Another Zane Milestone

Contemplating Change

Tonight, for the very first time, my boy Zane is wearing underwear to bed. What's the big deal? you may be asking. Zane has been mostly (9 days out of 10) dry for several months now. Recently I asked Eric what he thought about letting him wear big boy unders to bed and he thought it would be ok. Andrew was much older before he would wake himself up at night so it makes me a bit nervous to let Zane do it so young. I know several people who go straight to underwear at night when their kids potty train but mine either sleep too hard or don't have large enough bladders. Either way it would just work out to a lot of laundry for me to push the issue. Fortunately, Zane is Zane and is not in a terrible hurry to grow up. I first mentioned the idea of underwear at bedtime about a week ago. The answer was a resounding NO! Ok, no big deal. Not going to push the issue. It isn't like we were almost out of pull ups or anything. So I let the idea percolate in his little stubborn 3 year old brain. We have asked him a couple of different times. Still the answer was no. Tonight he was agreeable to the idea though and I am guessing that this will be it for him. Once he gets an idea in his mind the decision is done. Oh, it is so much fun to wait out my 3 year old!

Fishing at Lake Tye

Eric, the kids and I went to Lake Tye in Monroe for their annual kids fishing day. A local fishing club (can't remember which one, sorry) nets off a section of the lake and overstocks it with trout. This makes the fish super eager to bite and lets all the kids get the excitement of catching a fish. We went to the lake after church so the event was almost done. I got a little concerned that maybe they were all fished out but I shouldn't have worried. Eric took care of the boys (baiting lines and casting them) and I got to take care of Lucy. I first thought that I would just have to keep her from drowning herself in the lake but I soon realized that the shoreline was full of bits of Powerbait and some fish guts. Not exactly what I want my girl to play with or put in her mouth. So, I got to corral her on my lap. She was none too pleased with it either. The boys were having all the fun with daddy and she wanted a piece of the action too!


As I expected, Zane lasted only about 10 minutes of fishing before he wanted to come and sit on my lap. The kids next to us on either side kept pulling fish out of the water and I started to get a bit nervous that we were not going to catch anything and have to take home two (three if you count Eric) super disappointed boys! I shouldn't have worried though because soon enough Andrew caught his first fish.

Well, watching your brother catch a fish is absolutely no fun so after Eric got Andrew's fish off the line Zane wanted back in the game.

Eric rebaited Andrew's hook and was getting Zane's ready to go back into the water when lo and behold Andrew caught another one!!! Well, the limit for each kid was 2 fish so Eric got Andrew all finished up so he could focus on Zane. For whatever reason the fish seemed to like Andrew's pole the best so they stuck with that one. About 3 minutes later Zane was reeling in his first fish and it was a doozy!

Now that both boys had caught something we decided to call it a day. We went and got our fish weighed (2# 14 ounces for the 3 fish) and then stood in line to have the nice gentlemen clean them for us. They were significantly faster than we would have been at home! Plus we didn't have to worry about Calvin trying to eat the fish guts.

All in all, a great day of fishing and family bonding. Next year I think we are going to bring a lunch though. By the time we got done we were all starving and raw trout didn't appeal to any of us. Now to cook them for dinner tonight. If the kids take more than one bite I will be impressed. Eric is going to have a LOT of trout to eat!

Playing Go Fish

I recently got the kids a holder for their cards when we play go fish and other games. They love to play but they can't hold onto the cards the way that they need to. The cards end up in a lump and then it takes them forever to sort through them. Anyway, while I was at Target this week I picked up these card holders to see if they would make a difference.

Eric and I played Michigan Rummy this week with Andrew and it definitely helped him. Then tonight with Go Fish it helped with both Zane and Andrew. They like poking the cards in and out of the holder. I like that it was a non expensive solution. Now the card games can really begin at our house!

And just a random cute picture of Lucy for your enjoyment!

Z's, Pee and Ready, Set, GO!

