Who's Your Daddy?

Today my friend and I were discussing Matthew and his talking. I was mentioning that it was difficult to track his development as closely as Maddie and James' because he's the third baby and we're super busy.

When thinking of the words he does say mama and dada came to mind as well as his most used and well pronunciated word....Buddy.

Later I started thinking that I really don't hear mama that much. In fact, I hear dada a lot more. Tonight I may have figured out why.

Matthew, James and Owen were in the backyard doing manly things like moving rocks around when all of the sudden I heard Matt crying. As I made my way to the backyard I could see Owen holding him and comforting him through the window. I walked right up to Matthew to wipe some tears and tell him everything will be ok when he reached out to me and said, "Dada."

Evidently, he thinks Owen and I are both Dada. I better start calling myself mama in front of him more. It'll be strange if he tells his friends he has two dads----or maybe not in this day and age:)

Cute Video

Clever James

Tonight the boys were having some trouble going to sleep. At 8pm we decided they could stay up while Maddie, Owen and I watch the newest episode of Corner Gas.

For obvious reasons James wasn't into the episode, so he started riding his plasma car up and down the hallways. Due to our tile floors, the plasma car makes a lot of noise. Owen told him not to ride any more since we were watching tv.

James, being the clever boy he is, decided to walk the car around instead of riding it.

Sadly, the noise level wasn't any less:)

Community Service Day

A few weeks ago our church suggested that all of the homegroups do a community service project.

As some of you know, we host a homegroup at our home with 11 adults and 14 children between the ages of 12 and 9 months.

When we started thinking of a community service project it was very difficult to find one that would offer a chance for all of us to contribute. Finally our faithful leader, Kim, came up with a great idea. Beach clean up day. So, after one cancellation due to colds and flus, all 25 of us (oops--no 24--Matthew stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Krehbiel's) finally made it out to the beach today.

We all brought lunches, blankets, toys and chairs. The kids had a great time playing in the sand and putting their feet into the cold water. The parents had a great time of fellowship.

After an hour or so we all got our trash bags, headed out in different directions, as families, and picked up trash. It was a lot of fun finding the different items people leave on the beach. Our beaches are very clean so we mostly found little pieces of trash--straws, styrofoam, bottle caps and small pieces of paper or food wrapers. One interesting think Maddie did find was a lobster tail.

When we all met back up at our spot we wound down and packed up and headed home for the evening.

It was a good time and people were cute, saying thank you, for cleaning up the beach.

Manners

This is another story from last night's drive home from school.

James was in the back seat next to a window. For some reason he wanted the window rolled down.

He demanded that Dad roll the window down.

Owen didn't take well to that and said no.

Maddie, who was sitting next to James encouraged James to say "Please, please, please put it down."

James thought this sounded like a good idea, so here's what he said...

"Peas Daddy, Peas Daddy, May you peas make the window go down?"

This was super cute, so Owen gladly rolled the window down.

James thankfully replied, "Tank you Daddy."

Beautiful Penmanship

Tonight the whole family was in the car driving Maddie home from school. She stays late on Thursday's for a bible study. Anyhow, I was asking her about what they did in biblestudy today and she was showing me her newly decorated folder. Inside the front cover was her name, the school name and grade.

I looked at it and said, "I'm am so proud of you Maddie. It seems like you've really turned a corner with your penmanship because this is beautiful writing. Good job!"

Maddie was in the back seat laughing and I couldn't understand why. As I looked back at her she said, "Are you serious mom?"

I said, "Yes, it looks really nice. I'm so glad to see that you're putting more effort into neat penmanship."

Now she's really cracking up and she says, "MOM! I didn't write that you did!"

I guess I have exceptionally beautiful penmanship and an exceptionally bad memory.

Happy 1st Birthday Matthew

Matthew had a fun birthday celebration in February.

Mom and Maddie brought Grandma Taylor home with them on the day before Matt's birthday. The boys were happy to have grandma visiting.

We had about 6 gifts around the house for Matthew to open so we decided to open one gift every couple of hours throughout the day. He got his first gift shortly after waking up and the last one shortly before bedtime.

Some of the things he received were a book, some toys, a Build a Bear bunny, and a Tonka dump truck.

Uncle John and Auntie Erin came over for most of the day. We had a bbq dinner and cupcakes for dessert.

It was a good day:)

James in the Box

A lot of days the boys and I spend time playing in their room. We can usually find a few things to keep us busy. Sometimes I stack their mattresses on the floor so they can crawl around on them or slide down them. Other times they play with their toys while I spend time straightening up.

One day in January I was loading up the diapers in their changing table and ended up with an empty diaper box. I thought we could use this box to play a joke on Owen, who was busy working in his office.

I had James crawl in the box and closed the lid. Then I pushed the box to Owen's office door, knocked, and ran back into the boys room. When Owen opened the door he saw the box, bent over and opened it. James popped out and we all got a big laugh.

How amazing that he let me put him in the box and he stayed quiet until Owen opened it up!

When Life Give You Lemons...

One of the promises I made to myself when I started this blog was not to blog anything negative.

Since I haven't written since January 17th you can probably figure out my state of mind for the last several weeks.

What is the culprit of this negative attitude?????

The cold and flu season!

We've had three 1-2 week bouts with these nasty viruses since December 31st. Fevers, vomitting, sore throats, ear infections, sinus infections, coughs, asthma attacks, 3 different antibiotics and some really scary diapers!

Now, although I was too tired and grumpy to blog, it doesn't mean that we didn't have some fun times throughout this cold and flu season. After all, I am a believer that when life give you lemons, it's best to make lemonade.

In the next weeks I'll try to remember back and write about some of the fun things that have happened.

Stay tuned....