The Cars attend Bible Study Fellowship

For those of you who have seen Sam in action, you know that his imagination is pretty big. He takes his toys and makes them be anything or anybody. His construction vehicles are used to portray the characters from the movie Monsters Inc. His animals from his Hermie set are used to be the characters from A Bug's Life. His Shrek characters become Rescue Heroes.

Last Wednesday after Bible Study Fellowship, Sam set up his Cars to be the people in his Bible Study class. Lizzie and Sally (the black and blue cars) are his teachers, Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Register (forgive me, I can't remember who was representing who in this setup). Whoever Lizzie was was telling the Bible story, so Sam needed Dad's bible (which is usually out in the living room) and placed it right next to Lizzie so she could tell the story. (For those of you not familiar with BSF, one of the children's responsibilities is to take the Holy Bible from the table in the room - verrry carefully, and give it to the teacher giving the bible story. They also march at the beginning and say the pledge of allegience, so we had to get our flag in the set up too.) Sam never ceases to amaze us with his imagination.

Now if only he could start telling his own stories, instead of asking us to make them up. I figure if I have to make up stories (there are only so many different stories you can make up about going to Target, going to the park, going to Walmart, going to Bible Study,... before you start drawing a story blank.) then I should make them worthwhile. So now we agree on a set number of stories I have to tell. Sam counts out the number with his fingers. So after I finish each story, I ask how many stories I have told, and how many I have left to tell. So by the time he gets to preschool, he should be able to do any addition or subtraction problem as long as the numbers are under 5. Sneaky eh!

Sam has consistently amazed us with his love for his brother. We read and hear horror stories about how jealous the older child became when the new baby came home. Sam loves holding Ben's hand, getting him toys, and generally wants Ben to be wherever he is. We are so thankful, and try to praise Sam every time we catch him being nice and kind to Ben, and make a big deal out of it. Hopefully it will always be this way, and they will grow up being the best of friends. Afterall, according to Sam, they will be getting bunk beds soon.

Ben is full fledged into the drooling stage of his life. I keep looking for signs of teeth, but can't really get a good look.

On The Road Again

My excuse for not exercising (this is Kristin) was that I couldn't go on a walk with both boys. We had fun trying out the various double strollers at Babies R Us, Sam especially enjoyed testing them out. The cheaper model was only up to 35 pounds per child - so that basically excluded Sam. We looked at a double jogger that would hold up to 50 pounds per child, but was $180. We kept looking and found this model at Wally World. We were able to test it in the store by driving it around the baby area. The back seat had a little step and footrest for Sam, and Ben actually sat up ok in the front seat, so we bought it. The instructions actually say the heaviest child should ride in front - I'm sure for weight balance, but the back seat is much roomier for the older child, so not sure how that is supposed to work. I went for an hour walk on Monday, down by the river on the bike path. It has a couple of nice hills, which weren't an issue until the trip back, and suddenly the 40 pound stroller and the 50ish pounds of children made the last hill quite a doosey. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.... Hopefully soon there will be more days soon where we can get out again --- for exercise sake, of course!

If I Only Had A Green Nose

Last week, Sam's movie choice was called If I Only Had A Green Nose. It is an animated movie about a town visited by Willie With It, who cons the town out of money. His technique this trip was to charge the townsfolk to paint their nose, and it becomes a status mark. Punchinello and his 2 friends refuse to have their nose painted just to fit in with the crowd, until a cute girl tells him that all the cool people have their noses painted green. So Punch caves in and gets his nose painted green to fit in because "everyone else is doing it." Of course, as soon as he gets his nose painted, the "in" color gets changed to pink, then to blue, then to orange..... you can see where this is going. Finally, Punchinello has to go back to his "maker" (the characters are all wooden people) to get the layers of paint sandpapered off, so he can be normal again. The idea of the story is to show the silly things people do to be just like everyone else. I don't think I did a good job of explaining the story, but anyway, Sam obviously didn't get the point of the story because he insisted that I paint his nose green.

Is it summer yet?

One day last week, when the sun was out, and it is kind of warm out, Sam wanted to play in the yellow sprinkler. He probably ran through it, around it, and drank the water from it for over an hour. Long enough to make a nice mud puddle from all the water. Sam often asks if the pool is open yet. And I can now tell him, it's just about one month away from the opening of the pool.

Sorry for not adding any pictures lately. But now that I have a few minutes, I'll try to add more. Sam spent 30 minutes picking "slivers" (otherwise known to the rest of the world as bark) from the sycamore tree in the backyard the other night. And Ben enjoyed a short nap on Dad. Ben is doing so well sleeping, and much better on not crying/screaming while in the car seat. He's growing up!

Happy Easter.

We had fun coloring eggs last night, and then having an egg hunt today. We also posed for a family picture, so now we can include Ben in the family Blog picture.

My Swimming Boys

We spent this weekend in Hutchinson at the Grand Prairie Hotel which houses the Kansas Splashdown indoor water park. Sam was like a fish and spent almost every free minute in the pools. Ben wasn't too excited on Saturday afternoon, but did seem to enjoy lounging the the water Sunday morning. I think it was because Sunday morning at 8:30 am was much quieter than Saturday afternoon at 3:00pm. There are several fun things to do, but Sam's favorite was the Space Shuttle.

Here are a few shots of the different places to play. The one with the rocket ships had the "zero" entry, and was 18" deep at the deepest part. The others show the slides and the "lazy river."

Here are 2 last pictures from the trip. Sam was trying on Doug's shoes which I thought was pretty cute. The last picture is of the boys sleeping beside each other. Our room had a king size bed, so Doug and I were the bookends to make sure no one fell out of bed. We each had plenty of sleeping space!

ZZZZZZZ!

It has been a good week with Ben. A little less crying in the car, and now sleeping in his own "big boy" bed. One day last week he ate at 8:45pm and I was going to try to feed him once more before we went to bed (to avoid the possibility of having to feed him twice in the night). But Doug had laid him asleep in his crib, and he looked so sound asleep I decided to let him sleep, and push my luck with having to get up a couple times. Around 5:30am I decided to wake him up to feed him, even though I was curious to see how much longer he would have slept before waking. I took the padding off one side of the crib because he was burying his face in it. So instead, his arm just fell out of the side of the crib. Oh yes, incase any of you are worried that he is supposed to be sleeping on his back...About a month ago we realized that he was sleeping better during his naps on his stomach, so we took the plunge and while he was still sleeping in the bassinet by the side of our bed, we put him to sleep on his stomach. (We did make sure the Pediatrician was ok with this first. I'm not sure that he was fully ok with it, but didn't voice his opposition loud enough to convince me not to try it.)