c little (or should I say big) update

charlie is growing up more and more every day. he will be 3 and a 1/2 on October 9th! ever since he started preschool he seems to be maturing. he still has meltdowns and crying fits, but he is saying the sweetest things and is fun to be around. I think preschool has made him appreciate being with me and his sisters more because he will say things like “I yuv you mom. I yuv being with you. thank you for caring for me mom.”.

he is also picking up on the phrases I say and repeating them to me when he thinks it would work.

“mom – can you just trust me on this?” (when he wants to get/do something he knows I wouldn’t allow)

“mom, I need you to obey me.” (this gets me frustrated and we sit down and have a talk about how he can’t make me obey him. he can ASK me to do/help him with things)

he has learned the art of talking back. I will say “charlie, you need to sit down” he will respond “you need to sit down”. he then gets an explanation that that is disrespectful and called “talking back” and he will get a punishment if he continues to do that.

when putting him to bed a few weeks ago, I asked him if he wanted to curl up on my chest like when he was a baby during prayer time. he decided to try it and now whenever I am putting him to bed he asks to “be held like when he was a baby” before we start praying. so sweet and it is incredible to feel how big he is when he lays on me. his legs are down past my knees!

charlie really likes – maybe even loves – preschool. this is big for charlie. usually if there is something that I want him to do (go into the RAC childcare, go to SBS childcare, etc) he will put up a little stink. he won’t cry going in, or cry before going, but when I mention that we are going to do something he will say “I don’t want to”. obviously, this never changes anything, but it is sometimes hard for me to hear every time we were going to the RAC (and he did love the childcare – he always came out smiling and sweaty from running around). however, when I mention preschool the mornings we are going he will pause and then say “fun! I like going to preschool!”. it is wonderful to hear that come out of his mouth. I am still not really sure what he does because he is not the kid to chat about exactly what he did each day. I hear bits and pieces about different friend names, animals he played with (stuffed) and lately he has been singing a song they must sing when they start. what I love most about the preschool is how relaxed it is. they are always playing outside at pickup time. the focus is on fun and learning to play and interact with other kids – not learning numbers, letters, etc. I pray he continues to develop a love for learning as this school year goes on.

charlie is also learning more and more about the Bible and is excited about it. last night, it was getting late and I needed to put dinner together. I asked charlie what leapfrog video he wanted to watch with the girls while I made dinner. he said he wanted to watch the Bible dvd because then sisters could learn about Jesus. how sweet!

then a few mornings ago at breakfast time when I started praying charlie stopped me and told me he wanted to pray. I let him and this is a bit of his prayer. It was mumbled, but this is what he was trying to get out “Our Father hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses (then he skipped a part and I started correcting him and he told me that he was just going to pray…alright – fine by me!)…on earth as it is in heaven. thank you for a mom who cares about me (this comes from a book we read), who I love and who loves me. thank you for cars from heaven that I love. thank you for sisters who love me. amen!”. I about melted! it was so sweet! I loved the “cars from heaven” part. at one point bill was starting his prayers with charlie with Our Father so now charlie likes to start his prayers like that.

his imagination is running wild! the last couple days he wants to pretend he is a dog named “Fendo”. I must call him by Fendo to get his attention and treat him like a dog. when I mistakenly call him charlie he corrects me. it is pretty funny.

this saturday morning – bill was home with us (first saturday we have been home and he has been around in months!) and we pulled all the kids into bed with us when we first got up (around 7:45!!). When we were laying there Charlie started telling me that we were going to get married next sunday. he carried on about loving me and wanting to get married and I thought it was so sweet and classic. I think most little boys claim they will marry their mothers at some point – because they obviously don’t know what it means. but to me it means he loves me and wants to hang out with me a lot – which makes me one happy mom.

proud of his tall tower.

