Of Monster Trucks And Aspirations

After saving his money for several weeks (and with the help of some V-Day money from Grammy) Jack was finally able to buy the "pink mini van monster truck" he's been wanting.  It cost $9.99, so for a child who usually earns 25 cents a day, and puts away 30% of his earnings for tithing and savings, you can imagine that it's been a long process of working and earning and saving and asking Mom and Dad "when can I buy my pink mini van monster truck?," which he did often.

He has loved the car ever since, but he's confused about its gender.  What do you think?

Yes, it has even comforted him in his sleep a few times.

Last week, the theme in Jack's preschool class was "Jobs."  His teacher told me that he said several times that he wanted to be a monster truck driver.  She took him seriously and they talked about all of the things he would need to learn before he could do that - he would have to know about cars and trucks and engines and work really really hard.  A day or two later he brought home this declaration, so I guess he's determined.

When we talked on his way home from school one day last week, I asked him about what he would like to be when he grows up.  He didn't answer at first, so I made several guesses.  He finally came up with a list of five things he wants to be.  A construction truck driver, a monster truck driver, a soldier, a policeman, and a fireman.  Farmer and cowboy were on the list at some point, but when it came down to it, they didn't make the top 5.  At home that day, he had some trouble deciding which hat to wear when he went outside to play with his friend.

Decisions are the worst.

(...name that movie, children of the 80s...)

Strawberry Birthday

I started asking Eliza a few weeks ago what kind of birthday cake she wanted.  She replied "strawberry."  That word was soon used to describe the entire birthday, though, so we've been referring to this birthday as the Strawberry Birthday.  I wasn't really sure what to do with that, besides have Eliza wear her strawberry outfit and eat strawberry cake, until a little idea dawned on me that morning.  Eliza should get strawberries at every meal!  Do we know how to do birthdays right in this family, or what?!?!  Talk about awesome.

Breakfast - toast with strawberry jam

Lunch - strawberry yogurt

Dinner (not pictured) - fruit salad with strawberries

Dessert - made-from-scratch strawberry cake

So, aside from a few gifts and blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, that was basically how we celebrated Eliza's birthday, haha.  But she didn't care.  She was just excited to get to say that she's 3 and to begin practicing holding up 3 fingers, which is rather difficult.

Jack chose to get Eliza a bouncy ball from the Dollar Spot in Target.

Cat bought her a set of 3 rubber ducks from the Dollar Spot.

(I just like this picture of Jack.  He was rather enthusiastic about the cake.)

Yeah for a fun and simple little birthday celebration for Eliza.

And yeah for a 3-year-old who didn't mind!

Eliza is 3!

Our third baby is now 3.  Wow.  Hard to believe.  This weekend I've been looking back at old blog posts of her baby year and reading our journal entries from when she was born and it just seems like such a long time ago, yet the time has passed so quickly!

Eliza has developed so much personality this year, and is reminding me more and more of her older sister.  She is fiercely independent, yet loves to act like a baby and even be treated like a baby at certain times (such as meal times).  She is headstrong and opinionated, but also has a sweet and thoughtful side.  She doesn't like being pushed around by her older brother and sister, and really wants to be able to keep up with them when they're riding bikes and scooters or playing a game.  

Eliza has started hiding things in order to keep them safe from Cat and Jack.  She has hidden things in her clothing box (a large flat bin that slides under her crib) and in the small space between Cat's dresser and the wall.  Usually, when she hides something, nobody plays with it for a long time, including Eliza.

Eliza recently started drawing shapes and even people.  She enjoys playing with Jack's cars and trucks (and has even expressed envy over some of these toys) yet she is very girly - she loves dancing, the color pink, and wearing skirts and dresses that twirl when she spins.

I've noticed a few eating/drinking quirks lately, too.  Eliza loves cucumbers and apples, pealed.  She only eats sandwiches sans crust.  She happily drinks water from a water bottle or from a cup with a straw, otherwise, she hates drinking water.  When there's something she doesn't really want to eat at dinner, she'll usually eat it anyway if we feed it to her.

Eliza started trying to give up her nap earlier this year, and became almost impossible to get to nap a couple of weeks ago.  I tried everything I could think of to get her to keep her nap, which she still needs, but finally admitted defeat.  I decided to begin a quiet time routine with her.  I told her she was now welcome to stay awake, but that she needed to be in her bed and stay quiet.  She was perfect the first two days, staying in her bed, quietly looking at books for an hour the first day and 45 minutes the second day (it was a school holiday and we all wanted to go somewhere.)  Tuesday, both older kids were at school, so my goal was a two-hour quiet time.  She got out of her bed once, then stayed in her bed for the rest of the time, and fell asleep.  And she's fallen asleep every day since.  So, apparently, all I needed to do to get her to nap was to tell her that she didn't have to..?