This week Andrew brought home worksheets to start working on the letter Z for his speech therapy. I think he is only saying it wrong about half the time. I love seeing the concentration on his face when he is doing his homework. He is a very determined little guy when he knows the correct and proper way to do something. I am so glad that we pushed the speech issue too. He is getting much clearer to understand and it is wonderful to hear the progress. He still has a lot of sounds to go but I am confident that he is going to tackle them with the same dedication he has shown already.

Zane had his first true boy moment this week. Tuesday we went to the park and somehow during the midst of the playing Zane and one of the other little guys went and peed in the bushes. Honestly I don't know what he was thinking. I understand that it is a very BOY thing to do but it still was so out of character for him. I think the other little guy mentioned it and it sounded like fun to Zane so he went along with it. It isn't so much of a big deal as it is just a shock to me that he would take that much initiative and just go for it. It is probably good that Andrew didn't see him either. He would have flipped out.

Lucy this morning was super cute. Eric was getting her diaper changed and he said "Ready,Set, Go!" several times and Lucy was saying it with him. Silly mommy, worrying about her talking! She is doing fine. I am just not listening for it. It was very cute though and we can get her to say it for us periodically. She looks so proud of herself too. She will be chattering like a magpie in no time!

That is all for us. Just thought a quick update was in order!

Some Fun in the Sun at Our House!

The sun FINALLY decided to come out in Western Washington and we decided to take advantage of it.

Andrew spent some time playing soccer. First with me and then with Daddy.

Lucy wandered around the yard and just enjoyed being outside in general. On a side note, she is now able to get up to the top of the slide on the play structure without any assistance. YIKES!

Zane spent some time playing with trucks and also played some soccer with Andrew and Daddy.

For Easter Angie and Reece got the kids these very cool bubble swords. They are a total hit and the boys played for quite awhile with them. I had gotten the kids one of those no spill bubble buckets and they had fun with that too. Lucy seemed to think the bubbles were to be eaten, but other than that it was a great activity.

I love sunny days! I wish they would be here to stay until at least November. Maybe we would get sick of them but some how I doubt it!!!

Lucy Fern- 15 Months

Lucy had her 15 month checkup today. She is getting so grown up I can hardly believe it! Here are the latest stats on my baby girl!

Weight: 23# 3oz (56%)
Height: 31" (67%)

I actually thought she would be a bit taller than that but apparently she is just looking tall to me. In comparison to the boys she is close to tracking with Andrew for weight but she is considerably shorter than he was at this point. As I told the doctor, I am glad she is not on track to be a lumberjack! The only thing the doctor and I chatted about this time was that Lucy is not terribly verbal yet. I just assumed that since she is a girl she would be super chatty by now. I think part of the problem is that I am not listening to her babble and interpreting it correctly. I think she really only says "ma" and "da" but in the office both the doctor and I could swear she said "read it" "elmo" and "book." So maybe my ears just need to be listening better. Either way it is nothing to worry about (according to doctor) until she hits 18 months and then they would just test her hearing. I am sure she will be chatting my ear off by then and I will be wishing for a little peace and quiet. :)

Here are some Lucy lunchtime pictures to enjoy!

"Seriously lady, I am eating here"

I think she was trying to say "cheese" in this one!

All Star Andrew!

T-ball, for all the uninformed out there, is hilarious. Andrew had his second game today and it is so much fun to go and watch kids picking daisies, missing the ball, fighting over the ball and occasionally throwing it where it is supposed to go. I hate to brag (ok, I don't really) but Andrew is pretty stinking good at t-ball. Part of what works in his favor is that he has a good attention span and reasonably good hand/eye coordination.

