Spring Has Sprung and Easter

I had such a Norman Rockwell moment to start the week.  It was good, because I needed that moment to sustain me through the reality of the remainder of the week.  Monday evening I was cooking dinner and all three kids were playing nicely together in the backyard.  No fighting or arguing, just talking, exploring, digging, etc.  It was just one of those idyllic moments.  What you think parenthood is like.  They even came in nicely, washed up, and ate a nice dinner.  (Well, they ate it nicely.  The dinner probably landed on the scale at: "mediocre to decent.")  Along came Tuesday evening.  Again, they were playing well outside.  Then Josiah tapped on the window to get my attention.  "Look, Mom, a dead bird!" as he holds up it's lifeless carcass with his bare hands for me to see.  I did make him immediately wash his hands, (Henry, too, since he was in the vicinity of the bird) but he was allowed to go back out and poke at it with a stick.  I'm all for exploring, but sometimes you just need to explore with instruments and tools, not fingers.

Henry had a very tired week.  He fell asleep on the way home from CC (wearing Josiah's jeans, no less, so he looked like he was wearing skinny jeans all day, but he insisted that they fit).

He fell asleep on the way home from the bank one evening.  (We were at a full and complete stop during the taking of this picture.)

He almost didn't make it through our dinner at Sweet Tomatoes on Saturday either.  Fortunately a giant ice cream sundae perked him back up.

Caroline usually never gets dessert at restaurants.  They tend to always have some sort of dairy or wheat product.  She did, however, come up and watch Josiah make his sundae, and noticed the sprinkles on the dessert bar quite quickly.  She immediately wanted a bowl of sprinkles, so that was her dessert.  It did say gluten free, but I'm not totally sure sprinkles are dairy-free.  We're supposed to test her every now and then anyway, so I just look at these times as small tests.

Our little Norman Rockwell Easter that we had planned in our heads was not to be either.  We don't do Easter baskets, but we do get them a block of chocolate in the form of a cross or a fish.  This year the boys got the fish.  They took a single bite out of their respective fish this morning.  Almost immediately, Josiah went nuts.  His body literally cannot handle sugar.  It's like I never learn my lesson with the whole candy/sugar thing with him.  And, of course, there were many moments of sugar throughout the day.  We had an egg hunt in our house.  (He ate a packet of fruit snacks.)  We made our Resurrection rolls.  (He ate two of those which contain marshmallows dipped in cinnamon sugar.)  Needless to say, it's been a bouncing-off-the-walls kind of Easter around here.

The best I got with all three.  Pictures are no easy thing around here!

Henry had a rough start to his Easter morning.  He was all nicely dressed for church in his brand new pair of khaki pants.  He was bouncing a balloon around and, in trying to get it, crawled on our elliptical.  He stood up and had grease stains up and down both pant legs.  Argh!  So, he wore blue jeans to church.  Caroline, herself, had several wardrobe changes throughout the day.

She wanted me to take a picture of her in her dress outside.  She totally did this pose all on her own.

I wanted to take a picture of her inside.  She did not want me to.

I used reverse psychology on her, though, and got this.  :)
  

Caroline had a cute outfit week.  It was hard not to include these pictures, too.

Spring Break...Ahhhh

Spring Break week.  I had slightly hoped for a spring break month, but I admit that I missed all the adult interactions I get on a normal week.

Spring Breakers.  They asked me to take this picture.  Then Henry sat on his siblings.

We started our week off by blowing up lots of balloons, throwing them over the ledge while the sibling on the ground tried to keep them from hitting the ground.  There was lots of squealing and excitement involved.  Plus, they burned off a lot of energy running (walking calmly) up the stairs and back down again.


Todd reminded us that throwing things off the ledge was not the wisest of decisions, so we played with the balloons safely on the ground for the remainder of the week. Although, I think we've had 7 out of the 10 pop as the week has worn on.  It disappointed Josiah the most when they popped because he had drawn bodies on each balloon, and, in the likeness of Xavier Roberts, wrote their names on their bottoms.

We finally played the dreidel game.  We studied Ancient Israel last week, but never found time to play the game.  We played it Gentile-style...with jellybeans.  (Hey, it's close to Easter.)  After Henry got over the hurdle of not getting the whole pot every turn, it was a fun game.

My child...organized his jelly beans.

Henry got his ice cream for having good behavior and not throwing a fit when we dropped him off for church.  He has gotten a million times better with it.  When we picked him up last week, I asked how he did and the lady said he did really well and actually played with everyone.  I think we have hopefully cleared that hurdle now.

All siblings benefit from his good behavior.  

We spent part of our spring break doing a tour of playgrounds.  We had repair men come two different mornings, so we didn't get to them until the afternoon which made it a bit busier and hotter than I had hoped.  The kids didn't care, of course.

Caroline & Henry went across the balance beam (that wiggled) and Henry proudly did it without holding on:


The boys patiently waited for other kids to get down before they could finally reach the top of the spider web thing.  A favorite of theirs.

