler every day, its incredible to see his personality really start to blossom.  

As for Sophie, she still pretty much just sits around most of the day.  And drools.  But she's very cute.

Our Parallel Family

So I was on the computer today, and decided to log in to the blog and see how the updates went. I just added photos / slideshow, etc.  and wanted to see how it looked.

Anyway, I opened up the "other" laptop -- not the one I had been using. And since I'd never logged onto this site on that computer, it didn't 'remember' the name of the website like this laptop does.  And, instead of typing in the ".blogspot" portion, I accidentally just typed in www.davidsonfive.com.  And stumbled across what can only be described as an eerily similar family to our own.  For a brief second, I actually almost thought that someone else had set up a family website for us, without our knowledge.

But no -- its another Davidson family of five.  Husband, wife, two boys and a girl. Similar in ages but I think their kids are each about a year older than ours, give or take.  Blonde, fair-skinned kids that could be our kids' cousins -- siblings even if I didn't know better. The husband even works in the computer industry, for pete's sake.  We looked at some of their photos, and Ben would make a comment like, "there's a picture of their Noah standing behind their Travis, did you see that one?"  

We considered telling Ben's parents it was our website, and see how long it took them to realize those weren't our kids.  I'm guessing at least 20 minutes. ('hmmm...who's that strange woman holding Noah?').  Okay, just kidding.  10 minutes, tops.