2.5

Today Blaise is 2 and a half. Hard to believe he's that big already... well, that old. He is still a little guy. Wearing the same clothes he was wearing last winter, which includes a few 18M items, but mostly 2T. It wouldn't surprise me if he's sharing a wardrobe with his little brother within 18 months. He's weighing in around 27 lbs now, maybe. He's just under 35" tall, which means he should be tall enough with his shoes on in January to ride Goofy's Barnstormer (kiddie roller coaster) when we go back to Disney World... if he wants to. He loves slides and other playground/fair attractions, but is still afraid of carousels and still freaks out if you push the swing too high/fast. Not sure what either of those issues are all about since he's not afraid of much else. His adventure's now include jumping into the pool "by myself" at 4 feet and falling from a ladder at a playground. I'm convinced he was caught by the hands of God in the playground situation. But those are just two of many times when he likes to tease by climbing to relatively high places and being independent... I still believe he will be our first trip to the ER.

In other news, he is still ahead of the curve with his language and is known for speaking "in paragraphs." It's so funny to see just how different he is from his big brother. He has now mastered the proper responses to the top 2 questions people ask preschoolers- "What's your name?" and "How old are you?" Even responding the former with just his first name or his full name, depending on his mood, or if the asker probes for more information. He's very interested in drawing, coloring, and eating markers (oh, I mean, he did that once, pretending it was chapstick.) Amazing the attention span he has for sitting and drawing. And he actually spelled his name for me the other day. We'll have to work on his clarity with that so that he can correct people when they try to spell it wrong (and they can understand him.) He's also finally taken to sitting and being read to. He will pick out books with Scott everyday and sit and listen to a few stories before "rest" time. He's even picked out a few from the library... although, I'm not the hugest fan of his most recent selection "Chicken Cheeks" which is basically using a different word to name the rear end of huge variety of animals, before they all fall down and the last page says "the ends." Funny, yes, but not my favorite selection for reading aloud to preschoolers. The other thing he does with books now is take a few to his bed with him for "rest" time. Then he sits and reads them to his kitty cat and Tiger... and sometimes he falls asleep with the book over his face :)

As potty training goes, this kiddo is perfectly capable of being completely independent... but not trustworthy enough and too moody. Meaning, he dresses himself, when he feels like it, and can actually complete the task much quicker than his big brother, because he's more patient with himself. And also that he knows how to hold it and has demonstrated quite clearly that he does in fact know when he has to go. He's also made it very clear that he can get on and off by himself, since he frequently decides he needs to close the door (and lock it), or that he needs to stop and clean the bowl midway. Some days he's perfect and tells us everytime, but some days he just doesn't feel like it. Guess it's all part of being 2 and I'm not worried about it at all yet.

Finally, he's now officially a middle child (since July), and living up to the role quite well. Teasing everyone and being sneaky about it so Scott usually gets in more trouble than him. I try to watch that, because I remember life with my brother, but I know sometimes he gets away with things. And he's still got that smile :)

Homecoming/Halloween

Clemson homecoming this year happened to fall on Halloween. We like to go to Clemson for the game and the RUF reunion... and this year was no different. Since I had planned on making the boys all new costumes this year, I was pleased to hear that they would be doing Trick or Treating at the Assisted Living Facility nearby. I pulled together a Goofy for Scott from my brother's OLD Goofy hat that he had given to the boys back in August. I last minute decided to make a Pluto from scratch last Saturday for Blaise... since I couldn't find the right color sweatsuit. And I also pulled together the Mickey outfit for Michael and then made mouse-ears by guessing the pattern that I used for Pluto down to size... came out great for all the guessing :) They seemed to be mostly comfortable in their costumes. Scott loved his, Blaise tolerated it when promised candy, and Michael was content- which is all you can ask of a 3 month old.

Friday we did the Trick or Treating with a friend for the "seniors." Everyone had fun.

Saturday we headed to Clemson for Homecoming... it was wet. Very wet. Michael didn't enjoy the game, because he wanted to see and was stuck in the sling AND inside my rain coat. We only stayed for the first half, because of the wetness and the coldness too. Scott and Blaise had a great time and really enjoyed the game. Blaise would have liked to be allowed to stand up and pace, but we were in the top deck with a couple of empty rows ahead of us- he sat. Clemson stomped Coastal, as expected, despite playing pretty sloppy football. Cullen and I are still trying to watch the rest of the game on ESPN360 - my new favorite thing :)

After the game we went to CPC for the RUF reunion... it was pretty small this year, but it was still nice to see some people and just to be there. The big boys had a blast playing with the campus minister's boys, so that was fun for them too. Remarkably, they both managed to run around the fellowship hall the whole time we were there... this is after walking all the way across campus to the stadium and back again! (Blaise was carried for a good bit, but still.)

