Six Years Ago Today...

We were sitting at the table today when Mike remembered that six years ago on this date, he was on the road with three other young men carpooling up to an overnight men's conference at Campfire.  The first snowstorm of the season was wreaking havoc on the roads, and they decided to take a shortcut to avoid the slow drivers on the main road.  This shortcut, unfortunately, eventually ended up hurtling them off a boat launch and thirty feet into a lake.  While this event provides excellent narrative potential for my husband, we are very thankful that everyone was ok that snowy evening and that we can now sit back and laugh about it.   

I picked him up that evening from a friend's place, and he never did make it to the conference.  However, the two of us drove up the next morning to see where the whole thing took place, and to see if they had managed to extricate the car from the lake yet.  The car was gone when we arrived, but we did have to laugh as we drove down the road toward the boat launch, as we could clearly for at least a kilometer that the road ended in a lake.  Amazing what some snow can do to your perception.

I'm not sure of the exact route, but it went something like this:  

And the trip ended here

 Too bad they flew past this warning sign without time to read it

Breaking the Laws

Mike and I were in the basement this afternoon, both busy working.  Of course, if we are in the basement, so are our dear boys, who find the basement to be a very exciting place to be as long as they are not down there alone.  I found their behaviour somewhat hard to understand while we were working, as it didn't seem to fit within logical constraints.  For some reason, they were much more interested in helping Mike out with his work than helping me out with mine.  After all, MY work was breaking basic laws of thermodynamics and entropy.  While things are naturally inclined to move from a state of order to a state of chaos, folding the laundry is a task which actually turns chaos into order.  You would think that such an amazing feat would be recognized as extraordinary, and that my children would be entranced by what I was doing, and would certainly want to help.  No such luck.  For some reason, the wall that Daddy was ripping down was much more interesting to them, despite the fact that this moving from order to chaos is typical according to the second law of thermodynamics, and should not cause any undue excitement to anyone observing.  Should I expect my children to ignore any phenomenal exceptions to natural laws in the world around them?  Perhaps I should introduce them to the wonders of folding laundry...

Happy Birthday, Peter!

Our first baby is FOUR!  Happy birthday, Peter!  We hope and pray that this next year continues to be filled with happiness and blessings for you!

Happy Palindrome o'clock!

Recurring Nightmares

Our kids are normally pretty good at sleeping through the night.  As long as everyone is relatively healthy, they go to sleep easily and wake up at a reasonable time in the morning.  With Aaron recently toilet trained, he occasionally comes out of bed in the middle of the night and wakes one of us up for some gladly-rendered assistance in the bathroom, but he's pretty content to go right back to sleep.  The last little while has been a bit of a struggle with Nate, as he has a few molars coming in and this has made him miserable during the day and night.  Most of the time though, we have it pretty good. 
Every once in a while, one of the older boys will wake up very upset in the night - I don't know if this has happened more than once or twice with Aaron in the last year and a half but Peter has always had a flair for the dramatic, and there is no exception for this in the middle of the night.  If something is bothering him, it must certainly be accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Last night was one of those nights.  We woke up to the sound of Peter wailing in deep distress, and both got up to go see what the problem was and to try to quiet him down before the other two woke up.  Through loud sobs, we learned that the poor kid had experienced a nightmare.  When he told us what he was upset about, we recalled that about a month or two ago, he had woken up screaming in the night from the exact same nightmare.  And what is Peter's worst-case, recurring nightmare about, you might ask?

"AARON IS TAKING ALL MY BANANAS AWAY!!!!"

Some Photos

On October 22, we went to a Touch-A-Truck event held at the Ancaster Fairgrounds.  The boys had a fantastic time, and it was fun to see them so excited!  There were all kinds of trucks and machinery there, from tractors and transport trucks to fire engines and tree spades.  We would definitely take them to an event like this again.  I don't think the smiles came off their faces all morning!

I think Aaron is sitting in the paddywagon in this photo

 "Driving" a skid steer

 In a transport truck - watch out for your ears, 

Dad, when he honks that horn!

 Nate dwarfed by some wheels

We'll call this one a "FAIL" in the "Mom-trying-to-get-an-artistic-

shot" category.  Examining the photo more closely afterward,

it was no wonder Aaron wasn't extremely pleased with me, 

 as I was covering up his face, haha. 

