Getting shorter

Isabel has a new 'do. What do you think? It is shorter than planned, but I am loving it! I think the length is darling on her.

Today she had a fun play day with cute little Kyla. Being surrounded by brothers, it's fun for her to get some girly play in. Little girls this age are so cute, fun and imaginative!

Isabel's preschool is a co-op, where the moms take turns hosting and teaching; we purchased a curriculum to teach from that has THE CUTEST ideas and crafts. It's been working really well. I don't technically have a teaching rotation until November, but did get my feet wet last week when I subbed for one of the other moms. 6 preschoolers (3 boys, 3 girls) is quite the crazy fun!

And speaking of shorter, the days are a changin'. Fall has definitely been in the air. Last week the mountains had their first snowstorm of the season, which looked very pretty from our vantage point-
and brought us some significantly cooler days and evenings-
We just won't mention the fact that tomorrow's high is forecast to be 85. No thanks.

Also getting shorter... the wait until Isabel's 4th birthday - just 13 days! She is sooooo excited. She has been waking up every morning asking, "Is it my birthday today?" No. "Is it Halloween today?" No. "Is it Easter today?" No. "Is it Christmas today?" No. Will be nice when I can say "yes" to the first item on the list; soon enough!

He's a lot of love

I am loving having some quality time with Lucas. He is just a delightful little boy, full of love, fun to talk to, just all around my heart's delight (they all are, but, this is a Lucas post). Crazy in love with him. As his vocabulary and speaking have skyrocketed, his tantrums from the spring/early summer have drastically decreased. Nice.

For starters, he is TOTALLY potty trained, at 27 1/2 months. He hasn't had one single accident OF ANY SORT in a week. He naps in underwear and wakes up dry. I can take him out in public now and he'll go in any public restroom (gross sometimes, but necessary). After my 3 days of cold-turkey trying a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't feeling all that encouraged. So I decided to back off and wait a few months before trying again. But then he just started telling me every time he went in his diaper, and I thought it was worth going for again, and since that point, he's basically had it down. Loving it. Loving it. Loving it. My first time in 6 YEARS that I have not had to buy diapers, and that includes a 1-year overlap between C and I, and a 10-month overlap between I and L. So that's almost 8 years of diapers if you want to get technical. What freedom!

Love this video of him. Can you tell what movie continues to have an impact in my home?

(yes, he's repeatedly saying, "ET phone home." He also likes to say, "I'm ET. 'Beeeeee gooooooooood'" in that shaky, weird ET voice.)

And some of the hazards of time with Isabel and I: pink toenails (Brian was none too pleased about that) and earrings:

And a few Lucas sayings/quotes/happenings:

As I was patting his little bum (which is so cute without a diaper!), I said, "hi little bums!" He replied, very seriously, "mom, widdle bums don't talk."

We were walking to the bus stop to get Connor on a very windy day, and Lucas said, "howy mowy it windy." (translation: holy moly it's windy)

Our little greeting these days: Me: "hey you Luke!" Him: "hey you mom!"

He loves the word "delicious" and uses it whenever he can.

He saw a statue of the Savior at my friend's house, and said, "look, mom, it's Yesus! I wuv Yesus!"

He seems to be getting his reds and greens down, so I'm feeling less concerned.

He can count to 14 consistently, and recognizes several letters consistently.

He has memorized a number of books and reads them out loud to himself; this is SO deliciously cute I can't get enough of it. He also sings a bunch of songs. Again, extreme cuteness.

I could just eat him up.

Quick and easy Halloween project

Few crafts are more fun than Halloween crafts (maybe Christmas crafts). I love this fun little frame project. I just stamped a Halloween stamp on paper that has words from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I bought the ready-to-finish wooden square frame at Michael's for $1, painted it white, covered it in fun Halloween B&W dot paper (both papers found at Archivers), put some fun Halloween charm brads in the corners, and glued it on the frame. Indeed a fun and easy project:
This is one of the projects Kelley and I shopped for when she was visiting, I had to show her the end result (I varied it from the original plan, but am very happy with the outcome).

Speaking of Halloween, I'm thinking of hauling out my Halloween goods this week (gasp!). I live by strict rules, and never decorate Halloween-y until Oct. 1, but you see, I am hosting one of my book clubs on Thursday, and wouldn't it be fun to be in full fall festivity? It technically will be fall, after all. I'm probably going to do it anyway, so don't try to talk me out of it. Unless I am really committing a decorating faux pas.

