Beatlemania continues

A few weeks ago I picked up an old VHS of Yellow Submarine from a thrift store. The kids have been watching it and love it. I've watched a few minutes here and there- it's weird. But the music is obviously awesome and the kids love that too. Here's my Dad singing one of the hits from the movie (notice he doesn't need to read along with the karaoke, he knows all the words):

We were listening to this song in the car recently, and Maryn was singing along. After the chorus "will you still need me, will you still feed me" Maryn said "I think he can feed himself, can't he?" Let's hope so.

Jonas loves to sing along to the Beatles too. His favorite song is Hello, Goodbye, but he can't sing all the words as quickly as they do in the song. So he still sings "you say goodbye and I say hello" but he's about a whole phrase behind.

In other funny-things-kids-say news lately: we were eating at a 50s diner type restaurant last weekend and ordered the usual burgers fries and shake for every one. When they brought out the shakes first before everything else, Seth looked at me wide-eyed and said "Do we get dessert first?" Some sort of alternate universe, the 50s. On that same occasion, the two couples dining next to us were very elderly. I said to Jon "they were probably our age in the actual 50s", kind of a funny realization. Where will we be sitting in 50 years?

swim team

We signed Seth up for swim team this summer- eight weeks of one hour practices five days per week. Technically, he was on the "pre-swim" team. This meant that practices were basically large group lessons and we didn't have to go to swim meets if we didn't want to.

My hope was that having Seth in the pool for 5 hours per week would turn him into this totally awesome swimmer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that all those hours in the pool actually helped to improve his strokes. The time that Jon spent with him one-on-one was way more beneficial. But he really liked being on the swim team and he now has a sweet tan.

After hearing about swim meets from other swimmers, he asked me when he was going to get to swim in one. So we all went to the last home meet of the season a few weeks ago. He swam in two events, one relay and one race- both 25m freestyle. Below is a video of the second race, he swam against the only other 6 year old boy at the meet. You can see at the end of the video the guy who was timing him was motioning him to hurry up (I think he got tired towards the end of the race). His official time was 48.67 seconds.

The meet eventually got rained out, which we were kind of glad about (who knew swim meets were so long!).

finish Kindergarten- check!

Seth finished Kindergarten on June 3 (after having to make up 3 snow days).

Last day of Kindergarten.

First Day of Kindergarten, August 2008

Seth had a great school year and truly loved everything about it! He had an awesome art teacher who came in every Friday morning and taught them actual art concepts along with how to cut and paste. He said that was his favorite part of school. He also had great PE and music teachers- those classes alternated everyday. In music, they did a whole unit on Indian music and each kid got to make an instrument- Seth made a tambura.
His best friend, Brennan was in his class all year. And since there are only two classes per grade in their school, they have a 50/50 chance of repeating the fun!
Seth did pretty well in his subjects- but really excelled in reading. His teacher told me that at the end of this school year, his reading level was a whole year ahead (end of first grade). We're determined to keep this ability going but having him read multiple books every day this summer. He's doing great so far. Seth also did well in math- he caught on to the concepts of addition and subtraction quickly. He like to sit and write out math problems for himself or have us write some for him. He can add multiple digit numbers together and carry numbers as well.
His handwriting is pretty poor though, he still writes using capital letters a lot. So we are trying to work on that at home this summer too.
Seth rode the bus to school almost every day. His was the last stop, so when the bus picked him up at the end of our street at 8am, it took him directly to school. I usually picked him up everyday though, otherwise he would have been on the bus for 45 minutes or so after school. He really liked riding the bus.

Seth has started piano lessons this summer and is doing pretty well and not tired of it yet. He has a great teacher who is very patient and jokes a lot- so his lessons are always fun. He's also on a swim team and goes to practice every weekday morning for an hour. Slowly but surely he is getting better and better at swimming. He understands the basic concepts but he is not very strong and his strokes are really wild. I'm hoping that after this summer, he'll be able to swim across the pool without stopping.

