Today's Alex-isms

On route to a friends house - as we are nearly there he says "Be sure to pay attention now mommy." And when we pull into the driveway, "Good job mommy, you paid attention today." (For background, this is a house that I have had trouble finding repeatedly in the past.)

Perhaps even better, the housekeeper is here today, after she cleaned the boys room we headed upstairs for a nap. Alex came out of his room in tears "Mommy, my bed is all messed up. Miss Lillian messed up my bed." Of course, what this really means is that the bed was all neatly made. Hmmmm, guess I ought to work on making the beds more often!

Today was...

A good day :-) Honestly I wasn't sure how it would be, the boys were up very late last night and then up at their usual time this morning. But, the reduced amount of sleep didn't seem to faze them. We went to a friends birthday party first thing this morning. It was at a lovely little park and the boys had a great time playing with their friends. It properly wore them out and after lunch Ben crashed for over 3 hours. Alex slept for about 45 minutes, but hey, at least he was in a good mood when he got up. We spent the rest of the afternoon outside playing and wouldn't you know it ALEX RODE HIS BIKE!!! I think it was just the cosmos aligning exactly right. It's very much a learning process but he had a great time and seems anxious to try again tomorrow, hopefully he will still feel that way in the morning. If not, at least he tried it today and that is something to build on!! Yay for the small things :-)

Thursday Again

There must be something about Thursdays in November. Last Thursday had me thinking that shipping the munchkins off to somewhere for awhile would be a good idea. Today really wasn't much different. Alex was in this "I must torment Ben" mood all day long. It was utterly ridiculous. No matter what toy Ben played with Alex would take it, even if they were in completely different parts of the house. Ben would be sitting quietly on the floor and the next minute screaming his head off because Alex came over and tackled him for no reason. Then Alex would sit there and poke and kick and tickle and "kiss" and everything else, simply NOT leaving Ben alone. When he wasn't bothering Ben he was screaming at the top of his lungs, mad because I told him to stop bothering Ben. We played outside for awhile on the new playscape (yeah I know, I need to post pictures), again constant bickering and fighting. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we haven't done pretend school this week, both of the boys classmates have been sick, tomorrow is cancelled as well. I don't know.

Instead of griping I should be posting all the bright spots of the day/past week. So, here I am giving that idea the ol' college try. The house is finally getting painted. It was worth the wait, the guys have been here 7 days so far, and they should be able to finish up tomorrow. I have never seen a more thorough job. After the painting, we'll be getting the roof replaced - thanks to that hail storm way back in March. The playscape is a bright spot, it's nice to have a place for the boys to play outside, and they seem to love it, particularly the picnic table underneath it. The weather is another bright spot, it's been gorgeous the past couple of weeks (aside from a rainy sunday). And of course, that I get to stay home and play with the munchkins all day long, even when I feel like I have completely lost every ounce of sanity I may have once had, is definitely the brightest spot of all.

Thursday Thoughts

My first recognizable thought of the day: Sometimes I think boarding school is a great idea.

As the day wore on: I love that the boys love art projects and I hope Daddy doesn't mind too much that I am bringing Ben home from the park covered from head to toe in paint.

After dinner: How do I get Alex to understand that I can't always make things work the way he wants them too, just like I can't make trains come.

Finally: I'm really glad tomorrow is Friday, hopefully the twin bad attitudes will take tomorrow off.

Butterflies, Connect the Dots, Free Ice Cream

The subject pretty much sums up our day. First, I am very proud to say that Alex did some connect-the-dot puzzles ALL BY HIMSELF today! Yay Alex :-)

Second, some more great reasons to love Austin:

1. We are on the route for butterfly migrations. Love this time of year and all the butterflies. We were sitting at a stoplight and there was a continuous sream of butterflies fluttering across the road. The are headed to Mexico for the winter.

2. Amy's Ice Cream. Really, need I say more? Today Amy's was celebrating their 25th anniversary. In honor of the occassion they were giving away free ice cream. Not just a scoop of vanilla or chocolate, but anything on the menu. I took Alex to meet some friends. It was fun to have a little one-on-one Alex time. Ben was napping at home with Daddy.

3. It's early Nov. and the weather is gorgeous - near 80 today and clear skies. Yep, I'm enjoying it, especially after the toasty summer.

