Papa and his "crunches"

E loves his push car

T is starting to look like a boy to me.  Probably has to do with the muscle definition.  check out the pecs he's using to pour the water in the wagon

W using a much smaller bucket to transfer water to her wagon

T running up the driveway with a full wagon of water

E and W working on their duet while the flipper machine is waiting for T

What crutches are really used for

E getting his first box ride down the hall from big bro

w can push him too!  But her muscles got tired faster.  She weighs 32 lbs and he weighs 22.  Pretty good workout for her!

Who doesn't love that smile!  E was pushing this stack of boxes around the kitchen himself

The shaving cream that didn't stay too well in the shower

T and his mask

J had surgery on his knee this week.  What fun!  For everyone but him, I think.  Mom is very excited to have a patient even thought said patient doesn't want a live-in PT that can't wait to practice her skills.  The kids love his "crunches".  Those crutches have multiple uses.  The PT that J did go see wasn't too excited to hear that the crutches had multiple uses, but whatever.

The first thing they did was make a see-saw for Pez and Dolphiny.

The next thing they did with them was make a carwash.  They went and got their "flapper" blankets.  They are those fleece blankets that are tied together.  They have a point.  They look exactly like those swishing mat things in the car wash.  They put them over the crutches and pushed their cars (boxes full of toys) through it one direction just like a car wash.

They showed Grandma on face time.  Grandma wasn't impressed.  She told them to be safe and not get out of their cars like in a real carwash.  W paused a moment and pointed out that "in a real carwash the cars move by themselves".  She has a point.  In a real one she wouldn't have to get out and push the car through, so since this is obviously a pretend carwash Grandma's rule was dumb and invalid.

While we were waiting for his surgery to get done, T kept asking when Papa was going to be done getting worked on.  He was also very excited to keep me posted on the what color Papa's number was on the board.  There was a computer screen in the waiting room with different colors for what stage of surgery the patient was in.  He liked holding on to the card and telling me what each color meant.  He had it all memorized.

The day before surgery, J spent a lot of time playing flip with the big kids.  E got his first time playing flip with Mommy.  T wanted to practice using the camera.  He wanted to get a picture of W on the "flipper machine".

The big kids actually like helping Papa out and are concerned for him.  They started bringing me his water bottle when it got empty for me to refill with ice when it was empty.  W saw some tulips at the store.  "Mom.  I think those tulips will help cheer up Papa".  I said I thought that Papa might be more cheered up with jalepeno dip instead.  She told me she asked T if he liked flowers and he said yes, so boys do like flowers and so do Papas.  I texted J and asked.  He, in fact, said yes.  So we have some beautiful flowers that are cheering us all up.

Going to the library is pretty fun now.  T and W are very good at whispering now that we have been kicked out once before.  E hasn't gotten the memo.  Although he was very quiet during the part where he was pulling out all the name tag markers on the books on hold while I was looking at books across the isle.

For some reason T loves the cold section in Costco.  He asked in a very kind and polite voice if we could please go in the cold area and get some spinach please?  He loves the fan blowing on his face.  We were also in the nuts and dried fruit section.  I was looking for some different nuts to get this time and came across these lemon yogurt covered almond things.  My mouth started watering.  I must have this look in my eyes when I see something that is coated in sugar.  W started telling me that it was candy and that I shouldn't buy anymore treats because sugar is a sometimes treat and Papa keeps buying all these treats that he shouldn't be buying.  Apparently she was in hearing distance last week when J and I were having a discussion of how he needs to stop buying treats and I asked him not to get any treats I like because I need to decrease my sugar intake.  She was using my comments to J on me in the store.  It worked.  She will be good for my goals.  Keeps me in line.

I also offered chocolate bread.  Homemade wheat bread with nutella on top.  Heavenly treat.  But W declined this treat in favor for a smoothie because Nutella will make her mouth sad.  Poor mommy!  She is going to have a weaker body for choosing sugar.  Man.  Why does she have to be so right and such a good example.  Step up to the plate, Mom.