He is a good boy and we love him so much!

my two little boys

could not be more different....
Tonight we were at an outdoor concert ("Blues, Brews and BBQ").  The kids all got their faces painted and a balloon tied to their wrists (both were free- you can tell by the quality of the "baseball" on Jonas's face).  Jon pointed out to the kids a red balloon flying way up high in the sky.  Jonas was fascinated by it, looked at the red balloon tied to his wrist and said "Mommy- I want my balloon go up too!"  (He has suddenly started to speak in complete sentences!)  I spent the next few minutes explaining to him that his balloon was going to go bye-bye.  He seemed excited about it, so I took the balloon off his wrist and he let it go.  He was totally elated and watched the balloon until he couldn't see it anymore yelling "bye-bye balloon" over and over.  Seth and Maryn still had their balloons but Jonas didn't care that he didn't have one anymore. 

In complete contrast to Jonas's excitement- Seth completely fell apart crying and saying "He should have just given his balloon to me!  Can we go back and get him another red balloon?"  He was totally distraught for the rest of the evening, crying and saying things like "I wish balloons would never pop.  How does the helium get out of the balloon anyway?  Is that balloon going to go all the way up to outer space?  Is it going to get to heaven?"

caution and control-----curiosity and adventure

my kids....

unfortunately do a lot of this.....

The funny thing about this picture is- it shows how Maryn and Jonas pretty much copy exactly what Seth does. If Seth lays down on the floor, then Maryn does too (usually very close up next to him) followed by Jonas not long after.

what we've been up to

The last few weeks have turned out to be really really busy for our family. Jon is trying to finish up his semester, the rest of us had (in random order) book club, Primary meeting, enrichment, swim lessons, open house at school, father/son campout, ballet, English Dept. party, school half day, activity day girls, mother's day crafts in Seth's class and at church yesterday...phew. Thankfully I had an awesomely-relaxing Mother's Day (except for the afore mentioned Mother's Day craft in Primary that I was in charge of- that was crazy). Jon did a great job taking care of all my usual responsibilities so I could just chill. I wish every day was Mother's Day. (Plus, I got released from my calling yesterday- it was a great day!)

I made these rolls for enrichment and the school open house (they were on the same night). They were yummy and got eaten up quickly.

This is Maryn's new dress, thanks Aunt Wendy!

We were watching funny animal videos on You Tube. Maryn loves to snuggle Seth!

Indiana-ana Jones

I find myself with some time this evening to share some birthday party pics. Jon is in SF for an academic conference (and having the time of his life--he is in love with that city), the kids are sleeping (I hope) so I have time to finally document these events.

Seth wanted to have an Indiana Jones-themed birthday party. (Jon and I tried to talk him into having a "monster" party where the kids could make monster masks and eat fun/grotesque treats--but he was having none of that.) Having a February birthday when it's actually winter outside is a challenge because you can't really plan a party outside (at a park-with built-in entertainment) which leaves you with only a few options: A-- shell out $150+ to have your party indoors at a restaurant/play gym, etc. B-- have your party at your own house. or C-- have your party outside anyway (even though it had snowed that morning) and make sure everyone brings a coat. We opted for a mix of B and C. Once that was decided--in a moment of mental weakness I told Seth he could invite 9 friends. Ten 6 year-old boys in my house, at the same time, what the heck was I thinking? (Luckily, 2 didn't come.)

The party guests (counter-clockwise, L to R) Finn, Seth, Ryan, David, Srijan, Christian, Brennan, and Elijah.

Special thanks to Grandma B and Aunt Carlie for many great ideas for Indiana Jones-themed party games. We played "put the gold coin in the chest", IJ Bingo, and Jon put together an awesome treasure hunt which included some outdoors fun. (There wasn't enough hats to go around, so you can see that one party guest settled for Maryn's pink cowgirl hat!)

As part of the treasure hunt, Jon had them watch a scene from the end of "last crusade" when Indy has to walk on stones labeled with letters, spelling "Jehovah". Then, he had the boys act it out by walking on our kitchen tiles labeled with letters to spell "birthday".

Dig for a buried clue in the sand pit (aka- sandbox turtle).

Balance on the beam and do jumping jacks.

Touch a friend on the nose.
The treasure hunt ended (after finding the treasure) with Jon pulling out his old Construx set.Seth got some cool presents that he really liked- 2 Lego sets and a Webkinz (among others).Seth was a little embarrassed by the Happy Birthday singing. And we had to do it twice because of an overzealous party guest who blew out the candles before Seth did.

