Sunday, January 27, 2013

Big kid

Can anyone tell me where my little chubby toddler went?  The little tank who slept with a hundred stuffed animals and wore a fireman's hat every waking hour?  Anyone seen him lately?  I swear I turned around one day and found this guy.  This handsome, jeans-wearing, long-legged, Broncos-hat-stealing (from me... not like actual shoplifting) kid helped me exercise the dogs today in a big pasture near our house.  He and I hiked around for a half hour and talked a lot of Star Wars, arrowheads and what dogs like to do in their free time. 
 
I asked him to smile for me and got a smile but also a muscle pose.  Naturally.  Five going on six is not without it's challenges, one of them being that if it's not said by his kindergarten teacher, then it's not fact.  (I guess we are at the point where I just become dumber and dumber each year, until Will's like 25 or something.)  But, he can still be sweet and he's a little sponge when it comes to topics that he's interested in. He's helpful around the house and (most of the time) does his chores willingly because he gets a little allowance. 
This big pasture is a little piece of public land a few miles north of us.  It's become a regular part of our weekend for the dogs, if the wind isn't howling or the temperature is below zero.  The dogs can run and run and run and RUN and come home tired and droopy which is awesome for me.  Both T & T have gained a few winter pounds (hey - who hasn't?) so it's nice to get them some good exercise when I'm too chicken to jog in the snow. 

We have some snow headed our way this week so I'm glad we enjoyed the sunny day while it lasted.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Indoor Soccer

After basketball ended in December, I signed both kids up for indoor soccer.  It's just for eight weeks, Saturday mornings, and it gets a few of us running around a gym for a little while.  Both kids are lukewarm about the gang, much to my surprise given both of their enjoyment of kicking things.  At their second week of games on Saturday, they both showed a little more interest.  Reina won't play without one of us holding her hand the entire time.   
She's shy, but we know it's all an act. 


I was pretty sure that Glenn was going to yank her shoulder out of the socket in his enthusiasm to get her to the ball.  The picture is shaky because I was giggling too hard.  Run Reina run! 

Reina's interest peaks at this point in the game because it's snack time! 

Will was more interested this week but he also would periodically stop mid-game to do ninja chops or boxing fists. Naturally.

Reina refused to any of the UWyo shirts handed down from her brother so we improvised. 
We had a nice three-day weekend.  The four of us went to the Cowboy basketball game and watched the Pokes knock off the #15 team in the country.  We had a great time.  Just like last year, the game ran about 5 minutes too long for the kids' attention span, but we made it out of there without any major meltdowns or barfing.  Success. 

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Well, it's technically a dream


Yesterday, Will brought home a book that he had made at school, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday on Monday.  The book talked about how MLK dreamed of freedom for everyone, people working together, treating everyone with respect, etc.  Will did a very nice job of coloring some of the pictures and completing other activities throughout the pages.  I turned to the very last page and found this: 

The lesson here - Will dreams of a world where we all have our own lightsabers and fly through the air battling the Dark Side.  Five year-old boys. 

Friday, January 11, 2013

What are the kids up to? January edition

With the holiday rush finally over, and the craziness of the new year hasn't kicked in yet, I thought I'd take a few minutes and write down what everybody is up to.  We've had such a nice few weeks, with holiday activities, sledding, football and lots and lots of down time.  By the end of Christmas break, I think we were all ready to get out of the house a little bit more but it sure was fun while it lasted. 

Will eased back into the routine of school this week pretty well.  I like his kindergarten teacher a lot.  She and I correspond through email and I feel like she sees him as we do, not a trouble-maker but not angelic either, just somewhere comfortably in-between.  He's coming along with his reading.  He doesn't have a lot of confidence to sound out words on his own but he's getting there.  Instead of kindergarten homework, we have to document that we read to him or with him at least 20 minutes a night.  While we've always read to the kids, it wasn't always 20 minutes.  What seemed like a chore at the beginning of the year has actually turned into one of my favorite parts of the day.  Although, if the Cowboy basketball team is playing, I might try to bargain with Glenn for him to read to both kids that night.  (Dear kids-reading-this-in-the-future:  You were always more important to me than sports, I promise.  But sometimes I just really really really wanted to watch the game.) 

Will has become obsessed with all things Star Wars.  While he hasn't seen every minute of all six movies (some of them are still too scary for a 5-yr old with a tendency to have night terrors), he soaks in as much information as he can.  He now wants to be Obi Wan Kenobe when he grows up.  He memorizes facts about all of the characters and quizzes me on tiny bits of Star Wars folklore.  "Hey mom - Who's Anakin's dad?" I had to Google that one.  Will wants to read Star Wars books, watch the movies obviously, build Star Wars Lego's and sleep in Star Wars jammies. 

He's such a little sponge right now, brain-wise.  Last weekend, he had a playdate at a friend's house.  This friend has parents who are divorced.  When Will came home, we were talking about the playdate and he told me all about the fun things they did (played Lego's! made Cookies!  played outside!) and Will mentioned that he didn't think that his friend had a daddy.  I explained that he did have a daddy but that his daddy lived in a different house.  Then I (probably badly) tried to talk about how some kids have mommies and daddies who live in different places and that they still can see them and platitudes, overly explanatory explanations, blah blah blah.  Will thinks about it for a minute and then looks at Glenn and me and says "So does that mean that *my friend* gets to have two sets of toys?"  We said that he probably does and then steered the conversation in a different direction.  We will also be watching Will closely for attempts to sabotage our sacred union in the hopes of getting even more Lego's.  Hey - the kid does love his Lego's. 

