At Bedtime:

Me: Hey Lennon, did you notice there are aliens on your new pajamas?

Lennon: Aah.

Me: Mia is an alien. (just one of the many strange things we say to our kids)

Lennon: No. No. No, no. Mia not an alien. Mia a cheeseburger.

Ahhh. He is one of us.

Pumpkin Carving, Bunnies and My Birthday

Lennon insisted on sleeping in this sparkly, blue "bunny suit" for one nap and one whole night.

Mia started it all by dressing him up as a bunny when she dressed up too. At least his is the blue one.

It's so fun that they are starting to play together.

Here's Mia with Mateus and Miranda after they all dressed up as bunnies. We just learned today that Miranda has head lice. She was here for a playdate yesterday and she spent several hours over here last wednesday as well. I just remembered tonight as I was trying on my Halloween wig that she put it on yesterday. Nice. If I get lice I just may have a nervous break down.

Mia and Mateus with their pumpkins. Mia designed hers and I carved it out.

I'm not sure if Bianca is terrified or taking concentrated aim.

Here's Lennon considering tasting that glittery glue.

Kids are so weird.

One of the highlights of my birthday. Snuggling up on the couch with my two favorite pint size people watching Backyardigans. I love that show.

Boo At The Zoo

Last saturday we went over to the Stoneham Zoo for their annual Boo at the Zoo. They have a trick or treat trail, crafts, radio disney and a little haunted house. Last year we went with Papa and Nana, but it was totally freezing. This year was much nicer weather. It was still about 45 or 50 degrees, but much more tolerable than last year. Here are some pictures of the kids. Yes, I know there are way more pics of Lennon than Mia.

Mia proving to us once again, that she can fit - although barely - into Lennon's clothes.

Lennon, Mia, Bianca and Mateus posing at the zoo. This was the best shot I got. They were not in the mood for a photo shoot.

Mia's Pocohantas costume looked a little different with the red and white turtle neck underneath and the floral arrangement on her head.

Papa and Nana brought this awesome costume to Lennon. He loves it, but I'm not sure what mutant faced child this eye mask was designed for?

Notice Swimsuit doggy in the lower left corner of the picture. He's almost always with us. He does now totally love Baby Jaguar from Dora, but Swimsuit doggy is still his main squeeze. He says he wants Dora (we're working on convincing him Diego is just as cool) underwear when he gets potty trained.

Our two cuties!

Captain Sandbox

We stopped at the school playground after dropping Mia off a couple days ago to let Lennon play a bit before heading home. It was just the three of us on a slightly cold morning out there on the playground and Lennon was having a blast. He stopped at this little steering wheel and instructed us to sit.

"I'll be de captain. Ee on a pirate ship."

"Okay, Captain. Are we going the right way?" I asked

"Aah. (pause and look around) "No." (fiddles with some imaginary control panels or something then back to the steering wheel) "Ee have to go north."

Baby I'm Amazed

I'm just sitting here being thankful for unemployment. Believe it or not, there are so many reasons to be thankful for unemployment. I guess really the truth is there are more than one reason to be thankful in general no matter what. Either way, here's what I was just thinking.

Isn't it amazing that your average stay at home mom (SAHM, me) could get sick and actually only feel really sick and bad for one or two days? Not so amazing when you factor in that this average SAHM was actually able to rest for one entire day while her amazing husband took care of cooking and children all day. Isn't it amazing how fast our bodies can actually heal themselves when we treat them well? Normally, a mom gets sick and has to keep on truckin' no matter what. I am feeling so thankful right now that what could have lasted almost a week, only lasted a couple of days. Yea for unemployment! Thanks Shelby! I love you!

New Hampshire Trip Photos - Slideshow

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...and here's a link to the album on Picasa!

Who Loves Mateus?

Well, Mia and Lennon both do. Lennon is officially obsessed with Mateus. He constantly wants to see Mateus, play in Mateus' room, sit near him, etc. He must think Mateus is his older brother as much as we see him. Unfortunately, Mateus doesn't really want much to do with Lennon. He is very sweet, but Lennon is just not Mia, so he's not what Mateus is interested in.

Lennon thinks it's hilarious to tell us that he has a penis. He thinks it's even funnier to tell us that he has a "peegina." A word he heard from Bianca. The conversation went something like this.

As I'm changing Lennon's diaper...

Bianca: Lellon? You have penis?

Lennon: Ahh. OO have penis Bonkaboo?

Bianca: Nooooo! I have a peegina!

Lennon: I have peegina Bonkaboo! I have peegina!

Me: No, Lennon, you have a penis.

Lennon: (now dancing around the room laughing maniacally) I have peegina! I have peegina!

Lovely. Now he will randomly ask Bianca and other children if they have a penis or a peegina. It's not at all completely embarrassing.

Also, Lennon seems to think that all colors are either green or pink. He says pink is his favorite color, but pink can be anything from actual pink to black or white or fuscia. How the heck do you spell that color anyway?

I met with my co-room parent, Linda, this morning to discuss the year ahead of us. We had coffee at a cute little shop down the road from our house. After talking a few minutes we discovered that she was friends with Claire because her son takes karate with Mateus. Small world. She's totally cool and I'm looking forward to being really involved in Mia's class this year. In talking to her, I learned that she pays $800 a month for her son's montessori! Craziness! I'm sure it's amazing, as it should be for that price, but my goodness! $800 a month. That's a lot of money. I would love for Lennon to go to a montessori of some type in a year or two, but that money could be so much more useful for us. Geez. Not that we could even consider that amount, but I am just finding it difficult to understand how anyone can justify spending that kind of money on kindergarten.