 

after picking him up from preschool one morning his teacher said to me “charlie had a LOT of fun looking at a lego magazine today. he has a note in his backpack for you.”. I thought – oh no, he probably had a meltdown over it and got a little out of hand or something.

this was the note. guess it wasn’t that bad. but he will probably be getting lego magazine soon.

charlie is still such a great big brother. he loves his sisters and can be so loving towards them. frequently he will do a run by arm nudge to knock said sisters over and continues to grab baby toys from them when he is frustrated. more often than not though I hear him saying in a really high mommy voice “that’s ok ellie (I interrupt and correct him that it is claire not ellie he is with), oh, claire, you are fine. come with me over here. let me show you…”. I love that he still has a hard time (or he is lazy) telling the girls apart. cracks me up.

here is a little early morning crib wrestling.

charlie – I love you and am so proud of the little boy you are growing into. what a great job you have done being a big brother to two very busy, time consuming sisters. I love watching you play with your cars and now legos. I love hearing you repeat lightning mcqueen’s mantra “I am speed. focus”. you definitely have those things little man – focus and determination and speed.

morning, noon & night

charlie is ALWAYS playing with his lego cars. morning (with breakfast).

noon.

with friends.

and night (playing before bed). looking at the “map” to reput max schnell back together.

I take back what I said about the lego cars being for 6-12 year olds. they are pretty good for very determined almost 3.5 yr old (with occasional help from a super smart mom, bubba, uncle or dad). he has been working with these cars constantly. he puts them together, crashes them, pretends a bit, then takes them all apart and starts the rebuilding process. I love it because he plays at the table for HOURS!

I have also learned that charlie uses “CARS shirts” as conversation starters. if he sees a boy with a CARS shirt on – he will stop me and say “mom, look at that boy’s shirt!” then I will encourage him to say hi and introduce himself. then both boys will act weird and maybe say hi or say their favorite car or something. pretty cute.

what was I thinking?!!!?!?!??

this morning I loaded the girls and charlie in the car to head over to J.E.T.S. gymanstics for eleanore and claire’s first gymnastics class (well – a parent and child class). my thinking behind signing them up for this would be 1. to help give them an outlet for their endless energy and monkey climbing business 2. it would help my weeks go quickly if I fill them up (I want this year to go faster than ever – we miss seeing bill!) 3. I thought it would be good for them to have to listen to a teacher and follow more specific directions.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?!??!?

I know my honey badgers – what ever made me think they would make this easy on me? let me just say that this morning was a HOT MESS! I have never sweat so much in my life trying to chase/wrestle/contain them! and charlie was also a crying disaster! I will explain.

here we are packed up to go.

bill said to me last night – take some video so I can see how it goes. ha! this is the first and only picture I snapped on my iphone before I took them out of the stroller.  this was taken in the sibling room. it is a nice play space where the older/younger siblings or parents can hang out and watch while their siblings take lessons. it has big windows into the other rooms and I thought it was a great place. once charlie realized me and the girls were going into a different room he freaked out. you can kind of see out that window into the mini toddler gymnastics gym area. it was super cute. next week I will snap a picture of the gym rooms.

as soon as the badgers came out of the stroller they never stopped going…in opposite directions. we first went into a plain room and “warmed up” with hula hoops. they were supposed to jump into their hula hoops. instead I spent the entire time repeating “no (claire/ellie), leave your hula hoop on the floor. don’t pick it up yet”. they didn’t jump in once. I picked them in and out of the hoops over and over. by this time I just had  light sweat going on. midway through I heard charlie start crying. ugh! so I quickly left the girls and talked to charlie. showed him his markers, snack, etc. he was still not happy but I went back to the girls. we stretched our legs…meaning I stretched my legs while the girls stood up and watched everyone stretch. fail 2.

then we went into the big room. the little kids were supposed to stand on this yellow foam pad to wait while the instructor gave instructions on the circuit (cart wheel, hand stand, elevated somersault, floor somersault, etc). guess who didn’t sit on the pad?? guess who was still crying – even louder – from the sibling room? yep – my kids. at this point, I comforted charlie one more time and told him I was going to have to stay with sisters. he continued crying. when I got back into the room the girls were across the room already on the big trampoline. funny girls – run away from mom time. I grabbed them and carried them back to do the circuit. my pits were already sweated out at this point. I got them to do a few somersaults and head stands. but it would look like this – me working with claire on her somersault, ellie running across the room giggling to the big trampoline to jump a bit, me running to get ellie to bring her back to have her do a somersault while claire booked it across the room to the trampoline. can you say NOT IN CONTROL MOM??? fail 3.