I was singing one of the Thomas songs.  I don't know the words quite as well S my children. Me hs been trying to teach me the words.  One day I was singing the words to the part I knew and was singing do-do-doo to the tune for the part I didn't know.  W pointed out to me very matter of factly the correct wording and that the song "doesn't have that many do-do-doo's in it".

It's been raining a ton this week.  Probably because we had some lovely days of sun.  Can't have too much of that around here.  I'm back to inventing inside games.  I let them go to town with the rest of the shaving cream can from the Joy School day.  They had a blast.  T painted his face.  W said to me when I opened the door to check their work: "Mom.  We were wondering why the can stopped being so funny."  I guess it stopped squirting out cream.

T gave E a ride in a box and E LOVED it.  He started crying a bunch for more rides when T stopped.

E has started pushing around stools and boxes.  It is his form of a walker and he loves it.  He likes to chew on shoes, especially the rain boots.  Just like a puppy.

We've all kind of been in the same room for about three days, so we are all a little grumpy.  All the kids have had fevers off and on.  J likes to sit instead of walk about the house on crutches.  Don't know why.  But even with all the fussy, the best part is that they all wanted to snuggle, something that really doesn't happen too much now that they are all on the move.  I had a snuggle nap with W today.  She just came up and curled up next to me while Papa played sneaky snacky squirrel with T and threw index cards at E, since E loves chewing and shredding paper.  J is learning Thai.

According to most other countries in the world, we are all sick because of the pictures above.  Playing in water outside when the air temperature is only 60, even if the sun is shining and warming us up.  Mina came home and heard E with his cough.  She said to me, "What does my baby E have?  Did you take him outside not wrapped up or what?"  J said the pharmacist in Thailand told him the same thing.  The sinus infection comes from the extreme changes in temperature.  I don't know.  Me being American, I was thinking it was because we went to the medical center on Tuesday, and sure enough, three days later, the kids are all sick.  Happens with church, too.  My kids are usually sick starting Wednesday.  Sigh.  Both cultures are probably both right.  No more water play until it is 65 degrees, then.  It's like I keep saying.  We just pretend it is summer here because the months on the calendar say so.

For Samantha and uthai

twin cousins

Nit

Nit

Nit's hubby?

Nit?

sitting area

entrance to kitchen

indoor kitchen

bedroom

house entrance

part of the farm? or property?

?

?

outdoor kitchen.  J wants one of these.  I reminded him he doesn't like to be outdoors much here because of the cold

outdoor sitting area

?

Nit's dog

local wat

?

not sure what this is

family house

Correct me if any of these captions are wrong

spring is springing

We went shopping and W's day was made.  We walked by the strawberries and they actually smelled by strawberries, so I let her pick them out as her choice.  She was in heaven and ate half of the package for snack.  She asked me to take a picture of her eating strawberries.  T had me take a picture of him with his cheeks full.  E was peering up at them over the edge of the table with the very tips of his fingers white from barely being able to reach the table top.

W started calling E a slug.  The reason?  His hands are slimy.  But later this week I let him crawl out of the bathroom with his towel over his head and back and he looked just like a blue slug.  Except he crawled really, really fast.

E has been having a lot of fun.  He loves to push.  He gets on top of paper or books with just his hands and slides along the floor.  His push car is dirty and an outside toy unlike when his siblings were small, but he improvised just fine.

He is also into the open/close discovery phase of life.  Really likes opening and closing pretty much anything.  But then he gets in a tizzy when he shuts himself in a room.

He is also in the I-don't-like-mommy-out-of-site phase.  Oh yeah.  I remember this phase.  Either I get worn out by listening to crying when I step out of his vision or I'm tired by carting him around.

He gets a huge grin when he sees people, especially me.  He loves to bend his head down coyly to initiate play with someone.  Usually Mina or some of his other church girlfriends that love to take him and snuggle him.  But now he likes to do it from the comfort of mommy's arms.  He also bends his head down toward the phone when he hears grandma's voice or when doing facetime.  It amazes me that he already knows how to use a phone.

But he had no smiles for Papa at his first reappearance at the dinner table after being gone for 11 days.  He looked at him and got the cute pouty lip that only babies can do when they are truly terrified.  He was crawling to get out of his booster seat and turning away while screaming.  I had to hold him before he calmed down.  But then Papa fed him later that night and they made up.

