Family Time

We try to do one or two big family activities a week.  Well, usually one big and one more smallish.  Anyways - I have mentioned it before, but we love Discovery Gateway on Friday and Saturday nights.  We just got our pass again - we hadn't been in about 8 months.  It was a lot of fun.

Madison rode in the stroller most the time.  She will be happier in there in a month or so when she can start having Kix or Cheerios with her.

We spent almost all our time upstairs and for the first time Brock played in the new station part.  They get to be on camera and report the weather and things like that.  He took it very seriously.

Megan spent most her time at the wind tunnel.  You put pieces of paper over a huge fan and it blows it up in the sky.  She thought it was great!

Oh, my Noah-boo.  He is so funny.  He sported the uni-bomber look the whole time.  He insisted on wearing his hat.  Noah is very precise in his play.  I love to watch him.

A good mom would probably not let her baby suck on toys that a million children have played with and would probably have put socks on her.  But we all do the best we can - and I am pretty easy going about germs.

Some family time at a building station:

A good mom would probably also not have her baby sitting on a sign that says do not sit on the table. :)

Madison Continued

I rushed through my earlier Madison post and didn't really get to post what I wanted to.  Plus I wanted to get a picture of her with her bucket of toys.

Then I thought - I have very few of just me and her - so I snapped one.

Her eating her cereal... and her toes.

I am in LOVE with Madison.  It is funny how the whole new baby love thing works.  With each one of my children I feel like I have never loved someone that much before.  I feel a very personal strong connection and am just... in love.  The other great thing about my "newborn stage" is that I always feel like I get plenty of time with them (mostly... well completely... thanks to Jason).  I always feel like I got to hold them and get to know them just as much as I did Brock.  Now a days Madison and I spend wonderful quality time together in the evening.  The other three go to bed at 8:00 sharp - and Madison and I lay in my bed and nurse, and play, and talk, and cuddle, and everything else until she falls asleep around 9:30 - actually that is when we both fall asleep.  She still nursed at night... and I could care less.  She is my longest baby to not sleep through the night and I have no intention of "forcing it" - like I did my others.  I am happy to get up with her - anytime between 3:30 and 5:00 and nurse for a half hour or so.  Strange - she must be the baby.

She is starting to crawl and get all over the place now.  It is all backwards and sideways - but she gets anywhere she wants to go - just backwards, it is very funny.  I am excited to have her crawl, I love having a crawler in the house.  Parts of me are sad that she is growing up - but I am at peace with it.  I think Madison will be most like me - both in looks and personality - which is weird because she is most like Brock and Brock is most like Jason.  I guess Jason and I were meant to be :)  I am excited to get to know her as she grows up.

Fun around the house

We have been spending more time at home than we ever have before.  Sometimes it's good and sometimes its bad.  I really like to go out and do activities - and there was a phase in my mothering when we went and did an activity 2 to 3 times a day - then it decreased to once a day - and now we are about to 2 a week.  Naturally my instinct and preference would be to do once a day (maybe with one or two days just at home) - but it seems that most days by the time every thing is done and we would be ready to go out and do something Madison is asleep, no one is dressed, or it's an hour until lunch and naps.  Now, I have recently been known to go on activity with everyone in their pajama's - but I try not to make it a habit.  And I REALLY don't like to wake up Madison from her naps - so we are just stuck at home.

Anyways... for the time being (Madison on two naps a day) - the majority of our activities have been at home.  It is nice.  Nice that the kids enjoy being home and we still find a lot of fun things to do. 

For starters, dress-up is an everyday occurrence.  Usually super hero's - even Megan.  The other day she dressed up like this princess/ballerina and she thought she looked so pretty.  With out me knowing she went and woke up her dad to show him how pretty she looked.  Then she asked me to take a picture. - Funny thing about Megan.  Every day after her hair gets done (well - on days her hair GETS done) - she immediately gets down and goes and finds Brock and says, "Brock look, so pretty" where upon Brock tells her how pretty she looks, then she goes and finds Noah and says, "Noah look, so pretty" where upon Noah says nothing, she says it again, and again, until I remind Noah to tell her she looks pretty.

 Then the boys wanted pictures.  It doesn't really matter who they dress up like - they all have ALL the super hero powers all the time.  In the above picture Noah is doing the Spiderman - web shooting hand action.

We have been doing A LOT of art.  I LOVE IT!  I love that I built my own little preschool.  I feel totally in my element.  When all three of them are doing something very kid-like Jason always says "we have a hoard of midgets" - we love it.  We love that we have these three kids who are relatively all in the same place developmentally - especially with Megan being pretty grown up.  And they are all about the same size right now as well.  It is so fun.  In a few weeks their ages will all coincide and they will be 2,3, and 4.  We now just often say, "and in a year their will be a fourth with them" - but for now she is still my baby.  

A few other art projects we have done are on our front door.  Noah is very particular about his art - and Brock just sticks it on to be done fast.  The best looking snow man and tractors are actually Noah's (bottom center snowman and bottom left tractor)

One fun quick activity is blowing bubbles off our balcony with the kids being at the bottom with fly swatters.  This was a pajama day - we have those about 3 times a week around here lately.  It is part of my "survival mode". I am slowly coming out of it though.  The last 10 days or so my days seem to go really smooth and I find I have an extra 5 minutes here and there.  I think in about a month or so I will be back on the top of my game.  Just in time to have an AWESOME 3 months before Brock starts Kindergarten!  Which is a whole other post in itself.

This is a DAILY set up.  Jason was coming down the stairs and grabbed a photo.  This is "the Bat Copter"  Every day - sometimes several times.  The kids set this up at the edge of our stairs - we are all super hero's and we fly the batcopter.  Who ever the driver is tells us the mission and the plan.  For example "Green Goblin and Dr. Doom are in Os Corp destroying the building and taking hostages.  We are going to fly on the roof, repel down the side of the building, smash through the windows and get them.  Spiderman, you throw webs at the Green Goblin.  Iron Man, you shoot your repulser rays.  Superman, throw bombs. etc.  Ok, its time to Hero Up."  Then they sing the theme song to either Spider Man or Super Hero Squad.  And we carry out the mission.

This day Madison got in on the action.  We called her super baby.  Another Pajama day - this was like 4 in the afternoon.

Bean Museum

When we lived in Provo the Bean Museum was almost a weekly trip in the winter time.  It was a staple in our life.  (The Bean Museum is a free museum on BYU campus that has a bunch of stuffed (dead) animals on display).

We hadn't been back since we had moved and we were in Provo - so I decided we would stop by.  Before we went I told the boys we were going and they had no idea what I was talking about.  I excused Noah because he was very young... but I thought for sure Brock would remember.  I tried everything to get him to remember and he had no idea what I was talking about.

I kind of had a mini break down - I felt like those were my best parenting years - so far.  Those were my hay days.  If that was as good as it is going to get and he doesn't even remember, what was it all for?  And now he is going to remember THIS??

Then we got to the parking lot and he looked at the new dorm buildings and he said, "the men finished the buildings, the crane is gone."  YES, YES, the buildings ARE finished and the crane IS gone, you DO remember!!!  You see they had been doing construction all around the Bean Museum and after the museum we would sit and watch the workers and have our lunch.  Once we got inside he remembered everything.  I was so happy.

 Happy enough to take a picture of just us.

We of course did the pre school scavenger hunt.