Due

Today, February 26th, was Easton's due date 7 years ago. Not only that, but the boy is due for some face time on the blog.

With him going to a full day of school this year, we just see a whole lot less of him than we used to. He's still around, still our happy, special, smart, little guy and all... But I'm less likely to break out the camera during his Wii time after school or during dinner or the bedtime routine. I should. I still enjoy all those small moments throughout the day with my littles. What is now "routine" won't be one day so I can (and should) capture some of those routine moments as well.

Anyway...

Easton is doing really, really well at piano. It's amazing to Jason and me to see how much he's already improved in his 4 weeks of lessons. Even better, he loves it. A lot. He even loves to practice. He liked soccer and flag football alright, but he never really wanted to go out in the backyard and kick the ball around. He loves swimming but he likes to swim just for the fun of it, not necessarily to get better. But piano? He's rocking it! He's got great rhythm. He's developing a good ear to hear if a note is right or wrong. I'm so glad we finally sprung for real lessons!


He often messes around on his little jam studio in the evenings after the little two go to bed. The keyboard came with a bunch of pre-programmed beats and while I was out the other night, apparently he shared the names he's come up with for each beat with Jason:
-The Robot
-Shiver-Shiver-Shake-Your-Pants
-Cleaning the Toilet (it kinda does sound like a plunger)
-Rock & Roll Kiss
-Bull Stampede
-Jiggle Jiggle
-Jazz Symbol
-Crazy Good
-The Tiptoe Man
-At the Beach
-Chillaxin' with the Birds (ha!)
-Strumming Along

and...

my favorite...

-The One Time Duckie

The next night when I was home they shared the names with me but Easton took it a step further and acted out each one. Jason and I were in tears from laughing so hard. I'm not sure we've laughed at Easton quite that hard in years. He was hysterical.








I don't think there was one named "The Situation". ;)






He's got the moves like Jagger:






Ah, good times. Good times. Now I have a permanent record. HI-larious. :)

Autumn 2.5

My baby girl is two and a half today! Dalton was two and a half (plus 1 day) when Autumn was born...it's crazy to me to think of it that way: that she's the age he was when he became a big sibling.



Autumn is turning into a very bright, very verbal little person. We get comments all the time on how good of a talker she is...not just what she says...but she says it fairly clearly to boot. She has "great diction" as someone who knows such things told me recently. Sometimes people understand her better than they understand Dalton! She mixes up her she/her pronouns which I actually think is too cute: "She's with she's mom". :) And she still says a "t" sound instead of an "s" when she says some things. Like, she says "tow white" instead of "Snow White" or she says, "Can I have a tack?" for "snack".

She loves to dance. She starts official classes on Monday. She adores her big brothers and they feel the same.




She's even doing better separating from me for church. She only cries for a sec now. When Jason drops her off, she doesn't cry at all!


She's super silly...and at times a bit of a rascal. The other day she started choking (mostly just gagging) on some fruit snacks. I told her she needed to chew just one at a time and she told me, "Um, no thank you." She says that to lots of things.

I made muffins for breakfast the other morning. A bit later in the day I went to shower and when I got out I found this:


She had rolled her little horse over there and climbed up to break off some more food:


Or, she made herself a little bed on the coffee table shelf on a recent afternoon:


And she wanted to do an interview like Dado did the other day:

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Dalton Eve

His last day to be...


I did a lengthy interview with my littlest man today very similar to the one I did the day before Easton turned 5. Probably only the grandparents would want to sit through all 12 minutes or whatever this ended up being. Even Jason didn't want to watch the whole thing at once! Ha! But it's fun to click on and maybe just watch the first little bit because that little guy is just so darn cute!

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He got to do his Walk Around the Sun at school this morning:

He brought the new Birthday Cake Oreos and some lemonade for snack. Mrs. L thanked me for changing it up by bringing lemonade. Everyone brings apple juice but apple juice does not agree with my Dado (sounds like 'Dah-Doh'-- that's what Autumn usually calls him and now the rest of us do too...so does our neighbor Emery! Hee hee!).

