Funny Stuff

Some funny things my boys said yesterday:

Christian- As were were driving down the road out of our neighborhood he said "Don't worry mommy, you don't need to look out the back window. I will look for you." Then he turned around, looked out the back window and said "yep, it's safe to go." Thanks, Christian, for letting me know there are no cars BEHIND us that I need to watch out for :)


Declan- "Trapezoid, trapezoid!"
Andy- "Where do you see a trapezoid?"
Declan- "I made one with my toes!!"


Christian- "When I grow up mommy, I will have to come and visit you because I am not going to live HERE, I'm going to live in the WILD WEST!"


Declan- "My next birthday is going to be on October 6th, mommy."
me- "No, your birthday is on March 4th."
Declan- "I don't like March 4th, I want October 6th!"
me- "Why don't you like March 4th?"
Declan- "I don't want anymore shots."
(This last birthday he got four shots at his yearly checkup)

Christian

Okay, I messed up and loaded the first three photos backwards! Aack! Oh well, if I try to go back now and fix it this post might never get published and Christian needs an update too. Christian will be seven years old in August and only has a month and a half left of first grade! Where does the time go? Okay, so starting at the third picture and working our way up we see Christian with my brother John and his girlfriend Lacey as we were celebrating John's birthday. (John's an April Fool - he was born on the first of April) You can see the candles on the cake, waiting to be blown out. In the second picture, Christian is helping John blow out the candles. In the third (which is really the first picture in this post) I said "Strike a pose!" meaning I wasn't sure if I got the money shot of them blowing out the candles and wanted them to "pose" and pretend they were still blowing them out. John dutifully "posed" as if he were blowing out the candles. Christian "posed" doing who-knows-what with both his hands. We all got quite a kick out of it.


Happy Birthday Uncle John!


Christian also loves to be outdoors riding his bike or scooter. No training wheels for him! He loves to play soccer in our backyard, go to the park, fly kites, play video games and play with friends. He also LOVES to read! Every time we go to the library we come home with more and more books. He'll even read an entire chapter book in the car on the drive home! (It's about a 45 minute drive) Right now he likes series books like Magic Tree House, the Magic School Bus, Bones, Puppy Patrol, Amelia Bedelia, etc. He has also enjoyed reading The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


I didn't realize until just now that the pictures I chose to upload of Christian all show him wearing the same shirt. Of course, John's birthday was on the same day but these other pictures are on completely different days. I promise he owns more than one shirt! (Although he does really like dinosaurs) This next shot is Christian and Declan again with Declan watching Christian play the game boy. (Or as they call it, the 'boy game')


Some of Christian's favorite foods at this age are:
*apples (he really wants to lose another tooth)
*macaroni and cheese
*chinese food (mostly chicken and rice)
*pizza
*french bread or hot rolls just out of the oven with butter
*sugar snap peas
*peaches
*fiber one bars
*peanut butter and honey sandwiches
*lemonade
*cooked carrots
*ham and scalloped potatoes

Christian is such a big helper around the house and such a joy to be around. (As are Declan and Jessica!) I can hardly wait for summer vacation when we get to have him home with us all day long!

He loves to remind us on Mondays that it is time for Family Home Evening and he usually tries to volunteer to be in charge of either the activity or the snack. He just recently read in the "Friend" magazine about a little boy whose family did a lesson about Moroni and the title of liberty and so he's not going to let me rest unless our next lesson is about that, too. :)

When he overhead that a beloved relative was traveling to Ireland he just about jumped out of his skin begging to talk on the phone. When I put him on he immediately stated "When you get to Ireland, LOOK FOR LEPRECHAUNS!!!!"
We got a good chuckle out of that.

Declan

Declan turned 4 years old last month. I can hardly believe how fast time is flying by. He still has one more year before he goes to kindergarten. I have been doing a co-op preschool with some other moms and he really enjoys his "school days" on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One of his favorite activities is reading books. The other day I caught all three kids in the hallway where Christian was reading a book to the other two. The picture below shows how I found them. As soon as I took that picture, Jessica noticed the camera and jumped up to try and grab it. The picture above shows that Declan moved to a better spot to see the pictures while you can see just barely see Jessica's leg in the bottom right while she's walking toward me.



Declan also really enjoys going outside to ride his bike or his scooter. Andy has been trying to get him to learn to ride without training wheels but Declan has really resisted so far.



And here's an action shot of Declan coming down the sidewalk. I love the look of concentration on his face.



Declan loves to be wherever Christian is and to do whatever Christian is doing. If Christian wants to sit and play game boy, Declan is sitting right beside him watching. I catch them all the time doing something sitting close together with their blond heads almost touching. Of course, sometimes the closeness is too much and they end up wrestling and fighting instead of playing nicely.


Declan has several favorite foods at this age, including:
*mustard and pickle sandwiches (can you say YUCK?!)
*fiber one bars
*steak with A-1 sauce
*bananas
*soymilk
*anything chocolate
*quesadillas with salsa
*chicken and rice
*salad smothered with dressing
*spinach
*sugar snap peas


Every day he says something funny or crazy or both that just make me laugh! I should really try to do better at writing them all down but here are just a few from the last 2 days.

*Mom, how old are you?
me- I'm 30 years old.
That means you're REALLY, REALLY old!

