Thanksgiving 2013

We had a very happy and yummy Thanksgiving on Thursday.  The boys started off with a sweet potato pancake breakfast - Spencie couldn't stuff them in his mouth fast enough!  After playing outside for a little bit, Owen and Oliver kept busy while waiting for Thanksgiving lunch by stringing beads, making long and colorful "caterpillars".  I've been so impressed with how much interest they've had in and how good they've become at this fine motor activity lately...the beads I give them are so tiny and just barely fit over the thin shoestrings I give them!  We all knew one thing Spencie was thankful for this year - his "silky" and "baba", which he just can't seem to live without these days.  He dragged his brown elephant blankie all through the house that morning, while sucking on his festive red pacifier and waiting for Thanksgiving treats.  We had an amazing spread from La Madeline which everyone really enjoyed.  Spencer and Oliver were happy to get a big piece of pumpkin pie afterward, their latest favorite dessert!  Spencie even came running in wearing Daddy's jogging shoes for his piece.  Since pies are on Owen's anti-sweets list, he happily ate a candy corn pumpkin in place of the pie!

Too stuffed for pie?  No way!

Choo Choo Table for 3

Grandbobby and Dee are visiting this week and the boys are having so much fun playing and showing off all their toys with them.  Yesterday they were playing trains after preschool and Grandbobby had them working on a way to share and all push a train around the table at the same time.  They did great going around and around in circles - like a little indoor exercise track for toddlers!  Isn't it cute how Spencer keeps right up with the big boys?!  I would even dare to say that he loves that train table more than they do.  When they're off at preschool or somewhere else in the house, he'll quietly arrange the trains and push them around by himself for long stretches of time.

Feast

The boys were so cute today when I picked them up from preschool - as their teacher helped them up into the car they were both excitedly telling me that they ate a feast.  I asked a few times what kinds of foods they ate at the feast, but they were too excited about using a new word that they just kept answering by saying they ate a feast!  Their teacher told me that Owen really liked the corn muffins and I eventually got the words "candy corn" and "ketchup" out of Oliver.  So as I was still trying to piece together exactly what was served at this feast, the school happened to email a few photos and I was able to make out some mickey mouse shaped chicken nuggets (ok, now the ketchup makes sense!).  The boys also brought home a lot of cute Thanksgiving crafts, and Oliver modeled a couple of them for us at dinner.

Fleeting Owls

On Sunday morning we gave the boys some Owl window clings to put up in the playroom (they love owls!).  I was really surprised that they immediately took them over to the sliding glass doors and were using them correctly.  Especially Spencer, he didn't try and put anything in his mouth and acted like he was a pro at decorating with window clings!  For a good 30-45 min they had fun trying them out in different spots, positioning the eyes and wings in just the right places, and adding the final touch with a few snowflakes.  And since there were 3 owls, each with it's own accessories, there wasn't any fighting.  I knew it was too good to be true...a couple hours later when Ryan and I were out in the family room we came back in to find the owls ripped apart and strewn all over the floor.  I can see how it's probably irresistible to a toddler to rip that stretchy gel stuff - funny how they waited to an opportune moment when Mommy and Daddy were out of sight!

Free Swim

This past week Pap Pap was in town helping me out with the boys while Ryan was traveling for work.  We took them to our favorite indoor pool Friday morning and had a great time swimming and sliding.  For a short bit we had the entire pool to ourselves, then a few other kids showed up around lunch time.  Right before we were about to leave, one of the other kids got sick in the pool and it had to be closed down.  Lucky for us that they gave out free swim passes to come back again!

No llama llama!!

Sweet little Oliver shows real concern for characters or animals who are sad or crying.  We started to piece this together when we first noticed the pattern with a couple different books and shows, and now can almost always pin point what's upsetting him when he starts yelling that he doesn't like something.  He's recently hit a peak in his aversion to crying animals with the book llama llama red pajama.  He's downright terrified of this popular preschool book!  I will admit, that the pages at the end that he doesn't like do have somewhat distorted (and probably scary looking to a little boy) illustrations of the llama crying out for him mama in bed.  When the boys had one of their friends, Charlie, come over last week to play, Oliver asked Charlie if he liked the book and tried to give it to him!  We wanted to get a few videos of Oliver telling us that he doesn't like llama llama because I'm sure this first childhood fear will quickly pass and one day we'll hardly remember it.  But he sure is pretty sincere, cute and innocent as he shouts "I don't like it!!"  And even still agrees to give the llama a kiss on the bookshelf!