3 Skeletons

I don't do seasonal pajamas for every holiday. We definitely do Christmas, and often do Halloween. Last year, Hannah and Joshua had skeleton jammies and Clara had pirate skeleton jammies. This year, I was planning for Joshua to keep his jammies from last year and Hannah to wear Clara's from last year and to buy Clara some new ones. Hannah was really not thrilled with this plan. She really had a huge problem with the hand-me-downs not being a traditional skeleton. Luckily for her, I was uncharacteristically disorganized when buying these and accidentally bought two pairs of the same jammies for Clara. So I gave the extra pair to Hannah. She was so happy.

This is the kids being scary ghosts. I think Clara is especially hilarious.

Joshua is Five!

Joshua turned five two days ago and this is the 5th anniversary of the day we met. He has grown so much this year and I feel like he is really entering into being a real kid as opposed to being a preschooler. This is mostly good. He is learning so much and can have conversations and make connections. Three was really tough with him and 4 was better, largely because he can respond to reason and consequences and logic now (not that he always makes logical choices). He has grown a lot in the past six months, not just mentally and socially, but also physically. Like Hannah, he grew two inches in the past six months. That's not as unprecedented for him as it is for her, but still a lot. He is 42.5 inches tall and 37 lbs. I didn't really buy him many clothes for the fall because I thought he was going to be able to wear his 4s, but he had other ideas and I think I will soon have to buy 5s. Almost all boys get to a point where they only want to wear athletic apparel and we are at that point now. He has gotten much more social and really likes his friends at school (and he is totally the kid who doesn't listen and is always messing around with his friends). This is probably my least favorite thing about him getting bigger. He absolutely latches onto the least common denominator of behavior in any group. If there are 10 well-behaved kids and 1 kid in the back doing something bad, he is totally going to to join that one kid. This has been the biggest change in him from last year. We have had to have several talks about "bad words" (luckily not too bad at this age) and just because you see things at school doesn't mean we do that. However, he overall is super giving and loving and generous and my sweet cuddler. His favorite things are being outside and bugs and dirt. He likes soccer and is really interested in learning how to be a big kid. He doesn't play with toys a whole lot. He does like Duplos a lot and is starting to like Legos. His favorite show is Miles From Tomorrowland and his favorite book is probably "Those Darn Squirrels". He likes playing his Kindle Fire and Rooftop Run featuring the Ninja Turtles is his favorite game. He is getting bigger all the time, but we hope he will stay little awhile longer. We love our big boy so much!

A Birthday Visit from Grandpa Jim

Grandpa Jim was at our house yesterday evening on Joshua's birthday.  I got so many good pictures, I wanted to put them in their own post.  He spent a lot of time hanging out with the kids, and even little Natalie got some love.  The kids always love seeing him, and everyone had a great time, as you can see from the pictures.

Happy Birthday Joshua!

Today is Joshua's birthday. He woke up to a decorated door, but besides that the first thing was to go to school, since it's a Monday. He wore his special birthday shirt and brought snacks (which have to be healthy at this school, so not super fun). While he was at school, Jason put together his new nightstand with Hannah's and Natalie's help. He really couldn't have done it without them.

Then we went to school a little earlier than pick-up time so Jason could be the guest reader. He read one of Joshua's favorites (and Jason's favorite), "Dragons Love Tacos".

After school, we went to PowerPlay, which is sort of like a cross between Chuck E Cheese's and Dave and Buster's. We started with the buffet, which is exactly what you would expect and really awful, but the sort of thing a five year old boy loves (all you can eat frozen pizza? How can you go wrong).

We started out in the little kids area. This had an indoor playground, a bounce house, and a train ride that the kids enjoyed.

It also had unlimited machine rides, like they often have outside of grocery stores. Our kids never get to do those because I rarely have quarters and, when I do, I save them for animal feed at Deanna Rose, so they were pretty excited and really liked that.