E really likes to crawl through things.  Anything that looks like a tunnel.  My legs, a chair, an obstacle course that Papa sets up for him.

He is also super cute whenever he feels something soft.  A teddy bear, my fuzzy hooded sweatshirt, W's fleece blanket, or his own.  He lays his head down and sucks his two fingers while feeling it with his other hand for a minute.  I guess he and W both love feeling of soft stuff.

He keeps practicing standing in the tub.  I call him maniac baby because of how much he loves to move around in the tub.  He goes really crazy. Kind of freaks me out.  He loves baths, but it's a lot of work to have him in there.  And none of the big kids like sharing much with him because he crawls all over them.

He likes to play forehead.  Just like T did.  He also uses his forehead to tell me he is poopy.  He head butts my leg if I take too long to smell a dirty diaper.

One day W came to me and said "I want to play a game that boys can't play."  She was walking around the house with a sheet dragging behind her.  E was chasing her and thought it was sooo funny as well as when the sheet would pass over his head.  She had just tried to get away from playing with T but he had taken over her bed by jumping on it.  Brothers. 

E is very ticklish, laughs at blankets flapping or blowing wind at him, and when we walk into his room after sleep.  He is standing in the crib and has a fabulous smile I've never captured on camera, but hope I never forget.

I think T loves this smile.  T continues to love being a big brother in these regards.  Mixing his food, feeding his food, picking out his diaper, supervising the change of poop and whether or not he needs diaper rash cream and "checking to see if the baby is standing in his crib".  For all the frustration of E and his slimy hands and touching of their toys, I think they love him because when he wakes up, they are happy to see him and want to get him when they hear him moving in his crib.

W makes us laugh when she figures things out.  I heard her tell Papa this: "Papa.  Did you get bubby (aka soda) from the store?  That doesn't make our mouths happy."  Papa answered and said, it doesn't make our mouths happy? He wasn't sure where this came from.  She responded back: "Yeah.  I went to joy school and McKinley's house and her mom taught me that soda doesn't make our mouth happy.  I learned it there".  Then Papa had to acknowledge that it's true, soda isn't good for our teeth. 

J also made a huge mistake in not waiting to eat dessert out of sight of the children.  They were all convinced that is was suddenly Monday and FHE night, so they should be having FHE and hence dessert.  He quickly vacated to the basement.

This past weekend I made something for a baby shower.  W was watching me cook and asking what a baby shower was.  I told her my friend was having a baby and the food was for all the people that were coming to the party for this friend's baby.  W was very very confused.  She told me "you didn't have a party. You went to the to hospital when baby brother was born".

I was playing with the kids and were on top of some pillows they wanted for something.  I was pointing out to them that they had all the rest of the couch cushion that I wasn't using.  T protested by trying to pull the pillows out from under me.  W protested by informing me of all the other items in the house that I owned, like my pillows upstairs and such.  Bummer.  She uses my logic on me.

T loves his new pjs.  Why?  "They have stars that are very sparkly!"  they are all star pjs about baseball, but have sparkly stars around the baseball stuff.  He's never had sparkly stars on his shirt like his sister.

T was walking around the house with his big fleece blanket around himself like a huge diaper.  I asked him about his big diaper and he yelled "NO! These are magiky underwear!"  My bad.  I got it wrong.

We did another T with Papa day and W with Mommy day.  Mostly because I think T missed his Papa so much.  They went to the tire store.  T came back with hands that showed me he had hand tested every tire.  He was also pretty cranky.  I found out he ate a doughnut, popcorn and a full thing of chocolate milk.  That would explain the crankiness.

W went shopping to find flip flops for her.  She doesn't fit in Target or Payless flip flops because they are made for girls with wide feet and she has very very narrow feet.  So we finally found some that stay on her feet at Osh Kosh outlet.  That was fun shopping with her.  I usually loathe shopping, but when you have cute W to keep you company, it's pretty fabulous.

