Helper Boy

I put my kids to work early. By two they're experts at doing laundry. Benny's been working so hard he had to turn his hat around.

It's rough being a kid here.



Or maybe he thinks pulling the laundry out and throwing it in the basket is fun ... you never know. But I'll tell you what is definitely fun: pushing the button that turns the dryer light off. Pushing it repeatedly.

Oooh, and dryer balls! Dryer balls are lots of fun.

Blast Off!

You may remember the last time we built a rocket with straws and connectors. Then again, you may not ... it was three years ago! Alex brought me the box of the straws and connectors today and asked if we could pleeeeeease make something ... so we decided on the rocket ship. He loved it, and of course he wanted to get in it and fly to the moon ...


Benny had to have his turn as well. This is the face I got when I asked him to look at me and smile. (And of course, this is why real photographers don't tell kids to smile!)


So we decided to send 'em both to the moon! Here they are blasting off.


Ethan was almost too big for the rocket this time.


This is my somewhat pitiful attempt to get all three of them in a picture together. Well, they're all in the picture, but only Alex is actually looking at the camera, and he has a pretty cheesy grin.


You may notice that Benny is disassembling the rocket. He completed that project shortly after the picture-taking ended, much to Alex's chagrin. It's hard to have a destructive little brother!

Clippity Clop

The boys have a new game they play. They call it Clippity Clop - well, Alex does. Benny's not talking enough yet to call it anything. It's easy to play, though. They each put on one rubber boot and chase each other up and down the hallway.

Notice how they both have their boot on the same foot?



They think it's extremely funny.


On this particular morning, Ethan got into the game with them. That, of course, meant Yellow wanted to play too.


I'm not sure what exactly Ethan is doing here, but he certainly seems to be having a good time!

Vacation

Luke had a week of vacation in September, and one of the things we did was go over to the Mall of America to visit the Aquarium (and the Lego store!). The boys loved the aquarium. (Luke and I thought it was overpriced for as small as it was, but that may be because we're cheap and old.)

They loved the tanks of jellyfish.

Here's Benny trying to hug some!

There were lots of oohs and aahs and pointing, although it was a little challenging to capture it because there was always something else just as exciting coming up!

The Lego store was closed for remodeling, but Ethan was a trooper and enjoyed browsing through the much smaller version they had open. We also got to stop on the way home at Cousin Trevor's football game!

Pictures ...

Since I'm not going to catch up with all the posts I was going to write, I just posted pictures here. Some of them are repeats from other blog posts, but some are new. Enjoy!

The Fire Station

Our local homeschool group recently had a field trip to the fire station. Ethan and Alex loved it! One of several things they got to do was spray the fire hose. They did it together since Alex needed a bit of help.



They both thought it was great!

The summer is over, we started school a couple of weeks ago, and despite my good intentions there are many blog posts that haven't been written. I have pictures of family gatherings, a field trip to the fire station (although I may share just one picture from that anyway), and summer activities that I had intended to post about. I am in awe of the moms that homeschool, run a business on the side, do all kinds of creative things with their kids, and find time to blog about all of it - I am not nearly that good!

So instead, I'll just post these pictures of my boys. They are all pictures that make me want to grab the boys and hold on to them ... maybe if I hug them tight enough they won't grow up so fast ...

Wishes

I was helping Alex in the bathroom today, and as we pulled his pants up he was muttering to himself.

"What are you saying?" I asked him.

"I just wish we could turn this into dirt," he said, gesturing at the floor. "Then I'd turn into a steam roller and you'd turn into a crane and Benny would turn into a cement mixer and Ethan would turn into a dump truck."

"What about Papa?"

"Ah, let's see ... he'd be a digger. And Yellow would be a fence."

And that would be a perfect world to a three-year-old.

Too bad it's the end of summer ...

... rather than the beginning! Luke and I have been talking about (and saving towards) buying a motor home for a while. There are a lot of reasons we thought it would be a good purchase, and a lot of traveling with the boys we'd like to do. Luke's been watching Craigslist and the Buyer's Guide all summer, and we've gone and looked at a couple that weren't right for one reason or another. This last week, he saw one in the Buyer's Guide that looked like just what we wanted. We went and looked at it Tuesday evening, and ended up buying it! Here are some pictures, mostly for those of you who have let me know you're anxious to see what it looks like. (Hi Dad!)

Outside:

Standing in the "kitchen" area, facing the front (the couch turns into a bed, and there's a bunk over the cab):

And this one is standing by the bunk/driver's seat area. The sink, microwave, and stove are on the right, and the refrigerator is on the left. There's a small hallway with the toilet and vanity on one side, and the shower on the other. Then there's a queen-size bed in the back.

There's no dinette because it's been modified to accommodate the needs of the previous owner. His son was handicapped, and it was too difficult to get him into the dinette. There is a small table that flips up in between the two chairs; I forgot to take a picture of that.

So what do the kids think?




They love it!

(They also like to make funny faces.)

