My sweet little boy

I can't remember exactly what you have to do to earn a trip to the prize bin at school but I remember its a reward for good behavior and a big deal when you earn something. This week Collin earned his first trip to it. They keep it stocked with cool toys and pencils and stuff the kids like. Collin had his choice of whatever he wanted and he chose a green pony tail holder with 2 white daisies on it. For me! He was so excited when I got him from my neighbor's after school. He gave me a huge hug and told me he had something for me in his book bag. Then he got it out and gave it to me and told me he picked it out from the prize bin at school. Of course I cried. I'm an incredible sap and I cry over everything. How could I not cry over such a thoughtful act? It also made me immensely proud that he would think of someone else besides himself once in a while. All those moments where I question my parenting ability faded away for a while because we gotta be doing something right if our kid can be that thoughtful.

Of course then he turned right around that night while we were out to eat at Red Lobster and decided to delight us with a new little ditty he picked up from a friend. He points at each of us as he sings "Skunk in the barnyard. P.U.! Somebody farted. That's YOU!" I giggled. I couldn't help it. It was hysterical. I then had to get myself under control and tell him that while I found the song thoroughly amusing it was completely inappropriate for a restaurant. He can sing it as much as he wants at home but no more when we're out in public. Interestingly enough, I haven't heard it since. I'm sure I will though. Both my kids love music and singing and Nick was listening intently as Collin was singing. I'm sure I haven't heard the last of that skunk song yet.

Fall Begins...

Collin's first day of school after he rode the bus home. That smile says it all!

Collin waiting to be "sponged" back into the game. I don't know why he calls subbing sponging but he does. I keep reminding him that its sub not sponge so maybe by the next game....

Coach Daddy and Collin (#6).

So much has been happening lately and its been hard to find an extended period to sit down and write about it all. The biggest happening is that Collin started kindergarten. There was much trepidation leading up to this event, mostly on my part but a fair amount on his as well. It was all for naught. He seems to love it. His teacher is very nice and he has come home every day with a smiley face on his behavior chart. In typical little boy fashion, its like pulling teeth to get him to tell me about his day.
Me: Tell me about your day. What did you do?
Collin: It was good.
Me: Tell me what you learned.
Collin: Nothing.
Me: Ok, who did you sit with at lunch?
Collin: Jacob, Tackle and Mystery.
Me: Who??
I've met Jacob but I have no idea who Tackle or Mystery might be. He's come home with some new songs and several awards for good behavior which he is very proud of. I'll have to shoot video of him singing the "Tooty-Ta" song. It is hysterical. He likes school because its fun. I like school for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it has made bedtime a breeze. He goes to bed like an angel now because he's actually tired. I also like it because I only have to get one kid up and ready to go in the morning now so my mornings are easier.

The boys are both playing soccer and taking swim lessons again this fall. Nick is doing the junior striker program that Collin did at his age and I'm very impressed with how well he's doing. He is engaged and follows directions from the coach with absolutely no prompting from me. He was so excited to go to the first practice. Collin had his first game today. He is very excited because Tim is the assistant coach for his team. He calls him Coach Daddy. Their team got crushed today but they had tons of fun and I don't think they realized it because there is no official score. The other team had a little kid who probably could have played with the 7 and 8 year olds and fit right in. I was proud of our team because they all gave it their best effort and had a great time.

Collin is also starting Sunday school in a couple of weeks. Tim and I will be taking turns being the second teacher in one of the classes. I don't know if it will be his or not yet. We're looking forward to that as well.

Its going to be a very busy year for us. There is certainly more than enough to keep us busy! I will try to find more time to blog and keep things a little more updated than I have lately.

Way to go Collin!

Check out my big boy riding his bike without the training wheels! It all started on vacation when the tire on his bike went flat and needed a new tube. The training wheels had to come off to get the tire off and they stayed off. It was tough at first but Collin kept at it. He almost got it while we were still at Grandmom and Granddad's. I let go and he kept going until he realized I had let go. Then he promptly stopped and fell and lost confidence even though I pointed out he was going just fine until he realized I wasn't hanging onto him anymore. Tonight Tim took him over to the school to practice riding again and he did fantastic. Tim said that there were even people cheering him on as he mastered his bike. He also met some new friends and got to play on the playground for a while.

