Fun Songs

We sing songs ALL. DAY. LONG. Most of them are the typical songs - itsy bitsy spider, patty cake, ring around the rosey, row row row your boat. But there are a few really fun ones that we have learned at school and I thought I'd share them with you all (you might know them), since I know a lot of you have wee little ones of your own. You will have to just add your own little melody because I'm not recording myself singing for you all.

Elephant Song
One elephant went out to play, out on a spider's web one day
He had such ENORMOUS fun (make a huge circle with your hands)
That he called for the other elephants to come

HEY ELEPHANTS (scream this really loud)

(then pat on the floor like a stampede of elephants are coming

Repeat for as long as you want (two elephants, three, four up to 100 if you want). HA

Bumble Bee Song
I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee (have your hands cupped together and swaying them)
Won't my mommy be so proud of me
I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (hold your hands up to your ear to hear it buzzing)
OUCH! it stung me (jump and let your hands open)

If Jack doesn't nap during the day, he will just sing up in his bed for 2 hours, well that or read books. These are two of his favorite songs right now though.

In other news: Potty training is going great. Jack is really getting the hang of it. We were at Tom's hockey games last week and he told us he had to go during the game. I was impressed. He's not a fan of pooping on the toilet yet, he usually saves that for nap time or bedtime. He also sits on the toilet, but faces the back seat of the toilet. Therefore, I still need to hold him. I'm not sure how I'm going to get away from doing this. I'll take holding him on the toilet verses emptying the potty chair any day though! Any suggestions?

Our Christmas decorations are up, our advent wreath is made, and a few presents are wrapped and ready to go. We still need to get our new lights on the outside of our house too. Pictures will be up later. For now I'm kicking it into birthday mode. Jack's 3rd birthday party is in less than two weeks! We need to get rid of Bailey for that day. Any takers? :-)

PS - enjoy the Christmas music I added on here!

Monday, Monday

Happy Monday!

I have been SO bad with laundry lately. But what annoys me the most about laundry, besides the folding and putting away of the clothes, is how EVERY matching pair of the boy's sock somehow gets eaten by our machine. Seriously, look:



These guys have been riding solo for over three weeks now. WHERE DO THEIR MATCHING ONES DISAPPEAR TO? Seriously. I'm giving them one more week, then I'm just going to throw them away.

On another note. We are going cold turkey on diapers with Jack. I've gotten some great ideas from the mom's in our ECFE class and a lot of them have said how pull ups don't really teach your kid much about potty training. I completely agree. They are a lot easier to use when first getting into potty training though. But after a while, Jack continued to pee in the pull ups just like diapers. So we are going full force. I'm planning on cleaning up a lot of accidents and we are wearing old pants the whole week. I was going to let him just be naked - but it's FREEZING! If I had to leave the house to go somewhere, I'd probably put him in a pull up though, I'm not that brave. Well at least not yet!

Finn is taking more and more steps every day. Yesterday he was up to 10! He's a machine. We are SO excited for Thanksgiving. And I'm also excited to hit up Black Friday. My mom and I haven't decided where we are going yet. But it's going to be so fun!

Chloe Mae Blair

Happy Birthday (yesterday), Chloe! Our good friends Kelly and Chuck Blair welcomed their THIRD daughter into the world yesterday. Little Chloe Mae joins her two sisters, Ruby Ann (our God Daughter) and Hailey Joy.  I wanted to get this post up soon because we've got some out of state/country friends who I'm sure are dying to see pictures of the sweet baby girl. So enjoy them. She is just a little munchkin and is the sweetest thing in the world.

 

Auntie Alissa


Auntie Molly







The only thing more exciting than one of your best friends having a baby, is being able to watch that baby grow up and having your kids be friends. I'm dreading the day when my boys and the Blair girls realize what cooties are and refuse to hang out with one another. Oh well by that time, the kids will be in school full time and Kelly and I will actually get to hang out during the days ALONE. And by that time maybe some of our other good friends will be at home mommies too and we can go play with that baby! I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Congratulations Chuck, Kelly, Ruby, Hailey and Chloe. Your family is PERFECT!

Video Time

I thought Jack's swimming lessons pictures would be more fun to look at with music in the background. I also have a few videos in the mix too. Sorry for the bad quality of some of the pictures, they were all taken through glass! Be sure to check out the last video of our little Finners taking some steps.