His team is called "The Zoo Crew"

Today Andrew got to play catcher, center field and second base. I really enjoy the league that he is playing in too. Every inning, every child gets to bat. There are no outs and everyone gets to score even if they are the last hitter. Andrew's coach is really good at moving the kids around too so that they will get into a position with a chance to actually touch the ball. Let's face it, in t-ball there is not a ton of action to the outfield! Each game we have played has been 3 innings long. It usually lasts just about an hour and a half. Kinda long and by the last inning the kids are done but it is fun and very educational. What I have figured out about t-ball (and baseball in general) is that it is a much more complicated sport than soccer. I am sure that big kid soccer has more rules than what Andrew played this year but it certainly was less confusing than t-ball.

Getting ready for the game!

Andrew gets a HIT!!!

Andrew's biggest fan!

Andrew's other biggest fan!

Andrew playing catcher, keeping his eye on the action. They have to stand behind the fence in case of thrown bats. Good game today, only one thrown!

The thing that impressed me most about Andrew today was that he is totally a team player. When he got a chance to play second base he would try and field the ball (he made several great stops) but if the ball rolled past him he didn't mind letting other kids have a turn. It was very impressive that he had that much position integrity. Many of the other kids ran all over the field every time the ball got hit. Not my guy though, he is a team player all around!

Planting Strawberries

Today we planted some strawberries in our front yard. I am not much into gardening but I do enjoy strawberries and they tend to take care of themselves. Plus the boys are very excited about growing something they will be able to eat and enjoy in the near future. First order of business was weeding. We had not weeded yet this year so it needed to be done. This was a perfect reason and excuse to get out into the garden and do it. The boys were amazing helpers. I may have some gardeners on my hands in the future!

Zane was agreeable to getting his picture taken!

Andrew helped me pick out the plants!

Busy weeding. Notice the grumpy look on my face. Weeding is not therapeutic or enjoyable to me!

Planted and ready to go!

The boys are hoping we will get enough to make jam. I am just hoping for a snack. I know they will spread in years to come. Someday maybe we will have enough for jams and jellies!

Rockets

The Easter Bunny brought the boys these wooden rocket kits this year. They had a great time painting and then assembling them. It is interesting to see how their minds work while they are creating their masterpieces. Projects are the best presents for my two little men. They just love an activity. Almost more than just getting a toy.

Zane didn't seem to want to get his hands messy.

Andrew was very determined and diligent about painting his rocket EXACTLY how he wanted it.

Andrew's finished product.

Zane's finished product.

I am a little bummed. I got these rockets at Target (on clearance even!) but they have stopped carrying them. Now where I am going to get such cool projects?

Our Easter Finery

Sorry for the delay! Yesterday was a crazy busy day and by the end of it I had a pounding headache that sent me to bed at 6! Unheard of for me for sure! Anyway, the kids and Eric all matched this Easter. (Thank you Target!)


I was trying to get a picture of all of us but I didn't figure out my self-timer and we were running late. I was the odd one out though because I was wearing black and not yellow. But there is only so much a person can do when stuck with maternity clothing!

I forgot to tell Eric to not cover the bottom of Lucy's dress. It was very sweet with yellow and black butterflies and orange flowers. I am sure she will wear it again though and I will try to get another picture of it.

The Bunny Came to Our House!

A super quick MORNING! post to let you all know that the Easter Bunny came to our house. I think Andrew likes Easter even more than Christmas. He was over the moon excited about his basket and the egg hunt that we always do on Easter morning. He also is fully aware that this is the day that "Jesus came back to life" As long as we have that cemented in his mind as the real reason to celebrate. I am good with all the Easter festivities. Yesterday we went to our church and they had a huge Easter egg hunt. Seriously, I think they had around 6,000 eggs laid out and the kids went nuts. Of course I forgot my camera so you are going to have to live with the pictures from Eric and my not so super egg hunt. Oh, and apparently the only reason for a house to have a chimney (in fact it is why they even exist) is for Santa. Found that one out this weekend courtesy of Andrew's brain as well!

Isn't this the sweetest picture!

I haven't gotten such a good picture of the two of them in AGES!

Lucy on the hunt for eggs!

