A big brother with his little sister.

I noticed that I don't have a lot of pictures of Maes and Mikah...the truth is, I'm trying to take more pictures period.

But it seems like she is more interested in her own world of school and fake colored hair. She showed Mikah her baby doll today and then worked on her home work.
She is an amazing big sister that helps get diapers and will hold Mikah very well for me.
She can hold Mikah and eat a whole bowl of frozen berries. Such a multi tasker (she'll make a great Mom one day).

Jake on the other hand is in LOVE with his sister. He loves to hold her (until she gets to heavy- and then I have to be on guard so he does not plop her down too hard).
He wants to hold her all of the time it seems..sometimes his attention span is longer, like this morning.
He held her and said she was a "cutie" (he says that almost every time she is in his arms).
Then while I was in the bath he sang her some made up songs.
He also likes to sing "itsy bitsy spider" to her.
Such a sweetheart... until things don't go his way!

This is where things start getting hard for me.
He loves Mikah and wants to hold her constantly... and touch her, and play with her. (he even had a blanket over her head as they were playing "hide and seek". )
But he does not want to wash his hands, does not want others to hold her and does not want to wait.

Here he is in one of his pouting sessions.
He has his big gun. He was being so difficult for some reason or another, and I'm sure it was past his bed time. I bribed him with it- saying he could sleep with it if he would just do what I asked (cannot remember what I asked of him, but it was important at that time).
As of now the gun has been taken away until Halloween (it is part of his costume) as is his little gun and various sticks.

jake the dragon

Jake was in a dragon costume for a few days.
This is what he wants to wear when he marries me later on.

I let him wear it where ever we went. I think the only reason he has not had it on the past few weeks is that it is on the top bunk of the bunk bed and he cannot see it!

I had a very busy Monday and today I don't have much going today on so I vowed to deep clean the bathrooms. They have been getting Clorox wipe downs every few days, but it has been about 2 weeks sense their last deep clean. They are done, and now I need to put them back together.
In the mean time, sweet Maes has taken a nap and Jake has gotten out a lot of toys and messes (more for me to do on this "non busy" day).

He has been pushing around the remnants of his "a" (not A as in the letter, but the "a" sound as in "ant") in a stroller. It is now just dried pieces of blue clay, but I am not allowed to throw it away. I also cannot throw away issues of the wall street journal that we still get delivered. If he finds one in the trash he transfers them to a berry box where he has been storing them. They are "his".

I've got a little worrier on my hands. It comes from me. I worry.
He worries about balloons not being secured so they don't float away, or in to a fan if indoors.
He worried about the pool toys being left in the pool.
He worried about his little snake toy being left at school and his sippie (both we had to retrieve the next morning after dropping Maes off at the bus.)
He might outgrow it, or he might turn into his mother.
I wish I did not worry so much.

Jakie and baby M

Jakie does not "wike kisses."
also, when I ask him what he is going to do the first time he sees the baby or what he is going to do with her these are his responses:
i'm gonna' poop on her. I'll poop on her when she cwies.
i'm gonna' put her in the toilet...and flush her.
i'm gonna ' jump on her.
i'm gonna feed her to the animals.
i don't wike baby M (we don't have a spelling yet).

I think we need to keep a good eye on him!.

First day of School!

Today is the first day of school. I took the morning off work so that Nate and I could take the kids to school. I am now in an empty house catching up on the blog while I procrastinate cleaning the kitchen, moping and vaccuming, folding laundry and sorting papers. However, sans kids- i bet I can get it all done in about an hour!

We started out a little rocky as I enrolled her in our neighborhood school not knowing if they would have a half day program. She went to an orientation there in the spring, but during the summer I found out that they only had full day so I found another school. However, I kept getting info from the first school and it was confusing. Especially when I would relay info to Maes and then have to retract it!
She was full of mixed emotions!
Her new school has a strict dress code- in fact, the pants she wore today are too short! We got some running shoes for her because she cannot wear open toe shoes and she lives in flip flops. These shoes are for running the turkey trot in Novemeber and she is pretty happy about it. (thanks grandma anderson for getting the shoes!)Here we are waiting for the bus. At first she was excited but then told me that she did not like yellow busses, only rainbow busses. By this morning she was anxious to get out the door! I hope it lasts!

She is so little. I could hardly see her curls through the bus window when she got on! I think nate and I were so nervous for her, but she did great! Jake really wanted to ride the bus too!