Memorial Park playground has a monument for all the branches of service.  We took a picture in front of the Navy side to pay homage to the Navy men in my family.  Caroline is noticeably absent from this picture because she was actually screaming that she wanted the stick that Josiah had.

Inside the monument and still angry he won't give up the stick.

Not even a dress would slow down Caroline from climbing a rock wall like a champ.

Josiah taught Henry how to hang upside down.

Midweek, Todd took a day off of work and we were off to the rodeo.  We were very happy to find an "official" parking lot as opposed to the somewhat shady parking lot we found last year.

We took our cowboy hats to fit in with the crowd.

We went to the petting zoo.  I told Caroline to stay with Daddy.  She did not want to heed my directive, so she entered with Josiah, Henry, & me.  She was not a happy camper to be in there with 45 animals and 200 people (at least it felt like that).

We walked down a row of cows.  Caroline was not a fan.  Then we went down a row of pigs.  All the pigs were in pens waiting to be shown (I'm assuming).  One passed us by and bumped Caroline which did not warm her feelings toward the livestock.  Josiah thought it was hilarious to see the pig right next to him.

Outside, we chose one ride to go on all together.  The carousel.  Normally, this would be my nemesis since I cannot do circle things.  I cannot even look at a carousel without feeling sick to my stomach.  But we did it.  I stared at Caroline and took pictures of her the whole time which grounded me.  Caroline had never been on a carousel before.  She loved it.




What we learned at the rodeo was that Caroline is not an animal lover.  Not a lover of any type of animal.  Henry, meanwhile, is a bleeding heart and asked, "Why do we have to eat chickens?  Why do we have to eat cows?"  Josiah would love to live on a farm and be surrounded by animals.

Caroline does not yet understand time.  Case in point: She has asked me several times a day, "We go to the beach?"  June, Caroline, June.  I've showed her the calendar, we'ved talked about three months time.  She has no clue.  Up again from her nap, "We go to the beach?"

The boys decided to draw portraits of family members.  They set up their "studios" and had really focused drawing time.  I love it when they get in these art moods.

Henry drew me (as if that needed to be said).  I'd like to make it clear that he drew my "gums" near my upper teeth.  Also, he got tired of drawing my yellow skin tone, so stopped just around my mouth.

Josiah drew Caroline & Henry:


We finished up our spring break by finally getting some things on our walls!  We got a bit more Texified.  Texas clock.  Cowboy hat rack.  We are immersing ourselves in the local culture.

We got our mirror hung up, too!

Free (or Three, however you say it)

Caroline turned three this week!

We let the kids pick out their meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on their birthdays.  Henry had a nice meal of shrimp and cornbread.  Josiah picked pizza, which came as no surprise.  Caroline?  She asked for one of her muffin tops for breakfast (we try to keep a steady supply in the freezer).  For lunch she wanted chicken nuggets.  Dinner?  Chicken nuggets.  We added strawberries, carrots, and fries to make it more of a "favorites" meal.

We made her cake since we had to know all of the ingredients to ensure she could actually eat it.  She wanted cupcakes and insisted on helping me make them.

After singing to her, Todd took a bite of his and mentioned that they weren't too bad for gluten and dairy free.  Then I took a bite and understood he was being sarcastic with that comment.  Really, they were not as bad as other gluten/dairy free items, but they are just not as good as things with butter and milk in them!  Poor girl has no idea what she's missing.  She did like them, though, so that's all that mattered.

She loved all of her new gifts, too.  We got her a doll playpen so that she had a place to put all of her dolls.  She has become quite the mother to her dolls and really enjoys playing with them.  She liked to flip it upside down also, and use the underside as the bed.







Other favorites have been a music jewelry box with a dancing girl.  All the kids like to have this music playing while they are in the playroom.

She loved her new Hello Kitty hooded bath towel, too.  Every time she gets out of the tub now, she looks at herself in the mirror with it on and smiles.

A grocery basket of pretend food is quite popular with all three kids, as well.  The boys have had a restaurant going ever since her birthday.  She uses the basket as a second baby bed most of the time.  You can never have too many baby beds around here.

Henry is coming along with his reading.  We counted 30 words that he learned to read this week.  He loves to read sentences now, as that is "real reading."  He gets super excited each time he finishes a sentence.  "Pat sat on the mat."  I can read!!!  He is so cute.

Josiah finished up his Awana book this week and was very excited to move onto the review book.  He didn't get to do that last year because we only did Awana the spring semester and he was already doubling and tripling up on pages to finish the regular book in half the time.

Both boys got to go to a friend's birthday party Sunday afternoon.  Technically, Caroline was invited, too, but she has been a very cranky girl for quite a few days and it seemed best to send her home for a nap.  The party was at a really neat park that had two huge playgrounds.  They played, ate some food, played, drank lots of juice, played, ate cake, and played some more.  It was the perfect setting for a birthday party.  All the kids were content to play and they only played three small games.

We have had a disgusting amount of June bugs lately.  This is what our front entryway looked like, filled with dead June bugs.

