Sharing and dog breath

Working on the idea of sharing with the three year old ... it is a loooonnnnggg and difficult road. Tonight we made Kettle Korn and after Slater ate his fill he started "sharing" with everyone. A piece for Jade, a piece for Mom, a piece for Dad. It was quite cute and we were excited to see voluntary sharing!! Then he handed us both a piece, after we had them in our mouth he said "Piper (the dog) no eat these, Piper lick these."

And think a few short months ago we were worried about his communication skills.

The ups and downs of parenthood ...

So this weekend was the weekend of illness.

All parents know it, the kind ...
...where the washer and dryer never stop running...
...where the shower is the only real way to clean them up...
...where you are touched that your child wants to just be held and you can make everything in their world OK for awhile...
...where you are not so thrilled by their frighten face as they run to you scared about how their body is feeling and then throw-up all over you...
...where little hands pat your face and say "I sad, mommy", "Just cuddle me" or "I wuv you"...
...where your spunky, never slow-down, dive head-first into everything son doesn't move except to crawl off the couch and go back to his bed ...
...where you wind up getting it yourself and listening to your babies cry while you are in the bathroom breaks your heart...

Well that was our weekend, thank goodness it is over. But after all the chaos died down there were some wonderful moments. Today I was tucked into bed by my son and then he pulled out his lincoln logs and started to play next to my head. He was so intent on what he was doing, examining each log, linking them together, tilting, twisting and arranging. Suddenly I realize that he was assembly cannons and firing them off at imaginary targets. His big brown eyes were fascinated by the little pieces, his mind caught up in a world of his own making, just content that I was there to share it with him.

These are the moments that families should be all about. The quiet time that we take with each other, stopping and watching. Not rushing to take a picture, running out the door to get on to the next thing, feeling frustrated by the un-done chores or projects. I hope that our Christmas will be filled with moments of wonder, wandering the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, listening to a choir sing, decorating the tree, sledding and laughing.

Week of Warmth followed by the Big Freeze

A large warm and wet air-mass migrated through Interior Alaska last week. It brought rain and 40 degree temperature - which is crazy for Alaska in November. The rain froze as it hit the ground and made the highways into skating rinks, so they closed school for three days! Since it was Thanksgiving, some of us got the entire week off!!! This week saw a reverse in the weather - temperatures closer to 40 below zero!! Ahh the joys of living in the far north :)


Master of her own destiny!!


Between trips outside and naps we enjoyed a little creative time. Grandma dropped off these ceramic Christmas figures. Both of the kids enjoyed playing with/painting them. Wade and I both got a laugh out of remembering when we were kids and all the stuff our moms, aunts, and moms friends had us do.

Goofing around at the playground. Schools were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday so there were no kids and great temperatures to be out - as long as you could find a safe way to get over the icy roads to the places you wanted to go :) The snowmachine ran well and let us get out everyday.

Slater showing off his awesome birthday present from Uncle Carter and Aunt Sylvia. He loves snowmachining, the helmet and the goggles, such an Alaskan boy.

The little things

Tonight Slater taught Jade how to play "Ring around the Rosie". She refused to fall down the first couple of times, but laughed hysterically at the rest of us. Slater says most of the words now and loves to include Jade in any games that he is making up.

After dinner we were all required to be characters from Winnie the Pooh, Vega was the only one who stayed the same the whole time (Christopher Robin??? - why was the dog assigned the human role???). Everyone else was given different characters every couple of minutes and we had to talk about who we were, what we liked (gardening and bouncing) and then we all had to run around saving Piglet before he got away on the kite. It is great to be able to have a semi-conversation with Slater, things keep falling into place with his speech and it is wonderful to hear.

In the morning Slater now says - "Nice to see you." and "I missed you, mommy." Now if we could just get him to stop saying "GO AWAY". He also likes to assign us to time out when we aren't doing what he has asked - "You sit in time-out."

