mason writing

besides being a little crooked, i think mason did a really great job writing his letters and numbers. he did end up writing most of the alphabet before moving on to the numbers. this is the first time he has sat down and written this much (at least that i am aware of) and i was pretty impressed with the results. love.

i have some video of him 'reading' from a few weeks ago but i haven't been able to post videos. i will try again some time but he is getting really close to actual reading. i think it has helped that madelyn works with him for fun. he is much, much more interested in reading on his own than madelyn was (or is) so i am going to try and be more intentional about working with him at home. he loves that he can 'read' and write on his own! love.

 

dance lessons

we signed madelyn up for dance lessons at a local community center. she has been asking to dance again and i wanted something low-key since i don't think she is going to be a life-long dancer (assuming she is going to be tall like matt and me). this class is perfect. it is an hour ballet/jazz combo class, she can wear whatever she likes (her last two studios have had very strict rules about what they girls could wear - even what colors), they have a story, there are only four girls, the teacher is very, very sweet and there is a little show at the end of the session (without costumes to buy - they just try to coordinate). the only down-side is that class is from 4-5 and madelyn doesn't get home until 3:40. it is a frantic race to get her changed and everyone in the car to get there on time. but we make it and the boys have a big open room where they can run and play while she has class (there is another boy who is almost two that they play with). matt and i have discussed making dance night a 'cereal dinner' night because it is hard to get everyone home and dinner ready (i have been doing crock-pot meals but it is still a little crazy to get everything on the table while nursing manning and letting madelyn unpack from school).

best part? madelyn loves it and is having a wonderful time. love.

 

spider-man puppet

mason asked to make puppets. i made a snowman and mason made spider-man by his own design. i asked if he wanted my help and he told me, "no". obviously he was just fine without me. love.

 

bat plane

mason made a black paper airplane with me today and decided it that it was the "bat plane" so we wrote "mason" on one wing and "batman" on the other (he did a great job of spelling out "batman" as i sounded it out for him!). he was having it launch like a rocket ship and got it on top of the fan. at first he was pretty bummed because the fan is so high up, but i showed him that he could just turn the fan on and the plane would 'fly' back down to him.

and that was all it took - he had a new game! he was actually able to land the plane on top of the fan several times (try not to notice the thick dust on the fan when you look at the pictures - i will get to it sometime).

that paper airplane provided a whole afternoon of fun and adventures for our biggest superhero. love.

 

manning

manning isn't crawling quite yet but he is getting up on all fours and rocking frequently. i did go back and look at when mason started crawling and it wasn't until march, so he still has a few months before i will think of him as 'late'. he is much more interested in moving than mason was so i don't expect him to be that much longer. love.

 

tuesday tip - shopping with kids (part 1 of 4)

since most of the time i am running errands with the kids - groceries, birthday presents, post office, etc. - i thought i would do a short series on tips for a happy shopping experience.

shopping with kids - planning

planning, planning, planning. even if you are not a planner, you have to plan. i write out the list of stores we are going to and what we need to buy at each on a single sheet of paper. for the grocery store, i put my coupons in the order of the items as we work our way around the store. momentum is key when shopping with the littles. if you have to stop and think once in the store, you are a goner and much more likely to end up with a meltdown (yours or theirs). i find that the momentum also makes it harder for them to touch everything because there is less time to look around.

next week i will share "at the store" tip(s). and the other two are going to be "shopping with more than one" and "loading up". send me any questions you have about shopping with littles and i will try to get them answered.

what is your best 'pre-game' tip for shopping errands?

love.

family jobs

we all have 'jobs' in our family. my jobs are laundry, cooking and cleaning (in summary), matt's jobs are garbage and yard and the kids are responsible for their rooms, toys and clothes (getting them to the laundry room is their job). we haven't planned on giving an allowance because we don't feel they should be paid for things they should do anyway as responsible people. but the idea of giving them ways to earn money seemed necessary for other life lessons - saving, spending, giving.

