The Joy of Having a Little Boy (and other stories)

I am truly in love with this little boy.  This is him playing with two locusts shells (the fragile little skeletons they shed), and we seem to have an abundant supply around here.  He is an expert "finder" and plays with them everyday.  He pretends like they are little airplanes, robot bugs, etc. and when he is done with them he always squishes them up into little pieces.  I asked him why he did this and he said "so the frogs could eat them"  Duh, Mommy, everybody knows that!  Since he has started school, he has started collecting his "treasures" again.  Everyday when I go pick him up, I see a variety of treasures in his little cubby.  Mostly rocks, pine cones, feathers, acorn and one time a twisty tie.  He is very proud of his loot, and I can just imagine him exploring on the playground and stuffing these in his pockets for safe keeping, he MUST wear pockets every day.  He has a little friend in there named Peyton, and her cubby always has several things too.  Jacob is such a sweet little boy, he loves to cuddle, loves to play with Gwyn, and to make Annie laugh.  He is "into" building things, I go out of the room for one minute, and he'll have every cushion and blanket off the couches and set up into a tent, or toys lined up to create houses.  The big, bad wolf (Annie) is always coming to knock stuff down, but he just puts things back up again.  I've got to get a picture of his "squirrel house" he's building in the front yard with little branches and leaves.  I'll have to put some corn out there (since this is what they dig out of trash can) to see if I can actually lure one into the house for him.  You should see his little face light up, he is so animated and he loves it when we cheer for him.  The other day the craft box, which he easily got out by himself was just too heavy for him to put back up, so Gwyn and I started chanting "Jacob, Jacob, Jacob!"  You should have seen his little smile, and sure enough, those muscles started working and he was able to put it away!  The other day, I picked him up from school and he was so excited to show me the "gun" he made (he taped two pieces of paper together).  I was trying to shush him, and tell him at the same time we don't make pretend guns, to which he was loudly replying, yes, I did, and here it is, isn't it cool.  I later had a serious conversation about we don't play with guns, we don't act like we shoot people, we don't make guns out of paper (where does he get this stuff, I think it is just embedded in his boy genes??).  He thought for a minute, and said, okay, next time I'll make one and it will look like a gun, but it won't be one.  I thought, okay, he's not getting it, I'll let Daddy handle this one!  Here is a picture of one of the houses he and Gwyn built the other day:

Both kids love school.  Jacob's class covers a different letter each week, they have to bring something for show and tell that starts with that letter, and cut out pictures of things that start with that letter.  Last week, it was B, so he brought batman, took pictures of a baby (Annie), batman, and a beach ball.  He also got to bring Bobby to school for a picnic.  So, we are always talking about letters, what letters words start with, etc.  Jacob asked me what letter was next week, and I told him A.  I started listing things that started with A.  He asked, what about shark, no, shark starts with an S, and I made the sound.  He asked what about crocodile, no, crocodile starts with a C, and I made the sound.  Gwyn asks, what starts with 4?  Ha, Brian was there and he said, 400, 44???  They are getting fun and are very interested in learning.  This year, he goes to pre-K four days a week.  It is 4 hours two days, and 5 hours two days.  He loves school, and was so excited on Friday when he got to stay home with me.  I told him we could do something special and he decided that he wanted a princess and superhero picnic...so, we did it (although at the last minute, he decided to dress up as a doctor instead of a superhero):

This is the kids "digging in," notice Annie has her face inside a bowl:

Jacob also brought out his doctor tools, looks like Annie is in need of another checkup:

Annie was part superhero/part princess:

Gwyn in her Tinkerbell outfit that she is going to be for Halloween (although now she says Snow White, but I'm reminding her daily how much she wants to be Tinkerbell since we already have that costume!):

The kids playing with sticks:

While the cat is away...Annie will steal some juice!

Sweet little Gwyn:

Jacob said, "Mommy, everything was DEEEE-Licious"

During the picnic, we sat the blanket right next to this LIVE locust, and I showed it to Jacob who attempted to pick it up and it started making that loud humming noise and took off.  It was so funny, Jacob got so excited and was after it, but it was just too fast for him.

