Helmets

"Where's my bike??!" Jeremiah happily started looking. He had seen helmets in the kitchen. Four helmets, two matching, bright blue with red spiders. He didn't find his bike in the kitchen, or the living room, or the hallway, or the bathroom, or his bedroom. "Where's my bike?!"

Well... He doesn't have one. We have a new (Craigslist-ed) bike trailer, and are planning on biking the boys to Kindergarten, which is about 3 miles away. A little too far for a four year old to ride. Especially as he doesn't know how to ride a bike yet. But, we figured, as responsible parents, that the children should each wear a helmet as they ride in the trailer.

He also discovered his new, fancy, zippered Spiderman lunchbox. "It will go in your backpack, and at lunchtime you'll open it up and there will be a sandwich and an apple and a juice box in it! Won't that be fun?" So, of course, now he wants an apple.

I've been trying to implement the idea of going to school again in his cute blond head. Your teacher's name is Miss Wilson! No, my teacher is Miss Rachel. My teacher is Miss Erica. You are so big, you get to go to Kindergarten [next week, in two days]! No, I'm all done with school. I'm all done with school!! You get to go to a different school soon. Won't that be fun? I'm all done with school.

One of the hard things for me with Jeremiah is simply that he is so completely literal. His preschool had a graduation, his teachers told him he was all done with school. So, as noted above, he believes he is all done with school, never to return. I did take the kids around their new school, and the play equipment is definitely the winning factor. :)

Going Potty

Note: This post contains potty language. If you are morally opposed to reading such, you have the power to not read this post.

Danielle is informally potty trained. Meaning, every few hours she hollers "Mommy! I have to go potty!" until I respond and take her to the bathroom. I only help her with pulling everything up again, she essentially goes potty by herself. I'm slowly backing away from helping her (we don't need to hold hands to enter the bathroom anymore), but for now, I'm quite content to let her call out to me that she needs to go, and only have dry pull-ups to throw away (they get wrinkly and funny shaped after 24 hours).

The boys start Kindergarten on Tuesday. Sometime after that, Danielle will learn to go potty all by herself.

Super-Mom!

I am amazing! My entire apartment is clean! At the same time!

(Notable exceptions and disclaimers:
Legos are all over the floor in the boys' room.
Floors haven't been vacuumed or mopped in the last 3 days.
And, and, and ... That's it!)

It's astonishing how much can get done without kids around, needing a drink, stepping on each other, spilling their milk all over the table-floor-themselves-chairs-and-stuff-that-should-have-been-put-away-last-week, whining because they are tired and cranky, whining because they want a turn, needing me to have a birthday party with them and their toys, needing me to fix their computer games.

Danielle is having her second nap in the past week and a half since our vacation, and the boys are (still) playing at a friend's house (thank you Laurie!). Two hours in the middle of the day is a gift. Indescribable. Plenty of time to clean this little apartment that somehow rarely gets all the way there.

Other things that this Super-Mom is working on:

Reading lessons with Jeremiah.
Potty training with Danielle. (I'm not sure why she needed to go all the time on vacation, or why that seems to have ended.)
Piano lessons with Isaac.
Making sure Isaac reads aloud everyday. He's a really great reader!
Teaching Jeremiah to write his name before Kindergarten starts. (Just "Jer." I didn't think about how long "Jeremiah" is for a 4 year old when we named him. I wrote our Jer for him on our chalkboard, and asked him to trace it, so when I said "J..." he grinned and started at the end of the hook and went up and to the right and said "G!" Cute.)

Kid-isms

A couple nights ago, Danielle really didn't want to go to bed. Also, lately she's been opposite-ing me to oppose my seniority or to have fun, depending on her mood. So, when she still wasn't staying in her room (which is unacceptable in our home), I changed tactics, and while taking her back, told her "I just love you so much, Danielle," as sweetly as I could given my rising frustration level. She looked at me with a determined face--determined to not go back into her bed--and yelled as loud and stubbornly as she could, "NO, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!" Well, then.

We've had incredibly nice weather lately, considering it's June in Arizona. But it's (finally?) getting hotter. And more typical. We were headed into swimming lessons, and Isaac was dragging along, and moaning, "Why is it so hot?" Uh, it's June in Arizona, buddy. Sorry.