*Yesterday I mentioned that we were going to a park in the afternoon to meet up with a friend of mine who was visiting from California (Hi Memory!) and he said -
Oh, mommy, I didn't know that YOU have friends!

*Mommy, you are a smart girl now.

*Hey mom! My arm is connected to my shoulder and my hand is connected to my arm AND my hand has a bone in it.

*A few weeks ago I caught him in my bathroom with a screwdriver up against the fake drawer front under the sink. I asked him what he was doing and he said the drawer wouldn't open. (um, it's a FAKE drawer) He was using the screwdriver to -and I quote- "I'm trying to get the right LEVERAGE to open it, mommy"

*Yesterday he saw a man at the ward pancake breakfast wearing a hat and a shirt that were the same color. He said "Look, mommy! That man is camoflauged!"

Jessica

Since Jessica is going to be 18 months soon, here's a little update for all of those who have not given up on our blog :) This first picture shows her doing what she does best - CLIMBING! She is a little monkey. I believe my mom once told me that I was quite the little monkey at this age too. We have actually moved all of our kitchen chairs onto the carpet and only put them at the table when we are actually eating a meal. Otherwise we find her on the table or pushing the chairs across the tile to climb up on a counter. So far, she hasn't been able to move the chairs when they are on the carpet. (When that happens, we'll probably move them back into a bedroom where we can close the door) But recently we realized that if we placed the chairs too close to the back of the couch, she will climb up and flip herself over the edge and roll down the couch. (laughing hysterically the whole way down!)

This next picture cracks me up. The look on her face says it all. She's not too happy that mommy barged into her room while she's still waking up and starting using a camera with a bright flash. I was trying to capture the incredibly cute moment in the morning where she wakes up and starts to read her animal book. She used to wake up screaming every morning as soon as her eyes popped open, but ever since we started putting her book in bed with her she will quietly "read" and feel the fuzzy pictures of the animals until I come in to get her. This is her favorite book and has been much loved. The front cover actually fell off yesterday so I think we will be performing some surgery with duct tape soon to correct that problem. :)



Jessica has also recently developed a love for fruit leather. I kept trying to get a good picture one day when she was walking around with a piece hanging out of her mouth, but this was the best I could do. She kept turning around and running away because she thought I was going to take the fruit away from her!



Her hair is long enough now to do the 2 ponytail hairstyle. I am just LOVING the cuteness! Sometimes she'll keep them in all day but most days she pulls them out within an hour, so if I want a picture with cute hair, I have to take it immediately. In this picture you can barely see her strawberry birthmark on the top of her head. It has flattened out substantially, and you can only see it now when her hair is pulled up. When she was an infant, people (mostly children) would ask how she got hurt or 'why does she have an owie?' and I would have to explain that it was a birthmark and it would go away someday. Christian and Declan liked to tell people it was her "angel kiss" where the angels kissed her before she came to earth.


Here's Jessica with one ponytail desperately trying to hang on. :) This is what her hair looks like most of the time. She had a great time sitting on all the lincoln logs. Then she would try to stand up and reach down to get some more out of the box, because she couldn't pull them out while she was sitting on them.



I love this picture of Jessica with Andy. This last General Conference, in between Saturday sessions the boys went outside to fly kites. It was quite windy that afternoon. When Jessica woke up from her nap Andy wanted her to have a chance to fly a kite too. So here she is, still snuggling in her blankie and flying a kite.


In this last picture, Jessica is rockin' the one ponytail hairstyle! I was trying to just keep her hair out of her eyes. She was really enjoying this cupcake at her cousin Emmalyn's first birthday party. It is so nice to have cousins so close by! And Jessica and Emmalyn are very close in age too, so we hope they will be good friends as they grow up.

Jessica has one Sunday left with Mommy and Daddy at church and then she will be old enough to officially go to nursery! Hooray! It will be so fun for her to play with the toys and have a snack with her friends and it will make it much easier for Andy and I to do our callings without having to hold her.

She doesn't talk very much but she is good at communicating what she wants.
She can say 'ma-ma' and 'hi' and occasionally 'da-da'
She will make kissing noises or put her pointer finger to her mouth if she wants a drink. She will stand in front of her high chair and try to climb in if she's hungry, or just stand in front of the fridge or pantry. She will wave her arms across each other to say "all done" when she wants to get down from her high chair. She can also wave hello and goodbye.

She loves to hand me her blanket and then turn around like she's going to walk away. But she will stand there and wait for me to wrap the blanket around her shoulders and snuggle her.

Some of her favorite foods at this age:
Soy yogurt and soymilk
applesauce
nutri-grain bars
rice
corn, peas, carrots, beets
oatmeal
fruit leather
pizza (with no cheese)
chicken
graham crackers
dum-dum suckers
any type of cereal
pancakes
oatmeal-raisin granola bars


Some favorite games and toys at this age:
*'ride a little horsy' (being bounced on our knees)
*climbing, climbing, climbing. (did I mention climbing)
*riding slides and swings
*her pop up toy where you pull a switch, push a button, etc and a sesame street character pops up.
*ball popper toy (blowing air 'pops' balls up through a hole)
*blocks
*magnets
*climbing into our garden in the backyard and digging in the dirt


I know I'll think of a dozen other things once I end this post, but I better stop so I can start working on updates for Christian and Declan too.
Hopefully I'll finish those soon!! :)