Signs of Spring

Here's hoping we don't get snow tomorrow. :)

Talk to the Hand

So this morning Maxwell got dressed by himself again. He chose one blue sock, one red sock, red shoes, his red pajama pants, a checkered blue button up shirt, his Elmo sweatshirt, and a red and white sock for his hand.

All morning long, he called the sock "Debbie." "Debbie" locked the gate this morning, trapping me downstairs. Maxwell thought that was pretty funny. "Debbie" came with us to the park and to the Mother's group at the church.

When we got home, I asked him if I could take a picture of him with his friend, "Debbie," for my blog. He looked at me like I was out of my mind, and said, "It's a SOCK."

Aunt Mindy

Last week my sister came to visit. The boys love playing with "Aunt Mindy," and they really enjoy the little treats she always brings. They think every good thing they own was given to them by Mindy.

One day while she was here, Bentley asked her (totally out of the blue), "Mindy, who are you going to marry?" Mindy said, "I don't know. Who do you think I should marry?" Bentley didn't need any time to think about the question, he was ready with an answer, "Jesus." "Oh!" Mindy said, then suggested, "what about Helaman from the Book of Mormon?" Bentley patiently considered his aunt, and then carefully broke the news to her, "I think he's dead."

Watch him every second!

Last night Maxwell didn't eat his dinner. Both John and I warned him that unless he ate it, he would get no dessert. Later that evening, John and I were meeting with someone in the living room when we heard chairs sliding around in the kitchen. I waited a minute, and then went to check it out. I asked Maxwell what he'd been doing.

"I was eating popcorn," he told me. I said, "but you weren't supposed to have dessert because you didn't eat your dinner, remember?" He looked down at his feet, stuck out his lower lip, looked embarassed, and said, "oh." I thought he'd really forgotten and felt a little sad for him.

This morning I got a phone call from my brother, Spencer, who'd been downstairs with Max while I was upstairs. He said that Max had tricked him last night. Spencer had been eating caramel corn and Maxwell asked if he could have some. Spencer said, "sure," and handed him a handful. When Max had eaten all of it, he looked at Spence and laughed, "ha, ha! I wasn't supposed to have any popcorn because I didn't eat my dinner! ha, ha!" Then Max ran upstairs. Spencer assumed he was going to tell John and me what he'd done, but that's when he snuck MORE popcorn! And I felt bad for him!

random shots from our morning

Maxwell, Jonah, and I were the "helpers" at Joy School today. (I'm not really a lot of help because I end up chasing my two little guys, or my little guys get the Joy Schoolers wound up.) So we all had to get ready for the day before taking Bentley. Here's Jonah trapped in his high chair just after finishing breakfast. He likes to climb out onto the tray, and is very good at escaping, even when strapped in.

Here's Maxwell's latest fashion statement. His shirt is on inside out and backwards, the shorts (we got tons of snow last night) are on backwards, but the shoes match. Bentley should be getting his shoes on, but he's hanging out over the heater vent instead.

Look Mom, no hands!

Jonah likes to keep things interesting at meal times.

How our garden grows

A week ago we planted seeds,


and now the plants are growing!

Seeing Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

more St. Pat's pics

Picnic Time!

Today the boys had their first picnic of the year. It wasn't really warm enough for a picnic (we still have snow in the front yard and in the corners of the backyard), but the sun was shining, so they wanted to be outside.

Bentley refused a coat, but ate as fast as he could and then came inside.

Maxwell didn't get a lot of eating done. He was too worried about bugs to sit down and eat, so he ended up finishing his lunch inside.

Jonah's mean mom kept him inside with her. :)

Accident Max

Maxwell had been busy adding character to his handsome face. Last night he fell down and hit his head on the ground - splitting it open by his right eyebrow. We took him to our pediatrican's after hours clinic and the doctor super glued his cut. It was a pretty clean cut so it should heal well, and he says it doesn't hurt. Poor guy, in October his forehead got split open and he had to have that glued. (You can kind of see the scar in the top picture.) The actual gluing was pretty traumatic for him, but afterwards he got a glow in the dark Oscar the Grouch sticker (the green man- Max said), and a root beer sucker, so he was happy again.
He's a tough, brave little boy.

Fashion to the Max

Today I helped Maxwell get dressed. I picked out two matching white shoes and put them on him. He didn't say anything, but went back into his room and changed. Lately he prefers to wear mismatched shoes. They aren't even the same size. Somedays it's a red shoe and a sandal. Today he chose one brown and one white because he "wants to be like mom." (I'm wearing two red shoes so I'm not sure what he meant.) :) No matter what he wears, he's pretty cute.
Even if he's wearing pizza sauce. :)

BYU's New Recruit

Bentley and Maxwell toured BYU's football locker room with their Uncle Spencer on Saturday. Spence took this picture on his camera phone.

Bentley's an awesome little boy. He loves his brothers and takes good care of them. When he gets candy or treats away from home, he's always careful to bring some home to share with Max. Bentley is also super smart. He likes to read and to add. He has a great memory, he loves to learn new things, to explore outside, and to play computer games. He also likes gymnastics (mostly the parts when he gets to smash into the big cheese mats), Joy School, and primary. I don't think he'll ever play football for BYU, but they'd be lucky to have him. I'm so glad he's our little boy.

Let him eat cake

Our sweet Jonah is growing up!
Today is Jonah's 1st birthday!

