Matthew after dark

While Sam is asleep within in minutes of hitting the pillow (usually with the book he was looking at covering his face), Matthew takes a bit of time to get to sleep. He generally doesn't take an official nap anymore, but he often does fall asleep for a few minutes watching cartoons before dinner. This leaves his with a burst of extra energy at bedtime which he uses up in imaginative ways.

For example, last night Jason and I went to bed around 10. We had heard Matthew moving around from bedtime (around 7:30) until 8:30 or so and didn't think too much of it because we always hear Matthew moving around after bedtime. We usually don't interfere as long as he's not loud and bothering the other kids. Anyway, when we got up to our room Jason saw a pile of clothes hangers on the floor in the middle of our closet. It was quite funny, until I saw where the hangers came from. A good pile of my clothes were lying on the floor underneath one of the hanging racks in the closet. Hmmm. Matthew. He had to help put the clothes back on the hangers in the morning.

This is just one of his many after dark antics. In the past he has emptied his clothes drawers. And no, he doesn't just pile his clothes up on the floor, he lays them all out completely flat, so they cover his entire floor. Then he walks around from item to item.

Another favorite of his is to lay his books out on his floor. And no, he doesn't just lay them haphazardly, they are organized in "roads" and at the end of each road is a group of books which he claims are his "houses". His cars and trains are covering the roads. It's really quite a lot of fun for Jason and I to see what he has come up with each evening before we go to bed.

A few nights ago, he made a fort in his room. He took some blankets and draped them over the chair in his room and when we went to bed that night, we saw that he was sleeping on the floor in his fort. Another time he had moved his pillow and blanket on the floor right next to his bed and fell asleep there.

Of course he still performs the "Mommy? I have to tell you something" trick on a regular basis (like 3 times an evening) and he also is coming up with some more imaginative tricks to get our attention. Last night it was "Mommy, my knee hurts". He had come downstairs to tell me about his knee and as he was telling me, he started shaking his knee. He has pulled the "sore knee" trick before so I knew it likely wasn't serious. I told him that sleeping and resting would probably make it better, but he insisted that it wouldn't. So I then asked him what would make it better and he said, "A cough drop." Ok. I got him a cough drop hoping that it would appease him and he would stay in bed. But a few minutes later, he came down and said that the cough drop didn't help him. Fortunately, Jason came in from working on the garage at that time and took Matthew upstairs and "looked" at his knee, which apparently fixed it better than a cough drop.

Matthew usually falls asleep around 9 or so (when he doesn't nap at all during the day it's closer to 8), but you never know what you'll get between bedtime and sleeping. The kid is full of surprises.

A typical weekend

This weekend was pretty typical of a weekend around our house. On Saturday Jason spent some time in the basement building a really cool fort with the kids while I went for a haircut (so a haircut isn't typical for me, but some time to myself is pretty typical, generally I go grocery shopping). Then Jason worked on the back garage while the boys helped or hung out with Abby and I. Matthew especially spent a good deal of time in the garage, sitting on the John Deere, playing with scraps of wood and just watching Jason work. In the afternoon Sam helped me make ice cream and we all enjoyed homemade ice cream which Sam remarked was extra good because he secretly stirred it extra while I was setting up the ice cream machine. It was remarkably good. The kids and I set up a blanket under a tree beside the garage and watched Jason work and helped out when needed or when we felt like it. Abby enjoyed practicing her balance by walking back and forth on the pieces of siding which were lying on the ground.

Our Sunday afternoon was quite fun too. Jason worked on the garage while the boys and I went swimming in our little pool. I got a bit tired of their lackluster playing in the water (they were sitting on a chair in the water) and decided to show them what playing the pool is really about. So I got on my swimsuit and showed them how to do a running headfirst sliding entry into the pool. The excitement of having Mommy swim with them or my inspiring moves really brought out a new level of fun in our swimming and the boys made up all sorts of interesting water entry moves. Sam's favorite was the feet first butt flop, while Matthew preferred a circle entry in which he ran around in circles before gently entering the water headfirst (all without getting his hair wet). We had loads of fun, but Abby was napping so she didn't get to join in.

