May 17, 2009

Finally I have a little time to post a few pictures and document what we have been up to lately. We have been doing a little of everything. We have been playing at the park and have had a couple of play dates. The dad is still on his two week stint of hospital duty.

We went to a small get together yesterday evening with families in our church connect group. Since our church is somewhat large, our classes are divided into smaller connect groups so we can really get to know each other. The couple who hosted our group last evening had hired one of those huge blow-up jumping things that also had a slide. All the kids loved it and had a ball. Our little guys were the youngest kids there but I'm sure they won't be for long, as a friend of mine is expecting in the fall. This was our first time to go to the connect group meeting and we really enjoyed it. We will look forward to attending more of these get togethers in the future.

This morning I had a little time to explore our church library for a few minutes before class started. They have an amazing selection of children's books. I checked out six books and will look forward to checking out many more in the future. We are allowed to check out up to 24 books at a time, since we have four family members and we can each check out six at a time. Not bad. I think this library will really come in handy in the future.

I am reading several books right now. One of them is Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma. It is a very insightful book and I am so glad I ran across it. Another book I am reading right now is The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. This is an awesome book and I highly recommend it to anyone who has children under the 8th grade level. Every parent with young children should read this book. It is much much more than just a list of good books to read aloud. The other book I am still reading is my new copy of the Well Trained Mind. I have put this one on the back burner for a little while, while I focus on the other two.

We are having such a beautiful, sunny day today that I decided to get out the little swimming pool for the boys....actually, I had the idea and then the dad got the pool down and put a little water in it for the boys:). Regardless, when I later went outside to sit and watch the boys play, I realized it is not nearly as warm outside as I had thought. But alas, it was way to late to turn the ship around. The boys were already playing and having a ball so I let them play, knowing they would quit when they got too cold. They really had a lot of fun but it didn't take too long before they were ready to change out of their wet clothes and go play in their sand box. This is definitely the year of the sand box....and also the year for the mud/dirt pit next to the sand box. We really should take out some stock in whatever company makes Spray & Wash or Shout or whatever it is we use. Nick always comes in covered with dirtish-mud. Usually the entire seat of his pants are caked with it. He is definitely the type of child who relishes his play with every fiber of his body.

I was talking on the phone while they were playing outside and I happened to see Nick throw a not-so-small stick across the fence into the neighbor's yard, or more correctly, onto the neighbor's driveway, just outside of their garage. I hurried outside, hoping the neighbor was not on said driveway and did not just get hit in the head with said stick. Fortunately, he was nowhere to be seen so I explained to Nick and Ben (for one usually follows the action of the other) the reasons we do not throw sticks over the fence and, most especially, into the neighbors yard. After that, we went to the ice cream store and had some yummy ice cream.

The boys are both doing great, although they are becoming more physical with each other and starting to pick at each other more in a physical way. Nick will walk by Ben and give him a little poke/shove and Ben will tip back, falling into the wall a little. He won't be hurt but he will whine to me "Mommy! Nick just pushed me and made me hit the wall!". Ten or fifteen minutes later, Benick will walk by N and poke/push him and I will hear the wail of "Mommy!....." all over again. The other issue I am having right now is I might tell one of them to do something and the response might be "No." or "No, I''m doing such and such." or "No, I won't!". Needless to say, I do not care for these responses at all. So I am working on correcting these behaviors but, I must say, I find it challenging....most likely because I am not consistent enough and/or because I have not been on top of it and corrected it as soon as it started or whatever. It never fails that the "No" issue rears it's ugly head when I am in a hurry to get somewhere, such as this morning when we were preparing to leave for church. In these situations I do not handle this behavior as well as I should and I tend to lose my patience and/or become rather irritated quickly. After reflecting on this at church this morning, I have decided that going forward I need to not worry so much about being late for where ever we happen to be going. My first priority should be correctly the child in the RIGHT way, rather than becoming impatient or angry and later regretting how I handled the situation. I have been praying about this and I am hopeful that, with God's help, I will do better going forward.

And finally, here are the pictures I promised so long ago.

Here are the boys, playing in the kitty basket-bed. I'm not quite sure what they were pretending. They have bowling pins in the basket with them and they are examining the holes in the bottom of the tub we use for storing their little cars and trucks.
Further exploration of the holes is underway. I'm not sure why this was so interesting.And this was probably the start of trouble but I don't remember for sure now.
This is how quiet time usually ends up at our house:

Yesterday the boys found these old bibs in the toy box. It was cute to watch them helping each other.
Ben made some more play dough people.
I thought these were especially good, since he did them all by himself. Not bad, huh?
And, last but not least, here are a couple of pics of my azaelas in bloom. I thought I had gotten a picture up close but I guess I didn't. Bummer. I think this was their best year yet. You can click on the picture if you want a closer look:).
I think these were taken early on, during the time when we were all sick, so these are a bit dated now. Everything here is in full bloom now and, since we have had so much rain, everything looks very lush. It really is beautiful. Also, my day lilies are now really blooming now.

Gotta go. It's bed time for the boys. Hope you had a good weekend. Goodnight.