He's feeling better

Yeah, he is feeling better!

So I think he is feeling a little better.  Gabe was told he needed to help clean up a bit.  Since his throat is still tender, he ran and got a piece of paper and wrote this:

It says: "I'm not cleen in up!" 

I think this is first ever sentence he is written all on his own. (It supposed to say "I'm not cleaning up!)  

Strep followed by another mystery illness

So all the boys tested positive for step the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  Woo Hoo!  Thankfully, after a few days of antibiotics they seemed to all be feeling better.  But then this happened...

Gabe gets sent to the nurse at school on Tuesday a week later with 101 fever - while still on his meds for strep.  Then his eyes start swelling up...geez.  So back to the doctor we go.  The poor kids endures 3 more days of 101-103 fever (while on Ibuprofen, mind you) and another round of bigger, uglier, drugs.  His poor system is not handling Kindergarten well.  He has now been on antibiotics four times since school started - about 100 days ago! This is totally not cool for his little body.  And now it has been officially deemed required that we get his horribly over-sized (3+) tonsils/adenoids out so he can breathe at night.  He is not thrilled.

After two days at home with mom taking it easy and doing quiet work, he has started to perk back up.  Apparently, his hair has, too.

Let the ear infections begin...

...and Gabe wins the prize for the first ear infection of the school year.  He woke up in the middle of the night saying his ear hurt.  We got him to the doctor the next morning and he was so worn out he put himself to bed when we got home and he slept half the afternoon.

Super Hero

Sometimes, you just have to bust out the super hero and take care of business...

Gabe on a mission...

Boys in a Box

Just playing in the box...

Super hero!

The big hit of the Easter baskets this year was hands down the super hero capes.  Sadly, I missed the mark and only got one for Gabe (bcs he has been wearing a blanket around his neck for weeks.)  When the other boys saw it, they decided they absolutely must have them, too.  So quick to Amazon - and 48 hours later I had two more.

I found some that were 'logo free' so the kids could just be a super hero all on their own.  There has been so much cape wearing and "to the rescue!" in our house it is ridiculous.

Apparently Gabe has modeled his super hero persona to be "The Streak," as he refused to wear clothes.

Pre-K Chemistry

 Now that Reece is going to the Montessori school the same days as the twins, it has gotten a bit harder to carve out time where I have ONLY the twins by themselves.  This means that some of the 'bigger kid' activities have been put on hold.  So the fact that I had just the twins for a few hours after school today meant we could pull out something fun to try!

Once again, borrowing from the Play at Home Mom site, I pulled out the baking soda and vinegar.  And to make it even more inquiry based, I colored the vinegar with food dyes so they had some primary colors to work with.  Now that we have been doing this sort of open ended play invitation for a little over a year, they boys jumped right in and started as soon as everything was out.

They got to use the medicine syringes to pull up the vinegar and then squirt it out onto dishes of baking soda. This was a great activity that held their attention for 40-50 minutes (until we ran out of baking soda and vinegar!) They were really excited to see the foaming and hear the noises it made.  Then they started mixing colors and the play took on a whole new direction.  They were eagerly seeing what colors they could make.  

When all the vinegar was used up they started stirring with spoons and were surprised to find the baking soda was gone!  When we decided it was time to clean up and start making dinner they both happily helped pick up the dishes and bring them to the counter.  

Making Ornaments

Once again, I am borrowing ideas from the Play at Home Mom blog and trying some of their activities with the boys.  A few weekends ago I bought a bunch of random little Christmas trinkets and some clear plastic globe style ornaments.  Now that everyone has recovered from the stomach bug that knocked the whole house on it's butt, I decided to give this activity a try after school today.

I set out all the goodies on the table and invited the boys to come and see.  I showed them how to get the salt (snow) in the globes and then told them they could put what ever they wanted in them.  This turned out to be a GREAT activity.  They were very engaged for over 30 minutes.  If I had had more ornaments to fill, they would have kept going!  Once they ran out of materials they were very excited to hang their creations on just the right spot on the tree.