i came across a job magnet board on pintrest (really, i don't spend much time on the site, but i do browse while nursing at night from time to time). it had odd jobs and what the parents were willing to pay for them; things like "wipe upstairs baseboards - $0.50. i had shown matt and we had discussed it briefly but not with any great detail or timeline for implementation. madelyn and i were talking about it this weekend because she was saying that she wasn't sure how she could get some money.

she liked the idea. a lot. so much that she has asked about it every day! matt and i did discuss it a little more after i told him about my discussion with madelyn and we decided that the regular 'jobs' had to be done before they could do any paid jobs. but again, didn't discuss what we would pay and what the jobs would be.

today i decided to let madelyn earn some money when she came home talking about what she could do. first she cleaned up all of the toys she had been using. then i offered $0.05 for cleaning up manning's toys (since he can't clean up on his own yet). next was $0.05 for assembling all of the puzzles maddux had dumped all over. still wanting more (well, she wanted to clean the toilets but that had been done recently and didn't need a retouch), i told her that she could clean the windows in the dining room. (she had to wipe down the counters and mirror in her bathroom first after i called matt to see if that was a 'job' for her or something extra.) she got some help from her brothers (although they could not get paid since they had not cleaned up toys first). it took her about 30 minutes, but she cleaned every window of every fingerprint and dried food spot. i was so proud of her and she was pretty proud of herself. for this job she got $0.10. she would have kept going if it hadn't been dinner time.

we will be 'formalizing' this system and posting extra paid jobs for them to choose from very soon.

she was so excited for her $0.20 and said that she might bring some of it to school for a change drive to benefit the children's hospital. she said that she was going to bring one paper and two metal money from her piggy bank. sweet girl. love.

 

mason's half birthday

mason is always excited to be the 'snack friend', but today was extra special that he was going to bring a 'birthday snack'! they let the summer birthday's celebrate "half birthdays". i don't remember the kids getting to do this last year, so it might just be something the 3-year-old class does. since mason won't get to celebrate his birthday at school very often, i wanted to do something 'special'. i let him pick from a few choices and he went with mini-s'more cakes. i had to triple the recipe to make sure that there would be enough for his whole class. doubling or tripling a recipe that i have never made before makes me pretty nervous because i would hate to ruin so many supplies if it didn't come out. thankfully, this came out delicious! i would make a few changes next time, but we will make some version of this again. the cake part was amazing!!

the tiered cakes turned out a little messier than i was expecting, but they set up to be a little firmer by morning (although the cake dried out a little) and not nearly as messy. the teacher was excited to see them because they had marshmallows and the letter of the week is "m".

our kids were just excited that there were extra...

we love our half-birthday boy! love.

 

cereal dinner

looking for an inexpensive, quick dinner? try "cereal dinner"! much like our beloved "snack dinner", "cereal dinner" was a hit.

we have lots of open boxes of cereal in the pantry at any given time - maybe 4 for breakfast, one for snacking and another 4 for cooking and treats. for our "cereal dinner" we let the kids eat whatever they wanted. we also had some honeydew mellon so that there was a fresh element.

the picture is funny because maddux was making a different pose and then looked at madelyn and tried to mimic her. so cute. love.

 

bowling party

one of madelyn's classmates had his birthday party at a local bowling alley today. since it was a public place with a lot of kids, we thought that it was best that i stay. madelyn didn't need me to but seemed happy to have me there. she was also pretty excited to be bowling again. i think she was most excited about doing something special that her brothers didn't get to though.

she was really excited to see two of her very good girl friends.

i wanted to take more pictures - like the look on madelyn's face when she rolled her spares - but there were no parents taking pictures! not even the birthday boy's parents. so i didn't want to be the crazed parent hovering at the party and taking pictures - again. :)

she had a good time and i was able to meet most of her classmates (which did help explain the note from her teacher about kids not listening in class this week) and some of their parents. love.

 

like sister, like brother

maddux' face had a rough day yesterday. at lunch he hurried to the table and tripped which bloodied his lip (and hurt). then at dinner he hurried to the table and slammed the other side of his face! yesterday it was purple/blue immediately, but today it looked more like purple eyeshadow.

you can't see the bruising in this picture but you can see his eye color very well.

madelyn would be so proud. love.