I love this little gal, in all her spunkiness, and I can't wait to see how she continues to change as she grows and matures in the years to come!

FHE becomes FNO

Our FHE last week was transformed into a Family Night Out as we spent some time at the BYU Museum of Art together.  I've had friends rave about one of the current exhibits, "We Could Be Heroes: The Mythology of Monsters and Heroes in Contemporary Art."  I was told it was very kid-friendly, so we made a plan to pick Ben up from the business school and drive up to the MOA before dinnertime.

One of my favorite "Hero" pieces

I love this one too - 

"Civil War Re-Enactors, Virginia" by Phillip Toledano

The exhibit was, indeed, very cool.  I liked the way it interpreted "heroes" and "monsters" so broadly - depicted heroes ran the gamut from being straight out of a comic book to being ordinary citizens doing ordinary, albeit heroic, things.  The same was true for monsters - one of the pieces on display in the monster portion was a photograph titled "Dear Leader" by Jonathan Hobin.  This resonated with me, since I recently read a book about North Korea.  Of course, it also made me shudder.  (You can click on any this image if you're in the blog to see it bigger.)

Awesome quality picture from my phone...

The entire time we were touring the Heroes and Monsters exhibit, Cat was begging to go downstairs to the Andy Warhol exhibit.  I knew it wasn't because she's become an intense Andy Warhol enthusiast.  It was because she wanted to play in the Silver Clouds room again.  So after 10 minutes or so in the first exhibit and a quick 2-minute walk-through of Andy Warhol, we ended up spending about 25 minutes with the Silver Clouds.  It didn't bother me too much - if the kids are having a positive experience with art, I'll consider it a success.

V-Day Celebrations

Preliminary Activities

The Sunday before Valentine's Day, I got Cat started on making her Valentines.  I instructed her on the process, typed and printed the message, cut the colored paper for her, and filled some of the bags with pretzels.  She did the rest, and was quite put out with how much time it took, haha.  But I love that they turned out cute, and appropriately imperfect, since they're from her, not me, and she's old enough to do much of it herself.

At the same time we had Cat's Valentine project covering the kitchen table, I was also making Valentine boxes for our family.  (We crush our boxes and immediately throw them in with the other recyclables when they're empty, so I had to use boxes that were still being used, which is why I could only find 4 and Ben and I shared.)  That night we began writing little notes to each other and putting them in our boxes.  We added to the boxes during the week leading up to Valentine's Day.

Jack's school mandated "store-bought" Valentines, which I completely understand with food allergies being as prevalent as they are.  So I scrapped my original plan to make pretzel Valentines for him (the pretzels were store-bought, but I thought they should also probably be in their original packaging..?) and the Monday before V-Day we browsed at the store with the goal of spending less than $3.  He wanted printed Hot Wheels Valentines, but even though the idea of buying ready-to-go cards was appealing, it also made me a bit twitchy.  So we kept browsing, and when I saw Hershey Nuggets, I was sure we could find an easy way to make them into a car Valentine for Jack to give out.  He loves chocolate, so he agreed pretty easily, though he really wanted the Hot Wheels too.  When I got home I found this printable school bus and Jack agreed.  They were quick and easy to put together, and I just made a simple card on the computer, leaving room at the bottom for Jack to write his name. He wrote his name on about 10 cards before he was fed up with it, but he never got bored of playing with all of the little buses.  He got out his Tonka bus as the fleet manager.  And he was really upset that I made him put the buses away, for fear they wouldn't survive until Valentine's Day.

The day before V-Day, I took Jack and Eliza to our ward building to decorate sugar cookies with our playgroup.

On the Big Day

We had a fun Valentine's Day, though it was toned-down a bit from last year's (which is a good thing.)  The kids were ecstatic to find candy hearts strewn on the table when they woke up.  "Can we eat these??"

So as they enjoyed their appetizer, then made their way over to empty the dishwasher, I made the real breakfast.  I have a heart-shaped waffle maker that was a wedding gift, so I just made waffles and (pink) whipped cream with strawberries.  Mmmm.