Can't believe 5 years ago tonight I was fretting over if I could really love "Deuce" as much as I loved Easton. Ah memories. It's been a piece of [birthday] cake. Dalton is such an easy kid to love!

He's too excited to fall asleep tonight, much like I was 5 years ago. Normally he'd have fallen asleep at least half an hour ago as I'm sitting typing this but he's still up! Turning 5 is certainly very exciting for our little dude! Stay tuned for the Cinco de Dado festivities coming up!

February Thus Far...

February 1st:
This little dude is about to be...

So we took a few pictures for his party invites. Still need to get those out...

Oops.

That evening we had a family jam session after E practiced his songs. Easton is taking a piano/keyboard class again. He's really doing well and liking it...and Dalton has also learned some of what Easton's learning. Bonus!


Dalton's hilarious idea:


February 2nd:
I submitted Dalton's kindergarten application to Easton's school. As I've mentioned before, it is a school for gifted children but you don't have to be tested and identified as gifted to go there. They have to have a certain amount of high IQ kids to maintain their description as a school for gifted kids, so that's how Easton got in, but siblings are pretty much guaranteed a spot no matter what. So, we didn't bother to pay to have Dalton tested. The boy is very definitely bright but I don't care what his actual IQ is. I didn't care with Easton either, we just needed to have him tested in order to get him out of his old school and into somewhere better. Anyhoo, I had such fun as I filled out D's app thinking of examples of his "outside the box" thinking and his creativity and attention to detail. A lot of the kids at this school are outsiders, I think, at least at the school where they came from, ya know? So, there are questions along those lines on the application and Dalton is soooooooo not an outsider. Everyone loves Dalton. Everyone. In fact, when the application asked about social challenges I had to say the only challenge is that sometimes Dalton doesn't want to be around the people that want to be around him. His teachers at school and church adore him. Other parents in his class stop me in the hall to tell me how much their kid likes and talks about Dalton. Kids that Dalton never even mentions to me! There's just something about that boy. Easton's school will be lucky to have him!


And Autumn has been earning potty prizes. Left completely to her own devices, she still has accidents from time to time...often in the bathroom. So, for a particularly good streak she earned some Strawberry Shortcake figures. When I gave her this one she said, "It's shiny like a toenail!" ?!?!


The night of the second we were expecting snow. Lots of it. Schools and buisnesses were announcing closures the night before! That never ever happens. I grew up here, I would know. But how nice for the teachers and students to know ahead of time that they could turn off the alarm for the morning.

This was 10:30 p.m. Thursday night:


February 3rd:
And this was Friday morning:


Jason's office even announced they were closed for the day. Easton's school already had the day off for a teacher-work day but it was nice that Dalton and Jason joined us.

While Jason shoveled the driveway, I made the kids a fort:






Dalton keeps asking me if I'll build the "lair" again. Ha ha ha.

If you're my Facebook friend, you likely saw our sledding pictures from that day as well.

February 4th:
Autumn and Easton wanted to play outside.


The snow was so deep and Autumn's boots are two sizes too big so she has trouble even walking out there:




But she had fun for a bit.


See how deep?


That evening my mom took the boys to the Phineas and Ferb Live! show downtown. But she wasn't terribly comfortable with the idea of driving my precious cargo in that snow so we met her at the venue. Jason, Autumn, and I did some shopping at Denver's new H&M (we've never had one till now) and then ate an early dinner at Maggiano's. As nice as it was hanging with my hubby and just one kid, it sounds like the P&F show was great! Too bad I missed it.

February 5th:
On Sunday, Dalton's Pre-K class sang at the church attached to his school. So we had to go to that instead of our regular church. But its always cute to see him sing. He did really great this year with the motions and everything. It was a repeat of a song they sang last year, though. Dumb.