Finally we went to visit some of my local friends in Clemson and just for fun dressed up the boys again to Trick or Treat on their street, but we only went to 3 houses, since it was still wet, and we aren't really about Trick or Treating... we're about bringing joy to other people with the boys cuteness (hope that doesn't sound wrong.) At home our philosophy for Halloween is that it's a golden opportunity to interact with and build relationships with our neighbors. The big question right now, is how to do that without encouraging the boys to be greedy :) All in all though, Saturday was a good day... and Speaks left us with a thought provoking question to entertain on the ride home as he always does. What is the most useful thing you learned through the college experience? (Or something like that.)

Yesterday, just to stretch the whole costume thing out and make it worth the effort of putting them together, we visited my parents in costume. They are house hunting and Cullen actually got to spend the early afternoon helping them out looking some. Hopefully, they'll find something they like before too long.

Boys in Action...

Here are the promised videos from October...

Scott was pretending to play guitar on the pillow and singing- which he refused to do at all prior to October, so this was an exciting moment for us. I think he was playing guitar because he missed playing Rock Band with Uncle Mike and who knows where the singing came from. It was also cute when Blaise told me, if you can catch it, that "Baby is holding my hand!"

Blaise and his friend Silas playing on the ramp to our shed... a favorite activity whenever the boys have friends over to play. Yes, occasionally there are wipe-outs, but this was a good day :) Oh, and I love listening to Blaise count.

Short, but very funny, if you see it. He was getting a little bit stuck in the Bumbo seat (it happens when you are really much too big for it.) I asked him if he wanted help to get out and he insisted he could help himself. If you watch closely, you will see his left hand pulling him out by his right hand. This really cracked me up in person... the video's just not quite as clear what he was doing.

Here's Michael, hanging out in the Bumbo and talking away. It' surprising to me how much he is playing with his toys already... this one was taken at least a week ago, and the one below was taken this morning.

This is a fun one... Uncle Mike brought his friend Kelli and her little boy over for dinner a couple of days before Halloween. The boys all took a turn showing off their costumes and Joseph didn't want to take his back off. Then the boys all had fun pulling Mike off the couch. They found it worked best if all 3 of them worked together :)

Where, Oh, Where Did October Go?

Wow, it doesn't seem like it's been a whole month... but then a lot has happened.

Quick picture summary of our trip to NY early in the month. We had a great trip. First stop after the overnight in Maryland was to see Cullen's cousin Amy and her little boy Sam. Sam will be 2 in January and we had not yet met him... we usually see them at Thanksgiving, but last year wasn't the typical Thanksgiving. Anyway, the boys all had fun together and it will be neat to see if they remember each other in a few weeks when we have a more typical Thanksgiving in Ocean City together. (Yes, this was the best picture... it's hard to take pictures of boys when they are having fun together.)

Then I cried a little, when we stopped to say Hi to Grandpa... it was hard to be at Grandma's house without her. I cried watching Scott and Blaise play on the Hoppity Hop thinking how much Grandma would have enjoyed watching them bounce all over her house. We introduced Michael to his Great Grandpa, who could not have been more thrilled to meet him. The pictures remind me of when Great Grandpa first held Scott. I cried again as we were driving from Great Grandpa's house to Great Grandma Jill's house and were telling Scott that we were going to see his Great Grandma Jill... he was so confused. He kept telling us he still needed to see his Great Grandma... his other Great Grandma. Then he clarified... he saw Great Grandpa and now he needed to see Great Grandma. He remembered and it made me smile inside, while I tried to re-explain to him that she's in heaven with Jesus now.

We spent a day with Grandma Jill and "Granny" Annie (who by the way, Blaise is still talking about!) It's always calm and relaxing to spend a day with them :) They made Michael a quilt and it's amazing, as are all their quilts.

Then we headed upstate to see Aunt Jesse and Darrell... not sure what to call him right this moment, so we settled on "Almost Uncle" Darrell. We are getting very excited about the wedding coming up in December and were thrilled to be able to "deliver" Jessica's wedding dress and see the basket that Scott and Darrell's neice will get to carry together... kind of a different way to do Ring Bearer and Flower Girl. Ok, so that was mostly just me being thrilled about that stuff... the boys were thrilled to play football with Almost Uncle Darrell.

We also stopped over at my cousin Emily's house to see her and her family and my Uncle Guy and Aunt Fran. Old Uncle Guy was enthralled with little Michael. I'm always sad that we don't get to see more of Uncle Guy living down here... maybe someday they'll come visit us! It was another good visit. Then we headed back down to New Paltz to start the homeward trek. We spent a morning with my Aunt Cynthia, and cousins Eljay and Allee, picking apples, pumpkins, and hanging out at Grandpa's house. The kids had fun with El and Al, as they always do... another one of those, it would be nice to be closer. (At the same time... it was COLD.) We went back to Grandma Jill's for the night and got to visit with Uncle Doc and Caroline too. I'm not sure why it is SO fascinating to my boys to watch other people play video games, but it is. I guess I should add this particular game is just Caro training her various puppies, feeding, and grooming them. Totally don't get the fascination... she HAS plenty of real pets.

