Pete's been cute, and a Hank video

I almost talked Matt into posting for me this week, but it didn't quite happen.  I think he will soon, which should be as entertaining as always.  

But since I need to keep my goal of posting each week I am just going to jot down a few things and then leave you with the cutest video in the history of videos.

I was in the back of the house and didn't hear anyone knock on the door, or hear the kids let them in. It was a couple people from church and when Jack came to tell me he said, "Some people are here.  It's not bad guys I don't think."

A couple days in a row Pete leaked out of his diaper and Matt took him straight down to the bathtub.  The morning that he did NOT leak out of his diaper Matt tried to put a new diaper on him but Pete threw a fit and would not let it happen.  Finally, Matt realized that Pete wanted to go downstairs and take a bath first.  

Pete is in love with Sharon's new dog.  At first he just followed it around making an insane screamy/screechy noise.  I doubt Windsor (the dog), liked it very much.  But now he is following it around saying, "Doggy" so that's progress.

Pete is so funny the way he hardly communicates but totally knows what is going on.  I took out the trash one day and when he saw me getting the full trash bag out he immediately ran to the back door where I needed to go out to throw it away.  Then when I came back in he pointed up to the shelf where we keep the extra trash sacks.  Then he ran over to the empty trash can and waited for me to put it in.  Once it was in, Pete picked up the trash can and put it in the cabinet under the sink, then pointed to the band that we tie around the knob, which, ironically, is to keep Pete from getting in there.  Also, when Matt showed up at Sharon's house and Pete saw that everyone was eating he immediately started his loud babble talk (where he speaks really deliberately but it's complete jibberish) and ran to point down the stairs where Matt needed to go to go get his high chair.

I came across the idea for a great bedtime Beatles song for kids from a friend of mine.  I started singing it to Jack first.  "Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart.  Love you whenever we're together, love you when we're apart."  He loved it.  I sang it to Jane, too, but Jack wasn't aware of that.  A few nights later I tried singing it to Hank in front of Jack but Jack got so upset.  He thought it was just our special song.  I ended up promising him that it would be just for us and had to come up with other songs for Jane and Hank.  Jane was very opinionated about it and eventually we settled on a song originally by Bob Dylan, although I was familiar with it from my high school days when the movie Hope Floats came out.  "When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case....I would offer you a warm embrace....to make you feel my love."  For Hank I settled on "What a Wonderful World."  Although, sometimes, I feel a little guilty singing to Hank about the colors in the world when I'm not quite sure how many of them he can see.  But anyway, he listened quietly for a couple weeks and then one night he started singing right along.  Here's a short little video of him signing the end of it.

Missing Matt

Matt left Thursday morning to fly to Washington to go to our niece, Shannon's wedding.  It took Hank awhile to believe me that Matt was going to fly on an airplane.  I quickly realized how out of practice I was at the full-time stay-at-home-with-the-kids role.  The first day Pete came to me crying, holding a GreenWorks all-purpose spray bottle, totally wet all over his face and chest.  Later, Pete managed to take every single item of silverware from the drawer and toss them in the sink that had a mound of dirty dishes in it.  To really top it off there was the time that I walked into the bathroom to see Hank holding a piece of poop with a toilet paper and trying to get it to fall off into the toilet.  I interrogated him about the poop and why he was holding it.  As Hank explained it, "Poo poo fell out of my bum bum."  "Where did it fall out?"  "In the family room and in the kitchen......But I got it!"  

To add to the chaos I had school work to get done while Matt was gone.  I managed to learn one thing--I would never be able to have a work-from-home job.  I just couldn't get myself to sit down and work.  After putting Pete to bed it would go something like this: "Oh man, I haven't eaten for hours, I should eat lunch first.  Ugh, look at all those dishes.  I'll just do those really quick. Wait, what is on my feet?  Why are there crushed up Cheerios on the floor?  I should sweep first.  Ok, I better do the dishes.  Wait, I'm so hungry, I should make something.  Oh, all of the kids are already hungry for a snack. Wow, how are there already so many dirty dishes again?  I should get a load of laundry started before it gets too late.  Jane needs me to find her drawing paper. Ok, I'm finally going to eat lunch. Whoa, WHY IS HANK HOLDING POOP?"  And then, you know, Pete was waking up.  So, the moral of the story is, I will never take Matt for granted again!!  I am now much more grateful for our current circumstances that allows me to get a good chunk of my school assignments done during the day and early evening.  It was really hard to do it all at night after a long day with the kids!  Sleep was very scarce this week.  I am really looking forward to having my awesome partner back!

Speaking of Jane and drawing paper--I thought I should make sure to document how she spends the majority of her days.  I never really even thought about it because it has been this way for as long as I can remember, but when we ran out of drawing paper this week I realized just how much time Jane spends drawing.  Her favorite thing to do is watch TV (usually WildKratts) while drawing.  She's had to spend the last couple of days using her paint paper with watercolors.  

While Jane was reading Harry Potter I kept noticing that she wasn't getting very far along each night.  When I asked her about it she said that she can't stop thinking about being in the book.  She said her mind wanders and she imagines herself as a girl in the book with darkish skin and black hair with Harry and Hagrid at Diagon Alley and next thing she knows, too much time has passed.  But Jane has had to stop reading Harry Potter because it got too scary for her.  She wasn't too happy about it because she has several friends who have read the series, so we had a chat about why it's important to do what's best for yourself instead of worrying about what everyone else is doing.