A night with my kids

Where has the time gone? It feels like just yesterday I was bringing home this tiny, helpless, little baby. Today I took a very independent young man for his kindergarten assessment. He was nervous at first but by the time they were through he was having a great time, probably because it was all stuff he knew. They asked him about the alphabet and did some numbers and simple math like which picture has more things. He was also given a list of site words and he knew quite a few and the ones he didn't know he tried to sound out. Some of the other tasks included writing his name and listening to a story and being able to tell the teacher what happened. He came out and told us everything the teacher asked him he knew the answer to. The teacher didn't have too much to say afterward. She wanted to know if he went to preschool and when we said no she seemed pretty surprised and said we must work with him a lot at home. She also mentioned that he told her he uses flash cards. Mostly what she said was that he was more than ready for kindergarten and he will do just fine in the fall.

So we took him to Rita's afterward as a reward for trying hard and we let him play a little wii because he found a new level that I'd never seen before and he wanted to show his Dad. You'd think he'd be good the rest of the night right? Ha! At some point during his bath (I didn't bathe him tonight) he dumped an entire bottle of body wash down the bathtub drain. And it wasn't a little bottle, it was one of the giant ones you get at BJ's. Apparently if you dump an entire bottle of body wash down the drain and then flush the toilet the basement toilet and tub fill with bubbles! We had no clue what was going on. All we heard was this gurgling sound and when we went to check it out we found the basement toilet gurgling and full of bubbles. Tim googled the situation and came up with the possibility of air in the lines. That's when he found the empty bottle of body wash. Collin fessed up when we confronted the boys about it. Thank goodness my husband is so smart and patient because he figured things out and spent quite a bit of time running water and flushing toilets to get rid of all those bubbles!

Then it was bedtime. I put them both to bed no problem and went downstairs to watch Dancing with the Stars. It wasn't long before Nick came down. I sent him back up then Collin came down. I sent him back up. Then I heard Collin say he couldn't sleep because of Nick's nightlight. I told him to shut his door. This conversation was followed by a series of screams and both children coming downstairs. Turns out instead of shutting his door, Collin removed Nick's nightlight. I took them both back upstairs, plugged in Nick's nightlight again and told them both if they got out of bed again I was going to shut and lock their doors. On the way out of Nick's room I happened to glance at the wall. "What's this?" I asked of the lovely green scribbles now gracing Nick's wall. "A bird" he replied. Of course it was a bird, why wouldn't it be a bird? He answered so innocently and proudly as if there was nothing wrong with drawing a bird on his wall in green crayon. I reminded him that we don't draw birds on the wall, we draw them on paper. That's when Collin fessed up, again! He had drawn a person with a box in a bubble on his wall in green crayon as well. What the hell were my children thinking tonight? So it was 9:30, they were both still up and they had defaced their walls. They will be scrubbing their walls in the very near future. Maybe not tomorrow because we have appointments at the eye doctor and a t-ball game tomorrow, but very, very soon.

Collin's T-Ball Game

Collin's first t-ball game was one of the most entertaining things I have ever seen in my entire life. It loosely resembled a game. Every kid on the team got to bat, there were no outs and the last kid up each inning hit a grand slam and cleared the bases so that each kid got to go all the way around the bases and score a run. Half the kids would barely hit the ball, the kids in the fields would rush forward to get it only to have the batter pick it back up and put it back on the tee. Collin had one really great hit that went over the head of the three kids playing short stop. His coach called it the hit of the game. He also got to play catcher for an inning. I couldn't have been prouder helping him suit up to play my old position. He did a good job too. Not that he actually had to catch since the ball sits on a tee but after every hit the first baseman throws the ball back to the catcher and its his job to put the ball on the tee for the next batter. When he was paying attention (which was most of the time) he did a good job stopping the ball and putting it back on the tee. Did I mention he plays for the Yankees? I have never cheered so hard for the Yankees in my entire life. He had such a good time he's looking forward to practice on Wednesday and playing another game this Sunday. I was going to add pictures to this post but realized they are on the other computer so I will have to post them later but they are available on facebook if you just can't wait to see him.