We drove Jake to his Montessori toddler program. I will be teaching a weekly art class for them and he gets to attend their program while I am at work. I choose to just have him attend half day and then go with the sitter the other half of the day with Maes. He loves his school but had a hard time letting me leave. I think he will get over it soon. His school seems so fun!


After the drop off we headed to Maesyn's school to make sure she got off the bus ok. She was still doing great! We walked her to her classroom and showed her the play ground where she could play until school started. She is very friendly and started talking to some bigger girls. I think she thinks that she is big because she plays a lot with her older cousins. I hope the big girls will give her the time of day and not ignore her. I think she will not have a hard time making friends.
Here she is with her class heading in. I cannot wait to hear how she did!

Up date:
"It was amazing". But they talked a lot about the rules and it was "BORING" . She only remembers the one about raising your hand.
On the second day she had PE. She loves her Gym Teacher!
She also has some girls in her class that don't listen.
Her teacher said that she loves being an example for other kids.
She is so big!

conversations with a 2 year old.

jake is still not in bed and it is after 10.
i told him he could snuggle me if he looked at my belly to see the baby kick. he has a short attention span so it is very hard.
at one point he saw a big wave in my belly as she shifted positions
we then had a conversation that went sort of like this
jake: is micah out?
h: no, she is still in there
j: does she need a stick to get out?
h: why? so she can dig her way out?
at this point i suggested a spoon as well, but he is pretty fond of sticks.
j: yeah, or we could put the stick in there (pointing to my belly button)? (i know this is not a question, but he will say these things with the fluctuation at the end that sounds like a question).
h: why? so we can catch her like a fish.
j: yes, we'll catch her with a fishing pole?
h: what should we put on it to catch her.
j: i don't know. Worms? micah likes worms?

trying for a "normal" bedtime...

Tonight I dropped something off at a friends house just before 8pm and their kids were already in bed. They try to get them in bed by 7. I know this is normal for a lot of people, but normal for our family has been 10ish.
It seems that the entire time we've had kids that Nate did not get home until quite late and I would either let the kids stay up so that they would actually get to see him one time that day, or let them fall asleep with me in my bed with no routine whatsoever.
The only advantage of this was that my kids would sleep in until pretty late..sometimes until 9am!
Maesyn will start Kindergarten next week and we NEED to have her get up early and eat breakfast and get ready for the day. This necessitates an earlier bed time. So our goal tonight was 9pm. I know, still sort of late, but slowly we will get them in bed by 8pm and possibly earlier. This will give her plenty of time to sleep and not have a hard time getting up early. It will also give Nate and I some time to hang out, now that he gets home at a fairly normal hour.
So how is it going?
It is just after 9:30.
Maesyn is asleep in bed (Jake's bed because she is afraid of the top bunk)
Jake is in and out of our room with excuses.
I'm hungry
I need food
My bed is too SWEATY
yeah.
he is 2 and already working it, but I just witnessed a yawn.

Jake the Big Brother

Tonight the kids and I watched my niece and nephew while Nate and the other in laws helped my brother in law pack up their house. On the drive home my niece, June, started to cry. We sometimes call her "June Bug". Jake has caught on to that and said.
"Don't cry lady bug June. We will be home soon."
He kept repeating it to her.
It reminded me of when Jake was first born and he would cry in the car and I would ask Maesyn to sing to him. She would always sing songs she had learned in nursery and it worked. He would stop crying.
Jake has been doing some "baby" stuff as of late.
He insists that I feed him his food at times and he needs to be held, because "it is to hot (or sunny) to walk." I thought that maybe he was trying to get the last tastes of being the baby (not bad) or that he might regress more (stop going potty in the toilet- bad) when the baby came.
But after what happened tonight with June I think things will be OK.

A few words about Jake.

Jake's favorite color is BLUE.
Everything has to be blue. Blue sippies, blue towels, blue otter pops, blue paint samples at home depot.
Jake did not want to wear a princess dress today when Maesyn was playing dress ups.
Jake is going to marry his mom and instead of wearing a princess dress...(that is what he said he was going to wear when he married snow white) ...he said he would wear his dinosaur costume.
I am so excited to watch the ways that he is becoming a MAN.

after yet another summer of swimming lessons

Maesyn wants to take a few more lessons this summer in "Sarah's Pool" but just have free time. I think she wants to show off her moves!
The kids made tons of progress this year. We just did 4 weeks of 2 days per week lessons and practiced a lot.
I really want them to be strong swimmers.
Last year Maesyn was a pretty good swimmer, jumping off the diving board and swimming in the deep end.
This year she is doing more dives and flips off the board, improving her strokes and picking up stuff from the bottom of the pool (something she told me earlier this summer that she would NEVER do!)
Last year Jake was just getting started.
Today he was able to swim across the width of the pool on his own. He insisted on doing it with his head out of the water most of the way, and that made him go slower, but he is always proud of himself when he does it.
He also picks stuff up from the bottom of the pool with help and jumps off the diving board with his noodle.
Next year I think they will both be quite proficient by the end of the summer and we will have a new one to teach!
It is so amazing to watch them learn new things!