Here's my sillies after church:


That afternoon we headed up to our friends' annual Superbowl party. We went last year and had the best time. It was Easton's old preschool buddy Jacob and Dalton's preschool buddy Sam's house. Sam doesn't go to school with Dalton anymore, though. But we were glad to be included. On the drive up to their house, Dalton kept doing this coughing gag thing like he does if something's bothering him like a bad smell or weird texture. I kept asking him what was bugging him and he kept saying that it was nothing...just a cough. Well as soon as we pulled up and he was hopping out of the car he did it again to the point that he threw up a little. I went up to their door and said, "We're here but now we're leaving" and told them why. But, I didn't think he was sick with a tummy thing...I thought it was just from coughing. So, they invited us to stay, gave Dalton some clean clothes and we had a good ol' time. I was nervous about D and kept checking on him but he seemed just fine and insisted he was. There were 22 kids there that night! 22! Plus 19 adults, I think.

As the game ended, our hosts were gathering all the kids on the couch for a picture...and Dalton yakked on their stairs on the way down. :( This time I gave him a quick bath in their tub and they gave us some p.j.'s for him and a cup for the car ride home--just in case. And we needed it! Before we even left their neighborhood. :(

It had been 8 days since Easton's short-lived tummy thing. Dalton's was also very short lived. He threw up another time or two once we got home and got him in bed for the night but then slept through just fine and was fine in the morning...

February 6th:

We made a run out real quick to exchange our Wii game at Blockbuster so he'd have something to do while he was home recovering and we had to get some crackers and Gatorade. He was doing just fine. This was so much easier than the tummy bug he caught at the end of September where he was throwing up every 20 minutes for, like, 12 straight hours. Easton puked 4-5 times the previous weekend when he had it, Dalton was also 4-5 times.

We usually leave to go pick up Easton from school at 3:15. Well, at 3:06 on Monday, guess who threw up? Autumn this time. Her first tummy bug. She's thrown up before, of course, but she's never had a tummy bug. She was still nursing when it ran through the boys a few months ago. I knew she was about to yak so I was able to get her into the bathroom and over the sink...but it still wasn't the cleanest. I had to throw her into a quick bath, get her dressed and clean up the bathroom a bit before we ran out to get Easton. She told Dalton all excited, "I'm sick too!" :) I covered her up in the car with a towel because I thought she might get sick again. And she did. We had to pull over and poor Dalton was like, "I still smell it!!!" but what else could I do??? I gave him a Wet One wipe to breathe through and rolled down the windows but it was freezing. Poor Autumn fell right to sleep after that second round and stayed asleep till 5:10 that evening.

I let her have a popsicle when she woke up because it had been a couple of hours since she'd thrown up.

She was so excited to be on the "sick couch" having a popsicle like she'd seen her brothers do.

But she threw the popsicle up a bit later. :(

She made it through the night without incident but was a bit lethargic the next morning:

February 7th:


She had some dry heaving but nothing came up. And Jason was off that day to be with the little two while I chaperoned Easton's class on a field trip. But she did just fine while I was gone...

The field trip was kinda crazy. On the way down, one of the 6 kids in my group had to pee super bad. I kept telling him to hang in there, telling him how we were getting closer, by the time we'd stopped in front of where we were going he was in tears. They unloaded the bus in front of us and I walked to the front of the bus and told E's teacher that he needed to get off now. She was like, "Can he wait just a minute?" and I was like, "Nope. He's been waiting...he's got tears streaming down his face at this point" so she recruited a dad on the trip to run him inside. He was much better after that. Poor guy.

The trip was to a mystery dinner theater but they do a kids one where you bring sack lunches. So we had our lunches and were watching the show when the kid next to me (but not in my group) started looking funky. I was asking him about it to the point of bugging him I guess because he was like, "Yes, I feel sick, I just don't want to tell you!" So I told a teacher who pulled him out for a bit and then brought him back explaining that he's very sensitive to loud noises. I looked at a fellow chaperone behind me and was all, "Nuh uh... I think he's going to throw up." Sure enough after awhile longer he started crying and saying he wanted his mommy. I knew what was coming. I motioned his teacher over again (his chaperone had not a clue what was going down behind her, the slacker) and he was like, "I want Mommy! I want Mommy!" and then "I feel like I'm going to throw up" so she started escorting him out and he yakked on the floor. I had a trash can there so fast, I'd been planning it since I first saw him turn green. :) Poor fella. Then right as we were leaving Easton had to go to the bathroom but the main bathroom was being used by the puking kid so I had to run E upstairs where he had diarrhea himself...ugh.