 This boy has talent, I tell you!  The day he learned to 

hang a spoon on his nose.  He's better at it than me.

With that spoon-hanging gift, he's bound to get a few more of these!  Peter received a Superstar Award during an assembly at school for the month of October.  No, it wasn't actually for spoon-hanging, it was for learning how to print his name.  I have found his name printed all over the place, and not just on paper... strange how a kid will deny writing his own name on the wall in crayon, as if he could pass the blame for that to one of his brothers... Thankfully "Peter" written all over our deck in sidewalk chalk will be more easily removed than crayon once we get a good rainfall.  It's exciting to watch him learn these new skills.    

Excitement reigneth on Rexleigh Crescent!  One morning we woke up to see water spurting out of our neighbour's lawn - the water main had sprung a leak.  I almost kept Peter home from school, as the backhoe showed up just as we were leaving home to drop him off. 

This doesn't happen every day - a backhoe parked in your driveway.  Needless to say, Aaron didn't have a nap that afternoon.  Thankfully it was still there when we picked Peter up again from school at the end of the afternoon. 

It even returned the next morning to fix the chewed up part of the lawn.  The boys enjoyed breakfast in the living room with the best of entertainment.  As for myself, I was just somewhat amused that it took a backhoe, two dump trucks, and six men over an hour to rake out some grass seed on an area about 3 meters square.  So glad we pay those taxes... 

You might guess that it was not actually me who was attempting to make this phone call... dear Nate is quick to grab things off desks or tables that he KNOWS he is not allowed to have.  I'm not sure who he was trying to call, but I'm not interested in finding out what the long-distance bill might have been...

ONE good picture of ONE boy sitting still is hard enough to accomplish.  The task of taking a good picture of TWO boys sitting still is exponentially more difficult.  Trying to get a good picture of THREE boys sitting still is quite certainly near impossible, especially when they are 1, 2, and 3.  Here are a few of my attempts. 

On Time

I have just realized that all three of my kids' birthdays fall on a Thursday this year.  I checked it out for next year too, and they will all be on a Saturday in 2012.  For the next 10 years at least, they will all be on the same day in any given year.  In 2013 they are on a Sunday, then the next years they will be on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in 2021. I wondered at first it it was just a fluke, but if it's steady for 10 years I suppose it will be like that forever.  Can't really figure out why the leap years didn't mess it up, but I'm not exactly good at the whole time-fiddling concept.  I thought I was all on top of things on Friday with the time change and I put my kids to bed half an hour early to help get them adjusted, only to realize the next morning chatting with my dear hubby that I was supposed to put them to bed later instead.    

