A New Obsession

Nathaniel has become completely and thoroughly obsessed with turning on and off the lights. The other day Joshua was sitting at the table doing a craft project and Nathaniel woke up from his nap earlier than expected. While he was running around playing, he discovered this tote full of clothes that was sitting in the dining room waiting to go back to storage.

Of course, mountain goat and daredevil that he is, (he climbed up on top of my scrapbook desk twice last week), he climbed right on top of it! And the reason he did this, besides the fact that he climbs on everything, was because he knew that it was right below the light switch. So he proceeded to turn the light on and off several times. In the second video, you can see that he figured out he could do it really quickly. Joshua, in the background, is busting up laughing. So, of course, Nathaniel continued because he knows that if he's got Joshua laughing, he's doing something right (and vice versa).

Every few seconds, Nathaniel would stop, put his hands on his knees, bend over and laugh really hard, then straighten up and do it again.

Sadly, the videos are sideways. I don't know if there's a way I can fix that. If there is, I haven't figured it out yet. I keep forgetting that when I'm taking a little video clip with the digital camera, I can't turn the camera vertically, I have to keep it horizontal!

The bruises, by the way, aren't from this incident. The lump on his forehead is courtesy of a friend grabbing his overall straps last week and yanking on him and him losing his footing and smacking his head (right where he hit it hard in September) on the door jamb. The lovely black eye happened about half an hour after the first crash when he climbed up on the footstool/toy box and slipped and hit right under his eye on the window sill. The eye didn't look too bad until Sunday when it turned that lovely yellow. The boys were both trying to do me in last week...the day after this, Joshua unbalanced the ladder on the bunk bed and it crashed down on top of him as he climbed out of bed...knocking him to the floor from half way down. Luckily just a few days before we'd moved Nathaniel from the crib mattress on the floor up to the bottom bunk (he loves having a big boy bed like Joshua). Joshua and the ladder landed right where Nathaniel would've been sleeping and that wouldn't have turned out well. That afternoon, Nathaniel tripped and fell and hit the sliding shelf thingie that this keyboard sits on and whacked the opposite side of his head on the corner/edge of that - two more scrapes/cuts/bruises/bumps. And then Sunday morning, about 5:30, Joshua somehow managed to fall from the top bunk. We don't know if he fell head or feet or if he was half-asleep and slipped coming down the ladder, but he has a goose egg on his forehead from that. I've told them NO MORE BUMPS and BRUISES.

Random stuff from last week...

Not much has gone on since Halloween, just your usual everyday life. But, I've got some cute pictures to share about everyday life, so here you have it :)

At the end of September we took the boys to a Build a Bear store in the mall in Fairfield. Each boy made a puppy. We gave Nathaniel's dog the unimaginative name of WOOF, mainly because it's one of the words he can say and that's what he calls dogs. Then Joshua, boy of the huge vocabulary, etc. chose to name his dog SPOT. Yes, just plain old Spot...I was expecting Eragon or Hagrid or some Star Wars character name. But no, he wanted Spot. Each of these dogs comes with a birth certificate. And, scrapbooker that I am, I made scrapbook pages using these certificates. However, they are very large, so it doesn't leave much room on the page for pictures. So I decided to just use a wallet-size picture of each boy with their new friend. I have Nathaniel's done and you can see it here. But I still needed to get a picture of Joshua with Spot - without Spot's clothing on (we bought him a $1 Halloween T-shirt at Target out of their dollar bins...and also gave him an outgrown shirt of Nathaniel's.). I finally got that done last week. And as soon as Nathaniel heard me tell Joshua to go get Spot, he went running for Woof. He wanted his picture taken too, so I snapped this one. I love it! I about died laughing at the expression on his face...I don't know what he was trying to do or say, but this is one of those photos I'm going to love for years.

Also, that day I took pictures of Joshua and his sugar skull that he'd decorated at school for their Dia de los Muertos celebration the week before. With him being in Spanish immersion they are going to be celebrating different Mexican holidays. Hmm, I wonder if I can get them to do any Spanish holidays - fallas would be fun :) But bonfires and kindergardeners are the best combo! Anyway, he wasn't overly impressed with Dia de los Muertos...he said that the "dead bread" wasn't anything special to eat. The first I ever heard about Dia de los Muertos was in Trixie Belden (Brian thinks I can link anything and everything back to a Trixie Belden book...he's pretty close to being right about that!) #6 and the Mystery in Arizona. True, Trix and the gang went to Arizona for Christmas (I've done that!) and Dia de los Muertos is in November, but it managed to tie into the mystery and be informative also. So, between that and teaching a majority of Mexican students for 5 years, I had enough of an idea about Dia de los Muertos and how it's celebrated in Mexico to make Joshua think I knew everything about it. So nice sometimes when he thinks I know everything. The other day when we were doing homework and he needed a word (in Spanish) that started with ba, be, bi, bo or bu and, while doing a couple of other things, I pulled the first word out of my head that fit that category and it was babosa (slug). He was so impressed that I knew the word for slug in Spanish that it prompted him to ask me if I knew every word in Spanish that there was. Sadly, I had to admit to him that no, I didn't and that I've forgotten so many words, but still, he assured me, I knew more words than he did. And he drew a lovely picture to go with that babosa - a beautiful rendition of Jabba the Hut (because he's just a big slug, you know) and carefully (because of my insistance) wrote babosa underneath the drawing.