Here he is enjoying a piece of cake.

To see more pictures of his birthday click here.

"Par for the Course"

This morning I spent 20 minutes or so getting the boys dressed, and then bundled up with boots, coats, and gloves. I sent them outside to play, and quickly got Jonah and myself ready to go out. We made it outside, but after a couple of minutes, Bentley's hands were frozen and both "big" boys were ready to come back inside.
So the 20 minutes prep time yielded a good 5 minutes of fun for them out in the snow.

One of my Grandma Warren's favorite phrases was, "It's par for the course." As I brought the boys inside I thought that if she were here, she would likely remind me that with kids this is "par for the course."

My Full-time Job

This adorable little guy is a full-time job. (notice the four teeth!) :) One night, a few weeks ago, my younger brother watched all three boys for an hour and a half. When I talked to him about it later, he said that Jonah kept him busy the entire time - mostly triying to eat things he shouldn't. Since then, Jonah has added a few things to his repertoire. Here are just a few:

-He likes to find garbage cans, empty them, and stick something in his mouth.

-He goes up stairs quickly, but can't safely come back down them.

-He is learning to climb. His favorite place to climb is the stool in the bathroom (it's there so the other boys can reach the sink to wash their hands). If the door gets left open, he finds his way in there and stands at the sink singing or hitting the brushes against each other.

-At meal times, he refuses to sit down in his high chair. We've tried the seatbelt, and scooting the tray all the way in, but he's able to wiggle out no matter what!

-He prefers to go through things instead of around them (like under a kitchen chair) so he frequently gets stuck and needs rescuing.

-He also likes to open dresser drawers and to throw all of the clothes on the floor. (Sometimes he puts a few of them back in when he's finished.)

I could seriously follow him around all day and be kept busy! And he doesn't even walk yet!Luckily, he takes a pretty good nap at least once a day. He needs it, with all the "work" he does! Now if only I could get a nap . . .

Weather

Today it was my turn to teach our ward preschool co-op (different from our Joy School group) and I chose a weather theme. The kids made wind serpents, weather wheels, (here's a picture of Bentley's) and finger painted with "clouds." (shaving cream, again)

The weather here was crazy during preschool. The kids got to move their wheel from sun to snow to clouds to sun again. What a great object lesson!

Green Eggs and Ham

The current Joy School theme is "The Joy of Trust and the Confidence to Try." I taught today, and we focused on the "try" part of the theme. The kids tried tumbling, bean bag games, making kites, singing new songs, and eating green eggs and ham.

Last week, I told Bentley that he'd get to eat green eggs at Joy School. "Gross!" he said. So today, I let the kids watch me make the eggs and add the food coloring. They thought it was cool to see the yellow eggs turn green when I added blue food coloring. They all ate their green eggs and not one of them said "yuck," or "gross." Hooray for trying new things!

Observing Jonah

Today the boys and I went to BYU so that Jonah could participate in a study for the Child Development people. They hope to learn at what age children start to put animal sounds and pictures together. While his brothers played with some blocks in another room, Jonah and I went into "the lab." A computer was set up in one corner; in the middle of the room was a desk with two televisions on it; behind the desk and was a black sheet. I sat in the chair with Jonah, a girl ran the computer, and a guy stood behind the sheet so he could watch Jonah's eyes without being seen. Jonah was pretty interested in the girl and her computer behind us, so they turned the lights off. Then the study began. Two pictures of dogs, one snarling, one content came onto the tv's while we heard the sound of a dog growling. After a minute or so, the pictures disappeared. We were shown two more dogs but this time the dog sound was "happy" barking. Jonah tried to crawl onto the desk to play with the happy dog picture. After a while he got really tired of this "game," so we let him crawl around for a minute. The second part of the study included pictures of a cow, a horse, and a chicken along with the sounds they make. (They wanted to see if he could look at the cow during the cow sound, etc.) Mostly he was mad that I wouldn't let him go.

While Jonah was being observed, Bentley and Maxwell were in the other room fighting over the one block with an "E" on it. Bentley had it and had spelled "BENTL." Maxwell had spelled "MAXW" with his blocks. Both boys needed one more "E" to finish their names. I thought it was pretty funny. At least they were doing something good. They could have been demolishing each other or the office they were in.

Rub-a-dub-dub . . .

At the Carwash

A couple of weeks ago, Max, Jonah, and I took the minivan to the automated carwash. I had worried that our timid Maxwell would be afraid of it, but he was ok. Today the boys and I took advantage of the sunny weather and went back to the carwash. I had hoped to take pictures of all three of the boys, but the battery on my camera died after taking one picture. So here's Max. It was Bentley's first time at the carwash (he was at Joy School last time) and he laughed a little hysterically through it. Jonah started to cry once, but recovered quickly. All in all, my boys were pretty brave.

Lest you think that little guys are the only ones made nervous by the carwash, I'll share what happened while we were waiting for our turn. We were third in line when the system shut down. The guys working there ran back to see what was happening. A large truck bobbed up and down, the machine tried to start, failed, more guys ran back, and eventually the carwash started up again. A manager came to each car in line to explain - "An elderly gentlemen got scared and hit his brake, causing several cars to run into each other." Oops. (It didn't sound like any damage was done to the other cars.)

The manager did not mention the "five minutes or less or your wash is free" when he came by. I wonder if anyone cashed in on it . . . ?