Here's our little Tiger... couldn't be cuter... smiling all the time and giggling for me too, ever since we got home from NY. The trip totally threw off his night sleeping... we'll get there eventually, and I'm doing fine with it. He's growing up too fast! How is it that he's 3 months old already?

The other huge thing that has absorbed our month of October is a drawn out goodbye to our dearest friends. The ones we get together with monthly to play Settlers', the ones we're all friends with... whose little boy is going to room with Scott and Blaise when they're all at Clemson together in 2025 and whose little girl has so much personality! Here's Blaise and his buddy Silas playing in our backyard last week.

And this is Riley- she can keep up with these boys, no problem!

Then on Monday we took them to Riverbanks Zoo. What a fun time. Here are our boys on the dinosaur statue... Silas had asked if they would get to see Triceratops at the Zoo and Rachel had explained to him that he wouldn't. As we were getting in the car to go Silas looked at me and said, "Dinosaurs are dead," and shrugged his shoulders, "something happened to them." Too cute... needless to say, we had to take a picture on the dinosaur :)

I'm sure lots of other things have happened this month... can't think of them off the top my head at the moment though. I do have a few videos and I'll post them later... then tomorrow we are off to Clemson for Homecoming and we have plans to Trick or Treat there as Goofy, Pluto, and Mickey Mouse. Yes, I'll post pictures, when we get home.

Quote of the Week

Last night we (Scott, Blaise and I) were discussing princess's and the fact that only girls are princess's. I pointed out that boys were prince's. After telling Scott and Blaise were my 2 princes' Scott's response:

No, just Blaise is a prince. I'm the King.

I found that statement very firstborn :)

Over The River and Through The Woods

To Grandma's house we go...

Well, we already went and now we're back - but Scott is staying by himself for a week. Scott was so excited to go. We left early Saturday morning and when we put him to bed on Friday night he explained quite enthusiastically that we would wake him up "in the middle of the night" (translation - 6am), that we could ride in the car and watch movies, and then he would stay at Grandma's house by himself. Who ever heard of a 3 year old getting so excited about a 7 hour drive. That was a lot of car riding for one weekend though. Fortunately everyone did well. Michael, as expected, slept quietly for the first stretch. After stopping to eat and stretch our legs though, he was not at all interested in getting immediately back into his carseat. Therefore, we had a louder 2nd half of the trip, since he cried on and off (thankfully, he did not cry consistently.) We had a nice visit. Enjoyed the cool weather. Introduced Michael to Nana and Granddaddy Keen. Then we turned around and came home.

Here we are, enjoying the week with Blaise and Michael, and they are enjoying having us more to themselves... but we're all missing Scott. Blaise points out, probably twice every hour that Scott's not here, he's at Grandma's and the rest of us should go back to Grandma's. We're pretty sure though that Scott is having a blast... I've heard he's already watched plenty of movies and examined the contents of his nose in his grandma's magnifying mirror for make-up. Boys :)

In other news... Michael had his 2 month check-up this morning. He is doing well. As of today, he wieghs 12 lbs 5 oz and is in the 65% for weight, but he's already 24 and a half inches, which is the 95% for height. He's also in the 60% for head circumference... that's different, the rest of us have tiny heads :) Here's the most recent Sunday picture, actually taken yesterday (on a Monday), because we were out of town.

He's gotten very interested in his hands and feet and is focused on figuring them out and controlling the movement. It's fun to watch him concentrate!

This is late, but it was really cool... a picture of the boys watching the Clemson vs GA Tech game on the computer the day after it was played- Scott watched the entire 2nd half (there wasn't time to watch the whole game and we played better in the 2nd half.)

And here's one last video of Scott... he was pretending the stick was an umbrella, but wouldn't say so for the video, oh well.

Singing!!!!!

Scott's singing in the other living room... how cool is that?! This is the child that usually tells other people to stop singing. He just randomly started singing Deep and Wide and Blaise joined in.

Oh, and earlier today they found the new baby card that Grandma Jill had sent. She always sends musical cards and this one played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Blaise was playing with the card and came into the kitchen singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I was so impressed. We rarely sing that song and somehow he knew it- from the music?! Why wasn't he singing the ABC song- we actually sing that ocassionally :)

They make me smile... even the one who doesn't sing yet- he just smiles and it's contagious.

