Fairytales...

I am convinced that the person who wrote "Cinderella" had to be a mother. A mother of little kids. Kids who, though are fully capable of doing things on their own, insist on calling, "Mom! Mo-om! MOOOOOOMMMM! MOM, MOM, MOM!" for every little thing. Jacob is the biggest culprit, though Tyler does come into my room at 6 a.m. every morning just to tell me he is "just going to the bathroom"--so glad he wakes me up to share that. But yesterday Jacob was in a particularly "Mom-calling" mood. Every five minutes I heard him call for me, and if I didn't answer 5 seconds BEFORE he called for me he would call repeatedly and insistently--"Mom?" "MOM!" "MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM" You get the idea. It was driving me a little bonkers and I kept picturing in my head the song the mice from "Cinderella" sing--

"Cinderella, Cinderella night and day it's 'Cinderella', do the dishes, do the shopping, they always keep her hopping.....She goes around in circles 'til she's very very dizzy, still they holler 'Keep a' busy! Cinderell-y".

I totally sympathize with poor Cinderella. I told Jacob that I was changing my name from 'Mom" to 'Fred.' He looked at me quizically, then after a minute said, "Mom." Ugh. I told him I was taking the rest of the day off--doesn't Cinderella get to do that? Maybe in fairytales.

Growing Up

I swear, every day I look at my kids and think how quickly they are growing up! All the kids love Joey and they are really very helpful. Maggie's job is bringing me diapers and then taking the dirty ones outside--she gets really mad if I do it myself. Hey, if she wants to take stinky diapers outside, then more power to her!As some of you may be aware, Jacob is probably the pickiest eater in the world. Eric and I are honestly surprised that he is actually growing. I go by the book--he can have cereal or waffles for breakfast, I make him something he likes for lunch, but for dinner he has to eat what I make. I don't think he has eaten dinner in over a year (do you remember the soup incident referred to in an earlier blog entry?). I keep sticking to it and experts keep saying that if you stick to it your child will learn to eat dinner. Well, they didn't plan on Jacob. So my new tactic is having him help me make dinner (which he enjoys doing anyway) and then maybe he'd be more likely to try it. I tried it first with a white chicken chili...
He actually tried it and said he liked it! But to my disappointment he still only ate a couple bites. Then I tried again the next night, but it wasn't as successful. Oh well, I guess I will keep plugging away!

Joey is getting so big! Of course when I see him alone he looks big, but next to his brothers he looks small. He is starting to laugh more and you can see glimpses of the fun stage that is coming up when they are very playful. Still waiting for him to sleep through the night though.
One last thing. Do you ever find something your kids have done and just laugh and admire their creativity? Late last night I went upstairs to go to bed and the light in the boys' bathroom was on. So I went in to turn it off and found this...
You may have to look closely, but he wrote "T-rex" on top, then actually composed a picture of a t-rex out of q-tips, a comb (the body), and floss picks (the hind leg and tail). He even included a small upper arm, neck and head. All in all it is a darn good representation of a t-rex, even drawn mostly to scale. I just wonder at his creativity--what on earth made him think to do that? He even signed his name "TY" at the bottom. You gotta love it...

Funny Story...

Two funny things happened yesterday. First, we went down the the outlets to do a little light shopping. We realized after a while that Maggie had lost her shoe. I retraced our steps, went into all 4 stores we had been in looking around and asking salespeople but no one had seen it. Eric and I resigned to the fact it was lost, but considered ourselves lucky we were at the outlets so we could buy her a new pair (the outlets are the closest place to buy kids shoes--and they are an hour away!). We headed to Skechers and found the exact same pair she had (we love them) and bought them. Then we had Jacob take the lone old shoe and toss it in the garbage. Not 5 minutes later I was searching for something in the stroller and lo and behold I found, in one of our shopping bags, the other lost shoe. Ugh. So I ran back to Skechers while Eric got the kids in the car. I didn't see where Jacob threw the other one away, but Eric said it was in the garbage can under the ladder inside the Skechers store. So I hurry back, and start digging through the trash can under the ladder...no shoe! I wondered how it could have disappeared so quickly--until I turned around and saw 6, count them...6 ladders with trash cans underneath them. Oh brother. By the time I was digging through the 3rd trash can a salesperson suspiciously asked, "Ummm, can I help you?" I explained and we finally found the shoe in the 5th can, of course. I returned the new pair.

