The Things Kids Do

Recently the twins, especially Schaeffer, have really started causing mischief in the bathroom. Sometimes the three boys go in and close the door and from the sounds of it have a grand time playing in the cabinet and being loud. Other times Schaeffer is just in their unrolling entire rolls of toilet paper. But this one time recently, I found Schaeffer and Logan  in the bathroom playing in the toilet. This has happened before and I've been trying really hard to make sure the lid is always down. But a certain 3 year old isn't on the same page as me with that idea. So when it is mysteriously quiet for too long I run to the bathroom. This particular day the twins and gotten into the office garbage can where Paul disposes of his chewed gum (which he's been told must change). They emptied the can and found all the gum they could and were both walking around chewing chewed gum like they were hot shots. I get the gum and put it out of reach but I let them keep the wrappers for no particular reason. A short time later that mysterious too quiet sound came over the house. Sure enough they were on either side of the toilet dipping their gum wrappers in and then sucking on them! Ewwwww! I can't even guarantee that it was just a bowl full of water and nothing else. I was so disturbed. Of course I put an end to it and scoured hands and took away wrappers and all that. But ewwwwww! I really need to teach Jack to put the lid down.

Valentine's

I love doing Valentine crafts with kids because they can be so easy. Color something with red, purple and pink, cut it into the shape of a heart and voila! you have a Valentine craft. I was excited to do Valentine's with Jack for school this year and started early. I was so proud of Jack and the effort he put in. He laced all 14 hearts that we made. And for each one he chose the color of heart and the color of ribbon and told me who it was for. One once or twice did I try to direct him as to what colors the girls in his class might prefer. I held the heart for him while he laced it and he has such fun doing it. He also cut out, with a little help, the red tags for his school Valentines and he glued them all on the envelopes. On each envelope I wrote his name in dotted lines and then he traced over my dotted lines to write his name. Those are all skills he struggles with, so I was so proud of him for pushing through and finishing all eight. On the Saturday night before Valentine's day I spent my evening making candy rockets and pasting together homemade envelopes to hold our homemade Valentine's. But I loved doing it. On Valentine's Day he took his bag full of Valentine's to school and then after school we drove around town dropping off our other hearts. He had fun ringing the door bells and Si and Haley's houses and handing them their heart. He didn't want me to come to the door at Haley's. It was so cute. 

This paper heart garland turned out super cute. It's hung in a totally inconvenient, but prominent location and Paul's going to make me take it down soon as it's driving him crazy every time he opens the pantry door. But this was made from the little kids finger painting. Those hearts were cut from Logan and George's paintings. We also used their paintings to make Valentine's for grandparents and for George's mommy and daddy.  

And these hearts hang in our kitchen window and look so pretty with the sun shining through them. Jack and Haley made these "crayon shavings melted between wax paper" hearts one afternoon. They had a great time sprinkling crayon shavings all over and watching how the iron melted the wax into pretty puddles of color. We also used some of these hearts in the grandparent's Valentine's.

And Then There Were Four

So my sister got to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams for herself, by going to Hawaii, with her husband. In turn she fulfilled one of my other lifelong dreams of being a mother to triplets. Ok, not really. Triplets have never been a dream of mine and I wasn't even close to being George's mother while they were gone, I didn't even have him most of the time. But he did spend some time with us and he did make it seem like we had unevenly sized triplets. My parents watched George while Megan and Dennis enjoyed a much anticipate and well deserved vacation. I helped my mom out during the days so she didn't have to take as much time off of work (which was really to my benefit seeing as I need her to take time off to watch my kids in May :). Just kidding! We loved having George and were glad to help. George spent three full days at our house. On the first full day, a Friday, we all went to the library story time. We were a scene, not a bad scene, just an "oh my gosh are those all your children, and you brought them all here by yourself" scene. They all did a really great job and George cracked me up because he just wandered all over. My kids stayed by my side for the most part while George went right up to the story teller to look at the book, sat down to look at another kid's book, tried to share someone else's snack and generally had a good time. I let the kids play in the kids part of the library afterwards. That was a bit tiring, trying to keep my eye on four kids at once. Especially, George, who just kept pulling books off the shelves. He just wanted to look at them, but he pulled a lot down and we left a big stack to be re-shelved. 

Going to McDonald's for a french fry snack at tumbling.

Story time at the library.

They were giving each other hugs and kisses. Later in the week I might have caught them licking each other. I'm not positive, but I saw them leaning towards each other to gives hugs or kisses with their tongues out. Guess we'll never know.