We didn't do anything exciting the morning of V-Day.  Ben didn't have classes in the morning, so he stayed home with J & E while I went to an OB appointment, then I sneaked in a work out and shower before we had lunch together and Ben left for school.  I took Jack to school, and he was simply giddy at the thought of bringing his Valentines to school.  Eliza has been trying to give up her nap lately, and on this day she came upstairs after not napping, and wanted to wear all pink clothes, with a twirly skirt.  She found the clothes herself and got dressed mostly independently.  Notice the inside-out skirt. I thought her color theme appropriate for the day-o-love.

The kids had a great time going through the Valentine loot after school, and Cat and Jack were kind enough to share with each other and with Eliza.  Here they are enjoying Fun Dip and showing off the resulting colored tongues.

Then the kids and I tried to clean the house before Ben came home (we didn't completely succeed) and Ben and I made our traditional fondue dinner and dessert.  Mmmm.

After dinner, the kids got ready for bed, then we read the notes we'd written to each other.  It was really sweet to see how excited the kids were about their notes, and to hear how much thought they'd put into their notes.  (Jack and Eliza's were mostly scribbles, but they took them very seriously.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

How do you like them apples?

Late in the afternoon on Friday I saw Jack eating an apple.  We had the following conversation:

"Is that the apple you left on the counter at lunch time?"
"No."
"Is it by chance the one that was in the fridge from yesterday?"
"No."

Shortly after that, I saw Eliza starting to eat a new apple.  

Perhaps in cases such as these, buying individual packs of sliced apples really is more cost effective?  Or maybe I just need to hide the apples?

My Birthday

My birthday was Sunday, and nothing blog-worthy has happened since then, so once this post is finished, I'll be completely caught up, thankyouverymuch.  In your face, never-ending computer problems and first trimester yuckiness!

My birthday was pretty low-key this year because Ben was out of commission with the flu.  Poor guy had it bad - it's the sickest I've ever seen him.  He rallied enough to wrap up the presents he'd bought, and the kids did a great job of being excited for some festivity.

The kids' favorite part of the day was decorating for me, which meant trailing streamers randomly in the house and tying them to the freezer door handle, cabinet door handles in the kitchen, the knobs on my German wooden bench, etc.  It also meant having me blow up as many balloons as I could handle.  :-)

Cake time!  Notice the streamers on the ceiling fan...

"I want this piece," Eliza said, as she pointed to the 2/3 of the cake without whipped cream.

Present time!  Don't they resemble the three wise men, each bringing me a wrapped gift from Ben?

I told Ben that I was hoping for a box set of Jane Austen's novels for my birthday, so when I received this package I was sure what was inside.  Little did I know it was actually a tablet, which a friend of his had won and didn't want to keep; Ben bought it from him for a great price.  Now I have all of Jane Austen's novels in one handy device, which fits nicely in my purse.  Thank you Ben!  (The other two gifts were kitchen items I've been wanting for a while.  Yeah!)

In other news...

• In the last few weeks, Eliza has gotten into the habit of "reading" before she goes to sleep.  Her bedtime routine now typically follows this pattern: complete scriptures & prayers with the family, brush teeth, listen to a bedtime story, lie down in bed with bedtime story book and look at it with the lights on, two minutes later call up to Mom or Dad to come turn the lights off so she can go to sleep.  Also, she still suckles when she is about to sleep and when she's sleeping.  It's just a little bit of baby-ness left over that makes me smile.

• Last Fall, Cat began doing a job to earn money.  We had her emptying the dishwasher by herself, but after a little while figured out that Jack was old enough to do a job too. So toward the end of last year, Jack began putting the silverware away, with Cat putting away everything else.  Cat earns 75 cents, unless she does the job without being asked to in the morning, in which case she earns $1.  Jack earns 25 cents.  We have paydays on Saturdays, and divide the money up between spending, savings, and tithing.  Eliza is eager to have her own money, but I haven't been able to think of a good job for her to do on a daily basis.  (Part of the problem being that I still want them to do things to help out, just because.  I don't want to pay them to set the table or clear the table at dinner time, for example.)  Cat is also probably ready to begin doing a different job, but I'm not sure what to add for her, either.  Any suggestions?

• Last year, we took Jack to the Dollar Store a couple of times to use his job money. There, he bought some cheap toys that didn't last very long.  This year, he saw this toy car at Target that he really wanted, so he saved his money and was finally able to buy it recently.  While we were buying his car, he noticed a monster truck that cost a couple more dollars than what he had saved for the green car, and he's talked about the monster truck ever since.  It's a "pink minivan monster truck" (I'm not joking) and Jack is currently saving up for it.