Other thoughts:
Jade's skin is still unbelievable soft and she smells so sweet.
In the morning she l.o.v.e.s. to cuddle in the chair.
If you ask her about reading books she will grab your hand and drag you to her bedroom to sit and read.
She can identify or point out most of the pictures in her favorite books.
At Uncle Carter's wedding she rediscovered bubbles and can't get enough of them.

Sort of rambling tonight, but it was a great Thanksgiving and I just needed to get a few thoughts down tonight. Hopefully I will post pictures of our fun week / weekend adventures soon.

Ice Storm

This week we have had 40 degree temperatures and rain. Falling rain on frozen ground creates a layer of ice that makes life a little more difficult. They closed school for 2 days and the kids and I choose to stay home on Monday. Since this is Thanksgiving week that means a week vacation for us ... too bad the roads are so bad that we are basically housebound.



Wade got the snowmachine out and took Slater to a nearby playground. It was the highlight of his day. He seems to be missing his friends from daycare and pre-school, he has been asking to see kids all day.

Piper and her guys

The pictures of pre-school day one...

Waiting impatiently for the school bus to arrive on the first day! We promised pictures of this big day awhile ago and some how they just never got uploaded. I hope that you enjoy seeing Slater take this big step (almost all by himself).


Getting off the school bus at school. I wanted to get one of him getting on the bus, but he was way to excited to stand outside the bus. He ran over to the door and jumped on - then he tried to steal the aide's seat. As much fun as he has at pre-school still can compare to the bus ride.


Here he is all settled into his classroom. These little people could be linked together, stacked and lined up like dominoes. After arranging all of his people he tried to snag a few more from the pile on the other side of the table (his classmate hadn't gotten there yet).

Sitting on things

Here she is "helping" vacuum the floor.


Jade sitting on her racecar.

She likes to sit in the chair with us, on the couch with the dogs, on benches, rocking toys and just about anything that her bottom will fit on. She often tries to sit on tiny objects (like toy horses and small stuffed animals.

Crazy hair-do!!

Bath time is the best time!

Jade loves to take a bath and we love to make her hair do crazy things. It is super-fine, straight, blond and finally starting to get a little longer.

I see a future in ponytails and pigtails.

Leaps in Language!

Slater has been in pre-school for two weeks now and we are seeing leaps and bounds in progress. He actually started to make some significant strides in the couple weeks leading up to it, but we are seeing daily progress that relates directly to pre-school.

: He can sing the entire ABC song by himself
: He is using 4-6 words in sentences of his own
- "I see a Charlie Brown tree"
- "Right behind you Jade"
- "That is you, booboo"
- "That is the school bus"
- "I found the storm trooper"
- "Jade, this is Commander Cody"
- "Baby duckie, so cute"
- "I see the number 2"
: Transitioning between activities better
: Uses the words I, me and you (not always correctly, but he says them now)
: Loves going to the gym at the school
: With a lot of coaxing and prompting he tells us things about his day
: He is sitting still for library and circle time
: Learning how to walk in a line or be a line leader
: Getting better at waiting in line
: LOVING the school bus more each day
: Always happy to see his mom at pick-up time

He still seems to understand what other people are saying better if they phrase it as a statement or a direction instead of asking a question (this is something that we are all working on). Mom can understand about 90% of what he says, while Dad and other are probably closer to 60%. His teachers are great and seem to genuinely enjoy him, they always have a story about something funny he has done with his time at school.

Gearing up for Halloween

This week end we decided to get the Halloween ball rolling. We carved some pumpkins, dug out Slater's whole Star Wars costume, went sledding, swimming, visiting cousins and even managed to clean some house. Lots of fun for the whole family.

Even Clone Troopers Like to Play

After a hard day guarding the frontier our young Clone Trooper likes to unwind and relax before getting some rest.
Slater liked his Halloween costume so much we could barely get him out of it, even to eat or swim.