 

still not through

this picture shows much better how far down the tooth is and it is still not through the gum! when i saw it this morning and how far down it was, i thought that it had come through at last. matt can't even look at it because it seems painful. it doesn't seem to bother manning in the slightest. i have just never seen anything like it... love.

 

little buddies

these two were just cracking up rolling around on the floor and kicking their legs with each other while i was making dinner. i really should have taken a video. these two just love each other. love.

 

the tooth that wouldn't come

this picture took a few tries - he kept laughing and grabbing my hands which made the picture blurry. the tooth on the left the his first top tooth and the one you can see to the right is the left middle tooth. that thing will not break through the gum! it is even visible when he just smiles because the tooth has come down below his 'gum line' but the actual gum covering it has not broken yet! you can not feel the tooth at all. of all the kids, i have never seen a tooth come in this far and still not be able to be felt. it has to be any minute now that it is going to break all the way through, right? i mean, how far can gums stretch? love.

 

daddy's alma mater

we couldn't resist getting mason this ku shirt for christmas. even though it means nothing to him (other than the picture he saw of papa with the jayhawk mascot at a basketball game), it is one of matt's alma maters. (is that the correct plural?) and how cute is he? love.

 

the baby carrier

maddux loves to help care for the babies while madelyn is at school. today he came up with a new way to carry a baby with him. they must go to the same hairstylist...

maddux is a very caring kid and is growing in obedience daily. we love him so. love.

 

boys with blocks

today was bitterly cold. i mean 'bitterly' - it was 7 degrees without windchill! it has been so long, that i forgot what it was like. after dropping everyone off at their schools, the last two boys and i headed off to the mall for some walking (have i mentioned that i am a "mall walker"? seriously.). there is no good way to load a double stroller in temperatures that cold! manning was not a fan...

to make it up to him, i let him check out some 'new' toys in the basement. he was more than a little excited about it.

i also let him play with the stacking rings. to all of our surprise, especially maddux, he put one back on in a single try! maddux yelled, "he did it!"

mason was building some pretty awesome towers to knock down. somehow, i ended up being the one rebuilding them over and over. and over and over. so that mason could throw a ball at it to knock it down.

he had to stand on his tippy-toes to look over his 'tower'.

and then we ran and ran all over. running laps around the house has become a regular after dinner activity. they have to burn off that extra energy somehow... love.

he had to stand on his tippy-toes to look over his 'tower'.

 

tuesday tip - competitive vegetables

eat your veggies
eating vegetables brings out some healthy competition around here! i put a bowl of veggies in the middle of the table while i am plating dinner (or lunch). the kids dive right in! i don't mind them filling up on veggies so i don't care how much they eat and there must be some level of peer pressure because they will all eat things that they wouldn't even try if they had them on their own plates. last week i boiled some edamame in salt water and put them on the table warm. the kids could not eat them fast enough! they were eating them before even trying their "round fish sticks" (aka "salmon cakes") and they love fish. they compete like they won't get enough if they don't eat the vegetables first. (i do think that it might have helped a little that they could 'squeeze' them out of the pods - that was really fun.)

we don't always eat veggies this way, but we do eat a lot of raw veggies this way - carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, celery and edamame. we also do this with fruits, but it is more for my convenience then trying to convince the kids to eat them.

i would love to know if this works for your kids too or if ours are just extra competitive - leave a comment. or let me know what your best veggie eating trick might be at your house. love.

three men in a tub

and it went great! i am so excited that we can consolidate some of the bathing again! all three boys were pretty pleased with the arrangement. we only ran into trouble when maddux tried to help me rinse manning's hair, but manning didn't mind which made it harder to explain that it wasn't a good idea. bye-bye baby tub! we never knew where to store you. love.

i got it!

manning was pretty pleased with himself when he got a hold of that puff he was chasing around on his highchair tray. he was actually focusing on it as if studying it but he kept turning to me when the camera would get ready to flash.

