Familia Nuttall

The cutest pirates ever

Isaac and Levi both loved dressing up as pirates and sword fighting with their dollar store foam swords. Here they are before I took them out to do trick or treating at the aquarium.

Thanks Grandma!

James' mom sent Levi a bath toy with little cars and a road for the bathtub and Levi and Isaac had fun initiating on the morning of Levi's birthday.

Happy Birthday to Levi

It was Levi's birthday, but Isaac kind of took control of Levi's cupcake ceremony and Levi was more interested in playing with his new cars.

Oct. 20-Oct. 26, 2008

I took Isaac to the dentist on Monday morning and they sent me back to the waiting room after they called him in. I didn’t expect him to last, but apparently he cooperated for the xrays and the teeth cleaning. Que milagro.
When Levi woke up on Tuesday morning, he ran up to James and said, “Papa, I found the spaceship book.”—it blows my mind that he is speaking full sentences now!! He is also the more polite kid you’ll ever meet. He’ll say “thankyou” and “you’re welcome” right on cue.
Going to the Science Museum on Tuesday mornings before preschool has become a new ritual for the boys and I. Isaac’s favorite thing is the ball toy in the kids science room and Levi loves looking at the images projected on the ceiling from the giant telescope in the space room.
Wednesday was Levi’s birthday!!!!! I really like that his birthday is close to Halloween because that way we can make it a costume party. We invited a bunch of friends to come over and had all of the kids dress up. It was very cute. Isaac and Levi were both pirates and they got such a kick out of running around the apartment and shouting “Arh matety” The kids danced to the elephant song, walk song, freeze song and we did some parachute games with them. That parachute I have for Spanish class comes in very handy for parties. Then I just cooked some frozen pizzas from Target and we all sang happy birthday and the kids devoured the brownie cupcakes. Levi was a very happy camper—especially because Jackson and Jordan gave him Lightning McQueen and Mater, his two favorite cars characters. Maria Paz gave him a Cars lunch box and Levi insisted on sleeping with the lunchbox with the two cars inside.
Thursday I felt like I was in slow motion all morning still recovering from Wednesday. The power went out in the afternoon so that made trying to prepare something for lunch pretty interesting. It made me realize that I need to be prepared with something more than granola bars and bread.
So I bit the bullet with Levi and told him that since he’s two years old, his bottle days are over. I put all of his bottle in a bag and hid them—for him and so that I won’t be tempted to give in and let him have one. He’s put up quite the fight, but I think he’s realizing that we’re serious. He still doesn’t want to drink his milk from a sippy cup but at least he consented to drinking it from a cup with a straw—he calls this “bubble milk.” His appetite for actual food has also been better too. His favorite things right now are green peppers, peanuts, popcorn, pasta, carrots, string cheese and frozen yogurt popsicles.
Isaac finally broke down and ate an apple—I’ve been telling him for about a week that he can’t have an after school treat until he eats some apple, and he’s just forgone the treat because he didn’t want to eat the apple. But finally this week he decided that apples are actually edible and he ate some. Hopefully he’ll keep this up since strawberry is the only other fresh fruit he eats (he loves dried fruit like raisins & craisins).
Spanish class on Thursday was awesome because I read the “Go Away Big Green Monster” book in English and Spanish. The kids loved it—especially because Isaac pretended to be a monster with his fake vampire teeth.
Thursday night Carrie invited us to go to the Aquarium to for a kids trick or treat activity. The boys loved trick or treating with the sharks, but Isaac did lose his pirate hat in all of the craziness.
Friday we went to the new Please Touch Museum (The Philly Children’s Museum) at Memorial Hall. The building that it’s in now if amazing. It feels so spacious and there are a lot more exhibits and stations to entertain the kids. Isaac’s favorite thing was the bull dozers that pick up plastic balls and Levi’s favorite thing was going shopping in the pretend supermarket. There’s also a carousel in the building that museum members can ride for free and the boys had huge smiles on their faces riding the horsies around the circle. Levi did have one major meltdown during the morning because the museum has several displays of toys behind glass (bad idea) for decoration and one of the displays is of all of the “Cars” vehicles and Levi just could not understand why he wasn’t able to play with them.
On Sunday Laura Nash took some family pics for us over at Logan Square by the fountain and we were treated to some great fall weather. The leaves changing on the trees right now are gorgeous too.
I was so tired Sunday night that I zonked out on the sofa after sitting down for a minute after putting the boys to bed—this kid in my tummy definitely makes staying on my feet more tiring than I’m used to.

Hanging out with Ben Franklin

The Wharton Kids Club met on campus to take some group shots with the kids by the Ben Franklin statue. Levi liked sitting on his lap and Isaac liked crawling up on his shoulders.

Here's the rambling weekly scoop. . .