The Big Blizzard of 2009

SNOW ANGEL!

It is really snowing good right now! We cleared at least 8 inches off the deck at 9:45 and there is probably another 3 inches out there now. It's only been 2 hours! Nick's fever is down to 99.7 but he was up a good portion of the night so I finally went upstairs and woke him up at 11:45. He never sleeps this long. At least he seems to be in good spirits and he's eating a little bit. Collin has already been out in the snow but his boots must be too big because they keep falling off his feet. Needless to say his romp in the snow didn't last too long. We'll try again later. I'm going to raid the shoe bin and see if there are any boots a size smaller in it. In the mean time, it is beautiful outside. There are no signs of the snow stopping anytime soon. Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!This is Collin and his best buddies Tommy and Jimmy who live "in our backyard" They actually live in the house behind us.

Hamburger Fiasco

Since we can't find our kitchen this week because we've been moving tons of stuff around trying to clear out the basement we went out to dinner tonight at Fatburger. It was our first time there. Basically they sell burgers, fries and milkshakes. We each ordered a burger and got a couple orders of fries and a milkshake to share. I made sure to order Nick's burger with cheese and Collin's without. Unfortunately they mixed up our order. Nick's burger was fine but mine was missing its cheese and Collin's had it. I couldn't just switch burgers because mine had lettuce and pickles on it. I tried scraping them off and telling Collin it was a plain burger but he refused to eat it. Finally we ended up asking them to make him a new one. While I was waiting for it, I got up to get some ketchup for the fries. Coming back into our booth I tried to scoot past Collin and ended up dumping my tray with my burger in my lap. The rest of us were done eating by the time they brought Collin's new burger so Tim asked him if he wanted to eat it in the car. He was enthusiastic about the idea so we cleaned up the table and left. Somewhere between that point and the car Collin's hamburger disappeared. He was mad because he was hungry so I made Tim stop at McDonald's for another hamburger. After all, it wasn't Collin's fault that his hamburger was gone and he was hungry. So after some grumbling we're on our way with another hamburger (#3, if you're counting) and Collin's lifts the bun and starts complaining because there are pickles and microscopic pieces of onion on it. At this point I tell him he has to eat it or else. He agreed to one bite and proceeded to take a bite of bun, no burger. He never ate more than a couple of bites and I think the dog just stole it. There will be no more burgers in our future for a while no matter how much he whines that he wants one.

Overheard

At one point all 6 kids were in the house and I heard one of them ask Collin if they could play the wii. He responded by saying "No. There's a moratorium on the wii. That means we're not allowed to play it anymore!" He hasn't asked to play it since about three days after the moratorium began and he learned a new word. It's really working quite well. Finally every sentence doesn't begin with something about Mario!

Scissors Paper Rock

Every night before he goes to bed Collin and I play scissors paper rock. He throws rock and I throw scissors. We play three times and it never changes, we always throw the same things. Last night we played when I got home from my board meeting. The first round I lost because Collin's rock crushed my scissors. The second round I threw scissors again and Collin saw me do it and changed his rock to paper so I won. Then he pretended to cry because he'd lost so we played one more time. This time before we started Collin said "Mom, you throw rock and I'll throw scissors." So I threw rock this time and instead of scissors he threw paper. He laughed and laughed and I laughed with him because it was pretty funny. Until last night I wasn't sure he understood the game but he definitely understands and knows how to play so he wins. It was a good moment. Unfortunately, it was after 9:30 when I got home and Collin wasn't about the go to sleep. It was 11 o'clock before he finally gave in and fell asleep. I put him back to bed many many times between 9:30 and 11 last night he just would not sleep. It was very frustrating so scissors paper rock was my silver lining.

