Are we having fun yet?: last two weeks of November

They have this game they play called gate. They throw all the outside toys over the backyard gate. I don't like it so much, but they love it. One part was cute. W was on the other side while T was throwing toys over. He was running back and forth from there to the garage because he "needed to get ice cream for princess". She was making ice cream cones with the buckets and balls he was throwing over. Ok. They can play gate.

Last year for Christmas I got T a calculator thinking he would love buttons and numbers. He is just now figuring out the connection. He likes pushing the number and seeing it appear. But they haven't figured out how to clear it or why it changes numbers

I started teaching them that some computer time is ok, but not all the time because our bodies need to do different things in order to stay healthy. A few days later, W commented that "Papa sits at the computer too long". All of us, including J, agree.

T is pretty good at knowing E's needs in terms of toys. He found a bear that has an ear that is good for a baby teething and offered the ear to E by shoving it in his mouth. "This ear is for E to eat!", he exclaimed. He also rushed to get E more toys one day when E was crying, exclaiming "E needs more toys!" He also can be attuned to E's feeding needs. One day he commented on how "E needs more milk, Mom." Sure enough, I fed him some more and he was still thirsty, apparently.

T prayed randomly "Thank you for Grandpa" the other night. I didn't know he was already so attached. He really likes to know who the boys are around him.

E loves the snail toy, even if it does roll away from him a bunch. He also is really eating rice cereal and more of it as a regular part of his diet.

We were reading a book on different marine life when W pointed and said "that's an orca whale", very matter of factly. They are also learning names of different tools and the correct ones. Like try square, for instance.

T and W played "sleeping slugs" the other day. They rolled up in their blankets and slinked around on their stomachs on the floor for awhile. Another pacific northwest play thing. I never played that as a kid.

W knows to lay water color flat to dry so the colors don't run. She spreads them out on chair tops.

We have a lot of fun playing together, but we also have fun working together. Everybody had a job and we all cleaned the bathrooms together the other day. It was way more fun for me than previous cleanings. T likes the toilet scrubbing job and W likes to clean the mirror because it makes a "sound like a snake"

They have nicknames for each other. W calls T heavy pinecone and Panda. T calls W "bicho" (bug in Spanish), bug and Princess when they play. It is pretty dang cute. W likes to help T and the other day I heard her say "Princess can do it for Panda!"

T still needs 2 hours of hard physical play, but neither one of us are motivated to stay outside just because. So I invent short games that they don't really like playing. But it is fun anyway. Like playing chase shadows up and down the driveway. If it is sunny here, it is very, very cold, so it didn't last long, but was fun to do. We have also played follow the leader.

J got them a penguin toy from Thailand. Three different color penguins climb these stairs and slide back down to the bottom of the stairs. The stairs are like an escalator of sorts. The penguins are the size of my thumb. Perfect choking hazards, right? The big kids love playing with those things. I had J disable the sound, though, because it sounded like amusement park ride music. Even I can't stand the sound of that all day long.

T does this cute thing when he is done eating. He pokes his stomach and says "the spots are all filled up.

These weeks have been clear, sunny and very, very cold. It has been so cold that the frost is stacking up on top of frost. We went to the park and I held my hand up to measure it. The frost was as tall as the thickness of my finger. We had fun making frost balls with it. You know. Instead of snow balls. It worked the same, the frost was so thick. Can't say I've seen anything like that, but plenty of others have this year.

The big kids went with Papa to the store and picked out some flowers for me, supposedly, even though J usually does that. It was really cute and melted my heart, either way. Which ever person did it. I loved it.

They have been playing "going in the elevator". That is when they go in the closet and open the door a bunch of times. T will also play fixing the elevator with his tools when the handle on it gets loose. They also played kayaking where they sat in their tents, folded up around them. It DOES look like a kayak! Pretty creative.

They know all the numbers and tracks on CD's after listening to them. I switch up their CD's and it causes a bit of a stir for a little. Like if it is W or T's turn to sing. W can sing with the ladies and T can sing with the gentlemen. So on one previous CD, it used to be W's turn to sing. She wasn't too happy when the new CD was a gentleman. She said " I heard number 6 and it was a LADY!" and cried because it wasn't a lady anymore.