Mr. Fix It

For Christmas, Michael got a tool kit with a fun tool belt. Today he decided there were some things around the house that needed his fixing attention. He would ask me what was broken and then proceed to bang on it, twist the screw driver and cut with the saw. After fixing a few things he would come and charge me some money.

The first job cost me $20 and he gave me $20 back in change. The second job was $40 and I got $50 back in change. Then there was a cheap one with a bill of only $1 - and I got $2 back. Just when I was beginning to think this was my type of handy man, he charged me $400 and only gave me back $300. However, since it was all pretend money, I think I got a pretty good deal for getting my whole house fixed!

We have a pet

When I got to school to pick up Michael on Friday, I was greeted by Michael standing in the hall. He ran up to me and asked, "Mom, can I have a goldfish?!" It turns out that they had been doing goldfish races at school the last two days. This involves preschoolers scooping into a tank of fish and picking out a goldfish. They then place it in a tube and cheer it on to beat the others in swimming to the end of the tube. Now that they were done, his teacher offered to let the students take home the fish.

So being such a great mother I agreed and we went and picked out a nice big goldfish. Michael named him Spot as he has a black spot on his side. Tim then had to go out Friday night and get a fishbowl and some fish food. I'm happy to say that today, over 24 hours later he is still alive. I really wasn't expecting it - the poor thing participated in goldfish racing and then was carried home in a bag by a very energetic 4 year old. I figured the preschool trauma would be too much for the guy, but for now he is holding on.

The Boys Room

Well, I'm getting bigger and much more sore and my body is telling me that it is time to get ready for the arrival of baby #3. So the first step was to move Jonathan out of his room and into Michael's room, which we are now calling the Boy's Room. That way we will have room in the nursery to actually put the baby things.

So with Jon's "help" I disassembled his crib and we moved it to the new room and put it back together. He was rather half interested in the process but was thrilled when I put the finishing touches (aka Snugglie) in his crib.

We were very excited to find a way to keep the train table there as it has become Jon's favorite thing to play with up there, so the room is a bit crowded, but works well for us. For two nights and two naps though, Jon has come up the stairs excited to find Snugglie and pacifier only to walk into the empty nursery and pause in confusion for a moment before he remembers the change. It is so cute to watch.

And for those of you who are careful observers you will see that Michael has on only one sock in this picture. No it is not because we don't have enough clothes for him. Half way through the day he found a hole in one sock and threw it away. I tried to talk him into getting a new pair of socks on or maybe putting on just one different one for a fun mismatch look. But for some reason his 4 year old sense of how things work insisted that he keep wearing just that one for the rest of the day and couldn't figure out why I didn't understand things that way.

Preschool and cookies

Michael started preschool today. He was so excited and could not stop jabbering about it all morning. He had everything planned out: we would listen to music and eat breakfast (cherrios and a cereal bar like always). But then we couldn't just start playing because we had to go up and get dressed. Then we needed to pack his backpack and get on his snow gear. He was in full schedule mode this morning!

We bought him his first backpack the other day. We were at Meijer and heading to the bag section when he saw it. There was one spider man backpack left and he couldn't take his eyes off it. I tried to show him a few others to make sure that was the one he wanted, but he just kept saying how perfect it was. :)

The report from him and his teachers is that he had a great day. The got to play outside and have mock Alaskan Iditarod races. Then I hear they read stories, had play time, and got teddy grahams and milk for snack. All in all a near perfection morning when you're four apparently.

This afternoon we finally got around to baking the Christmas cookies Michael got in his stocking. Michael likes to cut out the shapes and then put sprinkles on them after they bake. We did it at Jon's nap time since he always wants part of the action in the kitchen and there is not much I can invent for a 17 month old to do in Christmas cookie making. However, Jon did get to have part of the eating action when he woke up!

Learning some new camera techniques

Both boys are down for a nap at the same time today, and both are still quiet so I might actually get to post this during the day instead of waiting until bed time. :)

I have had a very cool camera - a Nikon D60 for a year now. I had desperately wanted to have better pictures to scrap with so for my birthday last year I got to pick out a new camera. For those who don't know a Nikon D60 is a digital SLR camera meaning that it comes with removable lenses to change out and tons of manual settings. It of course also has a lot of automatic settings and for the past year I have been content with those - mostly the one designed to take pictures of kids who don't sit still.

This year I have decided it is time to get down and dirty with the camera and learn some manual settings. So first up for me is lighting and today's lesson was taking better pictures in the snow. So the boys and I got all bundled up and headed out in the snow. You can read all about what I tried out and see some of my pictures on my digital scrapbooking classes blog.