Isabel: The storyteller, the star

Isabel is an extremely imaginative child. I sometimes can't believe the stories she tells, and the language and vocabulary she uses to tell them. The other day, she was taking a bath with a plastic toy tiger and a little plastic horse. The tiger was itself, but the horse she made to be a fish (?). For a good 30 or 40 minutes, she made up this elaborate story with these animals. After she got out of the bath, she resumed the story. At this point I decided to grab and pen and paper and record what she said as she was saying it. I missed a sentence or two, as it was difficult to keep up with her. She doesn't pause; the words just keep coming. I had to share her story, which again, is about one-fifth of the entire story, as it started way before I started recording, and continued for a while after my hand got tired and I stopped. *Note* I have added paragraph breaks where I think they should go; sometimes it was obvious, other times, not so much. And yes, she says, "and mom" a lot when she is talking to me. I didn't even include all the "and moms." And my favorite part is when she is sad and "dropped one tear off of her nose." Because Isabel wouldn't just say she was sad or crying.

"One time a big storm came, and mom, we have to hide in our campy camper. And so the fish and tiger were safe. And the storm stopped, and a big mean lion came and pushed the tiger off the cliff. But the fish was holding the tiger’s tail to be safe from the danger. A mean tiger came and pushed the nice tiger off, so mom, she (the fish) had to hide in the nice tiger’s mouth to be safe on his back.

And mom, the kingdom was flagged. The flag waved in the wind, and mom, the flag stopped and the nice tiger said, “What’s your dream come true?” So the fish said to the tiger, “Let your dreams come true the flag.” Because they love American. They wanna keep the flag and they didn’t want anything to hurt it.

The fish went on the tiger’s back and they went walking and walking. So mom, they went back in the camper to be safe from the big storm. The storm went away. The nice tiger put the flag in his mouth, and the fish got it. Then a girl lion came and the flag was staying there. I grabbed the flag, and then a big rainstorm came. They didn’t want their flag to get wet, so to be safe, they changed it into a little umbrella to stay dry.

The storm stopped, then another big storm came. And mom, the fishy and the nice tiger went to be with their cozy American flag.

One time a mean daddy tiger came and tried to push me off the cliff and the cliff had prickers and thorns down it. So I said ouch and I wanted someone to rescue me. Suddenly a fire lady came and rescued me, and I climbed down the ladder and saw my daddy waiting for me. We ran to each other and hugged. It was a nice story.

Then the fish and the nice tiger went to a nice place called American.

Then I got to put a little necklace and a lollipop in the squishy ball for them to tuck in and be safe. The necklace was their little blanket and the lollipop was their little stuffed thing.

My daddy put me to bed and said “I’m sure we’ll find the mama tiger in the morning.”

It was morning and I saw my mother standing and I ran to her and I hugged and kissed her. I held her little hand then we looked at our house and we ran in our house so no mean tigers or lions could get us. Then I was on the cliff on a red ladder, and I saw my brother Daniel the lion standing there. We went to the house and went in it and I saw my baby and my mom and they were all sleeping and a big rainstorm came and I was getting all wet.

I also got really, really wet. A pricker flew by me and came in my claws and I said “Ouch!” and I got the pricker out. Then I went in my house and laid down. I tucked myself in.

Then in the morning my mom and dad made breakfast for me.

Then a rainstorm came and I hid between 2 rocks, but they were fuzzy and prickery. So mom, I ran in my house and said, “hmmmmmmm…”

I was sad because I wanted to see my grandma and grandpa, and I dropped one tear off of my nose, and I wiped it away. And I saw my grandma and grandpa, and I ran to them really, really fast and I held their hand to be really, really safe. And I saw my cousins Grace and Emma and Ben, and I said, “Come on in.”

I grabbed my teddy bear and grabbed my sleeping bag and put my head on my pillow and went to sleep.

In the morning I found my grandfather. It was getting late and dark. It (something about family) makes me so happy and it's my special world."

