Don't Tell Emily Post

Rocky and I expect our children to be polite, and for the most part they have excellent manners.  Well, Billy does.  We're still working on "no feet on the table" with Alexa-and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  But somehow, after five years, I don't think it has occurred to either one of us to teach our kids how to set the table.  Yikes!  How did that happen?!  Our kids eat every meal at the table with no TV, but unless we are at Grandma and Papa's, they get rounded up from their busy busy lives, plopped down in their chairs where their food has magically appeared already portioned out and ready to eat. 

So tonight Billy helped me cook breakfast dinner, his favorite.  He loves to help cook.  And I thought maybe it would be nice to actually put the mail away rather than shove it aside, and have a nice Leave it to Beaver kind of dinner.  Billy set each placing (see, I don't even know how to use the proper terminology for setting the table!) and carried the food out.  Then he asked if we could have candles.  Geez!  We should probably do this more often, if simply setting the table is THAT big of a deal!  So we turned out the light, lit the candles, strapped the toddler into her chair after she grabbed the candles, re-lit the candles, put on some authentic castle music (Dave Matthews Band, of course) and had ourselves a Medieval good time!  And the new joke is "pass the peaches, please", which apparently is a hilarious alternative to "I'm out of peaches."

And, if you can believe it, the kids played much more calmly after dinner and have been sleeping peacefully in their beds for over an hour now!

Tricycle Update

Alexa will now put her feet on the pedals!  Sometimes she'll let Mommy or Daddy push her a few feet, and other times she'll pedal two full rotations before her feet go flying off of those magic little steps that move.

She's still afraid of the fire truck that drives with the push of a button, remote control cars, and shake-n-go cars.  It would seem she's afraid of anything that moves on its own, but she loves zhu zhu pets (which she can say as clearly as can be).  Oh, to spend a day in the mind of a toddler...

If you are just tuning in to this post, be sure to check out the other few I've posted tonight.  I've had all of October to catch up on!

Trick-or-the-Treat

When Billy was two we took him trick-or-treating in East Helena down one street until we found Bubby's house.  Then it was game over and he quickly ran downstairs to play with toys.  Not much has changed, I suppose.  Instead of saying trick-or-the-treat, he says trick-or-treat, though.  Alexa simply holds out her hand and says "treat!"  Like 2-year-old Billy, she would rather play than collect candy.  At each house she'd try to sneak through the door saying "play, play" and then throw a tantrum when we left.  Two birthday parties and two nights of Halloween fun were a little too much for our little miss.

Billy, however, couldn't get enough Halloween!  On Saturday, we went down to Three Forks to Trunk-or-Treat with Tiffany and Zak.

On Halloween we went trick-or-treating with Alex, Allison, and Brandon.  Billy's favorite house was "Vote for Bob's".  Alexa stopped crying briefly to figure out why eerie noises were coming from a pumpkin and Billy, well to hear him tell it is much more exciting.  But Bob (Brastrup) had a candy bowl with a hand that came down on yours when you went to take candy.  Billy thought it tried to get him because he said "Give me all of your candy" instead of "trick or treat".  Thank goodness Bob knows our kids are polite, because Billy always dishes out the flack to Bob before Bob can do it first!  To everyone else, of course, he said "thank you" and "have a happy/great/even fabulous Halloween". 

Alexa also wanted to go home with a little kid dressed as Elmo.  I guess to her the little kiddo was about as real as Elmo could be.  And back at the house (or during our dinner break, anyway) Billy handed out candy.  When traffic slowed, he and his sister stood out on the sidewalk recruiting kids to come get candy.  I think next year he should dress up as a salesman, for sure.

Circles and BOOs, BOOs and Circles

The kids love to draw and write.  The white board is their favorite (and I recently found washable dry erase markers-kids with nerdy office-supply-loving moms have the best stuff).  However, we've been taking advantage of the warmer weather to draw on the sidewalks before they are covered in snow.  Yuck, snow.  It is amazing that two kids and their endless need for movement can turn a winter person into somebody who prays for enough sun each day to usher the kids out of the house! 

But I digress.  One day we were drawing Halloween pictures on the sidewalk (no doubt because his buddies William and Scout did it the day before across the street) and I wrote "BOO" next to a ghost.  Then I went off to help Alexa draw her circles and when I went inside I noticed this "BOO" by the door.  I hadn't even mentioned to Billy that I drew it, but he took it upon himself to copy it and to figure out what it said.  He wrote his first word!  So we've discovered the best way to learn letters is to copy themed words.  Spelling and letter recognition at once.  Heck yes!  Rocky was a little nervous when he came home that night to find RIP DAD by the front steps, but hey-a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do to entertain her kids.  And if creating our family plots is what they want, family plots are what they get!

Alexa loves circles.  She'll trace them in the air saying "Round and Round", on paper anytime she can sneak a marker from somewhere (and let me tell you-I LOVE that she takes it upon herself to also sneak scratch paper from her desk...what one-year-old does that?), on the sidewalk and in her barbecue sauce.  She also drew a "A" unprompted on the sidewalk.  Guess it pays to hang out with the preschoolers.

Monsters vs. Superheroes

If you were to say our kids are spoiled, I'd have to argue with you.  See, Billy wanted a birthday party and a Halloween party and I said no.  Instead he had a Monsters (Halloween) vs. Superheroes (Birthday) party.  See...not spoiled!

It was a hit!  After planning and replanning, then replanning again; spending 7 hours making a masterpiece cake (well, at least I didn't have to send Rocky on a last minute Fruit-by-the-Foot run to cover up the mistakes this time), and tons of games which we never got around to playing once the Kung Zhu pets came out, Billy had, yet again, "the best birthday EVER!"  Which, as it turns out, really isn't a compliment on the planning after all.  Simply a phrase he picked up from an Elmo book.

A little cousin rivalry on the doughnut eating contest.  Billy abandoned his doughnut as soon as I snapped the photo.  Tiffany, however, kept at it for a few full minutes.  In fact, only the two girls finished!

Best daddy ever!  Even if he is on the Monster side.  And even if Alexa is terrified of Daddy Frankenstein.

The hit of the party-Monster Body Parts.  Billy is not gullible.  In fact, I was just thinking how I'm hoping he doesn't blow Mickey Mouse's cover to Alexa when we take a trip to Disney Land someday.  However, judging by the squeals and shrieks, he and his friends really were fooled into thinking the far of grapes were monster eyes, that the spaghetti and oil was monster brains, and the Jell-o was monster guts.

And of course, because this is how things go, I spent hours making a pinata for each kiddo after failing to find a suitable Halloween/Superhero themed one in Helena.  The next day I go to Helena and find two.  However, each kiddo got their own monster to hit (in Billy's case-the ghost with the one black eye from his favorite scary story).  In some cases, the monsters were brought to the ground and pulverized with the broomstick!

I'm going to have to start thinking now if he's going to be having this much fun next year.

Happy Birthday Billy!

He's 5!

With the Monsters vs. Superheroes party's guest list growing every time we walked out the door (Billy is just SO friendly!), we definitely were in  need of a sane, quieter way to celebrate out little boy!  Grandma and Papa let us invade their house with balloons and test tubes and the scientist party was on!  All day Billy just kept saying "This is the BEST birthday ever!  Thank you!"  He loved his "dangerous" science kit and now we have a new science experiment to do EVERY day of the year!

Being five means you get to do all sorts of things (even if it moves too slowly-which is Billy's biggest complaint).  He can swing by himself now because he is almost five.  He can run fast because he is almost five.  He can write words because he is almost five.