After Jason finished up the garage, he set up the sprinkler so we could continue some water fun. The boys (including Jason) really had a blast with the sprinkler and ended up getting soaked which is not usual for them as they generally hate getting their faces wet. However, they took it like little boys should and just had a lot of fun. Abby did not have much fun with the sprinkler. She was walking toward Jason who was near the sprinkler when she walked right into the cold sprinkling water and was quite surprised and shocked. She ran over to me, crying, terrified of the sprinkler and then shrieked whenever it came near her. She and I spent time on the deck watching the boys enjoy the sprinkler. After Jason turned down the sprinkler so the water was only spraying maybe 3 feet high, I was able to convince Abby to let me run through it while I held her and while she was apprehensive, she didn't cry and may even try it out herself next time. It was a beautiful summer weekend and we really enjoyed our time as a family.

Playgrounds, swimming and general summer fun

I took a few pictures yesterday when the kids were swimming and saw some pictures that I hadn't looked at from a playground that we went to a couple of weeks ago. Oh, we have a lot of summer fun these days and here's a look.

Sam was quite proud of his new swim trunks (though they are a bit big) as they have all sorts of cool sea creatures on them like sharks (and he loves sharks these days!).

 I got the kids some goggles a few weeks ago at Target and they came in a pack of three, so Abby got some too. None of the kids actually wear them for the intended purpose (seeing underwater), but they do like to wear them around. Abby wore her's for about 10 minutes yesterday as she went down the slide into the pool. The boys got a kick out of her look with the goggles.

And here are our playground pics. The kids enjoyed the "teeter totter." They have no idea what they are missing with these new teeter totters that barely move up and down, but they have fun nonetheless.

 Someday I dream of having family pictures taken, or maybe pictures of the three kids together. I was hoping that dream would come true sometime this summer, so I decided to see if I could get the three together for a decent shot. These are the best of the bunch and none are probably worth putting on a Christmas card, but they are fun for our own memories.

Sam is quite a climber (actually, all the kids are) and he really has a lot of fun on the rock climbing part of the playground. It's even more fun for him as it has a dinosaur skeleton imprint on the backside of it (and he also loves dinosaurs these days).

A summer Saturday

Jason has been working like crazy on the back garage and it is looking pretty good. I'll have to post pictures soon. The siding is almost done, so other than the inside, it will be looking like a finishing product soon.

Anyway, after a brief trip to the playground this morning (brief because it was too hot, too humid, and too sunny), we came home and decided to do some crafting. I offered to get out the paints and the kids were eager to paint, so I covered the table somewhat and they dove right in. Abby has been content with water colors (see the picture of all 3 and Abby has a bowl of water in front of her) but today she noticed that the boys had a different kind of paint. She indicated that she wanted to try that paint and I covered her with an apron and gave her some of the tempera paint just like the boys had.

The boys carefully painted their pages. Matthew painted a picture of Mickey Mouse and he likes to paint the entire picture, not painting in the lines or anything, but rather painting a patchwork of colors all over. So he ends up with a page covered with squares of different colors. Sam likes to paint on plain paper and he makes all sorts of abstract designs. He will paint a curvy road across a page, then paint some circles or other odd shapes, then he usually get to a point where he just fills in his curves with a mishmash of color. They both have their own unique techniques.

Abby took her paintbrushes and smeared around the paint on the paper plate which I put the blobs on paint on. She quickly made work of her smearing and then wanted more paint to smear around. She got her hands, arms, legs and the exposed parts of her clothes pretty well decorated as well and seemed to enjoy her first experience with real paint. I haven't tried finger painting with her as the boys never liked it so I just never pursued it with her but I think I may need to try it now.

The boys have been having a lot of fun helping Jason with the garage so after painting and lunch, they helped out some. Yesterday they carried a few of the 16' siding boards from the main garage to the back garage and Sam even dragged some all by himself which he was quite proud of. Jason likes to give them little jobs to do like they use a dustpan and broom to "clean up" the inside of the garage. Both boys like to play with the scraps of the siding and build things with it. Matthew was playing with a few pieces and said they were an airplane, another time they were a drum. Sam built a house and a tower with some of his scraps.