On the bus ride back that boy Jack (from Easton's birthday party with the two younger brothers whose dad died a few months ago) fell asleep in the seat. He wasn't in my group either but I was across the aisle from him and had to hold him up because when we'd turn he'd fall into the aisle or over onto Kaelan.

It was an eventful field trip, that's for sure!

February 8th:
Wednesday Dalton was back at school. Autumn and I had some doughnuts for breakfast. She always eats the chocolate off the top (and just the chocolate). The boys did this too so my trick was to cut the doughnut into bite sized pieces so they'd eat the whole thing. Well, the little stinker still just bit the chocolate tops off her pieces:

At least she was feeling better.

Easton had a half day Wednesday (and Thursday and today) for conferences.

Jason watched the kids while I went to Easton's conference that evening. His homeroom and literacy teachers love him and love having him in their classes. They showed me examples of things he's working on and had good things to say. His math teacher, however, called Easton an enigma that he just can't seem to figure out. He said Easton gives all these signs like he's paying good attention, but when he asks him about it it's clear he wasn't paying attention at all. He's great if he's one on one with E, but, of course, that's not always possible. He showed me some timed addition tests he's doing and Easton's score is actually getting worse. What the...??? Easton's not fond of repetition, however. He already mastered these simple addition problems. Long ago. And he's soooooo not competitive (think of him at soccer) so he doesn't care so much about beating his own score. So he doesn't try so hard. He doesn't see the point. (Sounds like his daddy was. I, on the other hand, wanted to beat my own score and everyone else's and wanted everyone to know. Heh.) So, we've got some stuff to work on with E...mostly about focusing. He loves school, he's learning tons and doing really well overall...but this recent stuff in math is interesting. We've come up with a plan for E and as we were discussing it, Miss Miss got into some trouble and had to have a time out:


February 9th:
The little two and I had a lazy morning at home. They're just too cute together. Here they are watching a little TV:






Don't let Daddy see them doing the Umizoomi "crazy shake" while standing on the coffee table:




I love their bond!


After we picked E up from his half day, Lauren came by with her pot o' wax. The kids were excited to see her, if only for a bit. We had a lazy afternoon after that until Jason got home and cleaned up a bit before having a young friend from the worship band come over to record in his studio. So I was on bedtime duty on my own...

Here's Easton working on part of our new plan. His school doesn't do homework, which we love. But, he needs to work on a little something here and there just so we can help him to focus and such...but here's how he got himself ready to write to me last night:


Suprisingly, he did really well with what I'd asked of him! Perhaps the crazy costume and sherriff badge is the trick?

February 10th--Today!
Jason and I had dermatology appointments this morning. I'm supposed to get a head-to-toe check every year because I'm all holy moley. :) I hadn't been since before I got pregnant with Dalton, though. Eek! Jason had a few things to ask about as well so we had back to back appointments so we could take turns with Autumn.

Then I first picked up Dalton and Em from school. This great drawing of Tails from Sonic was waiting for me in Dalton's folder. I was impressed:

D's got such an eye for the details. Even last year he'd draw eyebrows and chins and ears on his pictures of people when the other kids were lucky to draw a torso on their figures. Mrs. M was impressed with him. I tell you, this new school is going to love our little guy!

While at D's school, I also registered the little miss for preschool this fall. I can't believe all my babies will be in school at least 2 mornings a week next school year!

As soon as we got Dalton, we headed up to get Easton from his half day. Since the blog is so Easton-Lite lately with him in school all day now, I made sure to snap a picture of him before I sat to write this. He and D are playing the Wii and Easton's busy tongue just cracks me up:


And that brings us to now. So I guess you're all caught up on our February so far. Thanks for stopping by!