March

About the Brothers
After daylight savings Theo slept in til 8:30 a couple mornings. Lukas was very glad when his friend finally woke up.

They both love to read, but reading together is usually a challenge. Who gets to sit on Mama's lap (if she's there)? Who gets to turn the pages? How many words should there be in a book? Here's a moment of side-by-side reading peace.

Here's some book fighting.

Sometimes space ain't a bad thing.

A morning favorite - "sleep over". Pull out all the blankets and dogs and bunnies and important sleep objects and snuggle next to each other and then wrestle and then cry and then snuggle. 

Theo's Very Smart Brain

Theo is taking off with his words. He has said "woof woof" for about a year now, and that is accompanied by a great love for real and pretend dogs. "All done get down" is very useful when eating time is over. "All done" is also very useful for "amen" or for when we want something like singing a long song to be over. He says "Papa", "Mama" (though it sounds a lot like "more, more!"" and "Babu" (Lukas). He says "big boy" and "peas", though peas are usually just "um" with a chomp and a smile. He says many useful animals sounds like "mmm" (moo), "meow", "bok bok bok", "neigh", and makes a chomping sound for crocodiles and alligators. I think he said "grandma" last week, and he says "Isaiah" almost perfectly, though when pressed he'll point at any of the cousin pictures on the fridge and repeat it. 

Of course what he says is 1% of what he knows and understands. He has long been able to follow 3-part directions and carry them out to a T. He can point to many requested objects in his books, such as animals or types of trucks. He is very good at communicating what he wants; one long-time skill has been getting himself into his food chair (saying he wants food).

Auntie Mercy got this horsy for the boys. Theo's a big fan.

Theo had been scared of the breastplate until one morning last week. As you can see in his eyes, something was wrong last week. We're still not sure what it was but he's getting back to normal we think. 

Baby Sister

She's coming! Hopefully sooner than later.

Won't she be cute in these? (Grandma made them.)

Happy 39th birthday, Daniel!

One last pre-baby date :) A very cold picnic by Lake of the Isles.

February

Every good Minnesotan must talk about the weather a little more than is interesting for anyone including herself. So I'll start with all the snow we got in February. It was a lot. The alley was a mess and our neighbors who haven't lived in MN very long had a hard time driving. But these boys played in it as much as their mama had energy to get the gear on and get them out the door. And of course Papa got them out as much as possible after work and on the weekends.

Here's a snow lantern they built with Daniel:

You can't see him, except for maybe his legs, but this is Daniel going back outside after putting the children to bed in order to continue working on a gigantic snow lantern:

Here's Thomas shoveling for us on his no-school snow day:

The Armor

I think this all started with receiving "The Tale of Desperaux" from Brad and Kari, a story where the knight-mouse saves the human princess from the evil rat colony. There were one or two scary scenes where Lukas was likely to be found under the table where the computer was sitting with his ears covered, but every since we're real into being knights and heroes and having armor. Daniel has made some very nice things with him. He and Theo sword fight and joust. Sword fighting is what it sounds like, and more successful than I anticipated. Jousting is an upstairs activity where one boy starts at one end of the hall and the other at the other end. Two hands are raised in front of them and they charge at each other. Theo falls before Lukas can get to him, Lukas tackles him, they get up and they switch ends. Sometimes Lukas lets Theo win... very rarely... 

We got to go to one of Caleb's basketball games. The next day everything was Lions basketball. We wore all red, we carried our clothes to change into after we got too sweaty, and we put basketballs in hoops.

Auntie Mercy gave him lots of sugar.

Gale Woods Farm is a nice place to visit in one of the local park systems. Lukas had a class there all about chickens. While he was in his class, Theo and I walked all around the farm and enjoyed the sheep and cows. Theo's moo is cute, in a very low voice he says "Mmm".

Waiting for Papa to come home.

"Papa's home!!"

This one loves the buckles and anything mechanical.

He also likes to get up on the changing table and take matters into his own hands. 

And he likes to make elaborate buildings with his magnet shapes. Sometimes they are 6 stories tall. Sometimes they are very long and artistic. Sometimes they provide shelter for animals. Often they are very suddenly destroyed.

Because we are looking forward to the arrival of another family member, we sold this very fine car to a young lady very excited about it's manual transmission and excellent gas mileage. Mama was thankful for that. 

Now we drive this very fine machine. It seems to be a very good car, and Lukas can stand up and walk around in it, and it currently has two double strollers and Lukas' 1,000 lb bike in the back trunk. Cargo space is a welcome improvement to the compact car. 

January

Aren't they cute?

About Changing Undesirable Behaviors

We have found that Lukas is very responsive to sticker charts. When we develop bad habits, we choose 1 or 2 specific bad habits, offer a specific alternative, and then get a sticker when the alternative is chosen. When the chart is full, Lukas chooses his reward.

Our current sticker chart is about rice. We recently decided we don't like rice any more. This doesn't work for our family, as it is what we have at least 5 nights/week. So when Lukas says "thank you for the rice" and eats it without complaining, he gets a sticker. When this chart is full, he gets to choose the supper :)  

This photo was an ice cream reward. He was so excited that this was the stillest picture I could get.

And this one gets to celebrate too:

We still like costumes.

King of the hill. I discovered that on the days where I just can't get the two blocks to the park, the parking lot snow plow hills across the street are a nice alternative.

Who needs the sidewalks to be stroller-able when we can cruise around in this?

Theo has been so fun. We really like him. He's usually happy, learning and growing constantly, and a pretty cool friend to Lukas. He loves when Papa does "this little piggy" and he loves his belly button. I wanted so badly for Lukas to like his belly button when he turned the magical bb age of 18 months, but I just couldn't get him to be obsessed. Daniel thinks it was because we were in Bangladesh and belly buttons aren't special there (not covered due to weather and saris). I didn't even have to force Theo to get excited at 18 months. It helped that I have a massive one that's been sticking 1 inch out from my body since baby sister was just 14 weeks along.