She also chose to make cookies.  And frosting.  Duh.  She did make fabulous cookies and I just mentioned three of her friends that have birthdays within the week and she wanted to bring them cookies to share, as well as "share with the boys in the family, including Grandpa".  Grandpa, you have a cookie waiting for you here in the freezer.

And of course she loves reading books, so we sat in the sun and snuggled.  And the best part for me?  She finally grasped reading two words on her own.  From a book that was not previously memorized, so I knew she was really reading.  She read the word "art" and then "good".  It was in the book titled "I am good at making art".  Very inspiring to her.

E has six teeth.  Yesterday was his last day of nursing.  Actually this is a bit unrelated.  He never bit me, but has lost patience with nursing.  He wants instant milk and it just doesn't happen for him like a sippy cup, so sippy cup it is.  I thought I would nurse for a year, but almost 10 months isn't bad.  We are almost done with cold and flu season and I think that has made quite a difference.  I think he has only been seriously sick 2-3 times this year, including Christmas at Grandma's.

Sometimes I get a little annoyed at having to cook at a slow pace so my children can help and learn.  One day I was getting annoyed because I wanted it to be done before E lost interest in a toy and started screaming.  But he didn't.  And I was so glad that I didn't because I had my two chefs in their chefs aprons snuggling me from both sides while we were waiting for the water to boil.  A very sweet mommy moment.

W got down from helping to cook and T said to me "I want to snuggle Mommy.  I'm happy with that choice"

I think one of the hardest adjustments of switching from the workplace to working at home with our kidlets is the definition of productive.  Previously I had been able to check off stuff on a list of mine in my head with dizzying speed, but I can no longer do that.  Maybe one thing a day, max.  Then I realized the other day my list has changed dramatically and I just need to remember that the list is just different, not set to what a professional with no kids would do.  My lists include looking my kids in the eye everyday, spending one on one time even, for only a few minutes, everyday.  Snuggling, helping, teaching, reading, etc.  And lucky me!  Isn't that what all the professionals crave and rush home with road rage in their hearts to enjoy. 

T has been working hard these past couple of days to make gear creations.  He doesn't like it if I wreck one of his "creations" moving it.  So I didn't.  E saw it while T was in time out for pushing him.  E knows the role of baby of the family very well already.  He beelined it for the table and could hardly contain the joy in his body to finally touch and move all those colorful spinning gears.  I've never seen him shake with joy before.  He was also yowling with joy very loudly.  He has a loud deep voice that nobody but Mommy loves.  Good thing T's time outs are four minutes long.  This was almost enough time for E to enjoy the gears.

W has an incredible memory, especially for sugar.  We took a trip in the summer and on this trip, she had strawberry chocolate milk.  How do I know this?  She referred to it this week.  She said, mom.  Remember that trip that we drove a lot and we had chocolate milk?  I honestly couldn't remember.  I was trying to think of a trip to grandma's or something, but she kept describing the trip until I remembered.  Amazing.

But then she is also good at remembering details of lots of stuff.  She remembers that she went on the light rail a year ago.  She remembers it whenever we pass the elevated train part.  She also remembers that we made frost balls.  We walked by the path that we have only gone down once since December and she mentioned it.  Good!  I will have to remember that she has a good memory that serves her well when she remembers all of my faults as a teenager.

W is also starting to learn to play with E.  She set up a desk for E to play with gears below the real gear desk.  She gathered a blanket and two boxes for E to play on the couch with the cushions pulled off.  He loves soft blankets to snuggle, jump on the couch with the cushions off and climb on the couch using the cushions to get up.

E can scale an entire set of stairs in about 1 minute.  But he hasn't figured out how to go down yet.  Still very young for that.

T is starting to look like a boy to me.  He has these little mini biceps and deltoids appearing and the bone mass in his legs is so different from W.  My boy is growing up!  Both of them.  E fits in 18 month size no prob.

T used his manly strength to keep his mom's house safe from ants.  He squirted each on one on the trail with vinegar.  When he found the ants starting to encroach, he found me right away.  After he squirted a few, he said, Gross!!  It sounds so cute coming from his mouth.

The videos are of baby slug and T at the skate ramp park.  he totally figured out how to get up and down these things with enough speed and momentum with plastic wheels.  He also totally knows how to drift on his bike in our driveway.

