discipline

Oh, if only disciplining 4-year-olds was as cute as doing it when they're one-and-a-half...  Levi had a short stint of being a sweetie-pie and is now back to testing the boundaries.  His big thing lately is throwing everything.  Last night he was in his high chair finishing up supper while Mike and I were starting to clean up.  He threw some food, we said "no", he did it again, so I went over and he got a swat on the arm.  The bottom lip comes out, starts quivering, and his eyes fill up with tears.  Mike tells him to say "sorry" to me, and he very tearfully says, "Sorry."  Then, after I say, "I love you.", I get a sad, "I wuv you."  Gah!  It's too much!  I can't handle the cuteness.

Levi and I have quite the bedtime routine.  I guess this is one of those things that's different with a singleton than with twins (or at least different than when a room is being shared).  I've generally avoided getting "stuck" in a routine like this with any of the boys, partly because I don't want the child to 'need' a specific routine in order to fall asleep, and honestly, partly because once it's time for the kids to go to bed, I just want them in bed, I don't want to prolong things.  BUT, I am really enjoying Levi and I's special time at night.  Mike gets him changed and ready for bed (during which he is generally quite upset thinking that Daddy is going to bring him upstairs and not Mommy).  I take him up to his room and we sit in the recliner and rock for a while.  (I set him in his crib first so I can get his sleep sack on and turn on the heater and humidifier, and he just keeps saying, "Rock?  Rock?" until I get him back out.)  I don't rock him to sleep, we just have some nice quiet time together.  :)  This is the only time of the day that he'll just sit on my lap!  The rest of the day he'll sit on my lap for about two seconds and then squirm down, but at bedtime he just sits there nice and it's pretty neat.  I'll ask him to sing to me and he'll sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", and I'll sing to him some, too.  When I do put him in his bed he lays down and says, "Boo!", meaning he wants me to get down and "hide" next to the crib.  I do that and then we give kisses between the crib rails.  :)  (I can't wait for him to read this when he's about sixteen!)

Levi has JUST started actually sitting for a book.  Up until this point whenever you tried to read a book he would insist on shutting it and getting down right away.  But, last night he sat through a whole book (You know, like maybe a whole two minutes.), and today he sat while we looked through a touch and feel book.  Logan definitely seems to be more of a book lover than Caleb.  They'll both look at books and sit for stories, but Caleb just doesn't have as much patience for it.

We have had crazy snow and cold here lately!  It's been too cold to play outside.  Yesterday Bible Study was cancelled and for some reason the gym didn't have childcare, so I decided we'd make a trip to Meijer - get groceries, see the fish, and get a free cookie all in one stop?  Yes, please!  Although, every time I take all three to the store with me I'm reminded why I don't do it very often.  We still have a long ways to go on learning self-control....  So, it actually worked out okay that I couldn't get to the gym yesterday because I got quite the work-out just going through the store with the kids.  By the end I was hot, tired, and didn't mind at all going back out into the frigid temps.  Sun is out today and it's a tad warmer, so maybe we'll go out for a bit this afternoon.

i'm not creative enough to come up with a good title every time

Random things I want to record:

Last week we were finally able to successfully play the Quiet Game with Caleb and Logan!!  Things were a little crazy on the way to church last Wednesday, so Mike promised a piece of gum to whoever could stay quiet the longest.  I think we started at about Chicago Dr and 48th Ave, and they both made it all the way to church!  We could hardly believe it while it was happening.  :)

Levi bit Caleb pretty hard last week.  :(  Of course this happens when things are a bit chaotic.  We were all kind of on the stairs heading into quiet time after lunch (just that in itself can be chaotic...), the phone rings, I untangle myself from boys to go answer the phone, while I'm on the phone I hear lots of commotion and screaming.  Just a normal day if you have small children!

On Friday the boys and I went to a play date at my cousin's house with her three little girls.  Her oldest is almost a year younger than Caleb and Logan, and her twins will be 1 this spring.  Caleb sat really nice with one of the babies for awhile, it was pretty cute!