Pre-School #2

Slater has been having a little bit of trouble transitioning to talking in sentences and seems to be behind in his language development. We had him tested by the school district and he qualified for the pre-school program and will be attending "school" five days a week. Things he will be doing:

:Riding a big kid bus
:Carrying a backpack
:Attending gym, music and library
:Hanging out with 5 kids who need a little help and 2 peer pals
:Have 1 teacher and two aides!!
:Working with a speech therapist twice a week
:Doing art, circle time, table time and bunches of other cool stuff

Today was day #1 - so I took part of the day off to "help" him get on the bus and meet him at school to introduce him to everyone and everything. I want him to grow up to be independent, but I wasn't quite ready to be completely unnecessary today - and I was! Which is great and a little heartbreaking at the same time. He had his own spot and worked on hanging everything up today and was so excited to ride the bus and be in class with all the other kids. When I left he waved at me and went right back to his people :) Hopefully Wade will be adding pictures to this later.

Preparing the tiger

Every year we take all of the younger cousins in for a Halloween photo at Walmart. The first time that we did it was three years ago, when Slater was just a couple months old. All four boys were jungle animals - adorable!! The second year everyone came as a member of the Star Wars saga, last year was Jade's first time and it was fun to add a baby girl to all those boys, and this year (the 4th annual one - I love traditions!!) we had two super-heroes (Wolverine and Ironman), Slater the tiger and matching giraffes, Jack and Jade.


Note the pacifier on this tiger! Jade insisted on wearing Slater's costume for a little while. We got it large (4/5T) and she is just over a year ... it was cumbersome, but nothing beats getting into Slater's stuff.


He enjoyed watching the whole process in the bathroom mirror. He also wanted to add all the colors on the palette. This week during Jade's nap we will have to try out a few different types of faces.


The nose and whiskers was about all he stood still for. He was extremely interested in the fake blood, which came with the make-up set, but we decided to make it disappear instead.

Snow Angels

Yesterday's snow was the perfect stickiness for making snowballs and rolling out snowmen. Today's snow was more on the fluffy side and just won't hold together properly so we decided to try out snow-angels.


Angel-maker #1 If you look closely you can see she is one angry monkey!! What her brother was doing looked like fun until she was turtled on her back in a snowsuit that was a tad on the bulky side. Once she was up again there was nothing but smiles for all the snow.


Angel-maker #2


The final product.

Our little talkers

At one point I posted that Jade could say mama, dada and shit (I know how lovely is that third one!) Lately she seems to be adding new words on a daily basis. Some of the new ones include: ball, baaaa (brother), dag (dog), duck, wow, uh-oh, no-no-no (with the full head shake), and yum. She has also added foot stomping temper tantrums to her bag of tricks, charming how quickly the second one learns these cute habits.

Slater has also made a lot of progress since he entered daycare and started pre-school. We are hearing more and more three and four word phrases, although they are mostly parroted phrases not sentences of his own.

A few favorites: "I no know", "I'm sorry booboo", "Where my storm trooper go?", "How you doing?" - which is adorable in his Joey from Friends voice.

Current least favorite: "Go away, mommy, daddy, Jade-booboo, ________" insert whoever he is annoyed with. This is said with the squintie eye, snarled lip and pointed finger and is generally followed by a bit of "alone-time".

I read over this and it makes them sound sort of snotty, which is pretty rare. There is tons of chasing time, hugging, snuggles, and so much silliness and joy ... sweet babies of mine.

BTW as soon as the camera batteries are charged we should be back to the regular posts with pictures.

Like mama, like son ...

Today on the car ride home I forgot the DVD player (the life line that keeps my children awake on the way home). So I decided to improvise by singing a couple of the kids favorites - Old MacDonald, Wheels on the Bus, etc.

At first everyone was having a good time, Jade giggling and yelling "duck" every time it was time to name an animal, Slater supplying a few other animals. Then the fun ended, Slater started yelling "No, no, no, no mommy."