I swept this up after taking the picture one afternoon.  That very evening, as soon as it was dark outside, we could hear them hitting our front door again and by 9 p.m. the whole entryway was covered again.  Todd swept it that second evening and by nightfall again, the whole entryway was covered.  It is so gross, but at the same time they're killing themselves, so they're not damaging anything.  Basically,  I just use the garage to exit the house until these little critters are done with their suicide missions.

It was a very busy week all around.  Fortunately, tomorrow is spring break for us and we are taking it!  We are taking every. last. minute. of. it.  The kids have a list of playgrounds they want to visit and we're going to the rodeo mid-week.

At, An, Am, & Ad

We started our week out with a play.  The play was done by InterActive Theater which meant that the audience interacted with, and some got on stage with the actors to help out.  We saw Anansi the Spider which were stories from the Ashanti people of Ghana.  We had read quite a few Anansi books from the library last semester, so this went right along with our studies.  Josiah and Henry sat on the front row and had a great time - laughing a lot and taking in the whole production.  Caroline, meanwhile, was not sure how to take it.  The actor who played Anansi the spider was very expressive and I don't think she knew how to take it at first.  I kept telling her it was funny and encouraged her to laugh, but after about five minutes she said, "I want to go home."  She proceeded to say this over and over again, and well, that wasn't going to happen.  So, she took a bathroom break (false alarm) and then she started to enjoy the play more when the hippo and elephant appeared.

Anansi the Spider

The play must have had quite the impact on her, though, because the entire drive home she said, "Remember that guy?"  Yes, I remember. (Who?  The spider? The elephant?  She never did say.)  Sixty seconds later, "Mommy?  Remember that guy?"  Yes, I remember.

Even though that was a very long day, Henry still found the energy to attend his first Trail Life meeting with Josiah.  He was aware that they had a snack time during the meeting, so he was very eager to join.  After the meeting, when they got home, he excitedly told me that he had a great time and that he got a snack.  A little later in the week, Henry started to express sadness that he was going to have to be a Spark at Awana next year.  Sparks don't get a snack.  This kid loves his snack times.

Henry also had a major week in that he has started to learn to read.  He sounded out and read his first four words: at, am, an, & ad.  This is a picture of his excitement.

After school that day, he ran up to Josiah and said, "I read four words!"  He was so excited.  I have a feeling he may be a quick student with regards to reading.  He is constantly asking us about words, what they say, where we are on the pages when we are reading.  He is always trying to figure out words and read.  It is neat to watch him.

Caroline had some rough times this week.  She was playing on one of our barstools and it ended up tipping over and landing on her foot.  It did not look good.  She had a bruise line across the top of her foot and her middle toe appeared to be swollen.  I sat her down and wrapped an ice pack on her foot.  Ten minutes into her icing, she had to take a bathroom break. She kept crying that it hurt and wouldn't bear any of her weight on it, which just made my concerns grow stronger.  I kept her on ice throughout dinner, and then after dinner, she just hopped up off her chair.  I asked her if she was okay and she just walked around and said, "It's all better."  Kids!  It is still bruised now, several days later, but the swelling went down that first evening.

First she worried us.  Then she tortured us.  We have two Lego buckets.  She dumped out both of them.  It was a lot of Legos.  A whole lot.  I had the brilliant idea to have her pick them all up to learn her lesson of never dumping them again.  I gathered them all up and put them in a nice pile next to the actual bucket.  It took us hours and hours to get her to pick them all up.  She would just sit there and cry next to her pile.  She would pick up one or two at a time.  She would stall and delay.  It was so mentally exhausting.  The boys and I cleaned up the entire rest of the playroom, vacuumed other rooms, a whole host of things.  She finally, finally finished.  I really do hope she never dumps it again.  I don't think I could handle it.  (And, yes, the boys do dump the buckets sometimes when searching for things, but we always pick them up.  Caroline dumped them for not good reason except to watch them exit their containers.)

This weekend we participated in some clean-up.  Henry helped Todd clean up our yard.  Henry's a good yard helper, he picks up handfuls of leaves like a champ.

Then on Sunday, we participated in an outreach project with our church.  There is no church service once a year on this particular Sunday.  The entire church, through their Sunday school class groups, participated in some sort of outreach effort.  Our class helped out a fellow church with a piece of property they purchased to start a new church there.  We picked up branches, raked leaves, trimmed bushes, mulched flowerbeds.  Todd put in a new mailbox post.  Many worked inside ripping up carpet and putting in new light fixtures and ceiling fans.  It was a fun time.  The boys loved the giant mulch pile.  The boys were not always within our sight throughout the morning, so it was only later that Josiah informed me he had gone inside three different times for snacks.  He didn't get just one item at a time either.  Henry's not as bold just yet, (plus the countertop was too high for him to see everything anyway.)

Our group. Josiah with the small, red wheelbarrow.  

A favorite item of play.

The kids on the mulch pile.

It is now very late and I have to get some wrapping done for tomorrow.  One very special little girl will greet me early, I imagine, as her new three-year-old self.