Friday night Mike and I had a date night!  The gym I go to has an evening once a month where you can drop off the kids and go out for a couple hours within 5 miles of the gym.  We had dinner at Qdoba, ran to a couple stores, and finished with dessert at Culver's - yum!

So, yeah, don't know if I mentioned on here that I joined a gym.  Started at the beginning of December.  This is the first I've really felt like I could get out and do something like that with the kids.  It's been so good to have something else to do this winter and get out of the house!  The boys enjoy the childcare, and Caleb and Logan have a friend that they get to see almost every time we're there.

Levi wants things a certain way, and doesn't mind saying so.  :)  Last Wednesday evening while we were sitting in the van waiting for Caleb and Logan to be done at Gopher's, I undid my seat belt and raised the arm rest in order to reach back and get something for him.  A couple minutes later he was insisting that I put the arm rest back down (Pointing and saying, "Down.  Down."), and put my seat belt back on ("Buckle.  Buckle.").  He also requested I turn on some music.  ("Song?  Song?")  :)  Levi loves songs right now, and he even sang to me at bedtime last night!  Sweetest.  Thing.  Ever.  Hearing my 20-month-old sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to me is enough to make me melt.  I have GOT to record it.

Last night I was able to meet up with a college friend for dinner.  She and her family live in K-zoo, but she teaches one night a week in GR, so we met up beforehand.  It was great to catch up!  After dinner I ran a bunch of errands ALL BY MYSELF - ahhhhhhhh....  :)

table

So many cute and funny things the kids say!  I wish I could remember them all.  I try to write some down, but it's hard to keep up!

Caleb and Logan ask LOTS of random questions.  The other day in the car they asked what a troll is.  I said it's basically a pretend, short, mean guy.  One of them said something like, "But Grammy's short, how come she's not a troll?"  I had a good laugh from that one!

I get questions like, "How to rocks fly in outer space?" to "Do glowworms eat worms?"  to "Will I have a lion's tail in Heaven?"  Where do they come up with this stuff??  These boys are CURIOUS and OBSERVANT, and I love it!  I just wish I could handle all the questions.  :)  Today at lunch the subject of black holes came up, and I looked it up on Wikipedia, but I couldn't really simplify it enough to explain to them.  (You know, being the high level scientist that I am, it's hard to come down to the level of a 4-yr-old....  Ha!)

Last week Caleb randomly counted to either 39 or 49 without any help!  Last I remember he could only get up to 17 or something, and now all of the sudden he's kinda figured out how it goes, he just needed help remembering "forty" or "fifty".

Both Caleb and Logan do well recognizing letters, and are so-so at figuring out what letter a word starts with.  "J" and "G", and "C" and "K" are easy to mix up.  I suppose if they were starting school next fall I might feel some pressure to have them further along, but since they have all of next year at home yet, I'm not too worried.  :)

Even Levi sort of knows his ABC's!  He can recognize when he see letters and will say, "A-B-C!"  And he can even sing the beginning of the ABC song.  He loves to sing, and along with almost everything he does, it's the cutest. thing. EVER.  :)  He's been singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Lately".  I don't think anyone but Mike or I would recognize it, but he's close enough on the tune and the sound of a couple of the words that I can tell that's what it is.

Levi sometimes likes to pretend to be a kitty (I believe he got that from his big brother, Caleb...).  It's cute when a 20-month-old does it, not as cute when a 4-yr-old does it.  :)  He crawls around, says "meow", and will let me pet him.

Levi also has no fear.  He loves "Rough House" time with Mike, Caleb, and Logan upstairs.  He loves it when Mike drops him on the couch (or according to him "douch") - from a ways up...(That's one of those times where as a mother it's better for me not to watch, and I just walk away thinking, "He loves them just as much as I do and wouldn't any harm to come to them...")