"No, no, no what???" was my reply.

"No you sing, mommy!"

"Well, how about the radio? Is that better?"

"That's better mommy."

Apparently my singing is that bad and he would rather sleep and listen to the radio. I remember feeling the same way about my mom in the car, but it didn't start until I was much older.

The Boy Update ...

A mischievous tree-climber.



An admirer of nature.

A maker of raccoon hand-puppets and porcupine snacks.

A teller of elaborate (still difficult to understand) stories.

A tickler of epic proportion.

A sweet little snuggler.

A better and bigger brother every day.

A counting, weather-predicting, letter-identifying pre-schooler.

A breakfast lover and dinner hater.

An enormous fan of all things Halloween (and he hasn't seen his Storm Trooper costume yet!!)

An unpredictable sleeper.

An all-around happy camper.

Slater we love you.

"What a wonderful World"

The weather has been great and we have taken full advantage of it. Kite flying, wood cutting, swinging and playing on the slide has been the order of the day lately. We took lunch to the Botanical Gardens and let the kids roam. They love all of the little places to run, crawl, and hide. They have some great climbing trees and even a creek to play in. Winters coming but we are enjoying it while we can.

Reasons to be Grateful

While avoiding household chores or pretending to be quiet for a slumbering babe or some other lame excuse I have been looking at other blogs and noticed a large amount of grateful posts. It is so easy to get caught up in hostile moments of sleep deprivation and forget just how really great we have it, so here goes:

1. A wonderful husband who likes to rub my feet at the end of a long day and who works hard to take care of the family we have built.
2. A three year old who makes me cry with laughter doing the Hotdog dance, there needs to be video footage!
3. Grateful to be the mama to this sweet spaghetti eater.

4. To have parents that are here to celebrate all of life's little moments and are only ever a phone call away.
5. Friends, those that are next-door, across town, in-state, in country and over the great blue sea. I can't imagine life without your encouragement, laughter, and openness.
6. The most magnificent fall weather I can ever remember.
7. Chocolate
8. A gray muzzled dog that is always happy to just "be" with me.
9. A big beautiful home in a quiet neighborhood.
10. A job with teenagers.

Lawn Inspector?

So Jade loves to help me mow the lawn, when I fire the mower up, she wants to be right there. Sometimes she wants me to carry her, sometimes she just likes to watch, and sometimes she wants to climb on-top. But yesterday she acted like she was inspecting my work. When I stopped she would walk around in the cut grass and give me a look that said " I think you can do better Dad".


I thought her outfit was hilarious, she had the supervisor look down.

She takes her job pretty seriously. She even took off her glasses for a better look.

Welcome to the Jungle

A request for Jess! Today we put on our costumes and headed out to the yard. My little animals enjoyed the sunshine and got a giggle out of having their costumes on outside. This first set is of the shortest giraffe on the planet. She managed to climb ladders, slide and swing, not bad for her first day. I realize not all of these are great shots of her but I wanted a few that really showed off the costume.








Swinging is popular with tigers. So are the GVEA guys who came through with all their trucks and equipment - tree destroyers!! I am still a little depressed over the destruction of 17 trees on the back of our property.


Here we go with the begging and pleading section of the photo shoot.




Slater took this and I love the way it shows the light at this time of the day. The weather for the last week could not have been any more beautiful.

Fabulous Fall Days

The glorious days of fall are upon us! The last week has been filled with weather that just calls us to the outdoors. The air is crisp, the leaves have turned (and started to fall) and the woods smell of berries waiting to be picked. Perfect day for a hike at Birch Hill with my two favorite companions. Even though I took the Chariot along, both kids choose to walk most of the trail.


Now that he has his tiger / Tigger costume he likes to practices fierce growls wherever we go.


Her sweet little blond head! She walked almost a mile today and scattered Nilla Wafers far and wide.


Two in a hole? This is way more impressive than a hole in one :) Frisbee golf takes on all new meaning for these future caddies.