By the way, for anyone closely reading.  There will be no change of scenery for us next month like we thought.  Very funny, hubby.

E using his "desk" and token gear

My boys

Blue chalk T

E happy with gears, but not shaking

We are done with looking at stars until the fall.  It is much too light at 8pm for them to appear.  Our last night of it for the season was last night.  But we did see an amazingly bright planet.  Perfect to end with.

Who doesn't love this baby?!

W working the gears.  She makes gardens of purple flowers with a fences around her gardens.  T connects as many as possible and plays "seizing up" the gears by preventing movement

Sun already??! You are right. I was just kidding

T asked me why his pillow had feelers.  Feelers?!  I looked at what he was pointing to.  It was the little thread pieces in his pillow cover that are like a tied quilt.  I guess that's a good description of them.

I have a video of them in their dump trucks wheeling themselves around the driveway.  T was the best at it.  They were playing wheelchair dumps because they had "broken foot".  T was imitating it very well!

I've been racking my brain to figure out to get t to stop hitting.  Something the pediatrician mentioned was a book about acknowledging feelings and she kind of gave me a premise of the book.  Basically the idea is to talk about his feelings.  I never though to try it on t because he is a boy and why would he want to talk about feelings.  But it is working like a charm at the moment.  When I see that he is having a majorly negative feeling, i just talk to him about how he probably feels such and such because such and such is happening while I hold him gently and he does well by not hitting and figuring out a good  choice to the problem.  Who knew!  A boy talking about his feelings.  Might as well keep this tactic up for as long as it lasts.

E has a very cute laugh.  Right now the sound of ripping paper really sets him off.  As long he is doing the ripping.  One of w's tissue paper flowers from aunt b got wrecked that way.  He is also growing and we didn't know he could reach it.

And of course e is eating everything.  He really likes rocks and pine cones and rocks.  But don't all babies?

I call him maniac baby.  He gets this name because he is a maniac in the bathtub.  He can do all sorts of stuff in the tub and it freaks me out because I keep thinking he is going to get seriously hurt, but no.  He also crawls around a bunch, more than I remember t and w doing.  He crawls in the bark at eh playground, crawls up the stairs, he just tries it all.  I have to constantly be on the watch out.

And he has the most adorable set of thighs, so I love him to pieces.

W has taken to hiding.  She hides from guests, but she also hides to get away from t.  One night I told her she could play some games on the iPad since she didn't push baby brother around during bath time.  T wasn't able to play because he hadn't followed the rules.  She knew it.  She knew he would also really want to play the ipad if he saw her with it, so she hid behind the dollhouse and turned the volume off so he couldn't find her.  It totally worked.

She also loves to hide in the bathroom.  These are the only two places in the house that have a lock. She plans it out.  She brings toys in to play with.  Alone.  Without brothers.  She also likes to redecorate the stuff in my bathroom when she is there

We've had four days of fabulous sun.  Well, sun means there is sunshine and clouds instead of just clouds after 12 pm.  This is the definition of sunshine here anyway.  It's probably been around 55-60 degrees.  So obviously it is time to go barefoot and get out swimsuits for water play.  Obviously.


We are all majorly adapted to this climate change now if my children can talk me into such nonsense with only a little prodding.  I let them get out a bucket of water each, get their suits on and run barefoot in the drive way.  I knew the one bucket would last about an hour, the remaining time of direct sun on the blacktop driveway we have.  There was no wind that day, so the air warmed up enough against the house that I would go for it.  Because I have learned through sad experience that days like this are very very ra and short in durations, so we have to take advantaged.  They loved it.  They jumped in the buckets and ran around decorating the driveway with their barefoot prints.  Then they made pathways with the water by painting with their brooms.

Our neighbor has a fabulous wood pile.  I asked permission to take the joy school group out to it to play on the logs and dig in the sawdust.  We had great fun.  And when the group came back the next time, one of the students asked right away if we could go to the log pile.  Sigh.  I should have asked permission for that day, too.