Overall, I think the party went well. I felt badly that I didn't make a cool cake and I didn't really work that hard at planning a bunch of activities. But truthfully, I don't think Seth noticed and the boys seemed to have a lot of fun (especially during the treasure hunt). This February birthday party thing is always going to be hard as long as we live here!

Happy Birthday, Seth!

einstein

I heard on NPR last Tuesday that the widely-circulated fact that Einstein failed math is wrong. I was glad to hear that because I never really believed it anyway.

My first little son turns 6 today (my second little son will turn 2 tomorrow). Sometimes I worry about Seth because he seems totally addicted to media-based entertainment. He watched a lot of TV as a baby, from about 6 months on, because I went back to school and got a bachelor's degree (graduating while 8.5 months pregnant with Maryn) and I needed something to occupy his time so I could study. As I'm typing this, it kind of sounds like he was neglected. In my defense, he only watched good quality kids shows (with no commercials) or baby einstein videos. So I felt okay about it at the time. There was really nothing else I could do.

Anyway--so sometimes I think that because of this, he developed a sort of dependence on media for entertainment. He is constantly asking to watch a movie, play computer or play Wii...until one afternoon last week....

He's been working on adding in math in school, really only adding to 10. One night, Jon showed him how to add 2 and three digit numbers vertically in columns. Seth totally grasped on to this concept and started writing his own math problems to solve. Example: 213+215 or 1111+245. It was so cute how excited he was about it! Then, he started writing problems that required carrying numbers and got really confused. So later the same night, Jon showed him how to carry numbers. Since then, Seth has been creating and solving his own addition problems, complete with one or two carried numbers in each. The next couple of days after that, he came home from school and said,

"Mom, I want to do more math problems."

You can imagine my shock when he said this and not "Mom can I play Wii?" Last Sunday at church, he got a birthday gift in Primary--a little pen and matching notebook. He said,

"Oh good! Now I can do more math problems!"

Since his birthday party though (last Saturday), he has wanted to play with his new toys, so math has taken a back burner. Hopefully, not for long, I really wonder if he will always stay this excited about it?

birthday boys

More pics and party recaps to follow...

this socks

I caved and let Seth have a friend over after school this past week. Not that I don't allow this- I do, he has friends over frequently- friends whose parents I know well. But this was a boy from school, his mom called me up out of the blue and asked to arrange a play date. I immediately offered to have him over to our house. I'm just not sure I'm ready to let Seth go over to a friend's house where I don't know their family at all.

The afternoon went pretty well and the boys got along fine. The only problem was that this friend kept saying "this sucks". I kept telling him, "we don't say 'sucks' in our house". To which Seth said "Mom, it's okay to say 'socks' if you're talking about your feet, right?"

I wish he could stay this innocent.

rockstar in training

Seth has always been a big fan of Coldplay.  His first favorite song was Fix You off of the X&Y album.  Recently, their new album Viva La Vida has been a hit in our house as well.  The kids love the title track and will sing along to the "oh oh oh" chorus.  But Seth knows all the rest of the words too.  Jon took this video over Thanksgiving weekend in Tucson.  

Halloween 2008

Happy Halloween to all!

For costumes this year, Seth chose to be Indiana Jones (thanks to Aunt Carlie for the hat and "man-purse") Maryn chose to be a kitty, and Jonas was a cowboy (with a too big hat and no boots- don't worry, he still looked cute). Jon was also Indiana Jones for some of the festivities (picture below).

We participated in a variety of Halloween activities this year: our ward trunk-or-treat, trick-or-treating at Daddy's office building, and trick-or-treating with our friends on Halloween night. (See those pumpkin buckets in the picture above? By the time we were done with all of these festivities, we had accumulated 6 bucket-fulls of candy. Sick. We let the kids pick out 10 pieces each and are going to give the rest to our Bishop- he keeps a stash in his office.)

Seth had been practicing the Indiana Jones half-smile, it shows up in a lot of the pictures.

Jonas's bandana functioned well as a bib to keep candy goo off of his coat.

