My baby

Josie is enjoying preschool. She seems to do fine there.

However, is it selfish of me to love the fact that most days so far she has run out enthusiastically to give me a hug and tell me "I missed you mommy."

More Evidence that God Knows....

Our phone line has been without dial tone since we had a storm. We called and it was not going to be guaranteed to be fixed until September 1st. It also meant that we have had patchy Internet and no one could call us.

I did not expect the phone company to work on the weekends, but when we got home from church the guy in the phone truck was just getting ready to pull off. He said that we had a downed line and that it should be fixed.
Sure enough there was a dial tone on the phone and the Internet seems to be back up.

Then, this afternoon (who knew they would work on Sundays also) the person who coordinates the Speech & Hearing Therapy called (on the land line) to setup Andy's Speech Therapy.

I would not have gotten the call had the phone line not been fixed. I'm excited that my chatter box will be understandable to more people!

The world according to Josie

This may become a regular feature because Josie is full of "knowledge" about things.

For instance, today we stopped to get gas.
Jim got out of the car to pump the gas and I sat in the car with the kids.
Josie said that she wanted the car on (for the air conditioning for those of you who do not live in the Southern climate).
So I explained to the kids about how gas is flammable and that you could not have the car on. I told them about other things you shouldn't do while pumping gas...things like don't talk on your cell phone, beware of static electricity, etc.

Josie informed us that you could not hold caterpillars while pumping gas.

That's good to know. Next time I am pumping gas I will have to be sure to put my caterpillar down first.

If you haven't seen this....

If you read Cake Wrecks you may have already seen this, but I have to admit that I have enjoyed watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

New(ish) addiction

Jim ordered us the newspaper. I do glance at the comics and I try to glance at the rest of the paper...however the main thing that has held our attention has been the crossword puzzle.

We usually work it together. We do the one in our local paper. We have only had moderate success with some of the ones from the bigger papers. One Friday they have the Washington Post puzzle in the TV insert and the New York Times crossword on Sundays. The Washington Post one is just a bit strange in my mind. It is usually themed and is often not so much about vocabulary as being current on celebrities (which I have oh, so much time to keep up on THAT topic...).

So we usually do pretty well on the local day-to-day one. I am finding out (or perhaps I already knew) a few things about myself and crosswords:

1. I am seriously hampered by my lack of spelling skills.
2. I actually have a reasonably good vocabulary.
3. I have problem solving skills and strategies.

We do not look up answers although I do check the occasional word (usually for spelling...as I said "seriously hampered") in our big dictionary.

Watching and waiting

We are sort of watching to see how the boys do in their new preschool classes.
They are in separate classes this year. Doug is in the 5 day a week 4 year old class and Andy is in the 2 & 3 day 4 year old classes.

There are at least 8 children in Andy's class who go every day and we were assured that they would do different art activities each day. I just want him to be challenged because I know that child....if he gets bored he will start trying things and considering that his is a risk taker and creative....I don't think any of us want that.

Also, last year the boys were together in class and we thought they would do fine apart but you just never know what will come up. We had tried to prepare them ahead of time and then they seemed mostly okay with it. Tonight Doug was upset (and being tired probably added to it). He said that he wanted to be in Andy's class.
When I asked why, his answer was...."Andy has not met my teacher."
So I guess tomorrow Andy will help drop Doug off at class and then we will take him to his own class. Of course their classrooms are on completely the opposite ends of the hallways.

Monday

Took at least five loads of posters out to the trash and filled a trash can with old paperwork.

They were not mine...I am now helping one of my professors sort out a suite of rooms that have been used for a special program at the university. This program has been around for about 15 years...which is plenty of time to accumulate "stuff" that now needs to go.

Jim finished putting in the quarter round on the flooring so I think we are about ready to put actual things back in the laundry room. I will be delighted to get back my washer and dryer because with five people those are essential tools. I'll also be excited to get our tables back so that we are no longer dining by the light of the TV.

All three kids said that preschool was "awesome" today. We had a good start to the school year.

Things that make you go hmmmm....

I was getting Josie ready for bed and she had the hiccups.
I asked where those hiccups came from....



Josie: Sam's Club

(And yes they were big hiccups.)

Trying to get motivated

It is gray and rainy out.
The things that I should probably be doing are not the things that I want to be doing...and thus I have not really done anything yet today.