But we did something I loved, too.  I stole the idea from my auntie Jill.  We made shaving cream clouds on the wall of the tub.  We were learning about the water cycle and found it to be a perfect excuse to do that art project instead of cloud pictures with cotton balls.  I thought the boys in the class  would love to squirt the wall and go to town on it.  Yeah.  It was ok, but the two that loved it the most were actually two of the girls.  I think w loved it more than t.

We went to the park on one of the sunny days to fly a kite.  Didn't work out too well.  But this kite has long annoying strings that turned out to be very successful.  They ran around trying to catch them  in the wind while I tried to get the kite in the air.  Finally I realized that flying the kite successfully that day was that they could capture the strings.  They called it wild running strings.

We read books and snuggled in the sun every day.

Another really rare thing here is it to be warm enough, dark enough and clear skies before 8 pm bedtime.  When this happens,  we go outside to look at stars.  I think we all absolutely love it.  There is something about it that calms us all down and they start talking like crazy.  Probably be cause it is one on one time.  We did it twice this week and were sad when the other nights were cloudy.

I got some weeding done during outside time while e was sleeping.  They like to help me.  T collects his "moss" in his wagon.  W tells me she got weeds out so the other plants will have nutrients.  And t pointed out that the stupid deer ate some of the daffodil leaves.  Sigh.  Whatever they hear must come out.  It's true.  I do say stupid deer very often.

Something I remember as a kid was "going on vacation".  My brother and I would haul books up in a tree by makeshift pulley and read while mom and dad worked in the yard.  They did something similar this week while I was weeding.  They brought their chairs out and put them in the Rhody bush and filled their wagons with books to read.

While I was weeding, w was talking my ear off.  This was a day I let her go barefoot.  Going barefoot also helps loosen the tongue.  I don't think she stopped moving, talking or generally being happy because she could go barefoot.  One of the things she did during this time was stand amongst the daffodils and say "these are my temple daffodils". I think it is because there are so many daffodils at the temple and I love taking pictures of them there every year.  There is also a big patch of moss in between the daffodils she found with her bare feet.  She learned about how lovely and soft moss is.

I had a lot of fun preparing the joy school lesson this week.  Everyone else in the group decided to use the joy school curriculum, but I just couldn't get excited about it.  I have found that I enjoy being with them when I create the curriculum.  This is only fun because I teach once a month for two days. If it were more than that, I would probably stress out about ideas, but for now it is fun.  We did come fun experiments out of the book I got for christmas.  The best part was putting in the food coloring.  There were some sad comments later that they "didn't get a turn doing the experiment " meaning they didn't get to put in food coloring.

We got lots of books about water cycle, rain and clouds from the library.  I didn't do the request soon enough and only got the non fiction ones.  The non fiction closest to a story stuck the best.  When we went to the park today they played "stuck in the drainpipe" in the slide and stairs.  The other kids trying to use the slide were not amused.  T and W were pretending that they were "drop" just like in the book.

W loves to decorate.  She is constantly arranging stuff around the house or creating things.  She made a bunch of pictures for the family and hung them up with tape in our room, above t's bed, etc.  then she rearranged them later.  She also does this with our real house decorations.  It kind of drives me nuts but occasionally she will find an arrangement of items I like better than what I had out.

We also went to the park this week.  We haven't been in a while, so they had a blast checking out all the new stuff they can do now that they are older and bigger.

T putting on mascara.  Another sign of Aunt B



T was a little tired from the hike.  this is the hike that he did fairly well remembering all the turns to get back

W was a little more excited to have arrived at the waterfall

E loves this push car!!  He was walking on his knees

Tulips totally cheer me up!  This one had white inside with a little bit of purple

T making a pile of bubbles

Can I touch Hiro??!!  Let me see if T is looking...

T reading books in the chair in the bush

W reading in the tree house

Next to the "temple daffodils"

Books in the wagon in the background with the daffodils in our yard

T wanted this picture of him with Pez

Making clouds on the bathroom wall with shaving cream.  Thanks Auntie Jill for the idea

W was proud that her cloud was the biggest.  It filled almost the entire reachable wall

E excited to play peek a boo with Mommy at the park

W with her first strawberry of the season

T filling his cheeks full of strawberries for W to poke his cheek

Fuzzy on T