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.