• We began working with the kids to try to establish a habit of regular journal writing at the beginning of the year.  Our goal is to have journal time every Sunday, and so far we've done pretty well with that.  I think it helped just a bit that I made them each a personalized journal cover at the beginning of the year, though the novelty seems to be wearing off.  Cat usually chooses a journal prompt from the Story and Art Inspiration Kit I made for her instead of just writing about her week, but as long as she's writing, I don't complain.  We keep a bunch of colored pencils with the journals so Cat usually writes a page, then draws something to go along with it.  Jack and Eliza mostly scribble, then I talk to them about what they drew and write down what they tell me.  One day Eliza told me that a scribble was a slide.  "Put some people on and they'll go 'Whee!' and they'll slide and slide on their bum bum."  :-)

Other Developments

• I've started trying to teach Jack how to read.  He received a set of the first two levels of BOB books for Christmas, and since he already knows his letters and sounds, I thought, why not?  We are still on the first of the BOB books, but he's getting the hang of it.
• At Cat's previous school, she was a part of the choir and loved it.  And judging by the quality of the mid-year and end-of-year performances, it was a good choir program.  Though we like the academics of Cat's current school, I'm not in love with many of the peripheral components of the school, including the choir she joined in the fall.  As soon as we saw the Christmas concert, I began to think Cat had chosen the wrong extra-curricular activity.  I'd had a feeling she'd enjoy the Drama Club but didn't want to commit to more than one after-school club.  So when school started after the Christmas break, I asked her if she'd like to switch?  She said yes, and the teachers agreed, so that's what she did.  She is now really enjoying staying after school one day a week to be part of Drama, and is eagerly awaiting the auditions for their end-of-year play.
• Eliza is beginning to pronounce things better.  Just today I noticed that she pronounced her name "Liza" instead of "Wiza."  She still has an interesting habit of taking words that end in "r" and  giving them an "ee" sound.  For example, she pronounces "more" as "moh-ee."  I kind of love that she has that little quirk.
• In the LDS Church, we believe that children are mature enough to make sacred covenants with God through baptism at the age of 8.  Cat will be 8 this summer, and it dawned on me late last year that it would be good for her to prepare more seriously to take this step.  After lots of thought and consideration about how to help her best use the next 6 months, Ben and I decided that she should begin reading the Book of Mormon and discussing it with us.  It took us a few days into the New Year to work this into our bedtime routine, since I wanted one of us to read with her each night, but she didn't wait for us to get started.  She'd already read a few chapters by the time Ben and I began taking turns reading with her.  I found a set of scripture marking crayons nobody was using and gave them to her, and now she loves marking up her scriptures.  I also plan on asking her to teach an FHE from something she's read in the Book of Mormon 1-2 times per month.  She did it once in January - did you see the FHE picture and video in my last blog post?  We haven't been as consistent with the Book of Mormon reading as I'd like, largely because bedtime is just such a tricky time for everybody and going to bed late isn't a good option for dealing with extenuating circumstances, but I feel like we're on the right track.
• One of the goals we had for Jack and Eliza was to learn to dress themselves independently this year.  They aren't completely there yet, but they are both doing noticeably better than they were at the beginning of the year.  Yeah for progress!

PS> I finally added some more kid quotes in the sidebar, so you might want to click over from email or reader and check them out.  I've been bad about writing their quotes down lately, but I'm trying to do better!

Everyday Stuff - Jan 2013 Edition

We enjoyed a little more time with Suz and her family before they left at the beginning
of January. It was sad to say goodbye :-(

Why shovel snow when you can rake it, sweep it, or scoop it up with a dust pan?
I guess there are some perks to the snow being so powdery.

Our ward playgroup went to Krispy Kreme recently, and the kids loved watching the doughnuts
being made.   And did you know they give you free doughnuts if you receive the official tour?
Sweet.

When Ben took Cat to the store to choose some new snow boots, these are the ones she liked
best.  Thankfully, she'd changed her mind by the time we returned to purchase the boots.

Jack really doesn't like the automatic carwash.  He completely freaked out last time I took him through a
car wash, but that was over a year ago.  I decided to try again, and this time he handled it much better.  But
he asks me frequently now if this is the day we'll go through the car wash again.  No, buddy.  We'll wait a
while.  And maybe I'll even go when you're not in the car.