Zane's big stash

Andrew emptying out the goods. (Robin's eggs this year)

These two are MINE!

I will take more pictures of them in all their Easter finery. Hopefully that will get posted tonight! Hope you have a wonderful and blessed Easter!

Report Cards and a Speech Update

The picture is of course from Disneyland but I thought I should give an update on Andrew and school. The day we left for our vacation Andrew had his spring conferences. Eric and I were not concerned about school. I was interested to see if there was anything we needed to do to prep him more for 1st grade. Andrew's grades were overwhelmingly "exceeds expectations." Not only is he reading all of the sight/wall words that he is supposed to be reading for the quarter, he also is reading over half of the ones they will be covering from now until the end of the year. His teacher just encouraged us to keep him reading and to let him read as much and as difficult of books as he wants to. No need to keep him at grade level at all. She also gave me a list of the high frequency words for 1st and 2nd grade so we can work with those a bit too.

The one thing he needs to work more on is his writing. He has to be willing to take a chance and write a word regardless of whether or not it is spelled right. He is very concerned about what is the "right" way to spell. Unfortunately it can bog him down and he tends to simplify his vocabulary when writing to words he knows how to spell correctly rather than take a chance with a more difficult word. The more he reads and the more he works at it though the easier it is going to be. And lets be frank, spell check is a beautiful thing for those who are spelling impaired!

The last thing we received at the conference was an update on his speech. Andrew has been working so hard both in his homework and normal conversation and Eric and I definitely hear an improvement. He is currently working at sentence level with his "sh" sounds. He met his objective for the sound in individual words and is making progress with the sound in sentences. Andrew's progress with his "l" sound has been great as well. He is working with the sound at a sentence and monologue level. It is coming along nicely and we are very proud of him! The final sounds he is working on are the "s" and "z" sounds. He is still working with these sounds with the therapist exclusively and is having a harder time with them. Eric and I are kinda baffled a bit because we don't hear anything super wrong with the way he says the sounds but if they say it isn't coming out right then maybe we all are just not knowing what to listen for. I am sure we will be getting homework for those sounds in the near future as well!

All in all it was a great report card and we are super proud of all the great work Andrew has done this year. He is loving kindergarten and I am sure this is just the start of a pattern of loving school in the years to come!

Easter Eggs!

Easter eggs are an annual tradition at our house. It just wouldn't be Easter without them. In fact it is one of Andrew's very favorite things about Easter. He has been looking forward to doing this activity for days. He even brought it up on vacation to remind me. So I knew we had to get it done before Easter weekend or he would be disappointed.

Zane had fun with the egg dying this year too. I think he may have remembered it from last year but mostly I think he was feeding off of Andrew's enthusiasm.

My three Men!

Zane, intent on the egg process!

Final Product! Yummy!!!

Now for multicolored egg salad sandwiches and macaroni salad. My favorite part, the eating!

The Cruise and Stone Island

After leaving Disneyland we hopped on a Super Shuttle for a quick trip to the cruise ship. Eric and I were certainly ready for some mommy and daddy relaxation! For any of you who have not cruised, let me just tell you, embarkation day can be super crazy. We got to the terminal about noon and prepared ourselves to stand in line. Apparently there is some benefit to having a fussy toddler in a stroller because the man in charge of the line pulled us out and sent us to the disabled/wheelchair line. We did all the necessary work and then zoomed past everyone up to the boat entrance. SWEET! No waiting and straight to the dining room we went.


After our lunch was eaten we headed off to our room and to the kids center to get the boys registered. We got almost done with the form and then I realized I didn't have the medical information. Rats! Back to the room we had to go. Right about this time I started not feeling well. Which was kinda weird because I had been feeling great all day. I had a headache and just needed to lay down. Plus my tummy was not feeling so hot. Well, remember how Lucy got the flu and threw up? Yep, you guessed it! I was the first of all four of the rest of us to come down with the same flu plague that she had. For one night only all in our clan threw up and then felt better. Fortunately it was a short lived bug. We only felt nasty for about 6 hours or so and it wasn't on a day that we were in a port. But THANK YOU LUCY! for deciding to share her sickness with us. It was super swell of you.