After that, Joshua decided he was done with that little kid stuff because he is five now. So we went into the main arcade area. We had the place virtually to ourselves. They didn't really need to pay for every game to have fun. The car games were popular and totally free for them.  They were convinced they were playing and controlling the car on the screen, when actually it was just the demo that runs when no one is playing.

We played several games. They also had rides that I would have liked to do if we had more time and tickets and definitely think Joshua would like next time.

Finally we were down to our last tokens and played a game of air hockey (which you can tell Jason loves Joshua because he let him win) and then we were done for the day. I hoped Joshua would love this place but I wasn't sure, but he really did, so I think it was a great place for a five-year-old.

Once we got home, it was time for naps, but first we showed Joshua his mini room makeover. He wasn't that thrilled about changing rooms with Hannah, so I told him we would make his room "cool". So I got him a Spider-Man decal for his wall and a new nightstand and Spidey pillow. If I had known the Spider-Man pillow was going to be such a hit, I would have wrapped it as a gift. He loves fighting with it and was super excited about his room.

In the evening, we did a pizza dinner (his choice), followed by presents. His favorite was a remote-controlled transformer, which he was really excited about. Actually all the kids were excited about it, but Joshua is really the only one who can drive it with any accuracy. I was tempted to get a better one: a real RC car. But as much as this thing is hitting baseboards and columns, I think a toy is a good first step. Joshua is such a giver and sharer. He said, "Do you know what would be kind? If I let my girls open my presents." Which would be very kind, but we told him he should open his own presents because they get to open theirs on their own special birthdays.

Finally we did cake. He had a Miles From Tomorrowland cake, which is his favorite show. We had a super fun day with our big boy.

Going Back to the Pumpkin Patch

Today I took the kids to Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm, which is a pumpkin patch in Missouri.  We went there last year as a family, and it was a pretty good fit for our kids.  The first thing you see are the animals.   New this year was a zebra, replacing the camel from last year, though you couldn't pet him.  Most of the other ones were pettable, including the Brahma bull that Joshua really liked.

This poor alpaca was there last year too, and it seems he has not gotten any more attractive over the past year.  In addition to his embarrassing haircut, because of his teeth and the way he chews, he looks like possibly the dumbest animal that has ever lived.  He's probably not the dumbest ever, but I bet he's not the brightest animal on the farm either.

We then took a break for lunch.  There were a lot of bees flying around, and they were very interested in the Sprites with one sipping from the top and then falling inside the can.  We decided to abandon that one.

We then explored the different activities around the farm.  They pumped the water pumps to push some rubber duckies along a path, then went through a corn maze (where one of the rules was that you had to have your hands behind your back), and then posed at the obligatory display that they hope you take a picture of and share with your friends on Facebook so they want to come next year.

There was a small train pulled by a guy driving a tractor, and the kids really enjoyed riding around in it.

As we were about to leave, I realized I didn't have a good picture of the kids together.  I put them on a bench, but I guess it was facing the sun too much, because the picture didn't work out as I'd imagined.  It's like I ended up with Think No Evil, Be Crabby, See No Evil.  I then relocated us to the place where you can pick out pumpkins and plopped them on a hay bale.  As you can see, it wasn't much better.  They were so tired and so ready to go home, that getting a great picture was a lost cause.

So I decided maybe I would have them hold pumpins, and that would solve everything.  Instead, that solved nothing, as they were not interested in complying, but there were insterested in trying to lift up the pumpkins, cover their faces, and accidentally drop them on the ground.  Oh well.  We still had a very fun day overall and will definitely consider going back again next year.

End of Successful Soccer Seasons

Both Joshua and Clara recently finished their soccer seasons.  For Clara, it started off pretty rough, but we made some progress as the season went along.  Today was her last game, and it was her most positive experience yet.  She touched the ball a couple different times and generally felt good about her day and her season.  She was really proud to get the end-of-season medal.  Coach Shawn and The Soccerettes won a lot of games, and all the girls progressed in their skills, as he's a pretty great coach. Maybe Clara will end up playing soccer throughout her childhood, and maybe not, but I think it went well enough this time that we'll sign her up for another sesson in the spring to see if she continues to like it more.

