The Yitz

Although it's difficult to put into words why "the Yitz" is the perfect name for him, these pictures, which vividly portray Isaac's personality, may help explain why.

Luke starts school

Our little Lute is finally going to school!  (although it feels like these soon to be 6 years have FLOWN by!)

He is a little bored in school so far, although he usually says he has fun- but especially loves PE.

He especially HATES the bus.

one night he said "I don't like the way the kids talk to each other on the bus. . . I don't think I should be hearing the way they talk to each other"  This made us so sad, so now Max is driving him to school every day, and he takes the bus home.

Andrew's first prank

A couple nights ago Max got into bed and something kept poking him.

He reached down and pulled out an empty ziploc bag.

He rolled over and was poked again.

Another bag.

And yet another.

He finally pulled out 5-6 bags, bewildered as to how and why they were in our bed.

The next day, he relayed this story to us and asked how they got there.

Andrew, with a huge smile on his face looked at me and said, "I did it when we got back from the Palumbos and I didn't love you or like you or want you!" (he was not obeying when we left and wouldn't get in the van so I told him Daddy would be spanking him when he got home).

Anyway, we thought it was so funny that he set a trap to get back at me!

Tri Pres

What a fun week at camp!!

Since Max was the speaker (and did a great job) we all got to go to camp and enjoy all the activities.

It sure brought back lots of memories of when i went to Jr camp.  They still even do Pharoah Pharoah!

The first night of singing, the boys wandered up to the front to help lead the singing.  So cute!

Some people thought it seemed like a hassle since I had our newborn Miriam and 3 other kids with us, but I thought it was great because I didn't have to cook or clean all week and we had free entertainment and family time all week!

One of my favorite things was singing "oh give thanks, unto the Lord, for He is good, yes He is good. . . Oh He is worthy, worthy, for he is good, yes he is good" every time that we ate a meal.

The cutest thing ever was the boys and their "girlfriends".  The girls just thought they were the cutest things and wanted to take Luke and Andrew under their wings.  Pretty quickly, Andrew had a steady "girlfriend" and he certainly was loyal to her!  Other girls would try and talk to him or get him to sit with her or hug him, but he wouldn't even look at them.  He was constantly staring at his girlfriend and wondering what she was up to.  I think he may end up being the clingy type whom girls feel a little suffocated by as he gets older, but only time will tell.

Luke's "girlfriend" of course loved Star Wars so they had a lot in common.

I caught a frog!

Before we left to come home from South Carolina, Luke was so excited that he caught a frog!!

Great job, Lukey!

Andrew reading

So as I mentioned in a previous post, Andrew is our little genius when it comes to letters, and now even reading. First he taught himself all his letters and the sounds they make (with a little help from the hooked on phonics cd), then I realized he knew how to WRITE all of his letters too (this was when he had just turned 3).

Now that he is about to be 4, he has been reading for at least the past 6 months. He isn't just reading "cat", "sat", "pat", but ENTIRE books! Of course, they are Dr. Seuss books, but still! Sometimes he needs a little bit of help sounding out a few words, but usually he reads it all by himself. I've done a little bit of hooked on Phonics with him only to encourage this little gift in him.













This picture perfectly describes his life right now - absolutely obsessed with reading. Usually, he is the first one to sleep on long trips (we were on our way to South Carolina), but reading is actually stimulating him! This is so neat to see how different all these boys are!


Usually with the scrabble cheezits, I look at the letters the boys have and give them words to try and spell. Here, Andrew is using his cheezits to spell words all by himself.







"Look, Mommy! I spelled Pickle!!"

Wild Krats

Every Morning when the boys get up, they rush downstairs to watch Wild Krats on Sprout. It is a show where these 2 guys, named Chris and Martin are in the wild, trying to locate and learn about different animals. Luke and Andrew are now constantly singing the theme song ( "wild, wild, wild crats, the wild wild wild CRATS! cheetah speed and lizzard glide, falkin flight and lion cryin.") and turning into these characters. Chris always wears Blue and Martin always wears green, so of course Luke and Andrew want to wear the same thing every day now, either ALL BLUE, or ALL GREEN! From what I understand, girls want to change their clothes a million times a day, but boys, as long as they can become a certain character with their clothes, they will wear that same thing for weeks if I let them!

These boys have so much fun together and it is so much fun to watch them play!

Napping with Miriam

 I still require Luke to lay down for a nap every day even though he is 5 years old. 