The kids are enthusiastically playing some sort of strange blend of puppies, police, Star Wars, and I am not sure what else (but it is scaring one of the cats).
I have a meeting with my professor this afternoon to sign my most recent program of study. That is good.
I also would have liked to have had my paper to hand her, but I am sort of stumbling over it so I may choose to just talk to her about it instead.
We also plan to get ready to put down some flooring in the laundry room. It has been ripped up for a year and a half now and I am tired of not being able to put wet laundry on the floor.

After doing a bunch of research (and almost having a heart attack at the price) we ended up with self sticking tiles (on the recommendation of the sales person). So we will see how it goes.
I had looked at rubber flooring (like they put in garages). My thought had been that rubber flooring was water proof and durable, and hey how expensive can it be if people put it in their garages.
Well...what I saw online looked like it was about $15 for a cartoon of 20 tiles. The sales person struggled with the computer but she thought it was that price too.
After a long wait and a third sales person it turned out that it was $15 a tile....that's a big difference. Hence I almost had a heart attack.
So, we headed for the self-stick tile. The plan is today to clear the room and then put in the floor tomorrow.

Random thoughts for the day

Doug- already plays the air guitar.....

Andy- grumpiest before he falls asleep in the car

Josie- when asked what her favorite thing about today was? She said "Jesus loves me."

God works in mysterious ways

This is a story about the mysterious ways that God works.
I believe I have mentioned that we still have boxes and such in our workroom downstairs. They are there from when we moved in about a year and a half a ago. Most of the boxes left are boxes that need to be gone through. Many of them have things from my classroom, and many of those are files of papers that I didn't use a whole lot anyway but I need to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
I wasn't really finding time to go through much of it and clean it out. So....enter Dodge.

I think I mentioned in the Spring that Jim ended up bringing home a foundling cat who had crawled up in his truck. She ended up living and moving in with us and is now named Dodge.

It also turns out that she has the feline version of HIV. Our other cats do not have this.
So we do not want to turn her out to possibly infect the neighborhood(plus we wouldn't feel right about abandoning a cat anyway) and we have to keep her separate from our other cats. So she lives in our workroom.

She was gaining too much weight with the food just out, so we give her some food for breakfast and then again for dinner.

This actually means that we have to go in to see her every day and give her a bit of love (she is a very friendly cat who is playful and the kids adore her).
So while I am visiting Dodge and giving her some companionship I have started sorting boxes.

And I have now made a noticeable dent in what is left down there. There is more to go, but a little bit at a time I am lightening our load with the help of Dodge.

Why mothers of twin boys must have strong hearts

We got an earth ball for Christmas. It has stayed in the package waiting for the right time to blow it up.
I finally inflated it and what do Doug & Andy do?

One stood at the far end of the playroom.
The other stood at the bottom of the steps holding the ball.

The one at the bottom of the steps would lob the ball as hard as he could toward the middle of the room.
They both would take off running at the ball and would end up bouncing off each other with the ball in between.

Then repeat.

I am still breathing.

Imagination

Andy is a force of something.
The child will talk your ear off.
He also will manage to get his brother and sister upset because he is pretty forceful about imposing his view of how things are going imaginatively.
Case in point: We're driving. Andy is playing (with sound effects) Star Wars.
Doug is playing along (nothing like hearing "Stay on target...Stay on target" coming from the back seat).
Andy decides that Doug did the wrong thing (I think Doug was Anakin) and is now bad and Andy claims to have shot down Doug's ship.
Despite parents claiming that they are pretending and that Doug can pretend something different if he doesn't like what Andy says...we end up listening to wailing for five minutes because Doug is upset that Andy has shot down his ship and that Andy will not change that he has shot down Doug's ship.

Noodle Boy

Andy has embraced his persona....he has even started telling other people his title. He is "Noodle Boy"

It doesn't mater what kind of noodle it is...he will eat it. His favorite is mac & cheese, but Ramen is good, spaghetti, lasagna, etc. are also fine. I made him very happy on the way back from our trip by splitting the Italian Sampler from Olive Garden with him (they don't have a noodle sampler for kids). He was introduced to a new noodle on Friday night. Doug told Jim he wanted chicken for dinner and Andy said noodles. So that got translated into stir fry with chicken and chow mien noodles. The child would eat noodles at every meal if I would allow it.

Why are body noises funny

We were driving along and Doug made a sound that was obviously intended to be a fake burp. I gave him a hard time about it so of course for the last several days he has been running around making fake (not very realistic) burping sounds.

Andy thinks it is hilarious.