Mexican Vacation 2009

After all of the drama of our car trouble (which is still not over) I have settled down enough to post about our vacation.
Every year we go to Kino Bay Mexico. I think Nate's family has been going for about 15 years now and this is our 7th together. Even with our kids, that keep us very busy, this is the most relaxing vacation we take.
Granted it is very hot in Mexico in July, the water is quite warm and we swim and play a lot.
This is where we stay on the beach. There are 4 condos, and our group used the 3 on the end.. How else do you accommodate 20+ people?
Naturally Nate and Jake took some opportunities to fish. They did not catch anything. They were given some tips on some good fishing places but it was just too hot to sit and fish. It is just as much fun if you don't even catch anything.

Jake is fishing in his underwear. He was very busy potty training this trip. I think that his boxer briefs are so dang cute!!!!
It has been a tradition for a few years to bury the kids and give them fish tails. I was not sure that we would do it this year, it seemed like there were a lot of bugs- I called them sand fleas because they jumped and would bite you- but the tradition carried on. The year they were on their tummies.
I also make "sand Jakeis" and "sand Maesyns." We also make sand castles the whole week long. Jake made sure to take all of the shells of of "himself" before we went in for the night and Maesyn was upset that a large crab had a hole near her head and was wandering around "her" the next morning.

Because I have not read a book just for me in about 10 years I decided to take 2 books on the trip. After this summer's experience I have concluded that it is best to read the cover and some of the reviews before diving into a book.
My first book was "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. A friend told me about it a while back and I thought it sounded interesting. I loved a few nonfiction books I'd read on survival situations. ("Into Thin Air", and "Into The Wild")- however, had I read the reviews I would have been reminded, and prepared for the graphic, carnal nature of the story. I could not put the book down and I think Nate and I both read it in 2 days. I think I was eager for something good to happen so I could not stop reading until it did, or until the book ended. I guess that made it a good book. I was not disappointed with the end and thought about it for days.
The other book was "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I'm not a very literary person, and after I was finished Nate kept asking me why the caged bird sings. I still don't know. I also love books that talk about rising above difficult circumstances, I've enjoyed reading "Man's Search for Meaning." "The Hiding Place", "Hansi" (Not a well known book- but about the Holocaust), and "The Color Purple." They are enlightening and inspiring. However, I did not like reading about the assault on the young girl. (Nobody does). I think that it was a bit more difficult because I now have children of my own. I think that "The Road" was difficult too because of that reason.

The kids would watch movies and play house when it was too hot to go out. Kourtney, Nate's youngest sister, would indulge them. Jake was the dog. (Nate always wanted to be the Monkey when he played house with his sisters).
We also went to visit the street vendors on our way to the tide pools and at the pier in old Kino. We have a friend named Francisco that does Iron Wood carvings and gives us a good deal. Jake bought 3 dolphins. A mommy, daddy and baby. Maes bought 2 as well as jewelry and a little swivel head turtle. The kids earned their own money this year by practicing swimming. Maesyn can earn extra money by doing chores too. I figured that I spend money on trinkets when we travel, so why not make them work for it. Granted swimming practice is an easy thing to do, but they are sometimes reluctant. They earned 10 dollars for this trip and can earn 10 more for the next. (easiest money they ever made).
Maesyn also got together with her aunt and her friends and made jewelry. Another Mexico tradition that my family will be involved in via Maesyn, as I don't wear jewelry.







In addition to our time on the beach in front of our condo and reading books, we also went to explore the near by tide pools. The kids loved finding little snails on the rocks and tiny little crabs, some just the size of your thumbnail. Nate would also bring them hermit crabs that he would find snorkeling.
Nate and Jake were both stung by Portuguese Man 0 War. Some days there were a lot of them washed up with the tide. They are not very big. We would walk around and pop them (with our shoes on) but this turned out to be a bad idea, as one stuck to one of Maesyn's flip flops and it's tentacles rubbed against her opposite leg, and they still had some sting to them. I'm pretty sure I sat on one at one pint while we were building castles as part of my bum started to sting pretty bad!
All in all we had a great and relaxing (although eventful) trip. We are glad to be home and resting up for our trip to San Diego. We look forward to no car trouble and cooler weather on our trip as we prepare for the new school year.