After all their playing and helping today, Matthew was quite tired. I told him he could lay down in his room or on the couch, but he didn't want to pursue either option. However, his tiredness got the best of him, so he laid down on the rug by the sliding door and a few minutes later was asleep. And there he remained for an hour and a half. Despite some loud playing and brightness, Matthew had no problem sleeping through it all. He was one tuckered out little boy.

Potty training

For the most part, I haven't been taking Abby's potty training too seriously. Basically, she tries to go before baths and occasionally during the day when it seemed she was interested. She usually goes (#1) about half of the time, so we're off to a good start. Anyway, today after church was leaning on the ottoman, assuming her position for pooping. I asked her if she wanted to try the potty chair and she said "Yes" and nodded so we went to the bathroom and I took off her diaper and she sat on the potty chair for a few seconds. She looked down and didn't see anything and I knew she just needed some more time. So I encouraged her to sit down a bit longer, and she sat for about 5 more seconds, then was back up.

I knew she had to go, but just needed a little more time, so I decided to let her go about without a diaper for a bit. I figured that I'd give her a few minutes and see if she'd approach the potty chair on her own, then put a diaper on her. Well, the boys then attacked me with their new library books and we cuddled up in our big leather chair to read about dinosaurs and sharks. Abby was playing near us on the floor and ottoman.

After awhile I noticed something stinky and told Jason that I was quite busy with the boys, so would he please go change Abby's diaper? He really hates changing dirty diapers, but I thought he would maybe do it since the boys and I were so engrossed in our activities. At that point, I asked Abby if she was poopy and if she needed a new diaper. She just kind of whimpered and held our her hand to me. She had something in it..."What is that?" I briefly wondered as I held out my hand. Well, it was...um...her poop. She handed me her poop. "What is that?" Jason asked with complete disgust. Ummm, yeah, it's Abby's poop. He quickly scurried the boys upstairs away from the scene and let me deal with cleaning up myself, Abby and the poop.

I picked her up (with one arm) and carried her to the bathroom (she had, umm, dirtied her foot in the incident...) and dumped my load into the toilet. Then I scrubbed my hand and her's in the sink and cleaned up her foot. She was pretty upset by her poop and I remember Sam being a bit unsettled when he saw what he was able to produce as well (although he didn't try to pick it up). Then I got wipes and wiped up the floor in the area of the incident. Then I got disinfectant spray and wiped up the area again.

All this time I tried to be encouraging while cleaning up the mess and not reveal any disgust so as to not make Abby more fearful of going #2 on the potty in the future. I told her I was happy she made poopy and that next time she should try to potty chair. She basically whimpered throughout the episode and just seemed disgusted by the whole experience. I think this may be a setback in potty training, but I don't have much of a timeline for her anyways. Hopefully I'll have some better potty training stories to report next time, but at least this one was memorable.

London, almost done

Well, on the Thursday of our London week, we were ready to get out of London for awhile and decided to take a trip to Cambridge. We wanted a destination that was relatively close (around a hour or less) and didn't cost too much and was also an interesting place to visit. Cambridge fit that bill, so we made our way to King's Cross railroad station which was a few tube stops from the Great Portland Underground Station (the one near our hotel). Once at King's Cross we were overwhelmed by the size of the station. It really reminded me of an airport with all the white, wide corridors and queuing partitions, except that the final destination was not an airport gate, but a wide, open space where a dozen or so trains were parked, ready to depart at their appointed time. After arriving at the ticket office and purchasing roundtrip tickets to Cambridge for 23 pounds (a one-way ticket was 22 pounds, which we had to have repeated to us like 3 times), we boarded a nice train which headed northeast to Cambridge.

Rapeseed fields viewed from the American Cemetery

Our train ride was an hour and made a few stops along the way. It was nice to see the outskirts of London and some of the hilly countryside. I was surprised to find that overall, the houses remained close together (even in small villages) and yards remained small. We saw lots of horses out to pasture and some flocks of sheep. It was quite quaint and lovely. The fields were often filled with tiny yellow flowers which I later learned were crops of rapeseed (used in cooking oils).

