Manic Monday

Yesterday was insane! It was insane is a pretty good way (for the most part) but still insane.

Evan's kindergarten class made a Thanksgiving dinner to have at for lunch and of course parents were needed to help out and make sure that the kids were not picking their noses and then touching the food. It was fun and there were plenty of parents to help supervise. Evan's class seems particularly blessed with a lot of willing and helpful parents. I think we are the envy of the other kindergarten classes because we seem to always have more parents helping with things than the other classes. As usual Evan was very excited to have me in school with him.

Later in the afternoon Daniel had his checkup. He is a healthy little guy and hitting all his milestones and growth curves. He was not thrilled with all the shots he got but quickly shook it off to flirt with the nurses.

During all my rushing around the weather was awful. We had our first snow of the season which had the kids all excited but mom not so much. I now realize why my parents were less than thrilled when it snowed. Yeah it looks pretty, but it is not fun having to drive in the stuff. I think my doctor has jinxed me or something becuase every time we go and see him the weather is terrible. Thankfully the snow did not stick around and we are just stuck with cold rain. Brrr!

Confession

Last weekend Harry went to a birthday party (his first of the year). The day before he carefully chose a coloring book for his friend and I added to the present a package of crayons that I had bought earlier during the back to school sales. An hour before the party I hastily wrapped everything and made a quick card (I have oodles of card stock so I tend to make my own cards for things like this). Harry had a fun time, mom not so much (it was super loud).

A few days later I cleared off a pile of junk that was on a side table and noticed a bag with a brand new coloring book in it. Yeah, I had grabbed an old Sesame Street coloring book on accident and wrapped that instead of the new un colored Sesame Street coloring book. I can't even make it right and give the poor little girl the new coloring book because she had moved and I don't have the new address.

It is upon you, my dear readers to help me not feel so bad. Please tell me that I am not the only frazzled mother that has done something like that.

Boo!

Halloween is over but the candy still lingers. The boys got quite a haul between the ward trunk or treat and going around the neighborhood. I think the quality of the candy has also improved since last year, one of our neighbors was giving out king sized candy bars.

The Pumpkins

Evan's pumpkin. He drew the shapes on the face (except for the mouth) and I carved them. Now that the pumpkin is a little less fresh, the expression has changed into one of a pumpkin just about to blow an aneurysm. The teeth are less pointy so the mouth is more open and "what the heck!" looking.

Harry's pumpkin which was carved by my husband. The mouth is an homage to Daniel although Daniel's lone tooth at the time was on the bottom not the top (a fact that my husband did not appreciate me pointing out. The pumpkins this year were given to us by a great friend (thanks again Beth!) and a billion times easier to carve than the ones we had last year. Last year we had to get out the cordless drill to even pierce the skin of the pumpkins!

The Costumes

Harry's costume may look familiar as it was Evan's costume last year. For awhile Harry was insisting that he got to be a cat again even though he barely fit the costume last year. I finally convinced him that he could indeed wear Evan's costume from last year and nothing bad would happen.

Evan's dragon costume is a loaner (thanks again Beth!). We had a bit of drama with it. Evan wore it to school on the Wednesday before Halloween for the school party and parade. When he came home the pants were missing. A frantic call to Evan's teacher turned up nothing. I was rather bummed that the pants were missing since the costume was not ours to keep. Then on Monday morning as I was getting the kids in coats to leave for school I saw tucked in Evan's sleeve a pair of green pants (pale green pants with nobody inside them). They had been there the whole time!!! The weather had been rather warm (or rainy so we were staying indoors) so his coat had not been in use which is how I missed seeing them sooner.

Cuteness!!! This little guy was Friend Bear (a care bear for those not in the know). This was also Evan's first costume and they both looked adorable in it. This picture was taken five seconds before Daniel had an epic melt down due to over stimulation from the ward party. He went to bed early which really killed me when he woke up at 5am thanks to the time change.

The Celebrations

Here is Harry with one of his preschool teachers during the costume parade at school. The pictures are rather blurry, they were moving fast and I had a baby strapped to me.

Evan and his para during the parade. He was quite excited to see me there as you can tell.

At the ward party there was a game where you popped balloons and got the candy inside. Harry and Evan had a bit of trouble popping them. Harry even sat on his and was not able to get it to pop. Eventually my husband got his keys out to help them out.