Then later we stopped at McDonald's for dinner to keep the kids happy for the long ride home. I guess to preface I should tell everyone that Jacob talks loud. And I don't just mean a little bit, or sometimes, he ALWAYS talks VERY LOUD, almost like he is shouting all the time. It is annoying and funny at the same time. So in McDonald's he was explaining that he wanted, "CHICKEN NUGGETS WITH THE SAUCE AND FRENCH FRIES TOO AND A MIXED SODA!" Eric and I laughed a little and I replied, mimicking his loud voice, "OKAY JACOB!" Then Jacob gets quiet, looks and me and says, "Mom, you don't have to yell."

Christmas!

So to start, I must tell you about Jacob's rock collection. Tyler has started collecting nice polished rocks, so Jacob wanted his own collection. He decided to make it himself--he goes out all the time and finds "cool" rocks--even walking into church he bends over and picks up a few and puts them in his pocket. He has them all laid out over the table on our patio and loves to go outside and stare at them. It is amazing because he actually remembers each rock, has favorites, tells me where he got them, etc. It is so cute. And he is in heaven here--no shortage of rocks at Fort Irwin!Before we left on our adventures for the holidays, we built a gingerbread house. Can you guess how long it lasted? Well, Maggie ate the candy as it was being built, and by the end of the night the house was half demolished. By the next day any edible parts were gone...can you say sugar high? At least they had fun making it.
Jacob had his preschool Christmas program. He looked so cute. He sang louder than most other kids and knew all the movements. I met with his teacher a few weeks ago and she said he is really good in class--follows directions, helps other kids, is very smart, etc. She went on and on and it made me so proud! Jacob has always been very intense and it could have easily gone the other way with his behavior. He is such a funny kid. On the way home from Utah in the car he was very upset and kept growling and yelling, "My eyebrow is crooked!" It was very upsetting to him and I still have no idea what he was talking about...

First, the kids and I took off to my mom's for a few days. My sister and her family came down from the Bay Area and we got to spend some time together. It was great, except that everyone got sick. Jacob was throwing up (and never seemed to make it to the toilet) and the rest had coughs/colds. But we still managed to have a good time. Santa even came over to visit! Well, okay, it was only one of Santa's helpers, but he brought some good gifts!
Sorry not too many pics. But then I came home, unpacked, repacked and left for Utah. The kids had a blast playing in the snow. All except for Maggie. She was sick while we were there and made sure everyone knew how miserable she felt...what a pain! She was also sleep deprived. We got all the kids ready to go play in the snow and while I was getting something she actually fell asleep on the floor in all her snow gear. Poor little thing.
So Mags stayed home but the boys went sledding. By the way, I don't think there is anything more frustrating than putting gloves on kids... They had so much fun! They were troopers too--hiking their sleds back up the huge hill. Sometimes they got one of the snowmobilers to pick them up too which was nice.

Christmas Eve we all went to my sister-in-law Katie's house. Grandma Swenson gave all the kids pj's--here's the best pic I got (excluding Joey).
Christmas morning came and Santa didn't forget us. The kids were up bright and early (and I do mean early). They actually took some time opening their gifts so the unwrapping lasted more than a couple minutes, which was nice. Tyler's favorite gift was one Santa brought--Beyblades. Now, unless you have a boy ages 6-10 you probably have no idea what these are, but I firmly believe there is no kid on earth right now who loves Beyblades as much as Tyler does! It is rubbing off on Maggie too--she keeps taking them and yelling, "My beybade!" It is kind of funny...Tyler doesn't think so.
Jacob loves his remote control car...
And Maggie loves her Sing-a-ma-jig. I have to admit, that one is pretty cute!
We went up to visit my grandpa as well. It was great to see him. He loved seeing his great-grand-kids. Tyler was particularly sweet. He tried to make grandpa feel good by making comments about his nice view from his window and even told him that he had a nice bathroom! We went out to lunch and Tyler held his hand out of the restaurant. I didn't even ask him to! It sure made great-grandpa happy. Can you believe he is 92?
I won't go into too much more detail, except to say we had fun even though the kids were sick. It is always great to spend time with family and we can't wait until we move back there in a couple months. The kids had a blast with cousins, and by the end of the week we were all worn out, including dad...
So Merry Christmas everyone, even if it is a little late.

P.S. It snowed here at Fort Irwin! But by the time I got my camera ready to go it had all melted....oh well.