Hank's been pretty hilarious.  At the beginning of the week I jotted down a reminder to write about how he had asked a question and then told me how I should respond to it.  But in just a few days he has started doing it all the time.  So, he does it for little things like, "I want some Cheerios. You say 'okay'".  And then I'm supposed to say "Okay" and get him some Cheerios.  But he will really elaborate if needed.  One time he asked me to help him find a toy while I was changing Pete's diaper so he said, "Will you help me find it?  You say, 'Ok, I'll help you find it when I'm done changing Pete's diaper.'"  But he even does it when he isn't trying to get you to agree.  Like when he showed me something that his toy could do, "You say, 'Oh, wow, I didn't know it did that.'"  Now, normally I just go ahead and tell him what he tells me to.  But, the kids, especially Jack, are getting pretty annoyed, and I don't really blame him!  I overhead Jack yell out, "Stop it!  You can't always tell me what to say!"  I've tried to tell Hank that he has to let people say the things that they want to say.  He always just smiles and says, "Otay", but so far the habit remains.

Hank still often says all throughout the day, "I love you" out of the blue.  It's the sweetest thing.  But if he says, "I love you so much" and I say, "I love you, too!", he will tell me, "No, I said 'I love you so much.'" And then I have to say, "I love you so much, too."

Hank has actually been calling Pete, "Roy" lately.  Sometimes it's "Roy the boy."  But he picked up on it when Matt and I were talking about how we almost named him Roy.  

One of my all time favorite things about Hank right now is how he basically cheers on everyone's existence.  Any time I come home from work, or even sometimes if I just enter the room he is in from another room in the house, he will gasp! "Mom!"  "Oh, ho! Mom!" and come and give me a hug.  It is the best feeling in the world.  I've seen him do it to Matt and even Pete too.  I'm not sure if I've heard him do it to Jane and Jack but he sure does talk about how much he misses them when they are at school.  

A few funny quotes

I can't quite remember too much from this week.  I think the kids have been relatively on time to school (a miracle), they've done homework, played with some friends, fought and played with each other, etc.  Friday night we went to Seven Peaks as it was Jack's turn to pick our Friday Fun night activity.  We weren't there very long but the kids managed to have fun.  I thought I'd just hang out at the kiddie pool with Pete and Hank and let Matt take Jane and Jack on some slides.  But as soon as they left Hank made it VERY clear that the only thing he wanted to do was to go on slides and he had no interest whatsoever if swimming in a baby pool.  He kept pointing at the biggest slides he could find and saying "That one!  I want to go on THAT one!"  So we packed up the stroller and began walking all over trying to find Matt.  I was really starting to worry we would never find them and poor Hank would have missed out on any fun at all.  But luckily we did and Hank got to go on a couple slides with Matt.  He had so much fun.

Hank said something about Matt being funny and I said something about how I can be funny sometimes, too.  Hank let me know the truth though, "Only dad funny."

I was in the van taking Hank to preschool and I was singing a song to myself.  Hank interrupted, "Make the van sing." (meaning turn on the real music).

Jane was completely out of books to read and since she likes to read for an hour each night I tried to come up with something.  I looked through my old books and got out Harry Potter number one.  I figured the first one couldn't be too scary.  She's started and loves it.  She's not too far yet, but she keeps complaining about how absolutely unfair the Dursley's are to Harry. :)

Hank has been excited about peeing standing up these days.  He calls it a "stand up pee".  He asked me if you can do a "stand up poo."  Keeping with the poo theme, one time he announced before flushing, "It's going to be a poo poo tornado!" Of course, from Hank it sounded more like, "It's going to be a poo poo tomato!"

Here's a little bin of Legos that Jack and Hank consider special.  I put them in a bin with a lid that has to be clipped down on the side because Pete is in the habit of tearing their Lego's apart.  But I kept finding minifigures with their heads pulled off, etc., and kept getting after the boys for leaving the bin open.  Then one day I watched Pete go up to the bin, pull up the green clip, open the bin, take out some Legos, close the bin, and walk away.

We started using a bedwetting alarm with Jack this week.  There is a sensor that gets clipped to his underwear that connects to an alarm clipped to his shirt.  It wakes him up when the sensor gets wet.  Luckily, he's actually been waking up.  So, he wakes up, disconnects the cord from the alarm to make it stop, walks down the stairs and gets one of us to help him.  Well, one early morning he had come down the stairs and Matt was asleep on the couch in the living room.  (For those of you that know Matt, this needs no explanation).  But Jack was a little frustrated to be standing there, tired, half wet, with Matt not waking up.  So, as the story was told to me, Jack stood by Matt's head and plugged in the alarm right in front of his face.  I couldn't stop laughing about it all day.

I've had a cold the last couple days and I wonder if Pete might be getting it.  He has been very mellow today.  He sat in his high chair after breakfast for an hour perfectly content just looking around.  When I finally took him down he just laid on me.  He didn't have his clothes on yet so we sat on the rocking chair and I rocked him while stroking his back.  His laid his cute little face on my shoulder and I could feel his little baby breath on my neck.  It brought back so many memories of rocking my babies, and of rocking Pete in that very chair for three days when he had RSV as a baby.  Any time I would slow down the rocking he would rock his body against me to tell me to get with the program.  I happily obliged and kept thinking about how many, if any, moments I would have like this before he was too big and too busy to lay his cute little head on my shoulder to be rocked.  I am very thankful to have had the experiences I've had.