Doctor Anecdote

Huston had his four year check up with the doctor today. When Clarke came home from work, I was trying to get Huston to recount for him how his doctor's visit went. He had to get a bunch of shots, give a urine specimen, and get a finger prick, and it was all quite traumatic. I said, "Tell Daddy about going to the doctor today."

Huston said, "When they shot me, I peed in a cup."

Clarke said, "Well if they had shot me, I probably would have peed in a cup, too."

Huston is 4!

We had Huston's 4th birthday party this morning, and my sweet boy had a wonderful time, which made it so wonderful for me. Leading up to his party, he kept talking about it and sounding really excited, which was such a change from the previous two years when he really screamed about it and would keep saying he didn't want a party. We did an "Up!" theme, since that was his favorite movie for most of the year.

I bribed him with chocolate dipped pretzel sticks to take his picture under the balloon wreath I made. That wreath took so many balloons, that I've decided it's going to be our new family tradition to put it out for everyone's birthday.

I made these multicolored cupcakes to resemble the balloons in the movie, and my mom made those adorable cloud cookies. I love how they turned out! Of course her cookies were delicious and I thought my cupcakes were rather failed, but at least they made for a cute picture. The little "Up!" house was an online printable that I carefully folded and glued together.

Melinda brought these cute old suitcases for part of the decoration and I printed out the Ellie and Carl plane tickets from online.

For party favors, we had M&M's wrapped up as Mr. Fredricksen's bow ties, and some canteens I got 90% off at Target that I decided to call "Russell's Wilderness Explorer Canteens" since I needed to get rid of them. :)

Huston got some glasses that looked like Mr. Fredricksen's along with some other glasses that seem to have renewed his interest in playing with glasses.

We didn't sing Happy Birthday to him, as he still doesn't like that, but we did get him to pose for a few pictures in front of his cupcakes.

He loved eating his Grandma's cloud cookies. Not so much his mommy's cupcakes. That's okay. I felt the same way.

Goofing around with Grandpa.

Arden had such a blast at the party. I think she thought it was her party. She played with everyone and had a great time. She loved getting Uncle Ben's hat.

I wasn't going to have Huston open his presents at the party, as he usually hates the attention, but he approached the presents on his own and started trying to peek in a bag. I asked if he wanted to open it, and he did! After more people started watching and taking pictures he started to get shy, but we took a few breaks, and Aunt Emily helped him open the rest. He got so many great things that perfectly fit one "hard to buy for" boy!

Sweet Caroline got all tuckered out from the excitement. Love that sweet girl (and her momma!).
Abby was so sweet to come to Huston's party on her actual birthday. Happy birthday, Ab! (You and Marta look so cute!)

My dad just got back from Turkey yesterday. Thanks for coming in spite of your jet lag, Dad. We missed you while you were gone! And I forgot to tell my mom that I really liked her haircut. (I like your haircut, Mom.)
Sweet friends. So thankful for them.

Arden playing with one of Huston's toys. She wore her cupcake shirt that Grandma made in Huston's honor. And she even had little bows that said "Happy Birthday" in them.

Huston and Wyatt pretending to "sleep." Such hilarious little boys!

A family picture (don't remember how I bribed him to take this one, but it for sure involved some sort of food).

Happy Birthday, sweet Huston. Mommy and Daddy love you and we're so proud of our big four year old!

Washing Dishes

This little boy didn't want to take a nap today. So the second time he came out of his room, asking if nap time was over, I told him he could stay up if he let me take his picture. I'm not above bargaining or bribing for a picture taking opportunity. He said "Ok," which shocked me, because he never lets me take his picture.

I can't believe this little goofball's going to be 4 years old in a couple of days.

He's so handsome.

Then he asked for a snack, and after he picked the M&M's out of his trail mix and then asked for a different snack, he was bored. So I told him he could help me wash dishes. He was pretty happy about that.

He pulled his little chair over to the sink, and asked me to put the water on the "spray." Then he used the measuring cup to rinse off the dishes. When he was done he asked me for some more dishes to wash. I hope he still likes this chore when he's older.

Stuck Inside

So, it's like really hot outside. So incredibly hot that it makes me want to curl up and die. We've been mostly stuck inside recently except for a few morning excursions, a few swimming days, and a trip to the museum. One day when we were running errands, Huston said his nose was watering. He meant "sweating" but it was so cute.

I've been doing my best to come up with more creative, structured things to keep the kids busy and actually teach them stuff. Considering that I was a teacher, you'd think I'd be better about that, but I've been terrible. I just thought it would naturally happen, but the truth is, I have to be intentional about it. I'm discovering that's true for just about everything with parenting. Parenting on Purpose, Intentional Parenting, Parenting with a Vision. Whatever you call it, it takes effort and planning. And sometimes I'm just lazy. But I'm trying not to be.

Sooooo... we've done a few things lately. Nothing mind blowing. We've played felt board stories to go along with Brown Bear Brown Bear (Arden loves this book). We've been doing a Bible story a week and a letter a week. Last week we read books about Creation and made a little book about the 7 days of creation. We also did the letter A. The kids got on Starfall.com on the computer and Huston clicked around on the different activities. I downloaded a few toddler/preschool apps for my iphone and ipod and let the kids play with them. Arden likes to say "boop, boop" every time she hits a button. Huston likes to select all the wrong answers first and laugh hysterically, then pick the correct one when it's the only choice left.

Our friends, the Casburns, are in town. When they came to our house to play, Arden freaked out over their sweet baby, Elise. She kept saying "baby, baby, hold it, hold it, touch it, touch it." She realllly likes babies.
In pooping news, I think Huston has turned a corner. He pooped on the potty four times this past week and the most recent two episodes were perfect (no mess involved). Hallelujah! I think I prayed more about his pooping than about any other single thing in my life. I cannot tell you what a relief it is that he finally seems to be willing to do this. At some points on this journey, I really thought the day would never come.

Now that I've started rambling, I think I'll continue....

Ever since Kid's Kamp, Huston has been obsessed with watching his Kid's Kamp dvd, which has all of the skits from the week on it. He has been walking around reciting lines from it, many of which are scripture, to my delight. One day we were in a store with other kids around, and he started saying, "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. Honor your mother and your father." It was awesome. And hilarious. At lunch this sunday he picked up and separated the two sides of his hot dog bun, held them up so they looked like the two stone tablets Moses held, and started reciting the 10 commandments again. It was also awesome and hilarious.

Arden is talking a lot more in sentences these days. Her ability to learn new vocabulary words and string them together is just unbelievable. I haven't been able to record the words she knows, because she knows so many. She'll say, "More, more! Water please!" or she'll read a page of Brown Bear Brown Bear by saying "Purple Cat Purple Cat. See. I see Froggie... me." She loves to do everything her big brother does, loves to try to count (she says 1, 3, 5! but can count in order past 5 to about 8 or 9), loves to play in the bathtub, and loves reading stories. Both of the kids continue to love watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and during the intro, Arden will shout all of the characters names as they appear: "Daisy! Donald! Goofy!"

I've been getting a bunch of boxes of the kids' old clothes down and washing and tagging them to sell in the JBF sale this fall. It's making me sneezy (because there's a lot of dust, I guess), weepy (over their tiny, tiny clothes... oh so very weepy), and achy (from hunching over and pinning and folding and typing). The house looks like a children's clothing store exploded in it.

Oh, and the other morning I looked out the window and saw this:

It was pretty freaky. Of course, since we're city folk, I called someone to come and pick up the snake in case it was poisonous. It wasn't. So I guess we payed $160 to relocate it to the lake for nothing. I hope it appreciates our efforts.