In non-kid news, I refinished our dining table last week!  I've been wanting to do it for SO long.  I love how it turned out.  I sold the chairs earlier this summer, and we've been using folding chairs since, until a month or so ago I found a chair that works perfect, and last weekend I found another chair that I'm painting this week.  Just three more chairs to go!

Mike is staying busy at work.  Last week during the "Polar Vortex" we were hoping for a snow day, but no luck.  :)  It was so cold that we let Sadie in the house for a few days.  Of course the boys loved it.  I actually enjoyed it too, until I started having to deal with the hair.

Gotta run, little guy waking up early!

anatomy

Last night at bedtime I was giving Caleb a hug as he stood in his bed.  He kinda had his hands in an awkward spot above my waist (We've got our hands full if he's this forward when he's a teenager!!), so I just moved his hands without drawing any attention to it.  But then he asked, "What are those big things?"  HAHAHA!!!  First of all, I've never been classified as "big" - these boys could be good for my ego!  I'll just forget the times they've asked why my stomach is squishy...  :)  Second, I'm not ready to answer that!  I know my four-year-old boys and how they talk (and talk...and talk...); I don't want them running around using words for various parts of the anatomy...  I got out of having to directly answer the question.  Logan asked something about if I got those when I became a mommy, and I basically went the route of saying that God gives girls a special way to feed their babies when they become mommies.  I'm still getting a chuckle out of this one.  :)

Caleb and Logan moved up to their new Sunday School class today!  They are now in the 4 yrs - Kindergarten class.  Seemed as if they liked it.  They're back with some of the kids they knew from the 2's and 3's class that already moved up.

Levi just keeps repeating new words all the time, it's so much fun!  He's often pointing at something he doesn't know the name of, then will say the word after I say it.  He's also started saying Caleb's name within the last week.  So, we now have "A-bob" and "Lo-guy".  Gah!  Sometimes the cuteness is too much for me!  He is getting more attitude, but he's still a sweetie pie.  He's also been eating like CRAZY lately!

Logan did end up getting sick last week.  He puked for the afternoon on Thursday, was still tired and weak that evening, but then was fine by Friday.  I'm hoping that by now we're out of the woods and Levi skipped this bug!

Lots of snow here this weekend.  Church was cancelled tonight.  We were headed outside to play when my dad called and needed help getting his skid loader unstuck - so we piled in the truck and headed over there.  Spent the evening there - nice to get out of the house.

enough!

Sickness just won't leave us.  And, of course, it couldn't be uneventful.  Last night was the Krol Christmas Party.  We were in a church gym, Caleb would run around and play fine, then lay down for a minute, or say he needed to go to the bathroom and nothing would happen.  I kept trying to see if he could describe how he was feeling, but that's kinda hard for a four-year-old!  So, at one point when he was laying down after running around, he puked.  Quite a bit.  Right in front of a bunch of people.  And almost on Aunt Linda's shoes!  Mike took Caleb out to clean him up and get him in the van, with the help of a few others I cleaned up the floor, and then we got out of there.  Caleb ended up sleeping on the couch, and I 'slept' in the recliner so I could take care of him.  He puked several more times.  Poor guy - had nothing left in his stomach to get out, but it wouldn't stop.  :(  This morning while Mike and I were in the kitchen before he went to work, Caleb got up, came over and said he felt better.  Now he's been sleeping for awhile again, so we'll see!

Logan has been up a couple times, but no sickness yet.  Just throwing a fit because he saw that Caleb's not in his bed, so he wants to come downstairs, too.  Ah, yes, the fun of trying to reason with a four-year-old in the middle of the night when you're in the middle of also trying to take care of a sick child.  And, when Logan wakes up in the middle of the night upset about something he gets REALLY worked up and there's not a whole lot you can do.  He's been quite for awhile now, so hopefully he keeps sleeping in and doesn't wake up tired.