We had George all day on Monday too. Since it was the day before Valentine's day I thought it would be fun for the little guys to get in on the Valentine action. After morning snack I put smocks on them all and let them finger paint to their hearts content. A certain child was very angry with this idea, maybe because he promptly put the paint in his mouth and it probably tasted disgusting. So I just smeared his hands around real quick and called him done. Jack did one paper just cause everyone else was. But George and Logan had a grand time and each painted four pages that I later turned into Valentines.

George was quite the little drummer.

Our last full day with George was last Friday. Paul was out of town so I knew the day would be long if we didn't have any activities. So we did an extended bath with all four boys that morning. One boy, Schaeffer for some reason, wanted nothing to do with the water. He wandered around the bathroom naked while the other three played and played and played. George was a great sport about being crammed in the tub with Jack and Logan and with getting splashed repeatedly by Jack. And Logan, surprisingly actually sat in the tub (after a long while of standing, unsure) and played for quite a while. 

George never liked being dropped off at our house, but I think he always had fun. It was fun to get to know him better and for the kids to get to play a lot. George clearly did not come from the same gene pool as my children. That's one thing that was very clear. Not only is he clearly much bigger, he also is much quieter. He's got a lot to say, but he says it all in a fairly quiet, serious voice. And he plays by himself for long periods of time with one toy. I didn't even know kids did that! :) And he didn't scream when I washed his hair and pored water on his head. Outside of his poor napping, (30 minutes is not a nap in my book!) and being more physically exhausting to pick up (I'm used to such lightweights), he was a really easy kid to have as a temporary triplet. 

Catching Up Again

Since my last post I have thought several times of things I would like to blog about. But for a whole slew of reasons it hasn't happened. Instead, I'm doing a marathon blogging afternoon and hoping I remember everything I want to say! 

Here are the boys enjoying their afternoon pickle snack. Never mind the jammies, they are frequently still on in the afternoon and even into the next day. That's just how we roll sometimes. And yes, all three of my boys (actually all four of them) LOVE pickle snacks. It's weird. I have nothing against pickles, I enjoy them with certain meals. I just don't sit down to a bowl full of them on a near daily occurrence. Paul thinks the boys are gross cause they eat their pickles with milk (ewww!). Paul prefers cola, but cola isn't a choice for the boys so they don't know any different. And really Paul doesn't have any room to be grossed out. One night he sat down to a snack of pickles, cheese cubes dipped in ranch and cola. I think that's disgusting! To each his own. The other thing I like about this picture is that they are all sitting down together. Often when I dole out afternoon snacks, if I don't make them sit in high chairs, they all find each other and sit down somewhere together. Frequently, they are sitting even closer than this, like butts touching. I think it's cute and I'll miss it when they are older.

Jack has tumbling on Thursday afternoons right now. It's a rush to get all the kids up from naps, snacks and to the rec center by 4 o'clock in the afternoon. So I've started just running through McDonald's to get french fries for the boys to eat while Jack tumbles. This day I also got a milkshake for them all to share. We usually arrive about 10 minutes early and Jack get's his portion before tumbling while he and Haley watch the high school girls practice soccer. Then the twins scarf down what's left. As I predicted, they LOVED the milkshake and had a good time sharing it. Note the awesome bed heads. Their hair can get a bit crazy.

Some people eat their yogurt with their hand, other people prefer to use a spoon.

Schaeffer used to be the neatest eater. He's pick up one piece at a time, eat it, then get one more piece. Logan used to shovel it all in, making a mess and being sure that his mouth and both hands always had food in them. Then we introduced forks to the boys. It's like one light went on, while another light went off. Now Schaeffer is the messy eater and Logan is the neat one. One night I gave the boys their dinner, Schaeffer dug in and Logan sat their with his pacifier in his mouth and wouldn't start eating. I realized I didn't give them forks, so I got the forks and as soon as Logan had fork in hand, he took out his pacifier and started eating. He still get's a little messy and still uses his hands on occasion, but he now eats almost everything with a utensil and does a really good job of it. Schaeffer will try his utensils, but in the end he resorts to his hands and thus we end up with a yogurt covered Schaeffer nearly every morning.

I feel like I've posted a similar picture before. But I can't remember for sure and this is a good one of the twins. I have locks on a few cabinets and I don't have locks on others. This gives the kids some fun places to play without breaking my breakables or getting sick from chemicals. This particular cabinet is a favorite of theirs. They often sit like this and close the doors on themselves, playing a funny version of peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek, I'm not sure. Sometimes this is where they eat their snacks. Sometimes they just open the doors and sit. And sometimes all three of them get in there and bang on the pots in there.