Joshua had an excellent season.  He went through the same growing pains that Clara is now going through in his past seasons, but this was his third season, as he's really hit his stride.  But it wasn't all smooth.  Here you can see him with one of his teammates, Grayson.  One of the storylines of the season (from my perspective; it's not like it was a huge thing for the team) was Joshua's relationship with Grayson.  Joshua is a silly boy at times, and combining that with his attention span and occasional disinterest, I can see him being somewhat of a class clown in the future.  But another thing about him is he will gravitate to those personalities as well, which is to be expected.  Grayson is pretty much the same as him in that regard, so much so that when they are on the field at the same time, they often get so wrapped up in horsing around with each other that they become totally oblivious to the fact that there's a game going on on the same field, leaving their other two teammates to take on the opposing four by themselves for a period of time.  For awhile we (the "coaches") put them in opposite shifts, so they wouldn't be on the field together or on the sidelines together.  But they got a little better toward the end of the season and manages to mostly stay engaged in the game.  The other thing that is a huge part of soccer for Joshua is the snacks.  He really really looks forward to the snacks at the end of each game.  Here he is enjoying his spoils under a tree earlier this season.

The Mighty Bears had a really good season.  They won most of their games, and I could really see the progress that all the boys made from the beginning of the season to the end.  That was mostly due to Travis' leadership and coaching.  He's so good for the boys.  There was even one kid who had such anxiety before games that he wouldn't play, and Travis actually called him during the week to encourage him and help get him pumped up.  Joshua really enjoys playing at this point.  Part of it is because he's now a pretty good player.  He's one of the faster players on the team, and he has scored multiple goals this season, maybe six or so.  Joshua is the only one other than Travis' son Caden who has been on the team all three seasons.  During the medal ceremony, Travis always talks about each kid individually, and he talked longer about Joshua than any other kid, telling everyone how special Joshua was to him, because he'd seen him improve so much in the three seasons, and even recounting the story of Joshua's amazing end-to-end goal last season that he maintains is the best goal he's ever seen in any of the games he's coached.  It was a really nice speech, and Travis isn't sure how much longer he'll keep coaching the boys, but as long as he does, we'll make sure Joshua is on his team.  Regardless, Joshua will definitely play in the spring, as he seems to have an aptitude for soccer and also is now really enjoying it too.

Date Day at Pumpkin Hollow

 Today I had a date day with Hannah. In some ways, I feel like I don't really need a date day with her at this point because every Monday and Wednesday morning is basically a date day for us. However, I decided to take her to Deanna Rose so we could do something more geared to her. I wasn't sure she would enjoy it without the other kids.

 We started out with some ice cream, which we never do with the other kids, so she enjoyed that. She didn't really like the playground or the animals without Joshua or Clara. She mostly likes watching them feed the animals, and doesn't like feeding them herself. She also prefers partners on the playground.

 I wasn't sure if she would like pumpkin hollow, but I decided to give it a try. She didn't love the hayride. She thought it was very dangerous and wanted me to hold her tight the whole time. After it was over she said, "That was a close one". It really really wasn't a close one at all.

 She didn't love pumpkin hollow over all, but she loved this slide. She was really proud of herself for climbing the hay bales without help and going down this rather large slide. She did that several times.

 She also enjoyed choosing some pumpkins to take home.

 After Pumpkin Hollow, we went to her very favorite part of Deanna Rose, which is the butterfly garden.

 She really loves the stepping stones. She is very excited just hopping and skipping from stone to stone and sometimes talking about the letters. We stayed here quite awhile and she was really happy.

After Deanna Rose, we ended our date day at Chick-Fil-A. We had a really fun day and I'm glad we did it.