Wish I knew how to use my camera better - it was gorgeous!

Halloween already?

Slater has developed a love of shopping! Where did he get this from? It certainly wasn't his mama, but I loved it today.

When you are an August baby the first two Halloween's pass uneventfully. Mom and Dad get to pick your costumes and treat you like a little doll. But the third one comprehension is dawning and the fourth is all about Y.O.U.

A catalog called Wishcraft arrived in the mail about a week ago. Cute baby and kid clothes? Sign me up, I love to look at magazines and tell myself how much cuter my children are then the kids that they have - and yes they are cuter than those kids, but if I ever tried to dress them up and take photos they would turn rabid and crumble into sad little puddles. Oh well, guess I will have to figure out another get rich scheme.

Hmmmm, rambling but getting to the point soon.

This catalog was full of adorable Halloween outfits, beautiful Renaissance dresses, knights, fireman, piggies, lambs, bunnies, fairies, and Star Wars costumes. Well that was the end of my catalog viewing. Slater took one look at the Storm Troopers and commandeered the whole thing for himself. It was placed in the Star Wars box, hauled around the yard, examined every time that he stopped moving and then slept with that night and for several nights to come. And since I am a total spoiler I have ordered him a Storm Trooper Cody for Halloween (going back to work has to have a few perks).

So this seems like the conclusion to me and my little shopaholics story? But no, Jade still needed a costume. At 13.5 months she seemed totally uninterested (yeah I get to pick another costume!!). So I decided to take the newest shopper in the family and go to Old Navy. Slater thought it was fantastic, his favorite was the tiger, but he tried on at least four others and had to check out his reflection after each change. Sales associates stopped to admire and giggle, other small children were forced to join in the fun - "Hi there kid!" After a shark, bumblebee, dragon, and giraffe it was concluded that both he and Jade needed a tiger costume.

Why didn't I have a camera?

Again with the spoiler - I bought it big, he'll wear it for play, Jade can wear it when she is older - yadda, yadda, yadda. He now has two Halloween costumes and is currently the cutest, quietest sleeping tiger ever!

And to top it all off I was so distracted by all the fun we were having that I bought the wrong size for Jade and had to run back to the store - where I promptly traded it for the giraffe. Seriously this is probably the last time the costume will be my choice, so that makes it OK, right?

Pre-school = Slater is getting B.I.G.

Have three years really gone by so fast?

Slater started pre-school today. This month they will cover a Fireflies curriculum that includes: ABC, 123, the color red, intro to shapes, and animals of the forest. We get a monthly and weekly newsletter with suggestions on how to reinforce concepts at home and a list of books that will go well with the ideas. He is excited to go to the library and pick up a few new books.

He brought home his first coloring activity today, a house with all of the shapes included and he could point out all of them correctly (except the square and circle which he called the house and tree - which they were). Coloring has never been an activity that he liked to do much, but he does it with the other kids and is even getting to the point where he is coloring specific things instead of just scribbling on the whole page.

Looking forward to watching his progress.

Wipeout Fan ?;*&^%$

Have you ever seen the show Wipeout? If you have not Slater's quote won't be quite as funny, but here goes anyway:

"Please, one more Big Balls, Mommy!" - Slater said this when he wanted to watch just a little more Wipeout before bed. His longest sentence to date **sigh**

Here Birdie!

The weather was incredible so Slater and I went out on the Honda to look for Grouse. No luck but we did find a couple of cups of blueberries.


Mmmm, "b-ueberries Daddy!" How could I tell my hunting partner to stop!


Well we were so successful the first day, we decided Jade needed to go on her first bird/berry hunt. No berries, no birds, but lots of fun.


Jade was a champ, crawling over rocks, pushing though brush and taunting her brother from the lead! She did not want to go back to the car but kept heading down the trail again.


Back at the car taking a break and snacking. Think we will have to come back soon!