No thank you!

Today we took Grady to a birthday party at one of those bounce house places.  Asher was with me and we went into the building to get Grady settled in for the party.  Of course Asher wanted to play on the big blow-up slide.  After carrying Asher up the slide multiple times I wanted a break so I suggested the bounce house.  Asher was apprehensive, it was a little intimidating to him, I guess.  Me, being the good mom, I tried to push him up into it thinking once he tries it he will love it.  Asher being the sweet, polite child, also a child that knows absolutely what he does not want to do says, “No, thank you! Not fun!” repetitiously. 

I was so blown away with his ability to articulate himself, I gave up and we went down the slide several more times. 

He did later gain some confidence and did enjoy the bounce house for a few minutes.  I knew I was right!

What would you do?

Tonight we were fully initiated as scouting parents when we attended Jack’s Pinewood Derby.

Jack’s car is the red one.

We all had a great time Grady and Asher included.  Jack didn’t place and we learned some valuable lessons for next year. 

As we got home our neighbor was there looking for her son whom she thought had been at our house for the last four hours.  Immediately she went to check at some other friend’s house. I didn’t know what to do. So I got my school directory and went to our neighbor’s house.  We called the police and everyone we could think of the whole time she was trying to get a hold of her husband. He was at the home of  a co-worker for a party, with no cell phone service.  In between calling every person in the neighborhood we said a prayer together. 

After we could not get a hold of her husband I called Roger he figured out who her husband’s boss was at Microsoft.  His boss happens to go to church with us so we called Brad (the boss) and he was able to get the home phone number where the party was happening!  So after two hours of realizing and looking for this boy we located his Dad.  Who had his son!!!!

What would you do if you thought your child was missing?  It was so frightening, any parent’s worst nightmare. 

We are safe, today…

So in talking with several friends today I learned that some are safe today from layoffs at Microsoft and some sadly are scrambling for another position.  Finally, hard times have hit our bubble here in the northwest today 1400 people were laid off and another 3600 sometime soon.  My prayers are with all the families affected by this!

What is he doing?

Everything is quiet and I decide to sit down to check my email.  All of the sudden I get a sinking feeling, what is Asher doing? it is too quiet.  More often than not he is doing something mildly annoying like going through my purse and stealing a pack of gum then unwrapping and chewing every piece of gum in the pack at the same time.  Randomly he is doing something really naughty like emptying all the open cereal boxes on the floor or in a bowl in hopes of pouring his own milk before I find him.

Today he was not doing any of these things, he wasn’t painting with my lipstick either.  He wasn’t in my closet pulling every article of clothing down and piling it on the floor.  He wasn’t stealing candy or cookies after climbing onto the kitchen counters.  He wasn’t playing on or in the toilet.  He was not dumping all of the dog food into the dog water bowl or drinking out of the water bowl.

 

He was looking at books!

What a great kid!  How did I get so lucky?  How did he become so infatuated with books.  We have noticed this love for reading and books for awhile now.  His first favorite book was Go Dogs, Go by PD Eastman.  We could not put him down for a nap or at night without reading it at least once and then he usually wanted to sleep with it.  He has discovered several other books now, lately the favorites are Clifford and the Big Itch or The Cat in the Hat.

Our theory is that our kids see us so often curled up with a book in the evenings and weekends that they are drawn to books.  Jack is also fast becoming a book worm.  We started him with the Spiderwick Chronicles and went to see the movie at the conclusion of the series.  Now he is reading the Harry Potter series all by himself and we watch each movie after he completes the corresponding book.

Jack reading Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban

An hour after we sent him to bed, I had to take the book away.

Grady our middle guy gets the shaft sometimes because he is not  reading really well yet, he is in kindergarten, so he can’t just read on his own the books he is interested in.   Tonight I had the opportunity to sit down with him alone and read a story to him.  He wanted to be wrapped in a blanket and sit in my lap just the way Asher gets to every night.  I think he thoroughly enjoyed his moment with mom.  I plan to make this more of a priority every evening for Grady.  He does get read to most evenings usually it is a book within a series (Lord of the Rings, City of Ember, Spiderwick, ect.) that Roger reads to both Jack and Grady.  However, I think Grady needs his own time with the books he has chosen.

These are a few of the books the boys are into right now.  Asher’s books are on the left with Clifford, Morning Song and a Cars book.  While Grady’s books are in the middle Serendipity Collection, Bedtime Stories and Captain Underpants. Jack is to the right with Harry Potter.

Who knows where they get their love of books but I am so glad this is something we all share!  Now how do I get them to love cleaning up after themselves?

I did it!!!

So it only took about 5 minutes but they were determined minutes.  I finally had some alone time to figure out how to use the built in web cam on my new laptop.  I have never had a webcam.  This opens up a world of possibilities.   I can already imagine recording a session with my kids like one of the reality tv shows where they go into a room and get to blab about whatever is on their minds.  So much fun is in store for the future of this device and I will post the results here…   For now here is my picture from the first attempt at a photo capture;-)

Okay so I have many things to work on (lighting, background, how to center).

My Lunch Date

Okay the highlights of my day were dining on peanut butter and honey sandwiches and later looking at a piano. Asher and Grady accompanied me to Jack's school to have lunch with Jack in his classroom pod. It is very casual we just sit at a little table and eat. Somewhere between the juice box is empty and it is time to go, Grady and Asher are pushing chairs around creating buses and trains then reconfiguring the chairs by stacking them and creating thrones for all three of them. Then I got a message later saying if I wanted a piano it needed a good home, so we are getting a piano! It is old but sturdy. That is exactly what we need until we become a little more civilized around the Fleig household.

Apple Tasting

1/2/09 We were bored of being stuck in the house [snow] and it was something different to do. I had a bunch of different kinds of apples (pink lady, crisps pink {might be the same as pink lady}, honey crisp, red delicious, organic red delicious, gala, granny smith, and golden delicious). We cut them up and tried each one put a check mark on a sheet next to the ones we liked. It was Jack's idea to put a post-it note next to each kind of apple and he was the official score keeper. Every apple was liked but the favorites were the crisps pink and the honey crisp. Grady's favorite was the Golden Delicious I think, because he ate half the apple by himself. We ate small pieces of cheddar to cleanse our palate between apples and we also had some sliced honey ham. Lunch was done standing at the island eating mostly apples. At the end we made applesauce with the apples left over, it was tasty!

"Have fun Mom"

I don't think I can express the joy I feel when I hear my child speak. My oldest boys spoke clearly at 18 months and nonstop, that is what all kids do right? Not Asher. We went to his 18 month checkup and the pediatrician asked "So does he have more than 50 words?" Ahhh No he said Mama for everything. When he said Mama it didn't have a meaning it was the only word he said. We started speech therapy last March, a speech therapist came to our home once a week and an educational specialist came once a month. In December 2008 we stopped private speech therapy sessions and started a preschool class with 5 specialist in the room and 11 children in the class. Asher's language is exploding! Today he was leaving with his dad and I called to Asher, "Have fun with Dad!". Asher called back, "Have fun Mom!"! Roger peeked back at me and we smiled. Love that little man.

Zune Bliss

I just got a new Zune (microsoft's mp3 player). I have had one for a year in a half but shortly after my husband purchased it microsoft came out with a smaller version. So lately neither of us really wanted to carry our Zunes around because it felt like carrying a brick around in my pocket. Well for Christmas I got a much smaller Zune. I cannot wait to go to the gym with this smaller device. I used wear my old device on an armband and it spanned my entire bicep with my new Zune I won't even need an armband because it is small enough to fit in my waistband key pocket.