Did I ever mention that Sam’s a BIG BOY now, wearing BIG BOY underwear, and doing great?! He gets to choose between Lego Indiana Jones and SpeedRacer undies, and wears them with pride. He’s been accident-free for a long time, and has never had a problem making it through the night. Hooray for Sam! He even shares a room with his big brothers now.
Funny, though, Carl and I are noticing how different Sammy is from his older brothers. For one thing, James and Joseph have always HATED being naked. They like being covered, including socks. But Sam loves to peel off his socks (and bite his toe-nails, but that’s a whole different story). He relishes running around naked. The other day he was pretending to be a person named Toothbrush, and was telling us all the things that Toothbrush gets to do (that he wishes he could do)…”And Toothbrush gets to sleep naked!” We laughed about it, but wondered–do we need to be worried?
Alas, our three weeks are up. The boys have been off-track of school, and we’ve been enjoying our freedom of schedule! We’ve visited (with Grandma) the aquarium, the Bean Museum at BYU, the library and the park. Wish I had a couple pictures to post, but I didn’t bring the camera…I guess all you picture-happy relatives aren’t rubbing off enough. James was awarded some restaurant coupons for being Student of the Week, so Carl and I took the kids out to Red Robin. We also got to fly kites, and walk around the lake at Daybreak (among other things)…it’s been fun! We even read the first Leven Thumps together, worked on requirements for the Soaring Eagle Award, and James learned “Amazing Grace” on the piano. (Oh, and Carl and I gave talks in Sacrament Meeting, and survived!) But now it’s time to gear up and get “back to school”! Wish us luck!
This one catches the boys doing their thing on a Sunday evening. I like it because it’s characteristic of each: James doing a paper project, Joseph pretending to be an animal, Sam being expressive…
Annie can now “scootch” around on the ground! She’ll even get on hands and knees and rock a little before army-crawl, belly-flop, and toe-pushin’ around again. It’s really fun to watch her progress through these stages of development. Of course, there’s no peace from now on! She’s already getting into houseplants, mopping up crumbs with her shirt, and eating everything she can get her hands on.
I helped with the Valentines parties at school, and was kind of proud of my game idea , so I’m sharing it here:
The kids had to practice throwing heart-shaped bean bag “arrows” through the heart/hole of a poster man named Billy Bob. If they got more than 5 out of 10 through the hole, they became a “Master Cupid,” and were considered worthy to help cupid out on Valentines Day! Time permitting, they threw from farther back and earned the titles of “Commander Cupid,” “King Cupid,” etc. The kids seemed to enjoy it, and we had fun playing at home as well.
I tried to copy a picture from James’ class website, but couldn’t get it to work. You’ll just have to imagine…
As fun as it is to celebrate with lots of people, we really enjoyed our small-family celebrations this year. We spent New Years 2009 with ourselves–made hats, ate snacks, watched movies. Unfortunately, Sammy (who has a peanut allergy) ate a little pistachio nut, and had a severe allergic reaction! Now we know that he’s allergic to pistachios as well! He threw up, his face turned red, he broke out in hives, even had a little trouble breathing (we’re grateful it wasn’t worse!). So, that experience added a little extra spice to our New Year celebration. His condition improved, we put him in bed, and Joseph woke up in time for the count-down. Happy New Year, everyone!
Better late than never! We had a great Christmas! The boys were off track for most of December, which was nice–still busy, but less so. We were going to visit family on Christmas Day, but there was a big snowstorm, so we hung out at home and enjoyed our little family (Christmas Eve as well). We had fun with extended family and friends on the days surrounding! (The boys got some Lego Star Wars sets from Santa! They loved them, and spent many busy hours putting them together.)