Mia's Boring Recess Today:

After lunch at school today, Mia and her classmates were running down the hall toward the door to the recess field. The sky was bright and sunny. Some fluffy, white clouds were floating overhead. Suddenly, as they pushed on the release bars, the sky darkened and one of the most torrential down pours she'd ever witnessed began. Bummer. No outdoor recess. So, what do they do? Some wonderful enrichment activity? No, they watch some movie. Mia referred to it as an "ABC Fire Safety" video. She was sitting in between two friends, Amily and Nora.

Amily: (in a whisper, leans over to Mia.) This video is boring.

Mia: (returns the whisper) I agree.

Nora: (whispering and leaning into Mia's ear.) This video is boring.

Mia: (not hesitating to respond again) I agree!

Mia was hysterical relaying this story to me, so I just had to put it on here to remember that moment we shared walking home from school. She's so awesome. She dressed Lennon in a sparkly, blue leotard tonight and had him come down to me to announce, "Look at me, Mommy! Dat's my ballet costume!" He loves dancing with Mia.

Busy and Bees

Well, yellow jackets to be precise. Our house has been under siege by yellow jackets for a few months now. Shelby put some heavy duty, full of chemicals junk on the nest we could see just outside of our bathroom window, and although that did slow them down, it has not solved the problem. In fact, until last week none of us had been stung. Then in a matter of a few days Jessica was stung on her leg and I was stung right on my bicep while laying down to go to bed. Yuck! I was such a baby. It hurt for literally 24 hours and it still itches a little bit more than a week later. We are only seeing a few a week at this point mostly because "bee season" as they refer to it up here, is almost over. I'm just glad none of the kids have been hurt.

Now for the busy part. We are probably the busiest now that we've ever been. I can only imagine that we are also just going to get progressively busier now that I have two kids. Mia is taking piano, dance, soccer and joined a girl scout troupe. Soccer in Stoneham practices one day a week and has games on Sundays at various times. That leaves us with a whopping two days a week that Mia does not have a scheduled activity other than school. I am keeping Anderson typically two days a week and trying to get to the gym two days a week as well. I'm also a co-room parent for Mia's room this year. I'm super excited about being able to spend a little bit of time in her classroom as they didn't really like for parents to be involved in Malden. Mia is still not loving school. She asks to be home schooled at least once a week and almost every day says she doesn't feel like going to school. At the end of the day she always says she's had a good day/had fun etc., so I really don't think it's a social adjustment thing, but who knows.

Right now the kids are sitting on the couch together watching Space Chimps. Every few seconds at the beginning of the movie, Lennon was asking "what's happening?" He's still got some bad days/weeks, but overall he is just beginning to be so so much fun. He's really silly and he likes to tell knock knock jokes and make people laugh.

Two And Counting

We just finally got Lennon in for his 2 year check up. He was something like 32 lbs and 33" tall. He was in the 60 something percentile for height and head circumference and the 80 something percentile for weight. He had made a jump in weight from his last check up I guess, but Dr. Coffey said he wasn't worried. He said maybe if Shelby and I were big fatties and he knew us to be a junk food eating family who was feeding their children fast food and push up pops it might be a different story, but said in general Lennon seemed fine and according to the way I told him Lennon eats, he said he was probably just a big dude. He is still no where near the amazon size of his younger, larger cousin, Jackson who is off the charts in all areas I think.

In the waiting room Lennon was relaxed and playing with the toys, but as soon as they put us in a room he was suddenly petrified. He was clinging to me saying "I'm scared. I'm scared!" When Dr Coffey got into the room he said he thought Dr. Coffey was scary so we just talked for a minute and looked at a picture of Dr. Coffey's two little kids and told Lennon that Dr Coffey was a daddy just like our Daddy and then he seemed to relax a little. He still was not a big fan of sitting up on the examining table, but overall was very cooperative, just uneasy. In the end he was playing peek-a-boo and saying, "Peek-a-boo Dr. Daddy!" The doctor was very impressed with his vocabulary and I'm sure of his adorability as well, though he didn't mention that specifically.

We talked a little about vaccines. His kids are 4 and 1, so we're in a similar boat right now and it's really nice to get a doctor's advice that is also a concerned parents advice. He suggested we get Lennon the Hib and possibly the pertussis. He didn't suggest we do the swine flu vaccine because it is so new and he just couldn't totally stand behind it yet. His kids got regular flu vaccines partially because his older daughter has asthma and goes to preschool, but they didn't get the swine flu vaccine. I'll probably take Lennon in to get the Hib. I didn't want to do it today because he was so scared already. I imagine he was scared because of all the doctor visits and hospital visits we made last year during that never ending digestive bug he had.

On another note, Lennon seems to finally be okay with me leaving him at the childcare to exercise. It is amazing. I just drop him off and leave and so far no tears or complaints. The first day when I came to pick him up I said, "Did you have fun? How was it?" His response, "It's not so bad."

Lennon is the kind of kid who knows EXACTLY what he wants and usually has no patience for anything other than just that. Until recently when Jackson singing the alphabet was posted online, Lennon would have nothing to do with that pesky alphabet song. Anytime someone started to sing it he would scream with protest. It was as if the song itself offended him. Either way, now that we have repeatedly watched Jackson singing it, Lennon has started to sing his own version of it. It usually goes something like this, "ABCDEFGHIJK Elmo's bobo! QRSTUVWXYZ......now I know mine....sing iff MIA!" And a burst of laughter. Other times it's more like "ah bah ne ne blah bam bam...." He's super silly. He often says, "ne ne han han." No one knows what he is talking about, but he thinks it's hilarious. He will decide that the food we are eating is "ne ne par par" for example and if you ask him what "ne ne par par" is, he will just laugh and tell you in sort of a "weren't you listening the first time" tone, "it's ne ne par par." What a weirdo.