Milestones

It's been an milestone week here at our home!  We're down to one kid in diapers again, which has been extremely nice.  I started up potty-training with Aaron again about four weeks ago - this was our third try at it.  On Friday morning, I was just about ready to give up again for a little while, as he just didn't seem to get it.  Yeah, he'd pee on the toilet every time I put him on, but then he'd go again within five minutes without being too concerned about it at all.  Good thing I didn't give up though, because I guess he decided he was ready, and since that day he's been just fantastic!  He's been dry through the day, pretty much dry through the night (we get him up before we go to bed), and he's been wearing one pair of underwear all day successfully since Tuesday.  He's pretty proud of himself, and he's quite excited to be a "big boy"!  Aaron has demonstrated himself to be quite a sensitive kid, which I don't think I've mentioned here lately, or maybe even at all.  During the summer at one point, we had been driving and listening to the soundtrack to the Lion King, which they have never seen.  There is a song where Timon and Pumba are sad about losing their friend Simba, and while this was playing, Mike and I were astonished to see Aaron get all sad and teary eyed about this, as he was genuinely concerned bout the loss of their friend.  A few weeks ago we were in Strathroy and the boys were watching a movie about a polar bear who was rejected by his mother at birth.  Aaron became extremely concerned that this polar bear was lonely and didn't have any friends, and as he watched, his lip started quivering and he just broke down in with heart-wrenching tears.  It is intriguing to watch this emotional development in your child, especially since he is such a goofy, fun-loving kid.     
The other milestone that we reached this week was with Nathaniel - he's been taking steps and walking from one person to another for a while now, but he decided on Monday that he is officially a "walker" and no longer a "crawler".  It has been quite enjoyable to watch him toddle all over the house, still a little unsteady on his feet but gaining confidence every day!  He loves to get right in there with his big brothers, but he knows that he has to be a little careful or he'll get bowled right over by their overflowing enthusiasm at times.  He still doesn't have any regular words, although we've heard him say a few things like "Mommy", "Daddy", and "Amen".  Most of the time, though, he just says "yeah", which can actually be quite funny if you start asking him funny questions.  He gets called a number of interesting things, and most of the time we call him Nato, or Nate-o I suppose.  How do you know how to spell a nickname correctly anyways?  Do you think any other kids in the world who are called Nathaniel are referred to as Nato?  Mike thinks not, but I think there might indeed be some "Nato"s out there.  What I am quite certain about is that there are no other "Nato"s who became "Nato"s in the same way that our Nato did.  It was probably about two or three months ago that Peter and Aaron started calling their younger brother Nato-Bato-Bido-Bu.  He was no longer just Nate or Nathaniel.  This name has progressed through several stages into Nato-Bu, Nato-Bato, and the most recent Nato-Bato-Bido-Butt-Butt-Butt.  I find the shorter Nato to be much more convenient, but the older boys find Nato-Bato-Bido-Butt-Butt-Butt to be quite amusing.  At this point, you are probably thinking that we are all very strange.
Let's talk about Peter.  Peter is doing very well right now, finally settled into the routine of school and enjoying his time there.  He was quite excited to be the "Leader" at school on Friday, and he got to do Show and Tell this week as well.  He had to bring something that started with a P, so he brought a Play Phone with which he could call the Police.  He did go through a stage where he was quite afraid of being left alone, and was quite clingy to me.  There were a few days that the teacher had to peel him off me when I dropped him off, screaming and crying, and those were not good days for anyone.  He was also upset about going to Story Hour on Wednesdays when I go to Bible study, and his JK teacher said he had a hard time with any "transition" like going to the library.  We found that it really helped to talk things through ahead of time, and help him to decide that he wouldn't be upset about going to school or going to the library.  Once he decided that he would be happy and cheerful, it didn't seem to be a problem at all.  Strange how that is!  It seems to help him in other situations as well, that we can avoid meltdowns if we explain how things are going to go and what an appropriate emotional response would be.  Peter also seems to be going through a growth spurt right now - his pants and shirts are quickly becoming too short for him, and he is hungry ALL THE TIME.  Twenty minutes after breakfast is done, he is asking for more food, for a sandwich, for an apple, for anything!  As a result, my kids have been eating a lot of apples lately.  When I measured him at the end of September, he was 41" tall and 37 lbs.  At that time, Aaron was 37.5" tall and 36 lbs, and Nathaniel was 31.5" tall and 22 lbs 15 oz.  Nate's right around the same height now as Peter and Aaron were at a year, but he's 3-5 lbs lighter than either of them were.  I find it interesting to compare their heights and weights at different ages.  I should put it all on a chart sometime...someday when I have some extra time that is! 

Never-ending Dirt

Mom:  Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep, sigh. 
Mom:  "I think this is the sixth time I've swept this kitchen floor today.  Where does all this dirt come from, anyways??"
Peter:  "God puts it there, Mom"

Hmmmm.  I guess I can't really argue with that one, can I?

No Fear of Heights Here!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before how Nate is into everything, and is going to give me grey hairs.  We are hoping that with him learning how to walk, he will become more interested in the horizontal as opposed to the vertical.  However, I am pretty sure that learning how to walk is simply going to increase his confidence and ability to get to even more dangerous places and mom-heart-attack-provoking places.  Here are a few situations that I imagine I might find him in sometime in the near future.  Three of these scenarios are of real places that I have removed him from, without stopping to take a picture first - it's up to you to decide which three those might be... 

Climbing out of his crib

 Climbing on Peter's top bunk

 Climbing on the patio table outside

 Climbing onto the bathroom vanity

Climbing backwards on the rocker, with no hands

Climbing in the trees outside

 Climbing into the play structure outside

 Climbing up the walls, or the windows, whatever might be easier

 Climbing up the giraffe at the zoo