More Halloween Catch-up

When I read Carol's blog yesterday (we both seem to have been bitten by the not-posting-in-awhile bug) she mentioned carving their pumpkin and how Geddy wasn't too happy with them cutting up his pumpkin and that he sampled raw pumpkin and thankfully DIDN'T like it. Well, then I realized that I hadn't posted our carving pictures. So here are a few pictures. Nathaniel, as you can see, entertained himself for a good part of the time with a lid to a box.
He did enjoy sticking his hand inside the pumpkins though

He did kind of lick his hand, but nothing like what Joshua did on his 2nd Halloween

Joshua - October 2003 - 18 months

Joshua carved his own pumpkin this year - he wanted to make it look scary...but once he was finished decided it wasn't that scary and next year he'd make a scarier one!

Brian and I got creative this year and used stencil things to carve our pumpkins...Brian not only carved the front of his, but also the sides.

Brian's pumpkin - all sides.

My pumpkin

Joshua's pumpkin

Catch-up from Halloween

Well, I haven't made it back to post for a couple of weeks...between me being sick for a day or so (note to self...stay away from cheddar broccoli soup at TGIFridays!) and Nathaniel back to having a fountain for a nose...and then just the normal everyday busyness, I haven't had a chance to update more than the titles of the books I've read or add a couple of scrapbook pages. Seems like every time I sit down to post, the phone rings, Nathaniel wakes up or someone needs me RIGHT NOW. So, since Nathaniel is sleeping and should be for at least another half hour and Joshua is at school for another hour and Brian just left for work, I thought I'd do one of a few update posts.

Anakin (aka Joshua) had a blast as usual on Halloween. It's the last time that he'll get to go trick-or-treating in downtown Davis most likely, because next year he'll be in school all day...and I don't think we'll be going when he gets out...too late for me and then be ready to go to Woodland. We didn't hit nearly as many stores this year as we did last year because Daddy had less time and Nathaniel was done! Our little dalmatian puppy enjoyed getting all the candy too - though he didn't really care if we opened it or not - he just wanted to chew on it! He walked for awhile and the look on his face was priceless...as he came out of a bank where he'd walked in with Daddy and Joshua and they put candy in his trick-or-treat bag he held up his bag and gave me this look that said, "Wow, Mommy, I just smile and hold out my bag and they give me yummy stuff!!"

Both boys crashed on the drive home from Davis - big surprise! We were only home for about an hour before it was time to go back and meet Brian and go over to Terry and Theresa's in Woodland. I had to wake up Joshua to go...I think Nathaniel woke up before that. He refused to let me put his costume back on him after I changed his diaper, he'd worn it for most of the day. So he was a cowboy for a place we trick-or-treated at in Davis. But when we went trick-or-treating in Woodland we put him back in his puppy costume. He loved his tail!

In Woodland, we got to go trick-or-treating with Elisha and baby Zachary. He was Superman for his first Halloween. We did a block or so there and then it was time for dinner. Joshua (with the help of cousin Michelle) handed out candy there.

This is a craft project Joshua and I did for Halloween. This wreath gets used for various holidays...right now it's got hands on it with all the things we're thankful written on them (this is our 3rd year doing this and it's so fun)...at Valentines day we cover it in hearts that we write what we love about each other on. Well, for Halloween we just made ghosts out of Tootsie Pops and kleenex and stuck them in. It was a fun craft...though now we've got a ton of Tootsie Pops!

Joshua's First Field Trip

Joshua was so excited a few weeks ago because the kindergarten was going to go on a field trip to a nearby farm. Sadly, on the scheduled day, it was raining so the trip was cancelled. I wasn't sure if Joshua was more disappointed because the trip was cancelled or because he didn't get to ride on the school bus. They finally were able to reschedule the trip - for Halloween. Nathaniel and I went to. We followed the bus out to the farm (actually owned and ran by one of the kinder teachers and her husband) and got to see how walnuts were harvested and shelled and sorted and boxed up to send to stores. It was pretty neat. I'd seen the "shaker" before...a big clamp like thing that is part of a tractor that grabs the trunk of the tree and shakes the walnuts out. Then we saw how they swept them into rows and then how another machine came and sucked them up to take them back to dump them in a big grate thing that sent them through a sheller.

The kids got to help out by putting on gloves and sorting the nuts - removing all the black pieces and any bits of shell, etc. Joshua and his friend Diego had fun doing that!

They also got to listen to a story about earthworms and learned how earthworms help the trees and plants grow. Then they got to dig for worms in the garden and yard. And Joshua's favorite parts? The school bus ride (his first) and playing on the little playground in the back yard. That's my boy :)

Nathaniel also enjoyed the trip with the big kids. He spent most of the time in his stroller - except on the hay ride around the walnut orchard. But it was so cold and foggy that his little hands and nose got really cold. I hadn't thought to bring gloves or mittens for him. This was only our second day of fog and I guess I'm just not ready to have it back so I wasn't prepared. The day before it had burned off pretty early...but not this day. It was after noon before we saw the blue sky!

After we were done at the farm we headed to Davis to meet Daddy for lunch and trick-or-treating in Downtown Davis...but that's another story.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Tired Boy

This is Nathaniel, Sunday afternoon. I brought him home from church a little early because of his majorly runny nose. He'd fallen asleep with Brian and by the time I was able to get away from the piano and get him he was out. But it was horribly windy and as soon as we took him outside he woke up. He did fall asleep on the short short drive home from the church, but didn't stay that way. I even tried nursing him, which did no good. Brian had a meeting after church, so he and Joshua didn't get home until after 2. I fixed the boys a peanut butter sandwich and put Nathaniel in his portable high chair in the living room...then I was talking with Brian about his meeting, etc. while he changed out of his suit and stuff. When we went back out into the living room, this is what we found. I guess whatever Living Scriptures video Joshua had put on, it just wasn't exciting enough to keep the boy awake! Joshua helped me by pulling the chair out from underneath Nathaniel as I lifted him up and then I just laid him on a blanket on the floor. Such a tired boy!