on to the next circuit – balance beams. ha! they were supposed to side step, walk, leg dip on these different levels of beams (all really really low though). what I described above about working with one and having one run to the other side of the room to the trampoline happened again and again and again. I was able to get them to walk on the balance beams, but that is about it. my entire back was sweaty – dripping at this point.

side note: a wonderful, angel of a mom (who I learned later is a mom of twins – bless those moms of twins), started comforting charlie and he stopped crying. at some point a little boy let him watch him play his nintendo DS and that cured all things (charlie instantly told me he wanted a DS for his birthday. well that isn’t happening but you can watch another kid play).

on to the next circuit – bars. they had little bars to hang on, big bars to hang on, etc. at least with this one I could get them to both be on one bar so I could pin them in my arms and let them grab the bars a bit. but we were really close to the foam pit and trampoline at this point so they were super excited to try to escape and run to that. note – my kids were the only ones running away from their moms and giggling. fail 4.

last section – I was praying it would go quickly. jump down the trampoline and into the foam pit. we practiced jumping into the foam pit first. I would just plop the girls butt first into the foam. they had been waiting for this all morning and then when I did it - of course they started crying. mostly because they were freaked out about how to get out. but seriously girls – pull it together. anyway – we (thankfully the instructor took a badger at this point) walked them down the plank of a trampoline and then plopped them in the foam pit. they whined, I got them out and then they had to wait on this yellow pad until they got their stamps. I pinned them down and we waited. when the teacher had them put their hands on the walls so she could stamp them, I told the girls to stand like they were in timeout. guess what – they did it PERFECTLY – first time all day! ha! they got their stamps and thank the LORD we were out of there. I was soaked – front and back, but I didn’t care. we were finished.

when I exited the room, I thanked that savior of a mom who helped charlie. she told me she had twins and that it gets better – let’s hope so because right about now I want to hire a full time nanny. another mom looked at me and said she has 5 week old twins at home. I couldn’t even say anything encouraging – just congrats came out. I was that exhausted. it would be a lie to say “it gets easier” because as of right now – it hasn’t gotten easier – just different. I love these sweet girls more than I can even describe, but sometimes they just wipe me out.

thankfully it was only a 4 week course that I signed them up for. 1 down – 3 to go. I contemplated quitting multiple times through, but decided to stick it out – no matter how crazy or not in control mom people think I am. I do think the girls will benefit from a few weeks of directed play. but I definitely won’t be signing up for another 4 for awhile!

here were the pictures I took when we got back to the car. they were proud of their stamps.

eleanore.

claire – admiring her butterfly.

my back is already sore!

uncle tom’s visit

after dan and meg’s wedding, my brother tom came to spend almost 4 days with us. it was FANTASTIC! here is a classic uncle tom picture – reading to the girls and drinking a gumballhead.

I loved having tom here because he is so chill (hello – opposite of me!). he just goes with the flow. one morning we went to the RAC and I put the girls in childcare and charlie and uncle tom played in the neighborhood for almost 2.5 hours! they had a blast and I got a great workout. that afternoon after naps we took the kids to the RAC pool to go swimming. on thursday morning, charlie had preschool and I had a meeting so I took charlie to preschool and then headed to my meeting. uncle tom volunteered to hang with the honey badgers. his only concern – a poopy diaper. I told him that if that happened I would drive home and change it. I reassured him that they almost never poop after 9 in the morning so we were good to go. NOT. I dropped charlie off and ran a quick 3 miles before my meeting at 9:30. Just as I had finished my run I got a text…”claire pooped”. so I sped home, changed her diaper and was back to my meeting 12 minutes later. the joys of being 5-7 minutes from home.

after nap thursday we took the kids to quarry hill to look at the animals in the main lodge and “hike” (ok – walk SUPER slow) around. I was really glad to have tommy around because there were a lot of fast bikers on the paths and it would be really hard to keep all 3 kids safe on them alone. here are some cute iphone pics from our outing.

uncle tom and claire.