Playing at the Grocery Store

What's this you say, a third post in 3 days? Just to keep things exciting, we're going to go for the opposite of what we've done in the past. I'll inundate you with mundane details of our everyday life because I know you check every day to see what's new. Gone are the month-long waits, now you only have to wait 24 hours!

OK, so normally one goes to the grocery store to buy food or some other household related item. Not us. Our sole mission at Whole Foods today was to play. Yet one more reason to love Austin, the flagship Whole Foods Market has a little playscape up on the roof. It's a great little secret, no one is ever there. So we go and grab a snack from the store and then head to the roof to play. Some day I'll take some pictures because the cactus gardens up there are just gorgeous. After Whole Foods we hit another of Austin's finest landmarks - Book People, best bookstore around. Today I didn't have time to look, Alex wasn't interested in the "mommy books" he only wanted to head upstairs to the children's section - which comes complete with tunnels to walk through. Anyway, it was a fun morning.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting episode of "What's Happenin' in A-town".

Dinosaurs!

Pretend school was all about dinosaurs today. Since I was "teaching", (not sure that's the proper word, I think leading is much more appropriate...) I started the day by making some dinosaur shaped muffins. Thanks to my nifty spiffy dinosaur cupcake/muffin pan, they looked pretty darn cute. Unfortunately for Alex & Ben's classmates I did not veganize the recipe so they couldn't enjoy the muffins. We read the Dinotrain book, watched Dinosaur Train on PBS, did a rubbing of a sandpaper dinosaur footprint, and stamped all of our toy dinosaurs feet on inkpads and then on paper to make all kinds of fun dinosaur tracks. Alex & Ben are quite well versed in the names of the various dinosaurs. It's quite amusing listening to a not-quite 2 year old ask for a stegosaurus by name, and then actually knowing which dinosaur is really a stegosaurus! Aside from watching Dinosaur train (which we did before everyone else came over) all of our fun activities managed to take up a whopping 30 minutes! Usually we can keep the kiddos occupied for at least an hour in pretend school. Oh well, we had lots of great playtime, a fun lunch with everyone and a well earned nap later in the afternoon.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, pretend school is our version of preschool. A couple of my friends and I decided that we didn't really want to send our kids to a "real" preschool yet we wanted them to have some sort of learning environment. So, 3 days a week we get our munchkins together and try to teach them something. We have had lots of really great, fun activities and Alex & Ben just love it. They are always so excited to go to pretend school! Here's a picture of the "class":

Halloween

Instead of playing catch-up (which I again need to do...) I'm just going to pretend that I am not a month behind in updating this little piece of history. Yesterday was Halloween. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Mike and Alex spent a good chunk of the morning clearing some trees/brush from the backyard while I took Ben to the park to play for a bit. After lunch and a nice long nap, it was time to carve our pumpkins. Actually, Mike and I carved while Alex & Ben painted. This was the 2nd round of paint for the boys pumpkins. We went pumpkin picking a couple of weeks ago and shortly there after Alex and Ben put the first coat of paint on their pumpkins. We got some very heavy rain and all the paint washed right off! So we now have paint circles on the front porch, hopefully those will wash right off too.

Anyway,the real festivities started soon after the pumpkin carving/painting. We took the finished masterpieces around front and discovered that one of our neighbors had set up a ping-pong table in the cul-de-sac. From there on out it became a sort of neighborhood (or at least our little cul-de-sac) block party. At some point we broke away from the fun, fed the kiddos dinner and got them ready for trick-or-treating. I took them down the street, initially only stopping at a couple of houses where we knew the neighbors pretty well. They were having such a good time though, that we ended up stopping at just about all of the houses on our street. I took them back to the little party and handed them off to Daddy. Mike then took them up another street. They were both having a great time. Alex loved ringing the doorbell and saying trick-or-treat. Ben insisted that the candy be put in his hand and then he would put it in his bag. At some point near the end of the walk, Ben's bag sprung a leak and by the time he came home it was completely empty. Fortunately, he didn't care, in fact I don't think he had any clue he lost his loot. I'm pretty sure it was the fault of those darn oranges someone snuck in there! Anyway, we all had a great time and here are some pictures for you.