Many days he cannot fall asleep, but he has to always lay down- for one because it helps Andrew to take a nap if he knows Luke is laying down too, but also because I need the down time and a chance to get some things done in peace and quiet.

Sometimes, however I secretly tell him he can get up after Andrew falls asleep and then we do something special like hooked on phonics or piano. 

Lately though, Luke always wants to nap with Miriam, so I have on occasion allowed him to.  The funny thing is that when he lays down with her, he falls asleep within a few minutes!  Amazing!

 It seems as though Miriam helps everyone to fall asleep with that cute little snuggly body of hers!

I should let him nap with her all the time!

Miriam

So I started having contractions similar to when I was in labor with Isaac. Although I know that every labor is different, for some reason I assumed that this meant the entire thing would be the same as Isaac's.

I began with the back labor, as I always do. Wednesday night, my mom spent the night just in case. I was up quite a bit with contractions about 5-7 minutes apart for much of the night, but eventually they moved further apart and I got some sleep.

The way I have known when to go to the hospital with the other babies was if I would lay down and contractions were STILL close together, then it was time. With this one however, I would lay down and they would be 15-20 min apart, but REALLY intense, 1 minute long contractions. When I would walk around, they would be 5 minutes apart.

So confusing.

I took some Kali Carbonicum, but it may have been too soon because I didn't feel the baby rotate like I did with Isaac (a truly bizarre but amazing feeling).

Finally, at about 11am we went over to Special Beginnings to get checked (we saw Becky Lopiccolo on the road on the way there), and I was a good 5 centimeters. I thought this was great and would have the baby pretty soon. With Isaac, I was 6 centimeters when I got to the hospital and I had him about 1 hour later.

This time, I was checked again at the hospital (about 12pm) and was 6, so I was thinking I would have this baby by 1:00. Not true! I was 8 centimeters for the next 2 hours!!! NOT FUN!!!

I guess it is never a good idea to have a time in your head that you will be finished and keep looking at the clock.

Max says that every time I'm in labor I say two things: "I can't do this!" and "I'm never doing this again!" This time I also said, "remind me next time to get an epidural"

When all is said and done, however, it is SOO worth it. We had a baby girl! The midwife and the nurse said, "dad, what is it?" And Max said, um . . . . is it a girl?, completely dumbfounded. The nurse said it was the funniest reaction she had ever seen.














Every time we have a new baby, I forget many things like how much breastfeeding hurts, how many diapers they go through in a day, and how tiny they start out. They always make the current "baby" seem like a giant. Miriam was 7 lbs 4 oz, so she was by far the smallest. 1 lb is a huge different at that age, so it was a little bizarre to have such a tiny baby.

songs on repeat

For quite some time our boys have loved to put random CDs in the CD player. They quickly decide which song they like on that CD and then put it on repeat. We have gotten so used to this, that half the time we don't even realize the song has played over and over until the 10th time. We start singing to it and then say, "wait, haven't we already heard this a bunch of times".

When Luke was 2 1/2 he was already obsessed with star wars and wanted to march around the house with the Darth Vader theme on repeat ALL DAY LONG!!

Then there was the Guster song, "c'mon" where as soon as we would play it, Luke and Andrew would drop anything they were doing and start giggling and running circles around the house (this song was mainly popular when we were in the townhouse). We have a video of this.

Then there was "word of the Lord" from the Seeds Cd. It was the first song on the CD and we could never make it past it because it would immediately get put on repeat. If I tried to switch it to "For it is by Grace you have been saved through faith", they would start screaming "NO! I DON'T LIKE THAT ONE!!!"

Of course there was the Beatles song that Chup-pop made popular around here - Beep Beep. It sort of became Chup-pop's theme song, and therefore went on repeat all too often.

Probably the oddest one they put on repeat was Kiss, "I was made for lovin you" They played this ALL DAY Every day for a while, to the point that Max would get home and it would STILL be on and he would say, "has that been on ALL day?" It would just fade into the background for me so that I barely noticed it anymore. This also happened with a Veggie Tales song. . ."we're going to the promised land. . .in the promised land, you're gonna be so grand, you'll have a . . . it'll be so great, oh we can hardly wait, cuz we're goin to the promised land."

The most ANNOYING songs were on the Baby Loves Jazz CD that Eric gave them. WOW! I still can't believe how annoying those songs were! And of course the ones they put on repeat were the WORST ones on that CD- Ten little monkeys, but much worse than that was the
scat song. It went something like this "I was scattin real fast, and du du du du du who who who who" (monkey sounds), and other animal sounds throughout the song. It was just painful to have this one on repeat, but Luke loved it and even knew most of the words one time when we asked what they were saying in that song.