The End.

potty in the Toilet- for real?

I think it will become a tradition to use our Mexico vacations to potty train our kids. We took only pull ups (for night time and travel) and big boy underwear for Jake and he said that we will give all of his diapers to his baby sister.

He has been going potty and poopie in the toilet for over a week now- with the occasional slip up in pull ups and then this morning potty all over my bedroom carpet.

He loves his blue boxer briefs, so hopefully he keeps them dry.

He is so proud to be a big boy.

We did not have to use the training toilet at all, so it is back in storage under the sink.

Now, he has to grow a bit taller in order to wash his hands on his own-as well as want to wash his hands after every toilet experience.

Get confident enough to pee standing up with out taking all of his clothes off (for now it is not too hard to just put his underwear back on, but winters with jeans and shoes will be a problem)

Let go of a bit of his secrecy and modesty and allow us to hold him up to a toilet in a public bathroom so that we don't have to have him take off all of his clothes on the dirty public floor, and then shimmy his tiny body around the filthy toilet.

Obviously this training is different than Maesyn- but besdies the obvious fact that he is a boy it is evident that our children will all do things differently.
1. He went right to the big toilet to do his stuff and does not mind going in all sorts of toilets.
2. He is fine making poopies and pee pees in the toilets
3. He does not want anybody to watch him go to the bathroom (Maesyn offers to let him watch her poop).
4. He totally wants to wipe on his own- with that said, I had to reach into two mexican toilets on this vacation to unclog them. At least they were in our nice clean condo and the nice clean hotel. Never the less, I did scrub scrub scrub (more than once) and covered all parts that were emesred in the toilet with hand sanitizer.

Toad in our yard.

So, we had a toad in our yard for a while. Maesyn loved him (or her) and gave it a tour of our house and held it and loved it. Jake said he would hold it "next time". It peed on Maes a few times.

In contrast. I had a small wart on my foot. I did not want to do anything about it, it might hurt and then effect my running addiction..So I let it go. Sometimes they just go away on their own. Bu then another one sprouted. No big deal. Then one night I saw about 20 small dots on my feet. A "colony" as Nate described it.
So off to the dermatologist and then back with some compound w and instructions. The bottom of my feet are pretty eaten up from the acid.
One night when saying prayers my feet were near Maes.
"Ew, disgusting, get your yucky toad feet away from me!"

The things kids say....

"Pizza Gum"=piece of gum, hot gum only (jake)
"Next Day"= tomorrow (maesyn)

The sprinklers came on the other day as we were leaving. Jake took the opportunity to run through them and then pointed out that he was wet when we got in the car.
"Well, whose fault is that?" I asked Jake.
"The waters."
obviously!

Potty in the Toilet

This is our official documentation that Jake went potty in the toilet. He did it once a few months ago, but it was just a trickle and then he let the rest go in the bathtub, so we did not count it. I'm not going to say we are potty training. If he is ready then we will, but at the moment I am really tired, so I'll leave it up to him. It is easier that way.

Has anyone seen Jake's Princess book?

He needs it.
BAD!

Father and Child......

When we were fishing up in Greer it reminded me of when we visited my Grandparents on their Mission in Missouri. When Nate showed his co workers some of the photos they could not believe how green it was. They were convinced that Nate had altered the photos some how. Although both photos are cute, can you believe the difference in color. These were taken 3 years apart, both in the month of April, one in Missouri and one in AZ.

So, I'm pregnant and this is not what I look like right now... In fact, this photo was taken 2 days before Jake was born. I even wonder how a 7lb baby ever fit in there. This time around I think I might get a bit bigger...however my babies tend not to poke out, rather they take up all of the space inside my body that was meant for my internal organs... uncomfortable, hard to breath and hard to eat a substantial amount of food. I am just over 4 months along and I think I am bigger than I was before at 4 months- however I never take those month by month pictures. I say I will but I don't. Maybe I'll start after we know what we are having. As for now I have a little pooch, not a cute baby bump, more like the tummy of a squishy person- not photo worthy.
So... I am still feeling sick, which is not normal for me. It is mild and I am very tired, but I am a wimp so it is hard on me. I don't like grocery shopping, going to work, or thinking. I also don't like that I could only walk 2 miles this morning... no running and I was so tired at the end!!! When you have an addiction to running it is hard when you just cannot do it. I keep waiting for the "first trimester" to be over--- remember you are supposed to feel better in the second trimester??? I am so in the second trimester but still feel like crap!!