Sleeping Teams

One of the probably strangest things to come out of our trip was the idea of "sleeping teams".
The first night we started with all of the children in one hotel bed and Jim and me in the other. Shortly after the lights went out Josie switched beds to be between mommy and daddy.

The second night we started with all three children in one bed and Jim and me in the other. Some time around 2am Doug had something upsetting him and I actually brought him to our bed.

The third night about the time I finished saying "Josie stay in your own space" since Doug and Andy were complaining...I felt Josie pushing in between Jim and I. Then Doug swapped beds and Jim went to sleep with Andy where there was more room and suddenly we had sleeping teams.

Each night the idea was that each bed would get points so that it was a contest. The bed with the first person to fall asleep would get points. The bed with the person who slept the longest in the morning would get points. Did we actually keep points? No...but it all sounds good to 4 year olds.

Now that we are home the kids are complaining that they want to be on sleeping teams again. Last night we tried to convince Doug and Andy that they had moved up to the more challenging "synchronized sleeping" competition where they were each in their own bed.

Update (to get you up-to-date)

We went on a trip to visit Jim's sister and her family. The kids did pretty well in the car (having movies helps) but we did discover that Doug does much better sitting next to Josie than Andy does (or perhaps Josie does much better sitting next to Doug...it is a two way street).

The kids had a good time playing with their cousin Sam. Nana and Pop came at the same time so it was nice to have so many people together. We had fun visiting. We went swimming while we were there. We went to an indoor play place with lots of bouncy toys. We played at a playground.

Ironically, one of the most popular things with my children was the hotel rooms. We had a hotel room on the way there and the way back, and we stayed in an extended stay place while we were there. Josie kept saying that it was "like a house" and Andy just wanted everyone to come see our hotel room. We drove until we could drive no more on the way back so the two chain hotels were full at the exit we got off at. We ended up in a suite at a local place that was "unique" but Doug thought it was beautiful. I'm not quite sure on the era but it had to be 1960's to 1970's as it was completely wood paneling walls, had a large walk-in-closet, and a kitchen area that had saloon doors at the entrance.

Phrases that fill my days

Here are some of the things my children constantly say:

• What? (mostly Andy and Josie)
• Why? (all three use this...and I do occasionally fall into the "because I said so" answer)
• I can't wait for my own coffee (Josie)
• I'm doing my work (Andy)
• You do it for me mom (Andy & Doug)
• I do it MYSELF! (Josie & Andy)
• I want to watch TV (Doug & Josie)

Development

Hmmm...I do not know that it is a good developmental milestone that I was trying to get some information out of Doug tonight and Andy was telling him not to say anything while mom was in the room.

My babies are growing up and I don't know that they are so innocent anymore....

Beware of the Inja!

We watched something that had ninja's in it (Don't worry...it was a humorous thing not scary). So Andy went running back to his room and came out with a pair of pants on his head and an upside-down shirt pulled over his legs and torso.
He spent the next hour running around claiming that he was "An Inja!"

Did I think to pull out my camera?
Yes...about two seconds before he decided to take off his costume.

Things that make me happy!

Here is a randomly ordered list of things that make me happy:

• My family
• The smell of my almond scented shampoo
• Listening to funny podcasts
• Good stories (movies or books)
• Warm chocolate (both smelling it and eating it)
• Seeing that I have accomplished things
• When my children give me a full body hug
• Laughing & being silly with friends and family
• When my children play with my hair while I am carrying them or they are sitting on my lap
• Remembering that in all things there is hope (it sometimes just takes some thinking outside the box).

Art

Every so often Andy goes on an art binge. He will find the art supplies and just want to use them. It is helpful to have a bunch of scrap paper on hand because he will tend towards a few marks on a sheet of paper and he's done and moving on to the next one.
This afternoon it was the watercolors. Of course when he wants to do it then so do the other children. This turned out to be a good thing as there was a thunder storm this afternoon and with all of the lightening and clouds the satellite TV was (and is) having issues (first difficulty getting reception during the storm, then a pinkish picture after the storm, and Jim is now trouble-shooting sound issues with customer service).
Anyway, I had a delightful time water coloring with them. Josie was particularly content painting for quite awhile. She happily filled up several papers with small blobs of color that made no particular picture. Doug actually produced two humanoid "monsters" with bodies and legs and eyes. Andy...it was hard to tell what he was making. It had something to do with his "flower business" and it also involved gluing strips of paper on to the edges of his paper.