Shannon Visits

Shannon and her kids came to visit this weekend. We had a great time- albeit a little hectic with five kids in the house! It was a far cry from the old days at Club Med- late nights dancing, drinking, and partying, sleeping late, and spending all day lounging in the hot sun. The closest we came to "lounging" was sitting around the family room eating Ben and Jerry's (yeah... I still had a little left from Mother's Day) and watching Music and Lyrics while hoping that none of the children woke up. Late nights? Let's see... does waking up at 3AM with a barfy kid count? Or pacing with a crying baby? Partying was not in the picture, unless you count the hour and a half we spent out to lunch trying to keep four kids (Tanner was at school) happy and ferrying them back and forth to the restroom. Drinking? Let's see... we both had several diet cokes and poured many glasses of apple juice. And sleeping late? What's that again?

I reread this and it sounds like I am bitter or missing the old days.... but reality is this is what Shannon and I both always dreamed of as we lay there on the sandy beaches of Mexico. This family life is what we both were looking for all along. Yeah... a few days of R and R away from the kids would be nice, and maybe Shannon and I will get to do that together again someday soon (Brian and Matthew willing, of course) but this weekend was wonderful. We got to be moms together and enjoy our kids laughter as they forged their friendship. We got to laugh and shake our heads and compare notes and support each other in our days (and nights) of crazy chaos. Motherhood is not something you should do in isolation. It does take a village. This visit reminded me of why Shannon and I are such good friends... even 700 miles apart :)

Kid Stuff....random occurances from Brian

Tanner's Story:
If you can't tell from the photos, we got Tanner's first haircut today....went about as well as could be expected. Tanner dosen't deal with change (or strangers) well. His hair had gotten out of control, it was splotchy (long in some areas, non-existant in others). I applied a lawn care analogy to it, it you cut it, it will encourage new growth, so we decided to give it a try. There is a before, during and after photo. Tanner would have none of it, so he had to sit on Marisa's lap at the Fantastic Sams and she had to basically hold his head still. He was moving too much for them to use scissors, so they had to just use the electric shaver, and thus....Tanner the Marine Seargant!

His haircut makes him look so much bigger. He was fine as soon as they were done and back to normal. He was feeling for his hair the whole way home, touching his head and saying, "Ow, Ow,Ow..."

Jake's Story:
Those of you who know me, know that I have a thing for music. It's always on and I take it everywhere I go. There are 8700 songs on my iPod, and I play it all of the time when the kids are around (I try to skip past the Linkin Park, Nine Inch Nails and Kid Rock during family time..), so it is no big surprise that Jake really likes music. We have made several mix CD's for him of songs that I think he might like or expresses interest in when he hears them when I have them on. His CD's range from Bon Jovi to Alan Jackson to Bruce Springsteen. Tonight during dinner we were all rockin out to Boz Scaggs, Nick Lowe and Snow Patrol. This love of adult music does lead to some great moments...like the one that happened this morning;

I had the iPod on when I was making breakfast this morning. Jake always asks to hear "his" songs, depending on my mood sometimes I let him, sometimes I don't, but this morning I said okay. I asked him which one of his songs he wanted to hear. He said he wanted to hear "the log song". I have never heard of "the log song" so I told him I didn't know that song, how does it go? He proceeded to sing, " I fought the log and that log won, I fought the log and the log won!" while jumping around. After I stopped laughing, I put on the Bobby Fuller Four's, "I fought the Law", and continued on with the morning...

Faith's Story:
Faith sleeps on you while you walk around. Once she's asleep, you can set her down, but, she only sleeps on her tummy, which, parents out there know, is a no no (the fear of SIDS) so, needless to say, setting her down and keeping her happy has been tough. Normally, she is okay on her back, but only if she is awake, so you can set her down and get some stuff done. She likes to lay on the bed, the floor, the couch, the chair...yesterday she rolled off of the chair and ended up on the ground, crying. Now we can't put her there either.....