Collin's 1st Bike

For his birthday Collin we took Collin to Toys R Us to pick out a big boy bike. From the moment he hopped on to try it out he was hooked. He rode all over the store. Thank goodness it wasn't crowded. When we asked how much the bike was we found out it was discontinued and out of stock. ACK! Thank goodness they let us buy the floor model with a bonus 10% discount because Collin was NOT leaving there without his new blue Star Wars bike. When I saw how well my baby rode that bike all over the store I was just blown away. How could my baby be so big already? As soon as we got the new bike home we rode it all the way around the block. Nick was right beside him the whole time always ready to put his hand on his brothers back to give him a little push up a hill. He was so supportive, it was really neat to watch. Of course he wanted to give it a try too but he's not quite big enough yet. Soon though. I don't think he's going to put up with being told he's too small for very long. Anyway, here's a video and a couple of pictures of Collin with his new bike. I don't think I've ever seen him so excited over anything!

My baby is growing up

Tonight Collin is sleeping over at his friends' house. Tommy and Jimmy live right behind us and Collin just loves playing with them. They spent the night at our house once before a few months ago but this is the first time Collin has spent the night at their house. He was just so excited about going over tonight. I picked him up at 3:30 and as soon as I walked in the door he was asking to go to his friends house. We came home and packed his overnight bag and spent some time hanging out (and counting the minutes until it was time to go). When I walked him over he went right in to hang out with his friends. I was just about completely forgotten the minute he was through the door. Before I left, I did manage to get a hug and a kiss from him, but there was no trepidation about me leaving whatsoever. It was "Bye Mom. See ya tomorrow. I know, I know, I'll be good. I promise." In other words, I'm a big boy and I'm playing with my friends now. Please leave me alone. He wasn't acting like a little 3 year old. He was acting like a well adjusted much older child and I was a bit conflicted about it. One the one hand, I was very happy and proud that he had such good friends that he was completely comfortable leaving us for the night. On the other hand, it was another reminder of how big my baby boy has gotten. Another reminder of how fleeting childhood is. And another reminder that I have to be willing to let go a little bit at a time so that when he's really ready to be on his own, many years from now, I'll be ready too. He doesn't think spending the night with his friends is a big deal, but it is for me. Its another baby step on his road to independence. He takes these steps without even thinking about them. I, however, notice and agonize over every step.

Our First Foray into Organized Sports

I've been just waiting until Collin was old enough to sign him up for soccer because I thought he'd love it. He has so much fun kicking the ball around in the back yard. So last week we had our first experience with organized sports. I picked the boys up at daycare and headed to soccer. We got there early and I ended up leaving half way through with Nick because he was being horrible. I rescued him from running onto the field during an active game no less than 4 times and actually lost him once. The woman behind the food counter found him for me. I didn't want to bring him this week but Tim had an appointment and my mom wasn't going to be home in time to watch him. My Dad met me at the Soccer dome to help me watch Nick while Collin had practice. Mostly, soccer for 3 years old involves a whole lot of running around and very little actual soccer but the kids love it. Here are a couple of videos of Collin. In one he's supposed to be jumping over the hurdle. In the other he's crawling under it. You can hear Nick whining for Mommy in them. I so hope I don't have to bring him next week. I also hope that Collin does better next week. He spent half of this weeks session laying on the floor saying he was tired. He only listened and followed directions about half the time. The other half he did his own thing. Maybe he is really tired, he has been refusing to go to bed at a reasonable time again. I put him to bed at 7:30 and he's still up at 9. His alarm goes off at 5:35 am so, do the math, that's barely enough sleep for an adult. Its definitely not enough for a small child. I'm working on it, but so far I've been unsuccessful. Tim says he did very well the first week. I wouldn't know because I spent most of the time I was there chasing Nick. All poor Nick wants to do is play soccer with his brother. He doesn't understand why he can't and its very frustrating for him to be pulled off the field all the time. Maybe I'll enjoy soccer more when I'm not so busy chasing Nick and I can enjoy watching Collin have a good time, and when I'm not busy being embarrassed because he's the only kid not listening and paying attention and instead he's on some other part of the field doing his own thing.