Inside out bathing suit, stretchy pants, snow boots, Cat's hat, Cat's sunglasses,
and Ben's lanyard from a recent conference.

Oh, how he loves tomatoes.  We started seeing the yellow ones in the stores lately
and, wow, does he devour them.

For FHE a few weeks ago, I told the kids we needed to fill up these boxes with toys because we have too many toys.
Jack and Cat did a great job and surprised me with how many things they were willing to get rid of.  (The brownies waiting in the kitchen for our FHE treat might have given them extra incentive to fill the boxes?)  Eliza, however,
wanted to take things out of the boxes because they were hers.  I love how she ended up wearing Jack's camo pajamas (still not sure how that happened..?) with Cat's Dorothy costume, and filling up Cat's cowgirl purse with random
toys that would otherwise have been given away.

Eliza really wanted to help me shovel snow last week. 

The fact that we were all sans coats is a testament to how cold it had been.  On this day, 

the temperature was a balmy 36 (or so).

Jack's Monster Truck Extravaganza

Encore performance.

While sorting some donations to the MBASA clothing exchange, I came across this Realtree
brand baby sleeper.  I emailed the picture to Ben and asked him (jokingly!) if we should keep it for little man,
and he replied "Definitely!" I haven't asked him if he was joking, because I'm not sure I
want to know the answer ;-)  I put it in the "give away" pile...  Besides, what if the baby falls
asleep in the forest and we never found him again??

This is another item I found while sorting the donations for the clothing exchange. It was exactly
Eliza's size but my honest reaction when I first saw it was, "Wow. That's the ugliest jacket I've ever
seen."  But Ben didn't think it was too bad, and it began to grow on me a little.  Cat saw it accidentally
one day and just oohed and awed over it, so I had to give it to Eliza.  And she LOVES it.  Really, she could
use a new jacket anyway, and it has faux fur, so why in the world did I hesitate?  It's from a quality children's
store, so now I'm starting to question my own taste in fashion... I guess I'm just a little too conservative for
the rest of my family.

Jack wearing one of his snow boots and one of Cat's brown boots.
I didn't notice until we arrived at Target.
And then he posed.
Love this kid.

I guess Eliza has been paying attention to Cat's cup-stacking.

FHE - Cat told us the story of Nephi getting the brass plates from Laban, then we acted it out.
Cat assigned Eliza to be Sariah, but Eliza really thought Nephi (Jack) needed help killing

Laban (Ben).  I like when she wrapped the sword around Ben's head.

Then Eliza took it upon herself to be Zoram.  She is quite versatile.

I frequently need to wake Eliza up from her nap to go pick Jack and Cat up from school.
But she doesn't usually fall asleep again in the car...

Krispy Kreme, again!  When I took the little ones to KK for playgroup, I saw that they
give kids a free doughnut for each A (or equivalent) on their report card.  So, Cat treated us to
doughnuts one Saturday. Thanks, Cat!  Oh, and congrats on getting such good grades, too.

Eliza was kind enough to share her snow with Daddy.

I was taking pictures of some sewing projects one day and Eliza requested that
I photograph her teddy bear.

:-) 

Monkey Trap

It's hard to tell how implicating the evidence in this picture is, but this is what I found on
the couch after Cat reported that Jack and Eliza had opened a package of pepperonis
and were eating them... So much for double pepperoni pizza that night.

We had 3 siblings over to play one Saturday and the older 2 were getting a bit rambunctious with my older 2.  I decided to let them have their fun, but to see if the younger girls, both age 2,  wanted to get away from the noise and craziness.  I pulled everything out of the bottom of Jack's closet, closed the blinds, and plugged a lamp in nearby.  Then I gave them each a few books to look at while sitting in the closet with the lamp on.  They loved it!  And they enjoyed the quiet until the big kids discovered them about 10 minutes later and took over the hide out.  Oh well.  Better than nothing, right?

Cat was practicing her spelling by tracing the words in a cookie sheet of cornmeal.
Eliza wanted a turn when Cat was finished and I really should have taken a picture,
because her outfit was so messy it had to stay in the kitchen when Eliza went to the bath. 

Poser.

At Costco, buying a couple of the large plastic containers of tomatoes wasn't enough.
He wanted the entire box.

One day Eliza managed to put on a Build-a-Bear jacket. 

It reminded me of the "Fat Guy in a Little Coat" scene from Tommy Boy,

so I showed her the clip on YouTube.  Here is Eliza's version.