Grandpa Phil, The Golden State Warriors, and Baseball...

Grandpa Phil and Joan visted us here in Boise last weekend over Mother's Day. They are on a whirlwind tour of the states, going from Indiana, thru Minnesota, Idaho, California and on to Arizona. They stayed with us here for a couple of days over the weekend.

Grandpa got to see Jake's baseball skills on full display. I know that we have talked about it ad nausem, but the boy has some serious skills for a four year old. He has been hitting live pitching for almost a year now and has just amazing hand eye coordination. We have a bucket of about 20 balls that I pitch to him, and he hits right around .400 to .450 each time we go thru the bucket (I swear that I am not one of THOSE dads, but I wanted to see how he was doing ... I think that stats for kids are satanic, really!). When Grandpa Phil was here, we played a couple of games of baseball. Jake went thru two buckets of balls, one pitched by me and one by Grandpa Phil. Jake hit 8 home runs (not cheapies, these actually clear our fence...), four off of me and four off of Grandpa Phil, who obviously has never pitched to him before. He is going to be really bored next year when he has to hit off of the tee in tee-ball.

In addition to baseball, we went out to lunch, dinner, went to the Farmers Market, enjoyed a picnic and first concert of the year on the green and had soccer practice as well. I sometimes help coach during soccer practice, although I have yet to coach Jake's team (definitely the more focused of the two groups). I coach the yellow team. My team likes to take drink breaks in the middle of the game. I will turn around and have one player on the field, three over getting drinks and two that have wandered off over by the tennis court to look at bugs. Jake and his team run roughshod over the yellow team, but they are four years old, so no one cares. Week before last (I did not coach), the yellow team decided that they did not want to play anymore, so it became the green team against the parents. I have always been able to at least field a team....one player maybe, but that one player was fully committed to victory!....See I told you I wasn't one of those dads.

The main focus of the weekend however was the Golden State Warriors playoff series with the Utah Jazz. For those who don't know, Uncle Eric (my cousin) is the Equipment Manager for the Warriors. He has been working with them for as long as I can remember. He started as a ball boy, and has been there through some horrificly bad years, so this playoff series is a big deal in my family. Jake and I went to a game earlier this season and met Eric and had a really good time, Jake just loved it. We watch the games a little differently then most NBA fans....some comments in out living room, "There's Uncle Erics head, behind the players knee", "There is Eric's foot"...but we have a good time. In fact, I am watching game five right now as I type. We watched two games with Grandpa Phil here-they won one and lost one.

It was really good to see my Dad. He had never met Tanner, and also was able to meet Faith for the first time. We had a really good time and will hopefully be able to see them more frequently in the future.

Mother's Day

I really should have stock in Ben and Jerry's and Haagen Daaz. Brian has been razzing me for months about the amount of ice cream I eat. OK, I admit, buying three pints during our Sunday shopping trip is a little extreme. I got A LOT of crap for that, probably deserved. So, the picture above shows the gift my hubby got me for Mother's Day: SIX PINTS of B and J's- all different flavors. Maybe it was a "joke" gift, but I have to say it was a much appreciated one! I'd like to say that I'll be set on ice cream for the month but, sadly, it won't last that long. In any case, I was appropriately spoiled over Mother's Day weekend by my hubby (breakfast, sleeping in), my boys (cards and handmade gifts), and Faith (she slept for FIVE hours on Friday night!). Happy Mother's Day!

In Which Tanner Wields a Knife and Jake Calls 911

I Bet I hooked ya with that title, huh? In reality the knife and 911 stories are totally unrelated, but pretty funny nonetheless.