When Doug got home later in the evening, they both raced over to tell him that had made "Beautiful Ornaments" for the tree and wanted him to come over and see what they had done.

I'm pretty sure we are going to have to do this again.

Riding in Their Plane

So I round the corner of the kitchen into the foyer and I find this:

According to Gabe,they are riding in their plane.  They made it by flipping a bench upside down and sitting between the legs of it.  Gabe tells me he is driving it - Reece is pointing out things he sees while they fly.

Gabe's Nature Walk and Reece in a Pot...

Gabe went walking through the woods with Doug today while the other two boys took a nap.  He loves to be in the woods, under the trees where it is "so pretty and quiet."

He brought me back some things he thought were pretty during his walk - a piece of petrified wood and some osage oranges.

He's a pretty cool kid.

And not to make anyone think our life is all quiet / reflect boys that love nature, I give you - Reece.  Stuck in a pot.  Yes, I went and got a camera and took a picture before I helped him out.

This is the only shot I for where he wasn't looking at me yelling for me to help him out.  You can see Grayson's legs in the background - he kept asking him, "Reece, are you stuck in the pot??"

Halloween Project

The boys were a little stir crazy when I got home this afternoon, so it seemed like a good time to break out a crafty activity to refocus attention.  Since it was nice outside  we set up on the front porch.  I gave them

Look Mommy! It has 3 eyes!

• a bright yellow desert plate, 
• few tubes of glitter glue, 
• some white glue, 
• fall colored pompoms, 
• googly eyes, 
• crayons. 

After about 15 minutes, Grayson brought me his.  

Bikes and Puddles

The weather has been a bit wild - and it is getting dark so soon after we all get home - and the boys are dying to ride their bikes more.  The solution : Daddy let them take their bikes to work and ride!  Needless to say, this was a big hit.

In typical little boy fashion, the puddles in the parking lot were like a magnet.

Name tags and Letter Sounds

The boys are in week 2 of school and working hard.  They had been telling me about using their name tags at school on their work - so I thought I knew what they meant.  (They put them on something they are working on but not finished with so that no one else will mess with it.)  Grayson actually asked me to get them name tags at home.

Doug snapped this picture of Gabe's work this morning.  He is working on matching up items and their letter sound.  Gabe loves to play this "game" at home - asking and trying to figure out what letter different words start with.  He is on the cusp of reading and it is so interesting to watch as he slowly figures it all out.

Boxes are (still) fun

Somehow this toy box :


ended up at our house.  We are not fans of the huge toy box concept, but apparently it is Doug's old toy box and now it is ours, so we have to figure out a good use for it.  Right now, it is the place where the boys 1- hide, and 2- go to play when they want to be left alone.

Weird, I know.

If WE put them in a box CPS would come and tell us we were terrible parents.  If they put themselves in the box, however, it is OK.

(Gabe refuses to not make weird faces when he sees the camera. I tried three times, sadly, this is the best face.)

First Day of Pre-K

I can't believe today is the first day of Pre-K for the boys.  Not that they didn't go to "school" last year, they did.  But somehow this is different.  (Just bear with me...)  It is different because it is the last year that they don't have to go.  Don't get me wrong, they love, love, love school.  But this means that they are now one year away from going to Kindergarten and I am terrified of sending them to our local public school.  Which is bad, because I work in a public school.  Which probably is why I am so freaked out about the whole thing. 

So today was the one year of worry mark.  Ugh.  I hate that I am such a worrier, but I can't help it!

A little surgery for the 4 year olds...

Tonight Doug decided it was time to take out his massively wide stitches he got about a week ago when playing with the table saw.  The boys have been very, very interested in his thumb all week and taking inventory of if has healed yet.  So this combination of events led to a little preschooler surgery in the kitchen tonight.

Doug gave each boy a hemostat and then snipped the stitch and let them each have a tug and pull one out.  (Pictures to come when I can get them off the camera)

I have to say I thought this was pretty brave on his part - and the boys thought it was very neat.  (Gabe wanted to actually keep the nasty, crusty stitches - but luckily we convinced him it was not a good idea.)

