4-24-14 A Day with the Boys

3-22-14 Imperfect, But Patched

About two years ago, jeans started shredding around here like they were made of paper.  I don't think they are making denim like they used to and my crew wasn't playing like they used to.  We were moving out of the days of blowing bubbles and playing at the sand table.  The boys were riding scooters, climbing ladders, and playing contact sports that don't have a name because the contact is the sport!

When I stumbled upon iron-on patches, I went crazy with them.  I was thrilled to be able to save, literally, ten pair of jeans and not have to sew a thing.  They have allowed Conrad's jeans to make it all the way to Caden's play clothes drawer.  I have to say, they got the job done and did it quite well.  And then one day I got a blog feed in my inbox with "Monster Knee Patches".  From that moment on, I have been disappointed with the iron-on patches.  They're boring and they could be better.

I'm no ace with the sewing machine so I asked my mom for help.  Cutting the goofy monster faces and arranging them was quick and since my mom is an ace at the sewing machine; that went quickly too.  But she had to leave for home when we only had two pair of jeans completed.  That left me alone with  felt, my sewing machine, and four more pairs of hole-y jeans.  I quickly resorted to hand-sewing for obvious reasons.  The slow pace of it was relaxing, therapeutic even.  The unevenness of my stitches added to the monster's charm.  The stitching did not require a lot of thought and my mind began to wander.

Sitting in the quiet and hand-sewing monster patches, I vaguely remembered when I was impressed by and completely satisfied with iron-on patches.  This is a trivial example of how dissatisfaction creeps into other areas of my life.  It paralyzes me when I know better is out there.  Chase perfect for a while and it's only a matter of time until you stop running and it seems particularly had to start back up once you stop. . .

In reality, some things just need to be done.  Some things can have frills.  Some things can be silly and fun.  But when it needs fixed, get it fixed.  Embellish from there.  The bigger the thing is that is broken, the longer it will take to truly fix.  Sometimes you have to start with a patch.

10-13-13 Riding the Mississippi

10-13-13 Conrad and Mom's Overnight Bike Trip

This all start with an off the cuff remark I made about how fun it would be to do an overnight bike trip. Here's what happens when Conrad hears such a remark.  He latches on to it.  Asks for details about it.  Pursues you to make it happen.  And I liked the idea of making it happen, which means I fed into his pursuit.  We made packing lists, set biking goals, talked about what the trip would be like. . . Meanwhile time (i.e., good weather) was passing by.  With the chill of the fall, I knew it was now or never.  With a feeling of this being last minute, we booked a room and loaded up our bikes.  Here we are ready for take off!

8-16-13 Perspective

8-15-13 The Road Less Traveled

8-10-13 All Aboard!

6-22-13 Gone Fishin'

One of many fishing expeditions.  Today's catch was a record setter - longer than a ruler!

This picture is a little boy who works so hard to be like his Daddy and wants nothing more than to make his Daddy proud.  

6-21-13 What Caught His Eye?

Not sure exactly what made Caden pause to just enjoy the moment, but he seized the opportunity!  I can only imagine the questions swarming around in his head.  He notes so many little things about life and then asks about them.  Sometimes he answers too :)

6-20-13 Exploring

Sometimes it's nice to have a day to just explore.  Max loves to be surrounded by nature, particularly if he's with a good friend.  And everybody knows that cousins make really good friends!

11-28-12 Let's Play!

Sometimes I look at Caden and rack my brain trying to remember what you're supposed to do with a
2-1/2 year old.  I shouldn't be rusty.  The last time I had a 2-1/2 year old was, um, one year ago.

I did see this trend starting a year ago though.  Max was 2-1/2 and he really only wanted to do what Conrad was doing.  When Conrad was 2-1/2, I was his buddy.  When it was play time, I played with him.  It's different with your third child, especially when they're close in age.  With Caden, I'm not his first choice for somebody to play with.  He is always looking for Max and Conrad and beckoning for them to play trains.  I'm more of a last resort when they're no longer interested in setting up tracks for 2" trains to be pushed around.  They've moved on to bigger and better things -- big boy LEGOS (no more Duplos!).

Tonight the big boys left with Daddy and Caden started crying and saying that he wanted to go with them.  The thought, "What do I do with a 2-1/2 year old," started to creep into my head.  Then I asked him, "Do you want to play in the sink?"  A moment of genius!  Conrad and Max used to LOVE to play in the sink.  Caden does too.  There he was playing away with simple things.  Then I added a funnel.  Double genius!  He said, "Look at my fountain," and I remembered Max saying the exact same thing and I can remember the bowls and items he stacked to create his fountain.

What a fun night.  Sometimes it really is the little things.

10-20-12 My Little Pumpkins at the Pumpkin Patch

10-20-12 They're funny already!

Before 6:30 am today, Caden and Max were making me laugh.  They slept in the same bed last night and as the sun was coming up, Max was calling for me.  When I went into their room Caden asked, "Did you hear my gas?" as if that's what had brought me to the room.

Next step was for me to make coffee.  Max offers to make my cup, but I told him I already had a pot brewing.  I realized he was used to us using our Keurig so I showed  him the coffee pot and explained how it made 12 cups of coffee at once.  Max watched it brew and asked if it had a passcode.

Dear Apple, Max has a suggestion for you: iPot.  The cutting edge in brewing coffee.

10-18-12 Caden's Consistent Request

Caden's favorite Blanket, or "B", is his elephant one that Max picked out for him before he was born.  However, I think his true favorite is his Buzz Lightyear sleeping bag.  It's just too cumbersome to carry around, although this doesn't always stop him from trying!  He has it in his crib right now and every night he says,"Will you snake me in?".  This is his request for me to tuck him into his sleeping bag and pull it over his head.  It makes me smile every nap time and bedtime.