By the time we remembered to take a picture of Indy father and son- Seth had had enough of the festivities.

The next few pics are of our kids and their BFFs. We all went trick-or-treating together in their neighborhood. (Which is a few residential streets away from a fancy country club, we even went to his house- but he wasn't handing out subs.)

Henry Jones, Jr. and Henry Jones, III.Little witch and kitty girl.

I'm sure the kids had a lot of fun over the past few days. They enjoyed trick-or-treating (for while, until they realized how much walking it took) and enjoying playing with their friends late into the evening (past their bedtimes). Jonas showed no hesitation and walked right up to people on their porches with his hands outstretched. We also had freakishly-good, AZ-type fall weather, not too cold at all.

As usual, for the grandparents, more pics of the events can be seen here.

Halloween preview

Halloween cookies (on the good ship lollipop)

Last week, the kids had a great time decorating cookies. After the sticky mess of frosting and sprinkles was cleaned up, I realized that I probably shouldn't have had them do this right before dinner.

Jonas (with pink eye) licked all the frosting up with the little knife and left the cookie.

This is pretty much what Maryn does when I ask her to smile, she screams.

For more pictures of the event, click here.

I'll end with a little Shirley lovin'.

some recent funnies

Here are a few things that have happened lately that I want to remember:

While in the car with Jon (I think G-pa Stone was there too), Seth said "You know what Dad, grass is like the Earth's hair."

Further proof that Maryn is almost exactly like my sister Wendy- While clipping Maryn's nails last night, I noticed that a few were very short already while the rest were all the same length. When I asked her about it, she said "I pulled them off with my teeth." Yes, folks- at age three, she bites her nails.

We have been listening to a CD of Disney songs (Jon made a random mix). One of the songs is "Davy Crocket" to which Maryn sings "Baby, Baby Crockett, king of outer space."

milestone reached by brute force

I went to pick up Seth and Maryn from a birthday party on Saturday afternoon to find Seth sitting on his friend's dad's lap crying and bleeding. Apparently, Seth and two of his buddies were wrestling in the jumping castle when Seth took a knee to the chin. The impact knocked one tooth completely out and loosened the other one significantly.
It took him a good hour to calm down and stop whining about his tooth. Finally he said to me "Mom, I can feel the space that my tooth left in my mouth and I'm getting kind of excited." (Excited about the tooth fairy, which he had never heard of, which I had just finished telling him about, which now I regret doing.) He had trouble eating for the rest of the day because he kept forgetting about the remaining wobbly tooth and biting into hard things like bread.
"Mom, how is my tooth ever going to feel better?"
"When you decide to be brave and let me pull it out."
"Will it hurt?"
"No more than having your other one knocked out."

He woke up the next morning with four shiny quarters under his pillow. (Tooth fairy payments have increased significantly since I was 5 and losing teeth.) He spent the whole morning wiggling and fretting over the remaining tooth until finally he came up to me and said "Mom, I'm ready to be brave." (I admit, I was still a little nervous to pull it out, my biggest fear was that I wouldn't get it out on the first try.) After one swift yank later, the deed was done. He didn't even cry and patiently bit down on a wad of tissue paper until the bleeding stopped. That tooth still had a considerable amount of root on it (about 3-4 mm for you dentally-inclined types). It probably wouldn't have fallen out on its own for 2-3 more months.

I think he's going to have those two huge holes in his mouth for a while, so I'm really glad it wasn't his top teeth.

Seth's just excited to have earned two dollars in two days.

overheard at breakfast this morning

(Jon and I were in the living room, the kids were eating breakfast in the kitchen.)

Seth- "Mom's really the boss.  I know Dad's bigger than her, but she really is still the boss."

Maryn- "No, Dad's the boss!"

Seth- "No, Mom!"

Maryn- "No, both of them!"

Jon- "Maryn's right, now quit arguing!"

Seth and I know the truth.

what do you do when...

you don't like your kid's teacher at school?

I went in to Seth's class today to help with art. I was really excited to see how he interacted with his classmates and whether he was good at following directions (because he doesn't do well in this area at home). What I wasn't prepared for was the cold shoulder the class and I got from his teacher.