End of Summer

We start school on Monday, so this weekend was our last official weekend of summer vacation. We celebrated with a family day at the Weston Aquatic Center and a buggy supper! I have lots of pictures of the boys playing in the sand and water area of the Aquatic Center, and a big fat ZERO of them actually in the water. I meant to at least get one of Ethan flying down one of the big, twisty slides, but it ended up being too challenging to have two little people to watch and take pictures at the same time. (Luke was going with Ethan on the slide.) There was a lot to enjoy in the sand area, though.

They had watering cans, cups, shovels ...

The boys were enthralled, and sometimes slightly annoyed to have mama want them to look up from their play ...

There were troughs of water, spigots they could turn on ...

a pulley system with scoops attached to the cables ...

(You'd think I never fed this child, wouldn't you?)

I love how they concentrated so hard on their play.

Benny laid down and rolled in the sand.

We capped off the day with a buggy supper - fly burgers, butterfly pasta, cheese worms, and ladybug cupcakes. I'd planned on having this meal just for the fun of it earlier in the summer, and it got postponed because of all the unexpected traveling we did when my grandpa died last month. I took pictures, and discovered that it's very difficult to get good pictures of food. It makes me appreciate all the beautiful pictures on the food blogs that I see. So instead, here are pictures of the boys enjoying their ladybug cupcakes.

When they got done, I asked Benny to show me his face:

Good-bye, summer vacation! We've enjoyed you so much this year!

Tall Ships

Ethan recently got to go spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa all by himself! It was a rare treat that he enjoyed greatly. They went to a Woodchuck's game, watched fireworks, and went to Green Bay to see the Tall Ships. He had so much fun!



Here he is with Grandpa.


And you can see that steering a ship is serious work!

Lessons from my children

Never ask, "Is it possible for us to be any noisier?" unless you are prepared for a demonstration. And yes, it is possible. Always.


"That will make a mess!" is a reason to do something, not a reason to stop.

An eight-year-old will be willing to go to bed at 7:30 and get up at 5:00 if he believes that it will truly make him healthy, wealthy, and wise. "Wealthy" being the most important of the three.


Never ask, "What are you eating?" when there's no food in the immediate area unless you're willing to hear the answer, "Boogers!".

Seeing your kids cuddle together in a chair will always make you smile, even when you know it's only a matter of time before they start fighting.


"I love you, Mommy!" will melt your heart. Every time.

Photos in this post are completely unrelated to the text. They just make me smile. They were all taken by my talented husband.

How to Clean the Bathroom

Some of you may be familiar with Flylady* - one of the cleaning mavens of the internet. She has a theory that you can keep your bathtub clean all the time by simply washing one side of it every day as you shower.

I've tried her method. I think maybe Flylady doesn't have three dirty children that use her tub on a regular basis.


So I thought I'd share my method of how to keep your bathroom clean. With, of course, the help of your children.

Step 1. Choose the right time to allow your children to help you. Today we chose right before naptime because that's when I'm feeling most patient ... er, wait. Because that's when they're most cooperative ... um, never mind. Let's move on to ...

Step 2. Make sure to have a job for everyone. Benny used the tap to dampen his cleaning rag and then wash the mirror with it. This makes for a lovely streaky finish that is hard to duplicate. Alex used the spray bottle of (nontoxic) cleaner to clean the top of the vanity. Some might say that he was actually flooding the vanity, but the sink is right there anyway.

Step 3. Make sure you turn your back on the children to clean the bathtub. The demonstrates that you trust them, and allows for teamwork between them to develop as they unroll the toilet paper.

Step 4. Reflect on how important Step 1 is as you take deep, cleansing, breaths.

Step 5. Remove the toilet brush from the hands of any child who tries to scrub the floor with it. Remember, you have to clean the floor yet anyway.

Step 6. Explain to your curious three-year-old why it's yucky to splash in the toilet water.

Step 7. Pay close attention to what the children are doing. Otherwise, the one who had the spray bottle - who set it down while he went to the bathroom - will quickly take it back from the one who didn't have it. In retaliation, the one who had it taken from him may - just may, mind you - slam the toilet seat down on his brother as he finishes going to the bathroom.

Ouch.

Step 8. Put the children to bed for their nap.

Step 9. Clean the mess the children made.

Step 10. Clean the bathroom the way you did before you had children.

*Since I'm mentioning Flylady, I'll also say that one of my own family members (who shall remain anonymous!) has started her own homemaking website. You may want to check out The House Honcho.

Oobleck

We made oobleck today. It was fascinating - who knew that cornstarch and water, in the right proportions, would seem to be both liquid and solid? If you click on the link, it'll tell you how it works - something that Ethan was interested in.


Benny and Alex didn't care about the science; they just enjoyed the sensory aspect of the activity.


Aside from the scientific educational value ("Non-Newtonian liquid," anyone?) it was educational in other ways. Like "don't put too much food coloring in it, or your hands will turn colors". (See, we read the Suess book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck", so it had to be green!)


And "This probably isn't the best activity to try on a day you're leaving for a trip and have lots of other things to do. Aside from the obvious clean-up issues, you're going to want to blog about it."


But it was worth it anyway.