We arrived in Cambridge around 11AM and purchased tickets for an open-top hop on/hop off bus tour right outside the train station. Since we had little idea of how to get around in Cambridge, it seemed like a good way to see a lot of the city and colleges within it. Our tour took us around the city, and pointed out the various historic colleges that together make up the University of Cambridge. We also ended up at the Cambridge American Cemetery on the outskirts of town which is the burial site for a large number of WWII airmen who were based in Cambridge. The memorial building was under construction (see the picture to the right) but it had a beautiful map showing the main air bases in the war and where missions launched from those sites went.

After a short visit at the Cemetery, we rejoined the bus tour for a look at some more of Cambridge. As with London, the it was quite interesting to see the architecture and detail of the buildings which were hundreds of years old. They were just so lovely and picturesque.

 We exited the bus again after viewing some more of the city and proceeded to walk around Cambridge for the duration of our visit. At one point, we ended up within the campus of one of the smaller colleges and found ourselves surrounded by small, but stately looking campus buildings. It was like the buildings on an older US campus, but much smaller, like only a story or two, but faced with roman columns and other aspects of elegant architecture. The bottom picture was taken from the college and is of a nearby cathedral.  

We had a late lunch at a local pub and enjoyed people watching the obviously academic patrons around us. Wow, those people oozed "I am from academia" if anyone ever did. However, the city did not feel like you were on one big campus, as it was quite bustling and full of shops and had a nice sized mall. I was ready for some shopping, and stopped in a few places to look at clothing. I felt much more "at home" in Cambridge than in London. Although there were a lot of people, it had a much less urban feel (for obvious reasons) and I enjoyed the green spaces and trees and the bright blue sky and fresh air.  We walked around a bit more, before heading back to the train station and catching the 4:30 train back to London. That was our visit to the countryside and was a nice way to end our UK trip. After a light dinner, some packing and sleep, we were off the next morning to retrace our steps back to Minnesota. An uneventful ride on the underground to Paddington Station, then a train to Heathrow, some time at the airport, a  9 hour flight back to Minneapolis and we were back where we belonged and glad to be home.

Ahhhh, Summer!

Well, not quite, but at least it feels like summer! Today we set up the pool in the backyard (a new, larger inflatable pool) and had loads of fun playing in it. The boys were outside in the pool for almost 5 hours in the afternoon and Abby enjoyed 2 hours in the pool. Most of their enjoyment was spent in running in and out of the pool rather than sitting in it, but who can blame them when the water is only 6 inches deep? The best part was when I moved our little play structure with a small slide (like a 2 foot slide) over to the pool and for the last hour they took turns going down the slide and splashing into the pool over and over and over. The boys eventually moved on to bypassing the slide, preferring to jump from the platform above the slide directly into the pool. I gave them adequate warning about possibly slipping or stubbing toes or stuff like that, but let them have their fun in their own way and we avoided any major injuries.

Abby had never worn a swimsuit before so she complained "Tight, tight!" when I first put it on, but I finally convinced her that it was supposed to be tight. She didn't have any problems with it after that, until it was time to take it off, then it was "Tight, tight!" again. But she certainly warmed up to "swimming" and ended up being the most soaked despite spending the least amount of time swimming. She doesn't have much of a problem with being splashed or lying down in the water. She doesn't submerge herself completely (thank goodness!), but she is definitely the water baby of the bunch and will need extremely close supervision next to water as she just isn't afraid of it at all!

The boys are also warming up to swimming and getting splashed as they just simply do not like any water in the faces or eyes. Getting water in their eyes is really quite a calamity for those two, although they are improving. Sam's swim lessons this past winter I think helped him become more comfortable with water and Matthew, well, we're still working on it. I think it's probably better having them super afraid than not afraid at all, at least from a safety point, but it sure makes getting their hair and faces washed up a bit difficult. Nevertheless, they still have fun playing in the pool, just keep the water out of their eyes.

I'll finish up my London posts soon in case anyone was wondering what happened to the rest of our trip.