Let's talk about Reina.  She is equal parts endearing and exhausting.  Cute and crazy.  Delightful and deranged.  Okay, not really deranged but you should see her at 7:00 p.m. when she hasn't napped that day.  She's whip-smart and doesn't miss a beat.  She hasn't adjusted well to the going-back-to-school routine.  Tuesday morning she had a tiny papercut on her hand and while I was putting a (completely unnecessary) band-aid on it, she told me, "Well I guess this means that I can't go to school today."  If we let her, everything turns into a negotiation.  How many more bites of food she needs to eat, what she's going to wear, what toy she can take to school.  I'm trying to limit the amount of stuff that's negotiable while also letting her have a voice.  It's tough to find that balance at times.  She so desperately wants to be bigger, but she's also still very much an almost 4-yr old.  Reina loves to snuggle and she's always carrying around an armful of cats, dolls and little plastic accoutrements.  She and Will were playing hide and seek last week and she found an old chupee under the bed. I came into the room to put laundry away and found her sucking away as fast as she could.  It's been almost a year since Bailey ate her pacifier but she picked up right where she left off.  Luckily this time around, she gave it back to me after about 30 seconds and lots of giggles on both sides. 

Glenn and I are having a good month.  We both are busy at work but it's not the crazy busy that was going on before the holidays.  He's turned into (almost) as much of a rabid football fan as I am and was equally bummed about a Wyo basketball loss this week.  I don't know how I feel about that.  On one hand, it's much more fun to have someone else to scream at the tv with but on the other hand, I can barely handle my own emotions when it comes to bonecrushing losses, much less pep someone else up.  The easy solution is to stop getting so emotionally invested in things over which one has absolutely no control.  But nah.  Where's the fun in that? 

So as of Friday, January 11, everybody is healthy.  We've all had our flu shots.  The house is clean.  The weekend stretches out before us in all of it's 48-hour glory.  The dogs are tired.  It snowed today and it's 2.5 degrees out.  The kids are almost in bed.  Not a bad way to end a Friday. 

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Little milestones

The past (almost) six years have been filled with all sorts of milestones, first words, foods, steps, trips, birthdays, Christmases, everything.  Some of the firsts have been infamous... first trip to the ER, first ride down the stairs on the exercise ball, first barfing episode in public.  But Will's BEST first of 2012, besides heading off to Kindergarten, was getting his own library card right after Christmas.  He signed his own name and I'm delighted that this will be his signature on his library card until he's 16.  Or when he loses it, so we'll probably be getting another one within the year, if my track record is any indication.   We've been making weekly trips to the library and he picks out a few books that he's interested in.  This week's selection:  a dinosaur encyclopedia, Dragons! (actual title) and #3 in the Magic Tree House books.  He's not quite reading on his own yet but he's learning new words every day and getting oh so close.  I'm sure this card will help him get there even faster. 


Friday, January 4, 2013

Sledding Adventures

Last weekend, we headed up the road to our favorite sledding slot to get everybody a little fresh air.  It was colder than the last time we sledded, but everybody was bundled up and I remembered jackets this time.  Good times were had by all. 
This might actually be a post-sledding picture. I can't tell if Reina is saying, "Let's go!" or "I'm done!"  She was a trooper and kept her brother until she made the mistake of going down the hill with her mom who got a little nervous about the speed and put her giant feet out to slow the sled down and sprayed snow all over both occupants of the sled and the three-yr old occupant announced at the end of the ride that she was "all done!  I'm all done mom."

Trigger didn't care about the cold, the snow, or hiking back up the hill.  He was happy to run and run and run and run. 

Here's Glenn putting Will's gloves back on.  For the 900th time.

I was worried Tootsie would be mistaken for a coyote.  She has a wild look about her, don't you think? 

Here are Tootsie and Trigger graciously escorting the sled to the bottom of the hill.  If Trigger could speak English, I'm pretty sure he'd be yelling "YEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWWWW" in this picture. 

Hey look - Glenn's helping Will with his gloves again.  901st time. 

Cold, red-cheeked girl.  Even after she declared her done-ness with sledding, she still sat on top of the hill with me and played with her pretend key fob that when you hit one of the buttons, it sounds like a car alarm.  I'm pretty sure I bought that for her so I only have myself to blame.  I love the sounds of nature:  snow falling, wind whistling through the trees and a pretend car alarm going BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

After sledding, we went to a mountain-y lodge for lunch and hot chocolate.  Apparently my camera got wet during the sledding adventure. 

That's better.  Will's cheeks stayed that bright pink color for the rest of the day.  Mother o' the year. 

The kids will do just about anything for a mug of hot chocolate. And as Reina exclaimed "it has that white stuff on top - yeah!!" 

It was so cold this weekend, that we had to throw another dog on the bed... or the sofa.  Reminds me of this - http://www.punchcartoons.com/product_info.php?products_id=3959