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.

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