Gwyn is such a girly girl, but at the same time, wants to do whatever Jacob is doing.  She loves her baby and Dora dolls, she gets Jacob to be Diego and she is Dora and they play non-stop.  They also play "babysit" where one of them plays the baby and sits in their little rocking chair, and the other plays the Mommy or the Daddy.  Gwyn is so sweet and it is so funny how she might say she wants to do something, and then if Jacob says he wants to do something else, then all of the sudden she changes and wants to do whatever he wants.  She also LOVES to sing.  She always asks me to sing songs, and sometimes I catch her just singing to Annie, and she loves to sing in the car.  Her favorites are Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, "Baby Jesus" (Jesus Loves Me), and Jingle Bells. 

Little Annie is a night owl at least 2-3 times per week.  We will put her to bed around 8 along with Jacob and Gwyn, but sometimes she decides that she just isn't ready.  So, she yells and gets to come downstairs and hang out with me and Brian.  She is usually just walking around, she has a couple of her "go to" cabinets where she gets out all of Jacob and Gwyn's straws for their yogurt drinks and then she also loves my plastic cups cabinet and strings those all over the house.  The other day she was upset, and Jacob wanted to make her feel better so he went and got her a straw "because she likes them so much" he said.  We call her Destroyer 2 (Jacob is Destroyer 1, he is a master at this and can totally destroy the upstairs or downstairs in about 5 minutes).  This is Brian taking her back up to bed for the second time the other night.

Our back porch is finished!  This is one thing that we have wanted to do since we moved in because before we had absolutely no shade during the majority of the day in the backyard.  Now we have a porch with two ceiling fans and we've already been enjoying it so much!

Here are some more pictures of the backyard, Brian had to put the play set in two different pieces since the footprint was so large.  Jacob is checking the skimmer out, there is usually at least one frog in there.

The other side of the pool where the swings are now:

Another view of the back porch:

Saturday we had our friends Brad, Erika and Maddy over for dinner.  The kids had a great time swimming, playing, running around, and dressing up.  Annie pretty much tried to follow them wherever they went, and Gwyn was just mesmerized by big-girl Maddy.  The one traumatic event of the evening, is when we were outside.  The guys and the kids were swimming in the pool, and Erika and I were sitting under the porch with Annie walking around.  We looked down, and Annie had something in her mouth, and Erika got it out and it moved.  She dropped it and it was a lizard tail!  I totally freaked out, which lead to Annie totally freaking out!  I thought Annie had eaten a lizard and it was just the tail left, but Brad saw the lizard run off, and I guess left his tail behind when Annie grabbed it.  No, I'm not winning "Mother of the Year" again this year!  Poor little Annie, I used to joke with the kids that I was making lizard tails for lunch, but I just can't do it anymore!

I've been meaning to upload a couple of videos for awhile, and I finally had time to do it!  This is a longer post because I started at 4 am because I had to get up to start my pulled pork in the crock pot since I'm taking a meal to a family in our church after I pick the kids up at 1, so I had to start it early.  So, I find I am able to do longer posts when I don't have 3 kids asking at my feet asking for a snack, but who needs sleep anyway, it really is overrated!

Funny things the kids said this week:

Gwyn (to Brian when we were pulling into the church parking lot):  Park right there Daddy.  Brian looked at me and said, "Are you serious, she is 2 years old and already telling me where to park!  Already like her mother!"

Jacob to Brian:  You can go ahead and just get rid of that time out mat.  I'm not going to need it anymore (Oh really...I think we'll just hang on to it just in case!)

Gwyn:  Annie is a good sister.

Jacob:  Three more days of school and then I get to stay home with you? 

Gwyn:  What is my teacher's names?

Me:  Mrs. Raman and Mrs. Zarse

Gwyn:  Mrs. Raman and Mrs. Zarse, watch my mouth, Mrs. Raman and Mrs. Zarse (when she is trying to make sure she gets something right, she says, watch my mouth, because we always did this with Jacob during speech therapy)

Jacob:  Mommy, Gwyn is hitting my arm and I'm not hitting her back.

Me:  That is very good Jacob, now Gwyn, we don't hit.  So tell Jacob that you are sorry and tell him one thing you like about him.

Gwyn:  Sorry Jacob.  I like it when Jacob goes to school.

Gwyn (when they wore matching pink dresses to church):  Annie and me are on the same team!