By morning, Caden's sleeping bag weighs about five pounds because throughout the night he pushes all the stuffed animals, books, and water cups to the bottom of the bag.  Always fun to root through it when he's asking for his "Baby".

10-8-12 Brothers At The Zoo

10-7-12 Apple Season!

We went to the apple orchard a few weeks ago and many apple activities usually follow that, but this year we made our first apple pie.  Easiest baking I've ever done (code for: refrigerated crust).  The reason I've never made an apple pie is either one of two things.  The first option is that I don't really like apple pie.  The second option is that I have a recipe for caramel apple crisp that jumps out of my recipe box every time I slice apples.

Conrad has been asking to bake an apple pie, so I went to my Better Homes and Garden cookbook and the recipe only called for about five ingredients.  The apple washing and slicing began!  Conrad gave instructions and Max and Caden were part of the assembly line.  Max did not like the taste of the Granny Smith apples, but Caden and Conrad nibbled pieces of the peeled skin.

I cut out hearts in the top crust and soon the house was filled with the smell of a fresh baked apple pie.

It made a lovely fall dessert.  Unless you ask Max and Caden.  They took one bite and went back to playing trains.   I'm going to include my picture of our first pie.  It really does make me appreciate the talent of people who take good pictures of food.

10-3-12 My Kind of Homework

Conrad's teacher sent home this math assignment.  

Last week I gave the boys these containers to play with in the bathtub.

This week, the boys compared the sizes of the containers and the volume of water  they held and 

did a lot of pouring.  

All water activities seem better suited for the bathtub, but not when the containers of water have to sit on the edge of the bathtub.  Inevitably, the outcome will be water seeping into your bathroom tile.

10-2-12 A Quick Check In

The cool crisp air of fall has set in and now I'm just reflecting on the heat of summer and its warm memories.  Looking back, I have pictures of a lot of fun times.  You don't take pictures of the hard times, but of course they're there and they leave their mark in ways other than on film.  They leave their mark right on you.  Looking back on the pictures of summer makes me smile because we made it through some tough times and thoroughly enjoyed the good times!

In the spring, I made a list of 100 Days of Summer Fun.  We did a pretty good job of fitting in all 100.  I will say that it's a good thing we got a jump start on our list because I didn't consider how exhausting it would be to have that much fun ;-)  Plus, some things were so much fun that they warranted more that  just one day.

As usual, when I fall behind on my blog, I regret having not commented on what we've done with our days.  But, I regret more not noting how the boys are changing.  The things they are saying.  What's funny to them.  What concerns them.  But today, today Caden thinks anything having to do with poop is hilarious.  Max dresses up as a knight and is my valiant protector.  Conrad is deeply concerned when classmates turn to yellow card, really bothered on the rare occasion that someone turns to red.

All three boys have way more energy than I've ever had and they can go from zero to rambunctious in a millisecond.  They are hugging each other one moment and I turn around and it's WWF.  Overall, they are good buddies and prefer to be with each other more than anyone else in this world.  Usually.

6-30-12 Slow Saturday morning to Birthday Celebration under the Big Top

Joe had a busy day today, but the boys and I didn’t have anything on the agenda this morning.  Recently, I’ve let most of our mornings start the same way:  Caden wakes up and I go and get him out of his crib.  He immediately asks me to make dinner.  I suggest we snuggle in my bed.  Within minutes Max cries for me.   In his 3+ years, he has gotten up and come and found me about six times.  Other than those six times, he calls/cries until I go and get him.  When I go and get him, he insists that I carry him and indicates where he would like to go.  Most of the time he wants to go to my room and watch cartoons.  Conrad is soon to follow and climbs in my bed and joins the cartoon viewing.   Today followed this pattern.  Not a bad Saturday morning. . . but we couldn’t  didn’t watch the “Fresh Beat Band” all day. 

I had a lot of cleaning to do today, but my unfinished shelf was nagging at me.  So I loaded up the boys and we headed to the local hardware store.  They did not have the amazing paint (Rustoleum textured in dark brown) that I needed, so after spending 75 cents on three gumballs, we were off to Lowe’s.  It sounds much quicker and easier that it actually is to load and unload three kids from the car for these stops. 

Lowe’s has the paint and we were out of the store relatively quickly.  When we got back to the car Max was in tears because he didn’t get to walk in the store.  How could I have not remembered to let him out of the cart once we were inside the store?  I’m guessing my brain did that in order for me to protect my young and my sanity.  The more kids that stay in the cart, the better.  Every mom knows this!!

The boys wanted to pick up the sticks and branches that were knocked down by the storm last night.  Max said, “Dad will be glad at me.”  They worked hard to make their daddy happy.  They managed to hook Joe’s small trailer up to Conrad’s jeep.  I took the first picture because I thought they had come up with such a good idea.  I took the second one because I was so surprised that it worked!  The Jeep is more powerful than I thought!

I finished up painting my shelf and the boys cleared the debris from the driveway and yard.  Max asked, “Is today family day?”  When he didn’t get the answer he wanted, he asked, ”Is tomorrow family day?”  I went ahead and told him it was.  That made a sweet smile spread across his face.

After a wash up and Caden’s nap, we headed over to Olivia’s 3^rd birthday party.  The carnival was in full swing!  My friend threw an adorable birthday party for her little girl.   As if the games and food weren’t enough, in came a clown.  Skittles put on a show for the kids and Caden was captivated the whole time.  Conrad belly laughed through the whole show and was the first in line for a balloon animal.