Seven Quick Takes

It's been a while since I've done seven quick takes and I don't have a main "topic" I feel like writing about right now, so maybe I can come up with seven random things to share! 

1.

 Jack LOVES his school. We had ECFE this morning. Every morning when Jack wakes up the first thing he does is go to the Activity Board and change the day. When he figures out that it is Tuesday he screams "We are going to SCHOOL today!" it is so cute! Even the teacher told me today how much fun Jack is having in the class. And when we are in the car coming home, he always tells me "I had SO much fun at school today" This makes me happy.

2.

Speaking of school, I have started the processes of narrowing down preschools for Jack. We are definitely enrolling him for the fall next year. We have a few places in mind, some are public some are private, the prices are all relatively the same so it's just going to be a matter of our gut feelings on the teachers and the facilities. I've gotten some great recommendations from other mom's in Jack's ECFE class. Tom and I are torn between doing two or three days. The classes are only 2 1/2 hours, either morning or afternoon. I'd prefer the morning. I'm also planning on taking Finn to his ECFE classes while Jack is at preschool. Finn will just be in the sibling care room again in the Spring while I'm at class with Jack.

3.

Finn took his first official steps yesterday. The first time he did 3 steps up in Jack's room when we were reading books right before lunch. Then when Tom got home last night, Finn walked 3-4 steps over to him. Jack was SO excited and laughing hysterically. Finn looks so funny walking because he is SO LITTLE! Oh and another funny Finn story: sometimes when he's crawling he thinks that by lowering his head pointing to the ground it will make him go faster or something. And yesterday I seriously watched him crawl RIGHT into the wall and just pound his head. I couldn't help but chuckle just a little bit while consoling him.

4.

 Finn is officially down to one nap a day. I thought I would dread this because it makes the morning time that much longer and that much harder to actually shower and get ready and clean breakfast dishes, etc. But he's been taking close to a 3 hour nap during the day so I'm not going to complain!

5.

We got Jack signed up for his next swimming class at Foss starting in January sometime I think (they are like 16 weeks long, it's awesome). The first 4 weeks a parent is in the water with the child and then for the rest of the classes it's just the kids and the teacher. I have a feeling we are going to have some issues with one of us not being in the water, but we'll work through it. Last week they tried to get Jack to wear goggles. That did not work.

6.

I'm finally getting my hair cut next Wednesday. I'm SO excited. I'm not going to chop it off or anything, but it just needs to be cleaned up. And foiled. I LOVE getting my hair done. 

7.

It took me forever to come up with seven things to write about. I hope this post didn't bore you to death. I'll leave you with two pics of Jack-a-Roo.  

 

Winter Wonderland - November 2010

Saturday morning we woke up to this
Needless to say I opted out of my 7:30 AM workout class. We did however all go to Jack's swimming lessons. Grandma and Grandpa Starkey came to watch too. I was able to take a few pictures and videos of Jack and I'm working on that post so stay tuned. I snapped some great pictures of Jack playing outside in the snow. ENJOY!










This morning after breakfast Jack and I went out again and I pulled him around the front yard in the sled and we made a snowman! I need to find something for Finn to wear outside, I know he'd love the snow too and if I'm going to survive winter I'm going to have to be able to take both of them outside!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. GO WAYZATA TROJANS :-)

Craft Time & Hockey Season

Jack LOVES arts and crafts. Every week when we go to school, he makes at least 3 art projects. I've been hanging them on our door so he can admire his work. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with all of them. Throw them away? Anyway, I'm trying to get more motivated to do more arts and crafts here at our house. So yesterday, in honor of Thanksgiving being right around the corner - we made a turkey!

In other news, hockey season officially begins on Monday. I believe the try outs are starting on Monday and then by Thanksgiving weekend, the Turkey Trot Tournament, they usually have the teams narrowed down. I'm going to try to bring both of the boys to as many home games as I can this year. I think Finn will fit just fine in the baby bjorn and Jack can run around. They also have a room that overlooks the arena filled with potluck type food that the parents bring in every home game and we can eat dinner there. Tom really loves coaching and I think the kids really look up to him and admire that he played Division I hockey. It's stressful for me because I'm on my own for dinner with the boys five nights a week now. But hockey season only goes until the end of February, so I can do it. And like I've said before, it CAN'T be worse than last year!

