Tiny One

Nolan is a very verbal child and almost always wakes up in a great mood. In the mornings, he immediately asks for "brestfest" and often will ask if TJ and Sam are up too. After nap, he chatters away about his "banket" and "Buddy" and a stuffed penguin he is obsessed with. He also asks if his snack is ready. The kid loves food.

This afternoon when I walked in to get him up after nap, I noticed it was a bit fragrant in his room. I asked him if he had a poopie diaper. Nolan immediately responded, "No" but then paused and thought his response over. Finally, he nodded, but said "Tiny one."

I thought that was pretty funny. As if a tiny poopie diaper somehow isn't as stinky as a regular one. As if is isn't quite as important that it be changed pronto. I did a quick negotiation with Nolan, and he agreed that I could change his diaper as long as he got his snack immediately afterwards. On a typical day, Nolan has snack and THEN the diaper change. Like his brothers, Nolan is all about routines.

For the record, I didn't think it was all that tiny. He is not a very good judge of that, I guess.

If You Give a Kid a Popsicle...

He will definitely get sticky! Nolan needs the biggest bib we own, a washcloth draped on his lap, and he needs to be outdoors in order to make this do-able. As it was, he was still stained orange a few hours later!

Check out his grip technique. Why use the stick when you can hang right on to the popsicle?

Sam making the 'wow, that's cold!' face.


Sam is much neater than his brother.

We were Puka-sitting over the weekend. I think she was disappointed that Nolan didn't have any crumbs for her. She loves sitting near his high chair while he eats.

Our new/used playset

Last fall, the family across the street offered us their playset. It looked pretty nice to us...covered landing at the top of the slide, several swings, a small rock climbing wall...but Bill wasn't able to get over there until this spring to dismantle it. When he did start working on it, he discovered that quite of bit of the wood had dry rot, and it really wasn't even stable enough to move.At that point, he decided to salvage what he could (the slide, the swings, the rock wall, etc.) and start from scratch with fresh lumber.

I'm sure the neighbors wondered what we were up to...Bill said he felt like he was building a marching band podium!

A little bit of progress...but a bit of a safety hazard!

What we have right now for the boys. Later, Bill will add the swings on, and maybe cover the landing like the old playset. Not a bad little piece of equipment for about $100 in lumber!

Potty Talk

Tonight after dinner, I was changing Nolan's stinky diaper. While I changed him, he was singing a little song that went something like this:
Poopie Butt, Apple Pie
Poopie Butt, Apple Pie

Gross combination, but kind of a funny song.

However....TJ got in a little trouble today on the playground. His teacher emailed me and said he was using 'potty talk'. He told me that he said 'butt'. I guess I need to exercise more discretion with the words I let my kids use. I can't prevent what they hear other kids say, but I can work with them on watching what words come out of their mouths.

Yuck!

Today at lunch, Sam dipped his bananas in mustard.

Today at dinner, Nolan dipped his hamburger in fruit dip.

I can't watch my children eat.

Why can't they get their condiments straight?

They heard it on the news

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Kalamazoo tornado. TV8 had quite a news story on it. Both TJ and Sam are fascinated by severe weather and watched the story closely. TJ asked me if he was born when the tornado hit. I laughed and told him I was only 3 when that tornado hit, so no, he wasn't born. Then he asked where Kalamazoo was. Bill told him it was about 50 miles south of Grand Rapids. I commented to TJ that he had never been to Kalamazoo.

At this point, Sam piped up. "We have too been to Kalamazoo! They have a big snake!"

Bill and I were puzzled by that comment, but TJ rolled his eyes. "Not THE zoo, Sam, Kalamazoo!"

I thought that was funny and I was impressed that TJ understood the difference.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Also during dinner, TJ started discussing tornado strengths. He asked if I had ever seen an F-5 tornado. Umm, no, and who taught him about the Fujita scale?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

TJ apparently thinks we are related to the president. It doesn't matter how many times we correct him, whenever he hears a news story about Barack Obama, he asks a question about "Uncle Bama".

Of course, he calls our neighbor girl, Lauren, "Warren". Poor girl. I still think TJ could benefit from speech class!