i still got some cute ones though. love.

homemade play-dough

today's 'super special surprise' was homemade play-dough. this was a first for all of us and i was only going to make one batch and see how it went, but the kids (read: madelyn) demanded one for each of them. i had just enough supplies to make it happen. the crazy part was that i made all three batches at the exact same time and the consistencies were wildly different! i had to add at least an extra cup of flour to mason's batch! mason had chosen red, but it came out more pink than madelyn's pink. maddux wanted pink too but we talked him into purple instead.

they really just had fun squishing it and got it out off and on all day. madelyn made a nativity set. now, you need to use your imagination but the three lumps in the middle are the wise men on a camel, to the left are sheep, the right is a cow and the stable is in the middle back.

from above you can see baby jesus in the middle and mary and joseph.

of course the nativity is a very popular topic around here and we are doing a bible study on luke so the passion has been renewed.
we should have made playdough a long time ago! love.

"big hug"

i thought that this needed a post. maddux is all about the "big hug". i think it is inspired from him discovering guilt when he injures one of us. and then it turned into a love thing (or just a bedtime stall tactic). i had him recreate it for the picture but he was making a game of not letting me get a picture and it is actually much cuter in real life. madelyn likes to say that he is "squeezing her heart out" with his "big hug".

recently he has added "big kiss" to the rotation. i don't think it is very different from his normal kiss - although there does seem to be more slobber...

there was a lot of love here today. and boy was i thankful for that since no one had school and matt had a meeting after work. love.

manning at 7 months

manning is a busy little guy. you almost can't hold him because he never stops moving and talking. it is surprising that he isn't crawling yet because he is so busy all of the time. he seems to have mason's contentment about being where he is when on the floor. i don't think he will be much longer though. he gets around when he wants to with a sort of army crawl or inch-worm up and down.

he isn't small. tall like the rest of the kids, manning is also the chunkiest! although, i think he is thinning out a little. he eats a lot (just like the rest of them) to the point we will cut him off because we can't imagine there is physically any more room and we expect it to just start coming back up any minute. especially with yogurt. he loves, loves yogurt. he even gets excited when we mention it. i have started making his yogurt and it is working out great. i think i am going to order another set of jars and see if i can make flavored yogurt that the others will eat. it has been pretty easy. so now i can make 100% of his food, not that i do, but i could. things like peas are more work to make than they yield or there are foods that aren't in season so i buy some foods so that i don't make myself crazy.

he is wearing 9 and 12 month clothes and 18 month sleepers. manning is in a size 4 diaper. i think he should be in these for a little while. well, at least longer than the other sizes.

it is hard to believe that he is closer to one than a newborn now. although, i am excited to think that in about 5 months i will be done with nursing - forever!! i don't mind nursing, but i am completely done with nursing bras and having to wear 'easy access' clothes. how i long to wear whatever i feel like without a thought about how i am going to be able to nurse. it is a blessing that i have been able to nurse everyone to one year and i have been very grateful for (almost) every minute.

manning babbles almost all of the time. when we went to the library last week, the ladies were just oohing and ahhing over him. and he was eating it up just chatting and laughing away for them.

he is a thumbsucker and has lost some of his interest in holding fabrics. he does hold the top edge of his crib sheet sometimes though while sucking his thumb.

he loves his brothers and sister. he laughs at them regularly and can't seem to wait to see what they are going to do next. he has started to crack up when they run which the other two boys did too (madelyn might have but she didn't have an older sibling running in front of the stroller ever).

he is now riding in the umbrella stroller (i always love this change from the carrier and bigger strollers) and we are going to change up the carseats in a few weeks. he will still be rear facing just in a 'big kid' seat - the one maddux is now in.

he sleeps 11-12 hours a night and takes about a 3 hour nap each afternoon. he is starting to toy with dropping his morning nap. if we are out and about he doesn't always fall asleep and does fine until after lunch when i put him down for his afternoon nap (he will go down a little earlier than normal). if we are home he generally takes the morning nap and it can range from 40 minutes to 2 hours. with the sleeping changes, he can have one or two 'snacks' each day too. some days it feels like i feed him every minute he is awake! i am trying to introduce 'puffs' so that he can start feeding himself a little. this kid has no patience when he is eating. he wants it shoveled in as fast as we can go. he starts to cry if we take a bite of our own food before he is done eating his!

overall, he is just a joy. and we are happy to have him. love.

