Oh what a week! We have been going non-stop this past week...school, fall festival, play dates, a birthday party, the beach, and trick or treating. Halloween has been talked about here for months. Usually on the way to school, Jacob asks when Halloween will be. It apparently lived up to the hype, because the day after Halloween, he asked if we could go trick or treating again that night. Sorry, buddy, you have to wait a whole year for it to come again:( We went to the fall festival at our church for awhile and then took the kids trick or treating around the neighborhood. They did good, they had fun, and their buckets were full! There are a few videos from the church games and from starting off to go trick or treating at the bottom of this post. Jason thankfully came to help at the fall festival and passed out candy at our house while we took the kids out. Gwyn said, "you have to say trick or treatee" all night long, not trick or treat, trick or treatee! She was cute, always a few yards behind Jacob running up to the door (he has this down, it is all about minimizing your time between houses in order to maximize the loot!). One lady opened the door, and saw Gwyn running up and said, "Make way for the cuteness!" She really was cute, which hopefully made up for Jacob saying while he was still getting candy from one house, "come on, let's go to the next one!" This is really the best picture I got of all three of them, and yes, we had a few costume changes. Jacob was Batman, Gwyn was Tinkerbell, and Annie was a princess/fairy/something frilly like that.
Jason and Annie hanging out:
Annie is officially off formula and bottles and drinks her milk from a straw cup now. We are so excited, and this is the first week in awhile that my grocery bill has been lower than $200 per week...it is like getting a raise! She is up to drinking about 12 ounces of whole milk. I now buy 3 gallons of milk a week. Chocolate for Jacob, 2% for Gwyn (and Brian and I), and Whole milk for Annie. I know one of these days Gwyn is going to taste Jacob's chocolate milk and probably be mad at us for all that she is missing. For now, she says that chocolate milk is for boys and white milk is for girls. She really came up with that on her own!
This is pretty much what she looked like all week, she wanted to be held, and she wanted that bottle back, but Mommy was strong!
In addition to dealing with a fussy baby for about 4 days, Jacob and Gwyn also decided it was time to test my patience this week...I think I may have failed miserably! It started with them trying to make their own chocolate milk out of tea and yogurt drink (this all went down in about 2 minutes while I went upstairs to lay Annie down). They discovered if you pour some of Gwyn's yogurt drink into Jacob's tea then it turns into what looks like chocolate milk (yes, it is the first time I gave him a caffeinated drink, but he begged for some leftover tea from Annie's birthday party, so I gave him a cup of it with probably about 4 oz in it). They really thought they had made chocolate milk, so Jacob went to drink it and apparently it was pretty bad and he spit it out, which Gwyn thought was funny, so she took a drink so that she could spit it out. This cleanup was not fun...picture this homemade chocolate milk all over the table/floor/walls. Result: banned from pouring their drinks into anything except their mouths. The next day, I was downstairs fixing dinner with Annie, while Jacob and Gwyn were playing upstairs. They usually play either legos in Jacob's room or kitchen or something else in Gwyn's room. I had the upstairs monitor on, so I can hear if something gets out of hand, but that day they were in the bathroom with the door shut (so I didn't hear them on the monitor and thought everything was okay). Well, they decided to turn on the sink and use a half bottle each of soap on themselves, clothes on and all. Jacob had his own bottle and Gwyn had her own bottle. The entire upstairs bathroom was soaked with soapy water. The mats had so much water in them they were extremely heavy. They had soaked 3 hand towels, emptied an entire Kleenex box, used a whole container of wipes, they had soaked themselves and their hair. It was DISASTROUS! I made them sit in timeout with their hair a soapy mess and their clothes soaked the entire time it took me to clean it up while I was holding Annie. Later that night before bed, Brian opened one of the drawers to get their lotion out and found it full of water too! Result: banned from the bathroom unless they ask mommy or daddy first. Today, I again was downstairs fixing dinner with Annie, while Jacob and Gwyn were upstairs playing. Thinking that since the bathroom was off limits, that this was safe again. I thought wrong. They decided to get into Gwyn's closet, which is my storage closet since our house does not have an attic and Brian had built Gwyn an armouir for all her clothes. They got out all 16 games that were stored in that closet and opened them (some were taped, so they had to tear some of the boxes apart). Game pieces were EVERYWHERE, and they were all mixed up, and it took FOREVER to sort through them all and put them away. Result: banned from Gwyn's closet unless they ask mommy or daddy first. I'm thinking I might have to tie them both to chairs, if I ever want to fix dinner again!
