Big splash days

March 10-16, 2008

We had a huge rain storm on Monday and Isaac and Levi went sloshing around the backyard in their boots. Isaac was pretending it was a duck pond and Levi was just trying to jump and splash as much as possible.
Isaac has been a lot better about saying “quiero” instead of “quiere” when he wants something in Spanish.
On Wednesday for playgroup we went to a really cool nature sanctuary that I never would have found on my own. Sarah Marzarella showed it to us and Isaac loved it because he felt like he was exploring the jungle. There was a big pond with turtles and Isaac wanted to see a crocodile so I told him that one of the logs in the water was a sleeping crocodile and he thought that that was pretty cool. Then he wanted to throw rocks at the sleeping crocodile and I told him that it might come over and bite his toes.
Friday was a rough day—I was feeling really sick and just wishing that I could take the day off from being a mom. The kids were sick too so we were just one big disaster. James came home early and Isaac was so excited that he ran over to the kitchen to grab a strawberry cupcake to show him and in the process he clipped is lip on the corner of the table. Luckily it was only a flesh wound and we didn’t have to make a trip to the emergency room. Now whenever I see blood in the boys mouth I have an instant panic that its serious and also an instant dread of the thought of going to the emergency room.
So we all got worse (except for James—luckily he has the immune system of steel) healthwise on Saturday and Isaac was up all night in extreme pain from an ear ache. Sunday morning James took us over to the Katy urgent care and instead of spending 3 hours at church, we spent three hours going through the hassle of waiting to be seen by a doctor and getting prescribed azithromicin. The antibiotics worked miraculously on Isaac and his “owie” ear was gone by nighttime. Hooray for modern medicine. I felt better too, but still wanted to take the day off from being a mom on Monday. . .
Jungle, picomolo
Well, its official, Levi has entered the “mine” stage a lot earlier than Isaac did and understandably so since he has to defend himself from his big brother. He can now shout “Mine!” and Isaac will reciprocate and they’ll go back and forth for a while sometimes. Ah, the brotherly love.

walking in someone else's shoes. . .

The boys both wanted to try walking around in our shoes. It started with Levi putting on my tennis shoes and then Isaac wanted to wear James' sneakers. They looked pretty hilarious.

Little red wagon

Our neighbors across the street let us borrow this wagon and Isaac and Levi have loved riding around in it. They especially love eating cookies in it.

Isaac the Artist and Levi the Snuggler

March 3-March 9, 2008

James took Isaac and Levi to “candy mountain” on Tuesday night since the enrichment activity was over at our house. It’s a cool indoor playground at Memorial City mall and Isaac always fantasizes about going there to play so he was pretty excited.
Levi can now say “agua” and “Donawds” (for McDonalds) and “taco” (for Tacobell). Yep you can tell that I probably have had a few to many fast food adventures with the boys lately.
The “if/then” statement fun continued with Isaac this week. His new favorite is to say the if clause and wait for you to fill in the “then” clause. For example, “If we don’t put on our shoes. . . or “if I don’t take a bath.. . “
For some reason Isaac is terrified of grills in people’s back yards as well as cooking in the kitchen. He’s never burned himself on a grill and as far as I know, the only time he’s ever burned himself is when we were at Matt & Lara’s house and he burned his fingers on a bread pan. Anyhow, last week we were in one of our neighbors back yards and when she started putting coals on the grill and some lighter fluid he started freaking out and wanted to go home. Now he always wants to hear the story about the grill. That boy needs therapyJ
Levi has had a communication explosion this week. He’s started using the sign language signs for “more” “no” “where” “shoes” “owie” and “eat.” Its really cute. He’s also started saying a lot more words. He’ll say “hot” “huevo” “agua” “up” “down”
This week Isaac discovered that Levi understands commands and he started mastering the fine art of big brother trouble making. He’ll tell Levi to do things that he knows he would get in trouble for doing like bonking someone on the head with a baseball bat, kicking the door or throwing random objects in the washing machine. We’ll have to try to nip this one in the bud.
We usually have young women activities over at our house on Wednesday and Isaac absolutely adores having the young women come over. He likes getting to play with them and mooch the refreshments.
James was gone this weekend so I was a single parent for a couple of days and that’s definitely no fun—especially on a weekend. Church was kind of crazy. I had a presidency meeting before church, but Alisa and Lonnie helped me watch them which helped out a ton. Then the boys made it through the passing of the sacrament, but Levi started throwing stuff and squealing so I had to take them both out. Luckily it was nice outside and I just let them wander around the church building and commune with nature. We stopped by the Stenseth’s house (our Norwegian neighbors) this afternoon and they were celebrating Sondre’s 3rd birthday. Isaac was very pumped about arriving in time for birthday cake and just sat in front of the slice of cake they gave him with a big Cheshire cat grin. I asked if he was ready to go home and he said, “no mom, it’s Sondre’s birthday, we need to celebrate it.” Levi just ran around like a wild child and fit right into the chaos of the Stenseth’s five boys and their visiting cousins. I really like that family. When I see the inside of their house I always feel better because it looks just like ours—very basic furniture and toys all over the place.

Houston Temple Gardens

el templo

Houston Temple