So far so good on Levi, too!  The cold he had is getting better (still some congestion), and no sign of the pukes yet.  He has been getting more attitude with us again.  :(  When he first got sick a couple weeks ago I was hoping our "Sweetie Pie Levi" would come back when he got better, but I'm not so sure that's going to happen.  I think the sickness crankiness is just transitioning us right into early terrible two's.  :)

I do have to say, Caleb is ultimate sweetie pie when he's sick.  At one point last night when I was helping him he said, "I love you, Mom."  Wow, there's nothing like getting an unprompted "I love you" from your kids.

sick

Welcome, Winter Sickness!  We've had some sickness going around for over a week now.  Plus, Levi has four teeth coming in, and he has NOT been happy.  Currently, Caleb and Logan are congested, but it's not really slowing them down.  Mike has a runny nose as well.  Levi still has a bit of a runny nose and cough, but I think he's on the tail end of it.  There was a day last week that he didn't want to do anything - poor guy.  He just sat on my lap.

Levi is picking up new words like crazy and it is so much fun!  The ones we hear a lot now are: on (concerning lights), button (on toys, not on clothes), blanket, chocolate (asking for chocolate milk), and buckle.  Levi learned how to whisper about a week ago and it's so stinkin' cute!  At lunchtime one day either Caleb or Logan came over to me to whisper a "secret" in my ear.  Levi leaned forward in his high chair like he wanted to get close to me, so I put my ear up to him and he whispered some noises.  :)  He kept wanting to do it, and we've had alot of fun with it.  He's also gotten good at screaming and making loud noises while at the table - big brothers have something to do with that.

Caleb and Logan keep improving at counting, and figuring out sounds and letters.  Fun to see how they're learning.  I got them some letter and number tracing placemats for Christmas, so hopefully they'll have fun practicing writing with those.  I can hear Logan in quite time right now singing the ABC song.  :)  (Levi also likes to sing it, of course that's super cute.)

Both Caleb and Logan are observant and really think about some things, and I love it!  Even though they come up with some interesting and difficult questions sometimes.  :)  They ask alot of questions about God, Jesus, Heaven, Hell, etc.  It's SCARY to know the weight and responsibility I have in handling this stuff with them!  Gotta pray every day that the Lord gives me the right words to teach these boys.  Anyways, so the other day I was sitting in the chair with Caleb and Logan talking about Christmas stuff.  I mentioned that Jesus was born in something like a barn, and it was just him and his mom and dad.  Logan says, "But he's not his real dad, God is Jesus' dad."  !!!!!  A funny thing that came up the other day, Logan asked Mike how he has three moms because he calls, Grammy, Grandma, and me "Mom".  :)

different

Today we got the numbers behind how different Caleb and Logan are.  :)  They had their 4 year well-child visit to the doctor, and they did great!  They were both a bit nervous about getting shots (they got 4 each!), but it didn't ruin the whole visit.

Logan weighed in at 34 lbs (32%) and is 3 ft 4.5 in (54%).  Caleb is 43 lbs (92%) and 3 ft 7.5 in (97%).  Logan has been making more comments (and he did at the dr today) about Caleb being bigger than him, and it seems to bother him.  I just keep telling him that's just the way God made him, the two of them are different, and one isn't better than the other.  I can definitely see how this could be a significant issue in years to come.  Even though Logan is completely normal sized, having a twin that's so much bigger makes him feel like he's too small or something.  I hope that my experience on the other end of the spectrum (being a tall female, and having some rough times because of that) will help enable me to be an encouragement to him.  :)

We worked hard at prepping both of the boys for this doctor's visit, and they really did well.  They talked nice to the doctor and nurse, and behaved very well while waiting in the room.  Caleb took his shots like a champ - cried a little and stopped pretty quick.  Mike stayed with him for his shots, and I took Logan out of the room.  Then I brought Logan back in the room for his shots, and he was a bit out of sorts for a little while after, but eventually calmed down.  No more immunizations until they're 11!