Both Gwyn and Jacob's teachers called me this week for phone conferences. Skip to the next paragraph now, if you don't want to hear me brag about my wonderful kids! Gwyn's teacher said she is a delight to have in class. She loves music, she is a great helper and the first to volunteer to help clean up (WHAT??), she loves to play in the kitchen and with the babies, she likes to dress up, play in all the centers, loves circle time, and she is so sweet. That same day a little boy had fell down out on the playground, and she went right over and gave him a hug, without anyone telling her to, she just has such a big heart! I love that little girl. She did say that she could get emotional at times if she fell or someone bumped into her, etc., but that she is easily soothed or distracted (hello, remember she was upset about mommy leaving and then they mentioned cupcakes and I was long forgotten). Jacob's teacher said that he is such a sweet little boy. He participates well in music, but he loves playing outside and going to motor skills (gym class). He loves to cut (he didn't earn the nickname Mr. Scissors last year for nothing), he likes to paint and is excellent at the fine motor skills activities they do. He listens well and follows directions, and he likes to play with both the boys and the girls. I love that little boy!
We went to the beach with our friends Brad and Erika and their little girl Maddy, who is 3 weeks older than Jacob. We didn't tell the kids until right before we left and they were so excited. They LOVED it. Brian, Brad and the kids actually went swimming in the water. Too cold for me, but Gwyn was actually squealling she had so much fun out in the waves. They were on a mission to find as many hermit crabs as possible. We lost count somewhere between 35-40. Jacob loved the crabs, he kept running up to put them in this little star container, and one time he ran up and said, "This big dude got out!" and quickly put it back in. We had a fire and made hot dogs and smores. Jacob, Gwyn and Annie had such a great time and the weather was perfect! Who would have thought you could go swimming and enjoy the beach so much on nearly the last day of October?!?! The fruits of their labor:
Jacob and I went to his friend Josh's birthday party on Sunday. Jacob loves Josh, and it was fun to do something with just him and I. We got to see a movie, and Jacob had so much fun. He did want to bring his pet grasshoopers that Brian caught this weekend both to the beach and to Josh's party, but I said no. By today, all the grasshoppers had hopped away. I guess a 5 gallon bucket doesn't suffice as a proper home. Jacob was so proud to have them and kept talking about them all weekend. I also got to take my once/year trip to the Galleria while Jacob and Gwyn were in school. It wasn't the best week to go, since I had taken Annie off bottles only two days before, but she didn't do too bad. I was able to go to a few stores with some friends and have lunch.
Here are a few random pictures from this past week. I had read Jacob and Gwyn a story about snow angels, and they decided to have snow angels in the living room, I guess that is what snow angels look like in Texas:
I had bought Gwyn some patent leather shoes at Payless this past week, mainly for Christmas season and she loves them. She always wants to wear her pretty shoes...who would have thought a pair of cheap $9 shoes could make a girl so happy! She wants to wear them everywhere, and wanted to wear them to school, but as soon as I said she might get sand on them on the playground, she happily switched to her twinkle toes!
Oh Annie, just in case of an emergency, no, make that two emergencies, she has two pacifiers as backup!
Jacob: If we find a baby gorilla that lost its mommy, can we keep it?
Gwyn (to Jacob): You look handsome!
Jacob: Daddy, you are a good cook, I love this! (about his grilled cheese sandwich)
Jacob: Daddy, you are a good cook, I love this! (about his grilled cheese sandwich)
Jacob (after Jason pointed out Reliant stadium where the Texans play football): Does Daddy play football there? uh...no...he plays church volleyball league!
Gwyn: Annie hurt my feelings again!
Jacob (after another plea for sketchers light up shoes): I don't have light up shoes and no one in our whole family even has some!
Gwyn: I don't like that book, it is too floppy.
Gwyn: Giraffe starts with my name and jaguaar starts with Jacob's name (kind of?!?)
Gwyn (after I asked her her full name): Gwynnie Mack Katterhenry
Jacob: When our house gets old can we go live where the penguins live, and then we can hold one of their babies?
Gwyn: You don't eat boogers, you put them in a tissue.
A video of Jacob fishing at our church fall festival:
A video of Gwyn bowling at the fall festival:
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