The Mariah Carey Christmas song

I know there are more songs they obsessed over that I can't remember right now, but I just wanted to look back on these one day.

more Lukey obsessions

Luke will often become suddenly obsessed with a particular thing where he speaks incessantly about it and can’t sleep because of it. He just HAS to have it RIGHT NOW!

Obviously, we can’t always give into his immediate desires, but his persistence definitely gets to me after a while, causing me to actually WANT to get it for him, not because I’m tired of hearing about it, but because I know how much he will appreciate it and play with it.

Luke has always been so appreciative of every gift we have given him, thanking us profusely for it for several days or even months after he gets it, so he really is a joy to buy for.

One day he was at the Lopic’s house for a short time and was already obsessed with GI JOE, when Becky showed him Transformers because she just knew he would love that too (as if he needed one more obsession!) So he came home non-stop talking about how he HAD to have a transformer. Obviously I wasn’t going to go out and buy one that second, so he was asking me to MAKE him a transformer!! Now how was I to do such a thing?

 He was to take a nap (but couldn’t go to sleep unless he knew I would at least attempt to make a transformer). I ended up spending the entire nap time figure out how to make a transformer. It actually turned out kinda cool. I made a paper firetruck with the wheels and front of the truck attached with metal brads so that they could turn. When you turned the wheels and the front of the truck it turned into the arms, feet and head of the transformer. Not bad for a not-so-creative mama.

Luke has always been into animals since he was about 2 years old, but a couple he just HAD to have were a snow tiger and an owl. He must have seen a Marty Stauffer episode about a snow tiger because out of the blue he became obsessed. Where would I EVER find a snow tiger though? Low and behold we see a snow tiger just the right size while Max and I were in Ocean City. It was actually one of the prize options at a games booth, but we just asked the guy if we could pay him for it instead of play the game for it. It was so fun to surprise Luke with it the next day.

 The other animal he had to have was an owl that we saw in a gift shop on our way to Philly in the fall of 2010, which my mom ended up getting him a version of for his birthday. He still sleeps with both of those animals a year later

A few other obsessions were that I make a ninja turtles mask, a darth Maul mask (I spent about an hour one day drawing a detailed Darth Maul face on a paper plate and then it barely got used), a double bladed lightsaber (2 dollar tree lightsabers taped together with ducktape), and of course . . .

Jango Fett- probably the most obsessed he’s ever been about ANYTHING. Out of the blue he started talking about Jango Fett and how he is his favorite character and HAD to have a Jango Fett! for 2 days straight he wouldn’t stop talking about it, and again couldn’t fall asleep because it was on his mind so much. He kept begging to go to Walmart to buy Jango. Finally, I told him I would call walmart and see if they had it just so he would go take a nap, and we told him that Daddy would look for it on the way home. When Max got home, he said that they didn’t have Jango Fett anymore and boy did he get Luke good! That was one of the best surprises ever!

  However, Isaac took quite a liking to him and quickly became Jango-obsessed.  He was not even 2 years old yet, but would sit for an hour or more at a time playing with this action figure!  He has some of the best fine motor skills for a 2 year old.  He also loves taking apart the little legos. 
Probably the oddest obsession Luke ever had was that of wanting me to make him and Andrew a diaper so that they could pretend to be babies. I finally caved into his incessant bugging and pinned together two cloth diapers so they could crawl around like babies!

Winter fun 2011

The boys have gotten really into coloring these days and its really fun to watch them.  They have completed entire coloring books, which I didn’t know was possible!  When they’re not coloring, they’re reading or dressing up in costumes!

Big brother

I believe that Andrew would do just about anything for his big brother.

He watches the way Luke does everything and tries to imitate him exactly.

He watches to see which spoon he will use first in his oatmeal, and when he will drink his water.

He cleans his toothbrush out the same way as Luke.

He is also quick to share things with him and praise him for things he does well.

Several times Andrew has done something, be it a puzzle, writing letters, or anything, and will say, "but mine isn't as good as wukey's", not that he is upset about it, but just matter of fact.

The other day, Luke and Andrew sat next to each other on stools when Daddy came and sat on the other side of Andrew. Luke began to flip out because he was ONLY next to Andrew, so Andrew says, "Actually, I wanna sit over here" as he proceeded to move to the other side so that Luke could sit next to Daddy. Wow! what a sweet boy!