It is like herding cats

On Thursday the Kindergartners went on their first ever field trip. Evan's teacher asked me if I would come along and I arranged it so I could. I thought it would be exciting to go along and I was right, it was just not quite the exciting I had been thinking about. There were 58 kids total. Luckily Evan's class had enough parents coming a long that the groups were at most two kids. The other classes were no so lucky and had much bigger groups. Evan's para went along and helped out with another class. The noise was epic. It makes me wonder how the teachers keep their hearing after having to listen to it all day long. We were finished with enough time that I could have gone home before having to go back to school to pick Evan up, but I ended up buying come chocolate and sitting in my car listening to the silence.

First stop, making pizza at Cici's pizza.

First you put the sauce on.

Then the cheese.

Then the peperoni (Evan just dumped the entire container on the pizza and coudl not understand why I had him spread them out more evenly).

Then we wait for it to cook.

And there is the finished pizza! Time to eat. The adults got to eat pizza that was not made by Kindergartners.

On to the museum of history

Looking through the window section of a piece of one of the first permanent wooden houses in Kansas.

Look a train!

and that's the tooth

Yesterday while I was holding Daniel at Evan's OT appointment I felt a tooth in his little mouth. I knew that this was imminent due to his general crankiness of late and I am hoping that now that this one is cut we will have a bit of a break. I don't have any pictures, it is not like you would see it any way but I do have pictures of him eating solid food for the first time. We introduced solids almost a month ago and he is taking to them like a fish to water. He is starting to expect that at dinner time he will be getting some food too and when I try and skip it he will start fussing at me. I make him a baby mush with some pureed veggie or fruit mixed with the oatmeal baby cereal and a scoop of formula.

A big messy smile!

Wha?

A hot off the press taken today picture. Daniel's new favorite toy. He finally has the trunk strength to play in his exersaucer. This kid has amazingly great trunk strength due to his odd love of tummy time. Harry and Evan loathed tummy time, but every time I put Daniel on the floor for play time he rolls right over on to his stomach.

Daniel's favorite toy on the exersaucer thanks to his teething.

Oookkkaaaay

My kids are a bunch of wierdos (I have no idea where they get it from). Harry still wears a diaper at night due to him being unable to wake himself from sleep to go to the bathroom (Evan is the same way and wears a pull up to bed). This morning he took his diaper off and started sniffing it. He explained to me that he was smelling it and that it smelled like poop. He was so serious about it that I had the hardest time not bursting out into laughter. His preschool recently did a unit on the senses so I am guessing that is where the sniffing random stuff came from.

More about Evan

We had Evan's IEP refinement meeting today. It was nice to see all the people who were working hard to make sure that he will get the best education possible. The big change to the IEP was writing in the need for a para explicitly instead of implying it like it was before. Also added was that Evan will get an extra half hour of PT but instead of it being at the school it would be at another building where the PT has bulky equipment that she wants to use with Evan but can't take in her car. Evan's dream to ride a bus will finally come true and I am sure that will be the highlight if his week.

I was a bit aprehensive about taking him out of the class even more than is going on now but it will be during math time which is apparently one of his biggest strengths (unlike his math impaired mother). He blows his peers away in things like number recognition and counting. I guess I should not be shocked about that since he has obsessed over numbers since he was rather young. I do however need to work on teaching him his address and phone number which is something I never really thought about teaching him although I can see why it would be useful. He also needs to learn our last name and associate it with himself and that I am not just Mommy but I have an actual name. He knows my husband's name since I use it fairly often but my husband only seems to call me Honey so Evan rarely hears my actual name. I guess I should count myself lucky that he is not telling his teacher that his mother's name is Honey.

The adaptive PE teacher has a great goal for Evan which is to work on getting Evan to become more independent. Evan is the master at getting people to help him. There are girls in his class that seem to fall over themselves to help him. Any passing stranger falls under his spell and finds themselves assisting him. It was a crazy battle (and sometimes still is) to get him to dress and undress himself. He has the skills but sometimes just decides that he can't do something (naturally at the worst times).

Daniel charmed everyone at the meeting and flirted a lot. He got passed around a fair bit too and only looked for mommy when it was getting close to his feeding time.

I have been knitting and one of the things I have been knitting is so uber cute that it deserves a post of it's own. The problem is getting pictures since the kids will not let them out of their sight. Once I manage that you will be graced with some non baby (and some baby) cuteness.