Oct.13-Oct.19, 2008
The weather was amazing today (Monday) and the fall leaves over at Taney Park were absolutely gorgeous. I haven’t been around such great fall leaves since we lived in Michigan. The boys wore themselves out at the park and I saw Isaac interacting nicely with some little girls pretending to play “restaurant” through a little pretend window. Levi kept running off with some little girls pink mini stroller and cruising all over the park. My new pet peeve is parents who bring their kids toys to the park—it drives me crazy. Having other people’s toys laying around is too tempting and it almost always ends up in a sharing crisis.
We went over to Matthias and Pepitas’ apartment in the late afternoon and the Levi couldn’t get enough of all of Matthias’ Lightning McQueen toys. We took a short swim and they all had fun pretending to be “tiburones” I love hearing Isaac speak Spanish with Matthias.
The threat of taking one of the rocks out of the jar for breaking one of the family rules has been working pretty well for Isaac. He doesn’t like losing his rocks.
We kind of got a slow start this morning (Tuesday) and I let the boys take a long morning bath for fun. Well it was all fun and games until I was getting something from my room and I heard pounding on my door. I opened it to see two construction workers asking me if my toilet was overflowing. I was very confused and I said that I didn’t think so. They said that something was wrong because water was pouring down from our apartment into the auditorium under construction below us. I walked over to the boys bathroom with them and lo and behold, there were my little angels Isaac and Levi DUMPING water out of the tub onto the floor and completely flooding everything. The construction workers got a good laugh out of it and I was mortified. I had to get every towel in the house to sop the darn mess up.
My Spanish/ASL class went really well for Tuesday. The kids loved the chocolate and diez dedito songs. We played review games with the food signs with the parachute and by doing a hot potato (my version was bolsa caliente with a bag) game that I made up.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Wednesday so I took the boys to the zoo. We really had a good time. We were there right when the zoo opened so we got to be the first ones to ride on the zoo balloon. The boys got to chat with “captain” Corey and it was pretty cool—I love the view that you get from way up there. When the boys were playing in the treehouse later on someone told me that they thought they heard someone crying and when I went inside the treehouse area I found Levi covered with blood on the steps. Luckily it was just a bloody nose and once I wiped the blood away he was fine—it was pretty scary to see him with all of that blood though. I’m so glad that I didn’t have to take him to the emergency room.
Isaac’s new word lately is “nevermind”—I’m not sure where he picked it up, maybe from me right? But it drives me crazy!
Levi is a complete and total ball of energy. He is in his full energizer bunny glory right now. At night he loves to be chased around the aparment, dance to music, jump on the bed and be rough housed by James. Getting him to sit still long enough to eat lately is tricky because he’d much rather be running than eating. His new favorite food is green peppers which is great—I really hope he never loses the taste for them. Isaac in the other hand is still a vegetable disaster and I have to blend veggies into his refried beans and spaghetti sauce to make sure that he gets those extra vitamins.
I got a note from Isaac’s preschool teacher saying that I need to help him learn to use a glue stick properly and hold a pencil the right way. I’ve tried to teach him how to hold a pencil but I haven’t had much luck.
The Spanish class for the older kids on Thursday went really well. I focused on colors and we used the color rope that Aunt Jackie made for me. The kids pretended they were blowing up a balloon and then we let go of the rope when the balloon “popped.” They got a big kick out of it. Isaac participated really well in the class today too—even though he kept interrupting me and asking if he could show everyone the plastic vampire teeth that he brought home from preschool.
Levi refused to take a nap on Thursday—I’m not used to this!!! He used to be the most regular napper in the world. I still put him in his bed for a while but he would not settle down. Needless to say he was a total basket case by the time seven o’clock in the evening rolled around.
I left Levi with MariaPaz Friday morning and took Isaac to the doctor’s office with me. Isaac is actually easy to have at the doctor’s office now—things are very different from when I used to dread taking him to appointments when I was prego with Levi. Now instead of running around and getting into everything he’ll actually sit with me and read stories, and make up silly stories with me like his favorite “mouse and the strawberry story.”
In the doctor’s office a nurse came into to check the baby’s heartbeart first and Isaac looked at her and said, “I don’t want that doctor mom, I want the take off your pants doctor!” He was referring to Dr.Prilou, but since he couldn’t remember her name, he just identified her by what she had had me do for the last visit—take of my pants in order to do a pap smear. The nurse was a bit confused and I was amused.
On Friday night after bathtime Isaac grabbed Levi’s hands and said “let’s do ring around the rosie!” They both did the whole ring around the rosie routine on the bed a few times and it was utterly adorable to hear them sing the song and do the dance together.
Levi is talking so much lately!! He’ll say, “Hey Isaac, wook (look) at dis (this)” and “not the big one, the little one!” (when referring to his desire for a smaller size of bottle). He can also say “Hi, I’m Levi!” He is at such an adorable stage.
While watching a Max and Ruby dvd on the computer that we got at the library—Isaac looked at Levi and said, “We get to watch Max and Ruby! I love you Levi” and Levi said, “I love you too Isaac!”