Almost First Steps

As much as I'm not looking forward to having TWO boys to chase, it's pretty fun trying to get Finn to take his first steps. I really thought he was going to take one this afternoon.

Bath Time

The boys LOVE bath time. I got out of bath duty to snap some cute pics the other night. And I thought I'd share some of them. Notice how Finn has that sponge number in his mouth in every picture. The kid cracks me up.

Refreshed (sort of)

I had been looking forward to this past Saturday for over a month. A while ago, my dear friend Kelly asked me if I wanted to partake in a spa day with her before her baby #3 arrived. I double checked with Tom and then told her to sign me up! But at this time in September, the first available weekend that worked for us both was the first Saturday in November. After we made the appointment we laughed because Kelly would be 38 weeks pregnant. That's a huge belly!  We decided to make an entire day of it. We met for an early lunch, then off to our hour long body massages and hour long facials. Then we needed some massive amounts of caffeine to wake up before we headed to Archiver's for some scrapbooking. I decided to take on the huge task of actually making my Christmas cards this year. As my fingers were literally bleeding on my 90th card - I told myself I would never do this again. HA HA. All in all, it was SUCH a fun day! Kelly and I never really get to hang out without kids! The only thing that would have made yesterday the best day would have been if Kelly's water broke :-)

The past week or so both of my boys have been driving me crazy. Jack is in constant negotiating mode. Sometimes he is the best eater in the world, other times he won't eat a morsel of food ALL. DAY. LONG. Remember my last post about the amazing dinner I was making in the crock pot? It seriously turned out amazing! Almost like a holiday dinner. Jack took one look at it and said - I don't like this. I'm done. UGHHHH. I'm not a short order cook, so he sat at the table whining without food while Tom, Finn and I finished. It was so annoying. Then in Target last week while I was checking out, Jack sat on the floor playing with this stupid sucker that had batteries and was spinning around. I told him it was time to go home and eat lunch, let's go. He turned his selective hearing on and ignored me. So I crouched down, took the sucker from him, and made him stand up. He made his body go completely limp and started screaming. OMG. So I picked him up and carried him in the most awkward position possible while pushing the cart with Finn in it all the way out to our car, he was literally kicking and screaming. Oh and another really embarrassing thing that Jack has been doing is - he's been saying "who's that guy" to EVERYONE out in public. They could be a little girl, an elderly woman, a girl my age. Doesn't matter, everyone is a guy. He'll either say that - or he'll call the stranger Grandma or Grandpa. So embarrassing. Sometimes I just pretend like Jack didn't say anything and other times I will correct him.

Then there is Finn. He has a cold, is probably teething (when aren't kids), he's always on the go. I'm just so frustrated that I can't do some of the things that I did with Jack. Take for example sippy cups. When Jack was this age, we were putting his formula in sippy cups and got rid of the bottles. Finn just doesn't get it. He'll drink water out of them with dinner, but he won't drink his formula out of them. I know it's not that big of a deal, I'm just worried that we'll have a hard time getting him to drink whole milk when he turns one, and this boy needs all the fattening up he can get! PS - he's standing by himself a lot more, but I can tell just by how quickly he goes back down to his crawling that it's going to be a little while before he's walking. He just knows he can get there so much faster by crawling. And I'll be honest with you, I don't want him to walk anytime soon.

I'm kind of burnt out if you can't tell. Even though I had an amazing spa day on Saturday - I'm just feeling run down and worn out as a mom. I know it's normal and I'll snap out of it soon. Staying at home is just really hard.

Small Successes

I haven't done one of these in a while. So here goes.

1. For the past 5 weeks, I have gone to velocity sports training 4 times a week. I haven't missed or skipped one class yet. Although physically I can't see a whole lot of difference, I can tell I am getting stronger!
2. I've been cleaning the house all day long and I have dinner in the crock pot. Tom is picking up some wine on his way home and it's going to be fabulous!
3. I have been neglecting Bailey, our dog, since the day Jack was born. So last night when I went out to pick up some dog food I decided to buy her some new food and water bowls and a mat to go under them. Jack was SO excited when he saw them this morning. "ohhhhhh, Bailey has NEW bowls" ha ha.