I don't have a ton to say about the cruise in general. We stopped at Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. In Cabo I did some shopping for Andrew's teacher. His class is doing a unit on Mexico and she had mentioned a couple of things that she would like to have. I was able to find one thing that she asked for and some other super cool beaded art thing that I thought the kids in Andrew's class (and classes down the road) would enjoy.


Mazatlan brought the most fun of the trip for us. Eric researched one of the shore excursions to a place called Stone Island and found out that it is a super short walk from the cruise terminal to the "ferry" and it was significantly cheaper to go outside of a shore excursion. After losing Lucy's shoe (it was later recovered by one of the crew members when they took the gangway back out) we finally managed to get to the "ferry" terminal. The ferry was really more of a dingy but it only cost us $6 to get to the island so we weren't complaining too much. Once on the island we kinda followed some people who looked like they knew what they were doing. We ended up at Letys, a nice little restuarant/cabana thing that had good and cheap food. It was AMAZING and we had a blast. The kids played in the sun all day and Eric and I managed to cook ourselves.

The rest of the cruise was uneventful and relaxing. Wonderful vacation and break from reality. It was nice to come home though and get back into the day to day existence of things. No seriously, it really was!

Lucy's Trip to Disneyland

Now I know you are all thinking that I must be crazy to have more Lucy stories to tell about Disneyland but let me tell you, this little lady made vacation this time around interesting to say the least. The day we left (Tuesday) I noticed that she was cutting teeth. Notice I said teeth (plural) and not tooth. Lucy decided that Disneyland would be a FABULOUS place to cut two molars and her last secondary incisor on the bottom. Eric and I stocked up on Tylenol so we figured we would be ok. She usually runs a bit of a fever when cutting teeth and the Tylenol takes care of it. And it seems to combat the pain as well. Bottom line was that we knew she would be potentially a bit crabby but nothing we couldn't deal with. Oh how wrong two parents can be!

The first day at Disney was great. Lucy was crabby but we gave her some opportunities to get out of the stroller and run around a bit and that seemed to help. Stayed on top of the Tylenol too. All was going well and she was tuckered out by the end of the day. Plus she seemed to really enjoy the mellow easy rides.

The second day at Disney I had her all decked out in her princess gear. She had pigtails and the super adorable dress. All was going well. She was kinda crabby but we spent a lot of time in line and held her and she seemed to be fine. No real fever, just grumpy, so I gave her meds and food. Well that backfired in a huge way!

After kicking around the main park in the morning we decided to go to California Adventure in the afternoon to go and see Aladdin the musical. We made it in and sat all the way in the top, second balcony, very last row. The show begins and all of a sudden Eric (who was holding Lucy) looks over at me and says, "I've got to GO!" I gave him a quizzical look and he said, "She just threw up all over me." As these words are coming out of his mouth Lucy lets loose round two of all the food (bananas and crackers) that I had fed her thinking that her grumpiness was hunger. And let me tell you, the girl had eaten a LOT! Poor Disney workers, poor Eric and poor gentleman sitting in front of us who got yack on his shirt (not too much though!). They all got to deal with the Lucy mess while the boys and I all sat and enjoyed the rest of the show.

Needless to say we went home after that so clothing could be changed and washed. Thank God for coin laundry machines! I started a load and then we all went to dinner. Hey, the rest of us actually were hungry! Although Lucy did throw up AGAIN at dinner. Poor wait staff at the restaurant! And poor Eric who got the job of carrying her back to the hotel! The last day we were paranoid about feeding Lucy so she hardly ate all day. I don't know that she was super hungry and she was really whiny crabby. But it is just one more reason why you do not see any photos of Lucy with the Toontown characters. She will have her shot at Disneyland again one of these days I am sure!