-- Isabel Charlotte, age 3

*********************************

Also, Isabel is LOVING preschool. Not that I was worried. The highlight thus far was getting to bring the Star Bag on Thursday. The children rotate bringing home the Star Bag, and they get to bring it back with 5 things they want to show and tell everything. She was so excited, and planned for 2 days what to bring. Here is the result (you'll notice her naming abilities seem to be overall lacking in creativity)-
1. "Carrie" the Care Bear, a gift from Uncle Nate and Aunt Alli when we were in MN this summer.
2. "Licky the Cow," a tiny, rubber, pink cow Isabel got when we toured Cozy Cows Dairy in June. She and Licky have been inseparable ever since.
3. Lollipop the stuffed rattle, which is indeed a baby rattle, but Isabel believes it to be a stuffed lollipop.
4. Her princess ball.
5. A toy penguin that was from a McDonald's happy meal. This was a stand-in for the original #5, Maddy her toy ambulance (as she is going to be a "girl paramedic" when she grows up. Can you see her older brother's influence here?)

Oh my. I love my Isabel.

A fun family visit

It's been a busy, fun week, as Brian's sister Kelley, her husband Leo and their sweet little boy Cameron have been visiting from Dallas. They came to our house on Monday afternoon along with Brian's parents for a Labor Day BBQ. The kids had fun with their cousin, who is Lucas's age.

Kelley, Leo and Cameron stayed with us Monday night, and Kelley and I had a great shopping outing on Tuesday. We spent some good time at Archiver's and Michael's, getting supplies for several fun projects. Kelley and I always have a great time together; love having her as a SIL.

I really needed some new fridge magnets, and at Archiver's I found a pack of eight half-inch square magnets that had an adhesive front. So I just cut half-inch squares from different paper and stuck them on. A small, simple project, but they really make me happy! What can I say, I'm a girl of simple joys.

Kelley spotted this paper at Archiver's, which goes SO well with the tree canvases that I just painted. It actually looks better in person. I *think* I know what I am going to do with it.

On Wendesday, Isabel, Lucas and I (Brian had to work and Connor had school) went to Georgetown with Kelley, Leo and Cameron, and Brian's parents. We had a great day! At 8,500-feet altitude there was a touch of Fall in the air (yay!) and some of the Aspens have already started to turn. We had a picnic in the park with that fabulous playground (which was at one point being cleaned by the firefighters), shopped the cute, old-fashioned main street, ate chocolates in a little candy shop, walked around the town and saw all the historic houses. I have serious love for Georgetown.

Labor Day

We went on a Labor Day hike in the foothills just west of Boulder. I simply adore family hikes. We had a beautiful morning, beautiful weather, beautiful scenery. And we had a VERY COOL experience, more on that later...

Here's our hike in pictures-
Connor has been such a bug boy since he was a toddler, and especially loves ladybugs (and as a result so do his brother and sister). He's always got his eyes open for ladybugs. As we reached the summit of Bald Mountain (a not very tall peak), Brian noticed a little bush that had 5 ladybugs on it. As he started looking closer, he noticed that the base of the bush was, in fact, completely covered in ladybugs. Then they all started climbing all over, flying in the air, got in our hair, ears, clothes and more. I had never seen anything like it before. As we looked around, all the bushes in this area had the same thing. There had to be tens of thousands of ladybugs. It was difficult to totally capture, but this should give an idea-

We got this video, but pay no mind to my strange-sounding voice (what's up with that?)-



I did a little research, and if you care, here's an article I found to explain this ladybug phenomenon.

Who knew? All I know is the kids thought it was one of the most amazing things EVER.

Potty, party 1

This is how we spent a good part of our week (yes, that is a *clean* diaper he is desperately clutching with such loving adoration). Must be agony to give up your comfort-
We've had some successes, and plenty of misses (literally). And I have again been reminded how VERY DIFFERENT each child is.

Connor was 3 1/2. My parents came to babysit while Brian and I went to Seattle. They told Connor they would not change diapers on a 3 1/2 year old, and so Connor potty trained for them in about an hour. I felt like like a loser mom. But whatever. At least I came home to a potty trained child.

Isabel was 2 1/2. I let her run around stark naked, and within 3 days she was totally trained - not really even any lingering accidents for the most part.

Lucas has been all over the place. At first being "free" totally freaked him out, and he was so traumatized by his first accident, that he literally sat on the potty for about 5 hours for the first few days. Now he has gotten over that, and has more misses than hits.

I believe in cold turkey. But I also realize that if it just doesn't click here shortly, we'll cash in our chips and try again in a couple of months.

For the record, I have to say, my favorite Lucas response when I ask him if he has to go potty is: "not yet." And when he did have a success, he got so excited and jubilantly exclaimed, "you did it!" Maybe just maybe he recognizes how very challenging this is for everyone.