I'm not sure what I expected, but something along the lines of...
to kids- "Good Morning, class. We have a helper today, Seth's mom."
to me- "Thank you so much for coming in to help us out today."

What I got was...
to kids- "Sit down and get our your books." "Close your books and listen to the annoucements." to me- "What's your name again?"

Maybe she was having a bad day? (She is pregnant.) I really hope that's it and that she isn't always like this. I guess I was expecting someone more outgoing and energetic, someone who seems like they actually like kids. Do I have a starry-eyed expectation because my only examples are my mom and sister (who are both fabulous kindergarten teachers)?

My biggest consolation is that I have very few foggy memories about my Kindergarten experience. I don't remember anything about my teacher other than that she was really old. So I don't think that one sub-par teacher is going to make or break his elementary experience.

Right?!

first day of Kindergarten.....the afternoon after

To begin, I have four words for you....THE BUS WAS LATE!

It was the longest 8 minutes of my life.

The little kids and I sat at the bus stop for about 10 minutes, and when his arrival time came and went (3:27), my head was immediately filled with all the scenarios of what could possibly go wrong and why the heck he wasn't here yet.  I had to call Jon to talk me down, I was giving myself an anxiety attack.  I don't think the convenience of the bus is worth all this.  (Plus he was on the bus for almost an hour and his school is only 1.5 miles away.  I think I'm going to rethink this bus thing.)

But when we were finally home safe and sound, I was able to ask Seth about his day.  Here are the responses I got to my many questions: 

"Mom, I need to wear tennis shoes because we do this thing called PE.  It's inside- in the same place we eat lunch.  There's a bunch of different things you can do, it's kind of like the Olympics."  (Like I said, we watched a lot a lot of Olympics these past two weeks.)

"I didn't really like lunch.  It was kind of like a taco with red sauce."  (It was a pizza quesadilla.)  "So, I just ate the applesauce." (NOT the salad.)  "And you know what?  Dad was right- they did have chocolate milk!"  (Jon had told him last night during dinner that he could drink chocolate milk at school every day if he wanted to.  I did not agree.)  So his first school lunch was applesauce and chocolate milk.

"When my teacher said that everyone needed to go sit on the carpet, I was the first one there!"  (He also got 4 "super stars", some sort of recognition for being good.)

"Mom, I didn't think about you at all until I was on the bus."

I guess that's good.  (sniff)

first day of Kindergarten

The important business of today is.....Seth started Kindergarten!

Lucky for us, his school doesn't start until 8:30- we aren't very early risers in our family. This morning, Seth came in my room at 6:45 and said "Do I need to get up and get ready for school?" We told him he couldn't get up until 7:00 and exactly 15 minutes later he walked back into our room. He had picked out the clothes for his first day weeks ago- he was so excited to wear his "army" shirt (thanks, Aunt Wendy!)

The morning went pretty smoothly, except for breakfast. I'm sure he was excited and nervous, but Seth hardly ate a thing. We all piled in the car and drove the 5 minutes it takes to get Seth to his new school. Jon waited in the car with the younger kids while I took Seth up to the front doors of his school and showed him where to stand in line. He got a little nervous and teary standing there with me, but he got it together in time for his teacher to appear and take them all inside.

Seth's school is a very old red brick split-level schoolhouse (I think the sign on the outside says 1927). The enrollment is very small, with only 2 classes per grade K-5. And to make things even better, his best friend, Brennan, is in the same class!

It's been about two hours since I dropped him off. The anxiety has worn off a bit, but I still miss him. What I really miss is his helpfulness in taking care of Maryn and Jonas. He is really good at keeping an eye on Jonas- making sure he stays out of trouble and making sure Maryn doesn't bully him. I've already had to break up squabbles this morning between the two kids.

I expect the anxiety to creep up again around the time school gets out. I'm letting him ride the bus home and I'm very, very nervous about that. But in this case, my logical brain won over my emotional brain because if he rides the bus home, it means that I don't have to wake up Jonas from his nap to go and pick him up. So I'm praying that the bus experience is good and safe. Only 5 more hours until he's supposed to be home.

My baby started school! I hope this gets easier with subsequent children.