Sleeeeep

Ah, 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep... at least for my 7 week old. Michael slept from 7-5. Too bad I was too busy watching that game last night to go to bed before 11:30 myself. Here's hoping we keep seeing more and more of these long nights for Michael. It really doesn't surprise me that he sleeps so well at night... during the day the boy is constant motion and very alert. He takes a few short naps and maybe 1 longish nap (maybe 2 hours, somedays.) He's also cooing a ton already, it's how he manages to completely capture my attention for long periods of time during the day when I have other things on my mind that need to be done. Cuteness.

Where The Wild Things Are

We enjoyed a great visit with my sister, Jessica, over the Holiday weekend. It might be obvious from the picture... but Scott absolutely loves his Aunt Jesse. He was very excited that she was coming for a visit and even got very upset the few hours she wasn't with us, while she was here. For example, he knew she was coming on Thursday night after he was in bed, so Friday he woke up looking for her. Literally, he got dressed and said, "Where's Aunt Jesse." Then we saw a plane go by our house and he thought she must be on that plane. I said she wasn't and he ran down the hall crying before I could explain that her plane had already landed and she was with Uncle Mike. Funny boy.

While Jessica was here we went to Riverbanks Zoo for a day trip. One of my favorite day trips, because it's so easy and everyone has fun. The first picture is of the boys with their Nana and Papa (my parents) checking out the baboons as soon as we got there. Hey, they were on the way to the tigers :) Notice the Clemson hats... I always feel weird even just being in Columbia, so we wear our orange.

After seeing the tigers, Scott was set on giraffes, for some reason (could be he remembers them from the pictures from the last time we went). Of course, Scott and Blaise don't say giraffe, they say "raffes." One of the funny mis-pronounciations they share. Anyway, we headed toward the raffes and of course, grandparents love to spoil, so they got to feed the raffes. Fun times... I'm sure we'll be expected to buy lettuce for the giraffes every time we go. Hopefully, we'll be back there often. We had a big enough group that we went ahead and got a membership.

Let us not forget, the other major event of the weekend was Clemson's first home game. What a way to start a season. We couldn't watch the game... well actually, we could have, but we didn't know it, so we just listened. Remarkable the attention span of a 3 yr old for football on the radio. Scott at least listened quite intently and asked a million questions. I actually got out the little people to stage the game for him. I'm very excited to take him to a game live and we are even planning on going to some local pee-wee games. That's partly inspired by my dad who officiates, mostly high school, but some pee-wee too. Anyway, here's the picture of our 3 little Tigers from last weekend. They look about the same today, except one has grown plenty since Saturday. We'll be watching the game tonight on the computer. Too bad for Scott, it doesn't start til bedtime... I told him he could watch it on the computer tomorrow, we'll see if he remembers and how much of it I get to watch twice. GA Tech is always a close game, so hopefully it will be a good one and hopefully it will be a W.

Finally... here's the little man up close. Finally got a relatively good picture of his smile. It's still best in person of course. Actually, giving credit where credit is due, Scott took this picture.

I absolutely love this picture that Jessica took. Michael found his thumb while hanging out at my parents one evening. Evening isn't his favorite time of day, so it was very nice for everyone. Now if he could just learn to find his thumb consistently and when he needs it.

Blaise is in fact cutting his bottom 2-yr old molars. We'd been wondering, since he's been stuffing things into the back of his mouth lately. It was when he stuffed his finger back there at bedtime that I caught a glimpse of them. The top molars are still not in sight at all, so he's still not finished with the whole teething thing.

Scott's latest phrase is, "I'll eat you up." Can you guess where he picked that one up? I'm just wondering if he's wanting us to send him to bed without eating anything?

Go Tigers!

-Isms

Scott and Blaise both still say the funniest things. Here are a few quick phrases from the past few days...

Blaise in response to whatever it is you ask him to do mostly, well, he still says no a lot too, but it's cute when he says- "OK." (And you have to read it in his man-voice.)

Blaise when you answer a question or tell him something that he understands- "Oh" (Again, it has to be read in his man-voice.)

Blaise when he's getting into something... for example, yesterday he had pushed a chair from the table to the counter where he had picked up a bag of cookies and was about to open the bag and eat one (nevermind that the bag was the cookies we had set aside for Scott and Blaise, so we wouldn't, um, accidentally? eat them all.) I saw him and asked what he was doing and he replied, complete with his notorious grin- "I'm just getting a cookie from the bag. That is all." Major emphasis on the last 3 words there. He has used this phrase probably 20 times in the past 3 days, to downplay whatever it is he is getting into.

Scott for the past few months has been telling me, "Nothing," when I ask what he's doing and it's something he shouldn't be doing. Today it got better... as he and Blaise were both going through the CD's, which naturally they aren't allowed to play with, while I was nursing Michael, I asekd what they were doing... his response, "We're not doing anything anymore." I asked what he had been doing, "Nothing."

"That is all."