River!

Wow- it is has been so stinking hot here the last week or so it has been literally unbearable.  I know I should be better equipped to handle it, but I guess I've gotten soft in my old age.

As the summer has progressed I am trying really hard to come up with a few new and fun things to do with the boys each week.  Today I decided that we would try going and playing in the river at Elizabeth Furnace.  I was a little worried about getting to a good spot since I know Grayson doesn't have the best footing in the world and I didn't want to walk with little kids down the side of the road along the river (Doug and I do it, but not with kids in tow!)  Doug and I drove along the river the weekend before and found a good place to park OFF the road and that had an easy in access that Grayson could navigate.

 So today I packed a little snack picnic, loaded up the boys in swim trunks and lathered them with sun screen and off we went!  We spent several hours there and eventually had to leave to get home in time to make dinner for Doug and Reece.  I think they could have stayed longer :)  This is something we will certainly be doing again.

Sidewalk Chalk Paint

Grayson has been in rare form recently, so we thought it might be a good idea to let him go have some one on one time with Doug.  That left me with Gabe and Reece - and it was too cool to really get in the pool, so we needed a new project.

We headed to the stock pile of little pieces of sidewalk chalk and let the boys each pick out a color to turn into chalk paint.  They helped smash them up, brought cups of water to stir them up in, and each grabbed a paintbrush.

Once the paint was all mixed up we headed to the parking lot to 'paint' on the blacktop.  The boys thought the water paint was pretty cool (it just looked wet at first), but as the wind blew over it the water evaporated and the color of the chalk 'magically' showed up.  Once they realized what was happening the painting got much more frenzied as Gabe made lines to "help the cars know where to go" and Reece, of course, promptly copied him.

And yes, Gabe did most of this while still wearing his bicycle helmet.

Dip in the River

It is has been pretty hot and today Ms Patti decided to take the boys on a special little field trip to the river boat landing at the park after school.  She told us she thought they would be tentative - and it would be a short little diversion.  Not so much, it turned out they went in as far as she would let them and they spent hours and hours.  They didn't even want to stop for lunch.  Finally at 4:00 she insisted that they leave and go get something to eat.

When I got home Gabe informed me they got in the water with Ms Patti.  I asked if it was the pool and they said - noooo.  So I asked if was the ocean - again they said - nooooo,  Was it a lake? - Noooo, it didn't have lily pads.  (well ok then) Then they declared it to be a river.  Too funny.

Beds and Bikes

The boys had another full day with Doug. It was a bit of an unusual day because they had to go all the way to Winchester to school, then all the way back to Strasburg for Grayson's speech therapy after lunch.  They ended up just staying at home in the afternoon.  Gabe got a slow start in the morning and we found him all curled up under blankets on the couch.

As usual, there was lots of outside play.  We have potatoes coming up in the garden, so that was a fun thing to check out.  And while you are up there you have to be on the look out for the garden snack that lives in the wall. 

The older boys continue to be very into riding their balance bikes.  I think they may very well be ready for 'real' bikes by the end of the summer.  Gabe is getting pretty good at holding his feet up and coasting for 10-15 seconds at a time.  Grayson is also getting much smoother in his riding.

Reece was out of sorts because he didn't get enough of a nap with the crazy schedule, so he actually ended up going to bed early.  But not before he let us know he really thinks he can use the potty.  He grabs his pants and signs "potty!" and takes off running for it.  He ended up a running around with a naked butt for about an hour and at one point he decided he had to pee so he ran out the back door and peed in the grass - then went back inside to play.  Not exactly what we want, but at least it wasn't on the carpet!

When Reece was in bed the boys worked on putting the final coat of paint on Grayson's new bed with Doug out on the porch.  They are so cute being little helpers :)

They have all been so busy lately.  I still can't believe how big they are getting and how much they they want to be like / do everything their Daddy does.