Ok. The reason I am posting - the reason I blog (other than to have people think I'm cute and funny) is so that I can remember the cute things my kids do and for them to look back on this. SOOO.
Jake is talking A LOT. When he says here, there, stairs and words like that he says them with 2 syllables. When Nate and I try to mimic him we don't sound nearly as cute. He just started doing this and it reminded me that Maes did the same things when she was about his age. There was a word she would say, maybe it was "now"? She would say it with 2 syllables and we loved it...
Funny how kids can do simple things and we think they are soooo cute. But just cute when they do it..not cute when a 30 year old does it.

What happens with Mom cleans things up.

When I find random burst of energy I like to seize them- for example I'm catching up with blogging while Jake naps.
One Saturday morning (while Nate was actually home) I returned from a run and Nate and the kids were still out on a bike ride. I was feeling good so I decided to clean, totally clean the porch. Toys and all. It really makes me feel good when I accomplish something that isn't even on my list. Sometimes when this happens I will write the accomplished task down just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing it off.
Well I had it looking GOOD.
Then the kids came home.
I have this sad potted morning glory that tries to climb the sticks and things I put in the pot. Jake likes to remove the sticks and the dirt...daily. Mostly the dirt daily. Sometimes he attempts to clean it up. I think he puts it on the ground so he has something to sweep or rake.
Then he also likes to transfer the dirt to different places.

This was several weeks ago- I have sense had to add more soil to the pot and occasionally move it out of 2 year olds reach... but I like it better on the ground.

Pregnancy and Lack of Posts

I have taken pictures of cute events in the lives of my children and have tried to remember to post about the darling things they do, even without a picture. But I am envious of my other pregnant friends that have managed to do a little (or a lot) more than I have in their blogs. I regret that before blogging I may have neglected to record some sweet memories in my children's lives, but with this simplicity I hope to keep up with the rest. So hopefully all of my photos will jog some memories. Give me a few more weeks and I hope to have the energy and patience and will power to do a big catch up!
For now I will write about what I did that was amazing and important for me today.
This morning after my early morning workout, before sickness (and exhaustion) set in I had the lofty goal of cleaning the bathrooms (they are off the once a week rotation of deep clean to the "I hope I can get them clean every other week" plan) I also thought it might be possible to get the neatly folded laundry (thanks Nate)off the couch an put away. I was feeling OK at that point... but then Maes woke up and chocolate was served and she and I lie on the couch for about an hour as I contemplated simply functioning for the day. Pregnancy had set in for the day.

Around 9am ish Maesyn and I were bathed and dressed (no make up - PLEASE) and she was sent off to dance class. I ate an apple to soothe my stomach and shared some with Jake. I tried to convince him of a bath, but he did not get one until Noon.
Instead, he and I read books and played with puzzles. He is REALLY good at puzzles. I finally got him in the bath after realizing that his diaper (that had been on sense last night) was going to leak. Then I decided to try to do some potty training? (over cleaning the bathrooms?- Yeah pregnancy impairs your judgment and you are in a constant drunken state- but also feeling hung over all of the time- so I have heard) I made up a cute song that we sang to his pee pee....I have now forgotten it. He let out grunts but no fluids and I put on some of the new pull ups that I bought last week. I told him he looked good and instructed him to check out himself in the mirror.
We brought the potty chair in the living room and he pulled the pull ups off and on off and on and even pointed his peeps at me until I protested "we don't potty on people." No luck... He wore them to pick up Maesyn from her friends house and then to my parents house... He ran to the potty chair at their house and sat on it...grunted and pushed.. got up.... no pee. But then he did a whole bunch of potty in his pullups. The images on the front go away when you pee-not to mention they swell swell swell.


I think he is not ready yet. He still has that pull up on. I think I'll change him and put some pants on him so he can go on his play date during clay class.

All in all, even though my bed is still unmade, the laundry is on the couch, with a new load of towels I can say today was good because Jake and I had good quality time, and that is most important.
I think I am also in a better mood due to my "run" this morning and the fact that there are not dirty dishes.
I am not going to let my house completely go...but I do feel better when I get to spend some good lovin' time with my kids....It is for sure more fulfilling then a made bed- although that makes me feel good too. The bed will be unmade and made again, but I cannot replace or redo quality time with Jake and Maesyn.