Learning to Read

Collin mastered his letters and their sounds ages ago and has shown interest in sounding some words out so we're going with it. It's given us a whole new appreciation for just how difficult it must be to learn the English language. It really hit me as Tim was trying to sound out the word "food" with Collin. Collin's choice of words, not Tim's, but that's beside the point. Tim was explaining that two o's together makes the "oooo" sound (I'm not even sure how to write that, but if you can read this you know what I mean). By that logic I realized it should be "fooot" (rhyme with food) not "fut" (like it sounds). Try explaining that to a 3 year old or writing it for that matter. I guess that's why we take English every single year in school and stuff like math is optional after you have enough credits. It also gives me a new appreciation for spoken vs. written language and makes me really glad that I'm not an English teacher. I don't want to push reading on Collin before he's ready but he seems to really enjoy sounding out words. He proudly points out letters he see's all over the place and asks me how to spell stuff all the time. I just want to encourage his love of learning and especially of reading because its something I enjoy tremedously. Any hints for making it easier for him?

My kids...

You know you play wii too much when your 20 month old walks in the room and says "I wanna play wii". He doesn't play, he's still too small but that doesn't prevent him from trying. In fact, I've seen him push Collin right off the balance board and squat and then stand like you do when you're ski jumping on the wii fit.

Speaking of Collin, he's proven to me that branding and marketing really work. We went to Uno's in Baltimore for dinner the other night and as we were sitting there he looked out the window and got all excited. "Look! There's Best Buy!" Sure enough, right down the street was the Best Buy. Driving home from seeing Disney on Ice with his Dad tonight they passed a billboard and Collin excitedly pointed out "Look Dad! There's the Geico money with the eyes and the mouth!" Those adds are fairly new but they obviously got his attention.

My sister is a marketing major and she told me to turn Collin loose in the cereal aisle in the grocery store and tell him he could pick any box of cereal he wanted but it could only be one box. She said most kids take forever to pick a box. My kid did not. He went straight for the Coco Puffs. Uh, No. Try again. This time he picked Cookie Crisps. Still a no. Lucky Charms? Not on your life, pal. None of those cereals are healthy. What I also realized while I was doing this little experiment was that none of the healthy cereals were where he could see them. All the sugar filled crap was right at his eye level and all the good for you stuff was up at mine. We did not get a box of cereal by the way. When I turned Collin loose I asked him which box he would get if we were buying cereal and made it clear that we were not because we had plenty of Cheerios left at home. It was an enlightening experience to say the least.

Crazy Maryland Weather

Tuesday I was home all day with my "sick" child. He was contagious because he has strep but he was not "sick" in the normal sense. He had a gigantic lymph node in his neck but was otherwise fine and not really complaining or acting sick. If it weren't for the lymph node I never would have even considered taking him to the doctor. I'm glad I did since he was contagious. Anyway, we had a really wonderful day off together. I sent Nick to daycare to keep him away from Collin while he was still contagious. We played wii, and candy land and watched it snow outside. By the way, I can't beat Collin at Candy Land even when I don't stack the deck. By the time we left to pick up Nick, the snow was gone and it was considerably warmer that it had been all morning long. Collin was disappointed. And he was mad about picking up his brother. He told me it was not a good idea and that Daddy could pick him up. It finally dawned on me that he didn't want our day together to end. He'd enjoyed having Mommy all to himself for a while again. And so did I. I need to make it a point to spend time with each of them by themselves more often. Wednesday it snowed again. Caught me totally by surprise. Had I realized it would be snowing when I got up I would not have hit the snooze button. Twice. I was already 5 minutes late leaving when I opened the door and realized I had an inch of snow to clean off my car. I HATE SNOW! Collin was so excited and made me promise we could have a snowball fight when we got home. Yet again, by the time we got home, you would never know that it had snowed that morning, it was all gone. This morning it was 14 degrees when the boys and I went to daycare. By Sunday, its supposed to be 58! How on Earth do you go from 14 to 58 in 3 days? Its crazy! Before it snowed, I had picked the boys up and let them go without coats because it was almost 60 that day. No wonder we all get sick with all the wild temperature swings going on here. I wish the snow would either go away all together or dump more than a foot on us so everything shuts down and we can enjoy it. Crazy, crazy weather....

Darn it....