(i took these pictures because he had gotten the magna-doodle over to his blanket and actually did the 'drawing' you can see.)

 

tooth number five

manning got his fifth tooth today, what's funny is that now he is missing his two front teeth like madelyn! but he is going to get his sooner than she will. i can see one clearly but can't feel it yet. love.

nap time

i have been working on a project all week that i finished up last night (and very early this morning in true procrastination style). being very tired, i had plans for a nap. madelyn didn't have school today, but mason did. she was pretty sad that he was at school. madelyn and maddux watched some cartoons and played while i had a meeting during manning's morning nap.

once we picked mason up from school we headed to the library. my thought was to get them a movie to watch while i napped in the afternoon. but it worked out even better! i got manning down for his afternoon nap and then maddux crawled into bed with me for a nap.

madelyn and mason played very nicely while i napped for a bit making these colorful snowmen!

we had picked up the snowman craft at the library (they always have a color-sheet style craft for the kids to do or take). i was most impressed that madelyn came up with using the hole-punch to make the falling snow! i thought it was quite creative and i was thrilled with how well they did cutting and gluing together (there is normally some fight over who gets which scissors). they were pretty proud of themselves too...

...and then they just got silly!

we had a pretty great day! it is not often that i can get a nap when i really need one and i really needed one today! love.

 

boy day

after madelyn missed the bus this morning (i wasn't watching the clock like i should have been) and loading everyone up to drop her off, the boys and i have spent the morning just playing. last night's mops speaker was a self-made photographer (meaning she has little to no formal training but has some God-given talent and passion that she has built into a business) and she gave us some tips for photographing our children at home. i was really just playing around because i don't feel like i have enough pictures of mason and manning.

manning has two little 'wings' where his hair flips out next to his ears on both sides of his head.

this isn't great of manning, but shows mason's new picture face perfectly. he really, really wants to make sure that his eyes are open!

and another new favorite picture pose - the silly face.

i liked this one of all three boys with 'silly faces'. it also used her tip about getting heads in a 'triangle' instead of 'stacked' on each other (i.e. holding a kid on your lap and it looking like your head is sitting on top of theirs)

and they came upstairs when i went to put manning down for his nap and i thought they could try building some new things with mason's legos. it turned into mommy trying to help both of them at once, but we still had fun. and a few more silly faces.

after a while we got hungry and i made lunch. of course seeing manning eat his fresh homemade yogurt made maddux want some yogurt with his lunch. (yes, my yogurt maker came and i am thrilled with the first batch! i am already planning on getting a second set of jars so that i can keep whole milk and skim milk options in the fridge at all times.) one of the tips she gave us was to take pictures of 'who they are' at each phase. maddux was shoveling in his yogurt with his head almost in the bowl and that is 'who he is' right now so i went to get my camera. i used two of her tips, getting close up and calling their name and snapping without a 'pose' or smile.

he really likes having his picture taken and did the yogurt eating 'pose' several more times for me. notice how he switches yogurts as he finishes off the peach yogurt mason decided he didn't like.

and maddux wanted pictures of his closed eyes. he would ask me to take it, squint up his eyes and then ask to see the picture. i did catch him after the squint too.

manning got into his 'cross-armed' pose while he was eating lunch. he does it a lot so i don't really think anything of it, but the photographer at jcp was pretty excited when he did it during the photoshot and had to take a picture. since she was so excited, i thought i should take a picture of it.

and then the last tip (which she recommends for every subject), take a picture from above. it makes everyone look thinner (she was speaking to the moms here) and she said it always makes kids look cute and is one of the easiest shots to have them cooperate on. so here is manning from above.

and now back to legos with the boys. love.