A few months ago Auntie Sue sent the boys a book that teaches you how to call 911. It has a little keypad attached and you can actually dial the numbers and it tells you under what circumstances you should call. We had read it quite a few times, then one day as I was trying to juggle all three kids (feeding Faith, reading to Tanner, playing basketball with Jake- yes, all at the same time!) Tanner fell off the couch and hit his head. He immediately started screaming, so I detached Faith which set HER into screaming. At this point Jake ran out of the room. I was too busy to worry about what he was doing, so I tended to the littler ones (priorities, you know?). As I was calming both kids down Jake returned to the living room holding my cell phone. He said, "Don't worry, Mom, I called 911!". Sure enough- when he handed me my phone I could see that he had dialed the numbers but thankfully had not yet sent the call. Since we don't have a home phone he had run and found my cell and dialed for help. Although I was pleasantly surprised to know that he could handle the task, a conversation about what constitues "an emergency" followed.(Perhaps I should be less dramatic?) Don't worry... I also showed him how to send a call in case a real emergency ever occurs.

You'll have to keep reading to get to the knife story...


Tanner continues to be a crack up. He is so much more expressive and verbal than a few months ago. We call him "Our Little Russian Boy".

"Tanner, do you want some applesauce?"
"NO!" (accompanied by vigerous head shaking)
"Tanner, do you want a cookie?"
"DA!" (rhymes with "bra" and said with great gusto and a huge smile). "DA!" is his word of choice these days.

He charms us and charms us with his giggles and grins, bringing us books to read to him, balls to throw to him, and toys to play with him. But when this kid is done, he is DONE. He knows his limits. Around 6:30-7:00 each evening he begins to get a little sensitve and cry easily. We know it is time for us to ask the question: "Tanner, do you want to go night-night?"
"DA!" is his usual response. When we tell him to say night night to Grandma or Jake or Faith he waves vaguely in their direction while muttering "nigh nigh" with his eyes trained on his bedroom door. We put him in his crib and he rolls over and goes to sleep, often times not to be heard from again until 7:30 the next morning.

His new skill is climbing ladders. He figured out how to get to the top of Jake's bunkbed ...and boy does he think it is cool. He climbs up there and then just giggles and giggles. He can climb the ladder to the slide outside, too, and then scares me to death trying to go back down the ladder with clearly no idea how to do so safely. He climbs any stool or ladder he sees and takes the stairs like he has has been doing it forever. This brings us to the knife story...

Being the older brother Jake sometimes wants to micromanage his brother's behavior. So, we had just been telling Jake that we are Tanner's parents,not him, and letting him know that we would worry about Tanner- he just needed to take care of himself. Not 60 seconds later I was at the sink washing dishes and Jake was at the table. I hear Jake yell, "Mom, Tanner has a knife!". I turn around and, sure enough, there's my boy, standing on his stool at the counter behind me weilding a Henkles paring knife that I had left on the counter after cutting up roast beef. So much for us taking care of Tanner without Jake's help. Needless to say we are all much more careful about what we leave on the counter these days!

Faith is growing by leaps and bounds. She is sleeping better, although she is still pretty high maintenance. I guess she doesn't understand that mommy went back to work and needs her rest! I am enjoying dressing her way too much! Tanner and Jake both adore their baby sister. They shower her with kisses and hugs and bring her things they think she might want: a blanket, a binky,or a bottle. First thing in the morning and when he gets home from school one of the first questions out of Tanner's mouth is, "Baby?" (That's after demanding juice and a snack, of course).
For an 18 month old he really is quite good with her. My greatest hope is that her brothers will be her biggest fans for many years to come- and vice versa :)

First Smiles

Here are the first smiles I was able to capture on camera. She started with little smiles a few weeks ago, but in the last few days has gone to full fledged grins. She loves to be talked to, told how pretty she is, and to have her big brother Jake "click" his tongue at her. She is eight weeks old already. She is still not sleeping well- but we have made a little progress at getting her into her crib. We can sometimes get 1-3 hours with her there, but mostly she still sleeps tucked into my arm or next to her daddy. I go back to work a week from today and I think I may need Mary to bring her to visit at lunchtime to help with the withdrawl symptoms I am sure to experience. Luckily I only have 16 days of work before summer vacation begins :)