Quirks

TJ and Nolan do not like French fries (although Nolan will eat fries from McDonalds). Why?

TJ, Sam, and Nolan all hate mashed potatoes. How is this possible? I LOOOOVE mashed potatoes (as does Bill)!

TJ and Sam do not like chicken nuggets.

TJ does not like hot dogs. Give him one, he will send it back. YUCK!

It's really difficult to make a quick and easy meal while dealing with the above issues!

Sam will dip almost anything in mustard these days (cheese sandwiches, goldfish crackers, his finger). I have bought two bottles of mustard in the past three weeks. No joke. I have always been fond of mustard, but he is taking this to new extremes. His fingers seem to have a yellow hue to them.

The only way Sam will walk down the stairs is to put both feet on each step. He is terrified to walk down the stairs like he should (one foot on each step). He is convinced he will fall. It takes forever to get him up and down a flight of steps. I often carry him up and down the stairs at church, but I'm not exactly graceful and worry I am going to trip and kill us both.

Nolan does not like people to touch his feet or his ears. It takes at least two of us to hold him down to clip his toenails. It's very traumatic for all involved. And the other day he scratched his ear. The dried blood stayed there until his next bath because he screamed and threw a fit every time I attempted to wipe it off.

For the love of sprinklers

Sam is still obsessed with underground sprinklers. He was in seventh heaven last weekend when Bill took him to Home Depot and Menards to buy supplies to add another zone of sprinkling to our front yard. Bill said he handed Sam a sprinkler as soon as they got in the store and Sam was content to hold it for the rest of the trip (and talk non-stop about sprinklers. If you've met Sam, you know what I mean).

Here is Sam supervising Bill to make sure he's burying everything correctly:

Sam and Nolan watch as Bill tests the sprinklers for the first time this season (shortly afterward, I had three boys who couldn't explain to me how they got wet):

This is a great picture. Ummm...it appears Nolan has a bladder issue and that Sam is very amused by it:

Observances

Monday night, I made a frozen pizza. Dinner had to be quick and easy because we all went to the chiropractor at 5:45 (ahhh heaven!), so it was almost 6:30 by the time we got home. Before I put the pizza in the oven, I carefully moved as many of the toppings as I could off of 1/4 of the pizza. My boys don't like ANY toppings on their pizza (weirdos) and it's a time-saver to move the toppings before the cheese melts. Then, just because I could, I moved all the black olives onto Bill's portion of the pizza. I hate black olives. I wonder if Bill noticed that 80% of the olives were on his slices.

As TJ finished up his dinner, he commented that the guy who made our pizza was a really nice guy. I asked him why he thought that and he said, "Because! He made sure there were no icky things on my piece."

Oh sure. Give some unknown frozen pizza guy all the credit!

Sam has been spending quite a bit of time in the bathroom. Whenever he has to go potty, he sits on the toilet for a couple minutes before he goes. So, he's been looking around the bathroom quite a bit. He's fascinated with our shower curtain, which has a pattern of different flowers on it. He asked me what kind one of the flowers was, and I told him it was a daisy, just like his friend Daisy at church. He said, "Oh." A minute later he pointed at a different flower and said, "This flower is a TJ. Just like my friend TJ."

Cute. Wrong, but cute. And I'm glad he considers TJ to be his friend.

Miles Parker Van Dop

Miles Parker Van Dop, May 4, 2010 at 2:32 a.m. 6 pounds, 7 oz. 18 inches long.

Baby Miles made his entrance very early this morning. Sarah was scheduled to be induced this Friday, but that date apparently didn't work well for Miles. Sarah's water broke after dinner last night. She was sitting on the living room floor playing with Clark when she felt it pop. She said she jumped up and got in the hallway as fast as she could (who wants to clean amniotic fluid out of carpet??) By the time my mom got to the house to retrieve Clark, towels were down all over the hallway, and Sarah had changed her clothes twice. I am SO glad my water never broke until I got to the hospital!

Clark and my mom walked over last night to let us know that Miles was on his way. I asked Clark where his mom was, and he thought it over for a minute. Then he said, "She broke her glass of water and her pants got all wet. So Daddy took her to the hospital." Classic!

Miles is a keeper. Here's a few pics to enjoy: