Andy & Jessica

We didn’t do too much yesterday, but it was a good day as all “stay home days” are. Jude woke me up 17 minutes before we had to be on the road to karate. The rest of the family was still sleeping. I managed to get ready and hit the road with Jude and Levi and arrive in time for Jude to get suited up in his new uniform. Levi had a little bit of a hard time since he really wanted to be on the floor doing what Jude was doing. I opted to help him mimic the moves from our chairs while watching through the windows of the viewing area. Then he decided to stand in the doorway and watch and mimic the moves. It was pretty cute.  Eventually he got bored of watching and found some books to read and then he got bored of that and wanted to leave. Jude did great for his first time and had a lot of fun. He’s in a class with about 8 kids who are 4-6 years old.   After karate, Jude, Levi and I went to the adjacent dollar store where they skipped the toys and opted for treats. Levi picked 2 boxes of teddy grahams (that I really wanted) and Jude got a bag of blow pops and a bag of cotton candy.

After karate and the dollar store, we went home and watched German cartoons and baked a batch of chocolate chip cookie strips.  Jude had studied the cookbooks and picked out the recipe himself, as he loves to do. 

My mom came for a couple hours and then I was able to run a couple errands with just little Levi. Levi rarely gets to go anywhere alone with me so he just loved it. He was a little prince and I’d definitely bring him shopping again. 

Andy was busy yesterday replacing the light fixture in the kitchen (which then required that he paint the entire ceiling of the kitchen).  I never realized I didn’t like that old fixture until I saw the new one that Andy picked out.  What an improvement!  That is the bonus of being married to a guy who is trained architecture — he is always coming up with little ways to make big improvements to the appearance of the house.  It’s just funny because after he was done with the project he informed me that that old fixture had been bugging him since he moved in here after we were married (almost 8 years ago).  Better late than never!

For a couple years or so, Jude has been quite interested in presidential history. Today we were playing a presidential history game. He read a question he was going to ask me in his head (before reading it out loud to me). The question asked who the president of the U.S. was at the end of “World War ll.” Jude said (with a surprised tone in his voice) before asking me the question, “Mom, I guess there’s a World War eleven.”

Asher (aka Bobo) is an interesting little guy.  He does so many things that neither of my other boys would have dreamed of doing at age 1 like climbing ladders and pointing at the candy jar and begging for treats, etc..  Since everyone in our family is just crazy about Bobo, he really gets away with a lot of stuff that he shouldn’t be doing.  Bobo will go up to Levi and yank a toy or the iPad right out of Levi’s hands.  Levi would never hurt Bobo so little Levi just cries and Bobo runs off laughing and as happy as can be with whatever it was that he just stole from Levi.  Bobo also has witnessed enough sword fights in our house that he thinks it’s fun to come up to people and hit them with his fist or a toy and he always does it with a big smile on his face.  I never know what to do.  Do I scold him or play with him since he clearly thinks it is a game?  Bobo does so much of this hitting/throwing game that Jude has named him “Boxing Bobo” and his Grandma Olson calls him a bruiser.  I call him a little bully, but he’s such a cute little bully.

Jude gave me a little scare last night.  I had left work early so I could get him to his 1^st official karate lesson, but he was not ready to go when I got home (and either was Asher who I was also bringing with me).  So, in the end, when we finally got up to his karate school, we were 10 minutes late to a 30 minute class.  Since his  2 weeks of free lessons starts the first time we come in, I opted to turn around and avoid the embarrassment of having him show up late to his first lesson.  Then I guess sometime after we turned around, Jude fell into a deep sleep.  It was getting dark out.  I couldn’t locate Jude in the rear view mirror.  I saw Levi’s empty seat and no Jude.  Eventually (and only by turning my neck around) I located Jude who was slouched down sleeping in his car seat.  When we arrived home, I left Jude buckled up in the car in the garage and then went inside for about 40 minutes while waiting for it to be time to bring him to his bible memory club.  When it became time to bring Jude to bible memory club, I jumped in the car and slammed the door shut and Jude didn’t stir in the back seat.  I even went through the McDonald’s drive through and got Jude a hamburger without him stirring.  I tried to wake Jude up verbally while continuing down the road to bible memory club, but it took a lot of effort.  When he finally was able to talk, he was nonsensical.  I ended up pulling the car over and assessing him to determine if he was having a seizure.  I determined he was just really exhausted.  Crazy since he had had a nap earlier in the day.  It was definitely scary, but I was so thankful that I was able to continue driving him to bible memory club and not the ER.

 

 

I’ll be honest, when Andy first approached me about a desired toy — his first iPad — I probably thought (or maybe even said) “here we go again…when will this guy ever be satisfied with what he has…but, whatever, he can have it if it will make him happy.” I would have never guessed that an iPad would turn out to be so cool. It was so cool, that we almost immediately contemplated buying another so that Jude and Levi could use it for education (since the iPad is more like an appendage to Andy (like a 3rd arm)) and rarely leaves his side. We instead opted for an Android tablet, which is also cool and has totally different apps/marketplaces for apps, but never was as user-friendly as the iPad or as coveted by the boys. So, when Andy saw that a Twitter friend of his was selling his used iPad 2, he called me up at work to ask for my opinion. I agreed (and this time without any eye rolls). The boys’ new iPad arrived today. It will be so great not to have to have the boys sobbing that their Daddy won’t share the iPad enough. Now I’ll just have to deal with the inevitable battle between the 3 boys who all love their iPad screen time.

The boys and I had a great time at my parents’ house this past weekend.  I just love getting my boys together with their cousins.  Levi was thrilled to have his “best friend” Jonah to play with.   Jude and Ivan are only 2 months apart so they could practically be twins.  They are best buddies, but, as two alpha males, they can really battle.  95% of the time they are best friends, but if one accidentally leans against the other (and it is interpreted as a shove), it’s on.  As my mom put it, “Jude’s fists really fly.”  So strange to hear that since Jude never fist fights with anyone but apparently Ivan.  There was only one battle on my watch and it was over in no time — Jude pretended to paint Ivan with a paint brush and said that his forehead was orange and got too close to Ivan with the paint brush so Ivan whacked him in the eye with a wooden spoon — game over.  Jude carried on for 20 minutes screaming about his injury and lecturing Ivan who looked his his little heart was broken.  In the end, although Jude had a big welt on his eye, I was more sad for Ivan, who wanted to do anything to get his best buddy to be his best buddy again.  All in all, it was a successful 4 days together since Jude said he wanted to spend more consecutive days like that with Ivan and Ivan said he wanted Jude to live next door to him.  So sweet!

My mom has really had her hands full with Jude and his 2 cousins for the past 2 days. This morning, I will head to Litchfield with Levi and Asher to join the fun. (And Andy will stay back home to do whatever it is that Andy does.) I’m not sure if I will be more help or more trouble at my mom’s house. With my arrival, we’ll have 5 little boy in 1 house. There will be no dull moments, that is for sure.

When I was a little girl, I’ve been told I was a peacemaker.  I was always breaking up fights of boys in our neighborhood.  My mom saw that side of Jude.  I guess Jude’s cousins had really been going at each other and the little one (Jonah) ended up in tears and wanted his Mommy.  Jude told him, “I want my Mommy too, but there is no point crying about it.  Stop, Jonah.”  I guess Jude’s also swimming in self-righteousness and has been telling Ivan and Jonah that they “cannot hit brothers.”  Now if Jude could only apply those rules to his own life, Levi would not have to be such a tough guy.

It sounds like Jude and his cousins, Ivan and Jonah, are having a blast at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  While my mom (their grandma) was making dinner last night, her understanding was that they were downstairs playing dominoes.  Of course she assumed they were playing the game with tiles with little dots on them.  Oh no.  Not these high energy boys.  They were playing human dominoes.  The game went like this — Ivan would fall back on Jonah and Jonah would fall back on Jude (who ended up with a bloody nose).  Boys will be boys!

I’m beginning to get a little worried that my little Levi will never get potty trained.  I think I’ve heard that if they don’t like the feel of the wet/messy diapers, it will encourage them to potty train.  Levi has been actually throwing fits when I change his really wet diapers lately.  He’ll yell, scream and cry, “No!  Pee pee diap!,” indicating that he wants to keep it on.  I’ll ask him if he wants to wear the pee pee diaper because it is “warm” and he’ll indicate yes.  He’ll try to grab the wet diaper and put it back on.  It’s just totally bizarre.  And, now I’ve heard from Andy a really crude story that I probably shouldn’t write about publically.  Apparently, he had a little fun with Levi today that has probably gotten Levi all mixed up.  I guess Andy went to change Levi’s poopy diaper while was at work and Andy asked Levi where all that poop had come from.  Levi correctly said, “My buh.”   Andy then asked if someone had put it up there while Levi had been sleeping and Levi apparently said, “Yeah!” (And he probably looked like a light bulb just went on and that he had figured out some big life mystery.)  When Andy asked who had put it up there, Levi said, “Mommy!”  Thanks to Andy for completely confusing my little Levi.