Happy St. Patrick's Day

For St.Patrick's day this year we continued our tradition of wearing green clothes and eating green food. For breakfast we had green waffles and green milk. For lunch we had ham, cheese and lettuce sandwiches with green yogurt(we decided that the meal had to have something green, but not everything had to be green). We had pistachio pudding for snack. For dinner we had green cornbread, chili and peas. The kids thought it was fun to have green food all day.

Pine wood Derby!

Last weekend our ward had a pinewood derby race. Alan was SO excited. He and Reed decided on a design and then Reed and I cut it out. Alan decided he wanted a red car with a silver lightning bolt on the front. They used fishing weights to weigh the car down and they put the weights in the driver seat, so Alan pretended that one of the weights was him driving and one of the weights was Conner.

Alan with the finished product, which he called his pine wood derbian car

The boys right before they left to go to the church

According to Reed they placed 10th out of 14 or something like that but Alan came home with a medal that said winner on it and he was so pleased with himself. He wore that medal for days. I unfortunately didn't get to see the races. I came down with a sore throat on Thursday and went to the doctor on Friday to see why I felt so horrible. He did a half second look at my throat, announced that he was pretty sure I had strep throat and then did a test to be sure. Yup, definitely strep throat. He gave me a shot of penicillin and sent me home. I was feeling a lot better the next morning, which was the pinewood derby, but I was still contagious so Micah and I stayed home.

On Thursday I was trying to think of something for the boys to do that didn't require a lot of work from me since I was starting to feel yucky. Here is what I came up with:

I filled squirt bottles up with colored water (red for Alan, blue for Conner) and told them to go make designs on the snow. They had a blast. I am grateful to be feeling better and glad that no one else got sick.

Big Boy Bed

We finally decided to move Conner to a big boy bed. I have held off doing this as long as I could because he was sleeping so good in the crib and he never tried to climb out. When Micah outgrew his bassinet we moved him into the pack 'n play. However, a couple of weeks ago Conner decided he wanted to sleep in Alan's bed and there was no going back to the crib. So we ordered bunk beds - that way when Micah eventually moves into that room there will be a bed ready for him.

Here is what Conner looked like in the crib. The picture below was taken in Micah's room after we moved the crib and that is why the mattress is so high - it wasn't that high when Conner was sleeping in it.

Here is Conner sleeping in his new bed. We don't have a mattress yet for the top and we didn't attach the ladder because I don't want the kids climbing and playing up there.

Conner has done pretty good about staying in his bed. For a couple of days he did get up and he kept coming out but he is doing better now.

A couple of days ago I went in to check on Conner during his nap. He wasn't in bed and I found him on the floor in the corner of the room between the wall and Alan's bed. He was folded in half and fast asleep.

The next 2 pictures are just silly pictures of Conner. Conner has a fettish about keeping his hands clean. If they get dirty or sticky he will hold them up and yell "ticky!!" and run to the sink. Recently this has moved to his face too - all of a sudden in the middle of dinner he will get up and run to the sink to wash his face and then he will come back to eat.

Conner is eating a donut without using his hands (this was before he started worrying about having a dirty face)

I was pulling out some of Alan's old clothes to see if they fit Conner and Conner decided he wanted to try them all on. He put one shirt over the other until looked very thick. I think he ended up with 5 or 6 shirts on and he wore them for several hours. In the picture below he is wearing 6 layers of clothes, his hair is crazy and he has a black eye (hit in the face with a door knob at a friend's house).

5 sick days at home = cabin fever

On Wednesday Alan woke up complaining of a sore throat and it all went down hill from there. By the next morning he had a fever, was throwing up, and he was complaining of a sore throat, an ear ache and cough plus a runny nose. Just about everything that could go wrong with him did. He was not a happy little boy and he spent a lot of time laying on the couch watching movies and having books read to him. Thankfully by the next day he was feeling a little better and not throwing up anymore so we started thinking of other things to keep us occupied while we stayed at home. I gave the boys some styrofoam blocks, golf tees, elastic bands and pretend hammers and told them to get to work. They stayed busy hammering the 'nails' in and then stringing elastic bands around the tops of the tees to create guitars, drums, storage areas ect. I remembered doing something similar with some toddlers in one of my university classes and it was a big hit with the boys.

Here is Conner, hard at work

Alan and Conner working. Alan put so many elastics on his that it broke in half. Luckily we had a few extra styrofoam blocks from our new printer.

Alan showing me he can make music with his guitar/drum.

We also made a cardboard house, played lots of games, made some cards, and watched tv and movies. Alan is doing lots better today, but we still stayed home from church. I didn't want to risk giving anyone else that nasty bug. I am hoping to resume normal activities tomorrow though, because I have a bad case of cabin fever.

First taste of solids

Micah has shown a lot of interest in our food lately so we decided to see how he would do with his first try of solid food (rice cereal). Here is the story:
Micah loves to sit in his high chair and look around while we are eating. I like this picture because it shows how his hair usually looks.

Ooo, what's that?

Lets give this a try....

Gag me! That's disgusting!

How could you do this to me?!?

I don't think so Daddy. You are not going to come anywhere near my mouth with that spoon again.

After that he kept turning his head from one side to the other when Reed brought the spoon near him and he hasn't tried any more since then.

Another one bites the dust

The 8 pairs of pants in the picture all have 2 things in common: they all belong to Alan and they all have holes in the knees. Alan is SO hard on his pants. Most pairs of jeans only last one month and I stopped buying any other kind of pants because they only last a week or two. He does this every winter - he can go through 10 or more pairs of pants. So of necessity I learned how to patch pants. For Christmas I asked for a sewing machine and last week I sat down and figured out all the parts and instructions for my new machine. I am not much of a seamstress so that took quite a while. Then I sorted through Alan's drawer. Five of the pairs were getting kind of short so I didn't repair them, so I guess the title should read 5 more bite the dust. One pair are his paint pants so I didn't repair them. The other two I put patches in the knees and sewed them up. Now he has 2 good pairs of pants (they are both the Toughskins brand which means they last longer) and 2 pairs of play pants. Hopefully they last the rest of the winter.

Going to Preschool

After Christmas we looked at our finances and decided that we could send Alan to preschool. I found that there was one vacancy in a preschool near our home so we enrolled Alan there. When we told Alan I expected him to be really excited and at first he was, but then he got really quiet. I asked what was wrong and he looked at me with this worried look and said "I'm nervous." We reassured him but he stayed nervous until his first day. He seemed to lighten up when he met his teacher and saw all the toys in the room. When I picked him up after his first day I asked how it was. He excitedly replied "Mom, it wasn't boringer!"
Me: "Oh, it wasn't boring?"
Alan: "No, I thought it was going to be boring but it wasn't!"
Since then he has loved every day of preschool. He loves doing crafts and coming home to show me what he learned about. They had a valentines party on Monday and he was so excited for the whole week prior to it - he couldn't stop talking about it. I have learned that apparently here in the states you always put candy on your valentines. In Canada we don't do that - we just give cards or paper hearts. So I was kind of surprised when Alan came home with a pouch full of valentines and all of them had candy on them. He also came home with a plate full of goodies. At first I felt kind of dumb for not sending candy but then when I thought about all the candy Alan ate that day I think that maybe the kids didn't need anymore sugar.

Alan with his back pack on, ready to go to preschool

In preparation for President's Day they learned about Abraham Lincoln. Alan really liked wearing the pretend beard.