Danielle and I painted our toes together, though I didn't cave when she asked if she could paint mine after I did hers. I had received some nail polish that was a weird light pink color for Christmas, and hadn't used it. Then on Sunday when we were wearing church shoes that we could see our toes through, when we were outside, the polish turned to purple! It was amazing. We enjoyed watching it change from pink to purple and back again as we went inside and outside.

Our children pray independently. Given that they're 6, 4, and 2, we get some interesting "ask fors." One night, Danielle really wanted to read "the David book" again, but as it was bedtime and we were doing our bedtime routine and reading another book isn't part of it, the answer was a definite No. As she prayed, she included, "Please bless us read the David book," I think twice. We did read it after her prayer. Maybe my heart was softened. :) When Jeremiah was praying, he asked "Please bless us to go to Old McDonald's," something that is a Sometimes in our family. The next day, John had Jeremiah in the car for 30 minutes, and happened to buy him an ice cream at McDonald's. It wasn't until when he told me what they had done, that we recognized his prayer was answered.

One of the kids' favorite chores (they like to help clean and get things ready, for whatever reason, which I'm grateful for) is washing the door. They all like to be helpers.


John's currently teaching a ridiculously long night class two nights a week, so I have the privilege/opportunity to do bedtime solo. Maybe they think they can get away with more when there's only one of us...it's true. These three kids are wonderful siblings. They love each other so much. I am honored to be their mother.

For Bill

It must be genetic?

I just looked over at my daughter a couple days ago, and lo and behold... this is what I saw. I had offered her string cheese a few minutes before, and she had denied it.

John's Birthday!

We celebrated John's birthday (and, as he reminds us, the eruption of Mount St. Helens) this week. We had yummy chocolate pie, complete with 29 candles, and presents on Monday.

Isaac and I went to buy presents. From me, John received Toss Up! and Make-n-Break. From Isaac, John received a set of Pirate Legos. Isaac's first choice for a present for Daddy (that Daddy would really like) was a Nintendo Wii game, which I seriously considered. However, as we don't have a television or a Wii, I decided that would be a tad more money than I wanted to spend. It was a very very good thought.

Then on Friday, John and I went to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. We really enjoyed our visit! There is currently a "Seriously Funny" exhibit...which was seriously funny. The social porta-potties, the marker-on-drywall, the lumpy sculptures. The grocery family tree. It made a great visit. The photography simply was. We finished our date with a late lunch at Olive Garden.

John also received a trifold with adorable pictures of our kids to take to his office. He's one lucky daddy!

Random Update

Danielle: I went swimming, but I got water in my eyes.

Notice that this is a 10-word sentence. Yesterday when we took the kids swimming, she decided to venture out by herself (yes, with a life jacket on), and was very surprised when she was submerged. She doesn't usually get her entire head wet at once.


Danielle: Do sharks have belly buttons?!?
Jeremiah: No. They have fins.

Well, he's right.


We have family swimming time each night for an hour at our apartment community pools. I prefer when there aren't other people around, but as it's getting hotter, that's happening less frequently. Isaac is like a fish. Literally. He pretends he's a fish going swimming. He just loves the water. He's fairly fearless, which we rein in by taking his swim vest off for a portion of the time we're at the pool. Last night he was jumping and diving in the deep end of the pool (we wouldn't allow the diving without a flotation device, but since he goes about a foot under the water surface before coming back up, we've decided to let him be for right now). I don't know if he's actually seen people dive before, or if he's trying out new ways of jumping in. The day before it was cannonballs...

I've registered the boys for swimming lessons, which will start in a couple more weeks. I'm hoping that Isaac will take to them...like a fish...and that Jeremiah will voluntarily dunk his head under the water.

I registered myself for a tennis class. :)

I just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Isaac, and he absolutely loved it. It helped that there were some pictures, but he loved the story and requested more. We're currently reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Prince Caspian, and Mummies in the Morning. I think we need to finish up the last of those today so we aren't reading so many books at the same time--it didn't happen quite on purpose.

Jeremiah had a fever last night, and came to find me. I laid him on our couch, and then he told me a story about a shark, and putting a worm on it's nose. It was very cute. He doesn't often just keep talking, and I adore it when he does.

Jeremiah's school had Water Day a few days ago, and he did not want to wear a shirt with his swim trunks. He was confused to have a shirt and swim trunks--he doesn't wear a shirt in the water, and he doesn't wear swim trunks to school. It was quite an issue. But seeing inflatable water slides made all the difference and he had fun. :)