We've gone quite a while without making a trip to the doctor's office. Friday night Collin began complaining that his neck hurt. I looked and he had a gigantic swollen lymph node below his ear. I didn't have to feel for it, I could just see it sticking out. I figured that was why his neck was hurting. I asked if his throat hurt and he said no, his neck and pointed to the giant bump. I waited to see if it went down over night and it didn't so this afternoon I took him to the doctor's office. he has strep throat. Yeah! Now I get to take tomorrow off. Poor baby, he's really been doing very well considering. Since he doesn't act sick, I'm considering tomorrow a bonus day for the two of us.

Snow Pictures

Today we had our first real snowfall of the season. I HATE winter! But as I watched Nick staring in amazement at the snow coming down this morning, I almost liked it. Had this been a Saturday I might have actually enjoyed it. However, it was 6:05 and I still had to get Nick in his car seat and drop the boys off at daycare before going to work, I didn't have time to let him admire the snow too much. This afternoon however, I left work a little early, picked the boys up and let them play in the snow. They loved it! They had such a good time trying to make snow balls and snow angels. Here's a couple of pictures. This is the picture I took the other day of Collin giving Nick a hug.
Collin was trying to make his own snowballs.
Nick finally sat down to play in the snow.
Here's both of my boys hanging out in the snow.
Collin is making his first snow angel.

Brotherly Love

Collin slept until 8am this morning! That, I can assure you, is nothing short of a miracle. He came in and got me and asked me to meet him downstairs. Before I could get my butt out of bed I heard him in Nick's room. "Nicholas....Nicholas...Wake up Nick. It's time to play!" Of course Nick woke up and wanted to go play so we all went downstairs and had some breakfast and then the boys spent the morning playing together until it was time to get ready for church. I love to watch them interact when they play nicely together. They share very well most of the time. Sometimes one of them will tackle the other and just when I think its going to begin a battle, the other will giggle and tackle his brother back. Its one of my greatest joys watching them become friends and seeing how much they care about one another. I took a really sweet picture of Collin hugging Nick today. Nick is smiling and looking at the camera but Collin has his arms around him and you can just see in his face how much he loves his brother. I hope they'll always be such good friends.

Mr. Clean

Thursday morning before I left for work, I looked around the house and had a minor melt down. Since all three of my guys were sitting there I informed them that before we did anything on Saturday, we were cleaning the house. Then I added "Collin and Nichols, there are things you can do to help and you will be expected to do it before you can do anything fun." Friday night I was making a grocery list and said to Collin "Do you know what we have to do tomorrow?" I was going to ask him to come grocery shopping with me. To my surprise he said "I know, I know, we have to clean the house" in a totally exasperated tone that clearly said, I get it, quit nagging me Mom. Saturday morning Collin woke Tim and I up at 7 a.m. by saying, "Come downstairs, I have to show you something." Tim got up and went downstairs and sure enough, Collin had picked up all his toys in the living room. It looked beautiful. Who knows what time he had gotten up to do that. We were so proud of him. Needless to say, he got to play the wii that day.

Video Games

Since we got the wii, Collin has loved playing it. It's fun and there are plenty of games that he is more than capable of playing very well. However, I'm learning that there are some drawbacks to the wii, or video games in general for that matter. He is obsessed with Mario Kart. When he wakes up in the morning the first thing he asks is if he can play it. On the way home, he talks about which character and car he wants to race with. If you turn it off, he freaks out. I let him play for a half hour today when we got home while I fixed dinner. Then I said it was time to turn it off and play with his toys, watch a movie, whatever as long as it didn't involve a video game and he flipped. He screamed, cried, threw things and hit me. I dumped him right in time out because he was out of control. I told him he could stay there until his father got home in 20 minutes but, although he was upset and cried and promised he'd be good, he never left his room and he got himself under control again so I let him out after 10 minutes. I think 20 minutes would have been too long. He's still little after all. I'm limiting his time to 30 minutes a day and less if he complains about it. He's not allowed to play tomorrow at all because of his outburst today. I want to teach him a couple of lessons. 1. There will always be someone who is better than you and you will not always be the winner. You have to lose gracefully. 2. There is way more to life than video games. The winter is hard because it's cold outside and it gets dark early so we don't get much of an opportunity to play outdoors. Indoors, I'd rather he play the wii than sit on his butt watching tv but I still don't want him to do it for hours at a time. Wish me luck on this one because its going to be an uphill battle.