Time outside with Michael couldn't be complete without some snow football, so we did a little of that too. I think we made it back and forth across the yard three times before I was completely out of energy and ready to fall over for good. :) Just over a month and I should be able to start shedding some of the pounds.

So what do you think my chances are that once the baby comes I'll be able to have all three of them napping at the same time?

Made it through the week!

We had quite the whirlwind of a week last week:
*Jon was sick last Sat night into Sun and Tim and Michael got it Tue night into Wed. Of course both boys happened to get the worst of it overnight so I had two nights with very little sleep. Both times the boys (and with Jon me too) went through three sets of pajamas and three sets of bed sheets. So I was also running laundry through the night. That meant that I was very groggy for a couple of days after little sleep.
*I missed my mom a lot this week. Probably because I was so tired I was more emotional. And also, it would have been my mother I would have called to talk about the sick boys and my late nights.
*I finished my 33rd week of pregnancy and turned 33 years old this past week too. I got to start going through baby clothes. Do you know the woman in the Bible who got the never ending supply of oil for cooking? Well that is me with baby clothes. I keep giving them away and I always seem to have more than I need! My sisters are happy to hear that I have many clothes to pass onto them this year. For my birthday we also went out to a fairly nice Italian restaurant. The boys did pretty good, especially when we finally found something Jon would eat - spaghetti. He is really into feeding himself right now, though, so I feel bad for whoever had to clean up the floor after we left.
*We also took Michael to visit a preschool program. He had a blast and we hope to have him starting this coming week. It will give us some busy mornings, but he is so excited, especially when he found out we would be buying him new tennis shoes and a back pack for the occasion.

For my project 365, here is the layout with my pictures from this week:

Having Fun Inside

Today was yet another very cold day and so we found things to entertain us inside. Michael decided to do a puzzle. He got this Pooh and Tigger puzzle for Christmas and has been wanting to do it every day. He asks for help, but really doesn't need it. Instead, he just wants me to sit and listen to him talk through his puzzle strategy: "I like to start with the edges mom. First I finish the scooter and then I go up the pooh and tigger and trees. Then I can do the top. Then I put all the middle ones in, right where they go."

Jon, chose cars most of the day. He gets so excited that he can say "TA!" for CAR. He lines all of the cars up and then pushes them one by one across the table. And it just goes on and on. I always thought that young children were not suppose to have a long attention span, but in reality I think it is more like an unpredictable attention span.

And as you can see, I got to do some scrapping today!

Poor Jon is sick today

Jon has had his fair share of colds, runny nose, and even a fever or two but he hasn't really been sick yet... until last night. He was up with us from 10:30-2:30 last night throwing up about every 20 minutes. The poor kid was so tired and just looked at me as if to say, "Please make it stop Mom." But all I could do was hold him and hug him. By 2:30 he was finally asleep and we all settled down for the evening. I was up with him about every hour from then on.

During the day, all of us (except for Michael) were exhausted. Jon would wander around fussing for a bit, trying to play and then come back and crawl up into our laps to snuggle or take a short nap. By evening, though, he was eating and drinking and went to bed pretty good. Hopefully it will be a restful and health reviving night.

Advent Candles

When I was unpacking our Christmas box last month, I came across a beautiful advent candle holder that we got years back and never got out to use. Since Michael is getting older and really getting into the Christmas traditions, we thought this would be a good year to start. So, I went out looking for candles. Tim wanted to go with the traditional three purples, a pink, and a white. I had no problem with a large white candle for the middle, but that was when my success ended. There were orange candles, and yellow candles, and all the left over fall colors. In the rest of the color sets, the tall taper candles had been replaced by incense sticks and I wasn't quite sure that would work....

Finally at one store I found red and green and decided we'd go with that. Then we got out Michael's children's Bible, thinking we could read a page each day at dinner and work through the Christmas story during the month. I got out a set of manger scene figures to help also. (On a side note, it is an adorable wooden manger scene with figures great for little ones to play with. There is Mary, Joseph, an angle, baby Jesus, a sheep, a cow, a donkey, and three magi. Notice anything missing? There are no shepherds, not even one. So in our story, a sheep had to come visit the baby instead.)

Michael and Jon both loved the candles and the stories went great. Now, however, with Christmas over we have decided to continue for this week. We spent most of the last week and a half at my dad's house with family, so last night was the first chance we've had to light the fifth candle. And we still have the magi part of the story to read, and since our manger scene can actually accommodate that we figured we shouldn't leave it out.

I've also taken on a new challenge for this year. It's called project 365 and means that it is my goal to take a picture a day for the whole year. I'm hoping to put them in a book together. Here is my first page.