 

ellie and claire. investigating every single stick, tree, rock.

hmmm….this might taste ree kinda good.

this is so sweet. uncle tom and ellie holding hands. it was so cute – ellie would want to hold on really tight to your index finger when we were walking. and when you would ask claire if she wanted to hold hands she would give you a snort and quickly shake her head back and forth. then she would take off running. she was not interested in being connected to me one bit.

claire – doing some serious work with the pine needles. she was making piles and more piles and combining piles. at one time she turned around and was chewing on an old pine cone. yuck!! I tried to get all the dirt/pine cone/nastiness out of her mouth, but she still had some in and was perfectly fine with it.

charlie and uncle tom found a cave. charlie is sporting his “go pack go” sweatshirt from nana and g. pops. love football season!

this is a picture just to make us laugh. I had chopped a TON of veggies and pan fried tofu to make a big vat of red thai curry. just as we were finishing up, I told tom to add the rest of the seasoning because I thought it was lacking. we started eating it and were both commenting on how hot it was. our eyes were burning, noses running and we both didn’t remember the seasoning being that hot. then I looked on the counter and saw this…the empty cayenne seasoning! tommy had mistakenly dumped 4-7 TBSP of cayenne into the pot. so that was the end of that. we dumped it and tom ordered papa johns. at least it was funny – we laughed for a long time about it.

more uncle tom pictures. giving high fives.

uncle tom with eleanore doing her natalie morales smile.

now you can see her eyes.

uncle tom tickle time. tommy stayed with charlie this morning and played, strider biked to the park and back, etc while I took the girls to Side By Side.

more play time.

claire and uncle tom.

tommy took these pictures of charlie when they were on their strider bike outing to the park. from what I learned from tommy – in this picture he would have charlie push his bike to the top of our neighbor’s front lawn and ride down the hill. I think he was trying to teach him to mountain bike.

coming down.

tom brought a cliff bar along for a snack. good idea!

on the way home.

wrestling honey badgers can be hard work.

it was so precious. for some of the time we were hanging around the house – tommy would lay on the couch or sit on the couch. the kids loved it and would just climb all over him, bring him books, or lay with him like charlie is here. how sweet!

he even copied uncle tom by crossing his feet. thanks uncle tom for spending some of your precious vacation with us. we loved the company!

rewind…july 20, 2012–m&e’s wedding

since I am on a wedding kick and have a free moment with bill’s computer (where the pictures were stored) I wanted to update the blog with pictures from mary & elliot’s wedding back in july. the wedding was incredibly beautiful – the ceremony took place in stillwater, mn at Camrose Flower Hill Garden and the reception was in Uptown at Calhoun Beach Club. fabulous venues as you will soon see.

getting beautified by margit in the bridal cottage.

katie, me and margit discussing our beautification.

gorgeous dotes and bubba having a photo shoot before mary saw elliot.

all of the bridesmaids. grace robia (elliot’s sister), margit, kate (college friend), marley (maid of honor – life long friend), mary, hannah, katie, trinara (all college friends), me.

me and dotes!

I realize the picture is a little wack – just me. but I figured if I didn’t include it in the blog it would be lost forever. ha!

love these additional sisters.

daddy and claire.

daddy and eleanore.

getting the kids for the pictures.

my sweet family.

the famous picture from facebook. 81 likes people!

how perfect is this picture of margit, pete and paul??!?!? love it!

charlie jollifing paul.

dotes and her daughter from the Lord – Claire.

this picture cracks me up. whose idea was it to put the beautiful, happy bride and groom with all of the nieces and nephews??

entire schmitt fam!

sweet.

mary’d!

the stunning Calhoun Beach Club.

the flowers were incredible. mary and laura and hand collected all of the milk vases at antique shops over the course of year.

classic dotes laugh.

this is the classic stacking picture with the seltzer family. bill, jonathan, pete, charlie and mary. in order of age.

oh yeah! we ended the night with dippin’ dots. mmmm.