Michigan

Our family trip was to Harbert, Michigan this summer.  We survived a long car ride with the kids, including about an hour of Marlo crying "Mommy now!" from her car seat.  Still, it was a lot less stressful than flying.

We rented a house with Aunt Rachel, Uncle Jeff, Cousin Kinsey, and Grandma and Grandpa.  Plenty of space for kidlets to run around, and even better...a pool.  Hayden and Marlo were in the water pretty much any chance they got--the pool every day, and Lake Michigan on other days.

The private beach nearby also had a small little stream which was Marlo-sized.  Marlo gravitates toward all puddles and mud, so it was perfect entertainment.

Hayden was mostly interested in playing in the big lake.  He liked being tossed around by the waves.  Occasionally, he would get out long enough to find some rocks or mess around in the sand, but mostly he wanted to be in the water.

We also went to a Go Kart track one day.  Hayden loved it, and Marlo, always an adventurer, wanted to try as well.  Her enthusiasm waned a little bit once she was in the car, though.

The kids collapsed into bed every night, pretty much exhausted by fun.  I followed soon after...

Happy 2nd Birthday, Marlo!

Marlo's 2nd birthday was low key, but a lot of fun.  Cupcakes, presents, and outside time...about everything a new 2 year old could want.

She loved all of her presents, including the playhouse from me and Ben.  Hayden was a helpful gift assistant.

It's been an eventful year.  She has progressed from saying a handful of words, mostly about the dog (Dextoor!), to long, rambling sentences.  She still has her own personal grammar, but she's quite the conversationalist.  A year ago, she toddled around confidently...now she runs, jumps, and climbs a lot of things she shouldn't be climbing.  She can sort of dress herself, although her fashion sense is, well, creative.  She's a character through and through--happy, funny, active, curious and very sweet. 

Front Yard Nature

Sitting in my office on a drizzly afternoon, I noticed 2 large woodpeckers hopping around the front yard.  I've certainly heard them a lot recently, but haven't seen any hanging around.  They let me watch for a few minutes before they flew away, looking for more bugs I suppose.

Word Explosion, Part 2

I don't know exactly when Marlo started combining words.  A couple months ago, I think.  In any case, she is trying very hard to contribute to real conversations in our house.  Her parts take a little decoding:

Marlo: "Chair nose floor."
Translation: "I fell off of my chair a few weeks ago and hurt my nose on the floor.  I'm kind of obsessed about it."

Marlo: "Deddy bus."
Translation: "It's time to get Hayden at the bus stop!"

Marlo: "Babybug outside bye-bye."
Translation: "Do you remember that ladybug I found in the house?  You put it outside and it went bye-bye."

Marlo (in tears):  "Milk pockpock!"
Translation: "Damn it!  Why won't my sippy cup of milk fit in my pocket!"

Marlo: "DRAW! KIDS!"
Translation: "I really love going to that toddler art class, and now every time we leave the house I think we are going to go draw with kids."

Marlo: "Ucky milk.  BLEH."
Translation: "I found a sippy cup of curdled milk and I tried some."

Happy Easter!

This Easter was the first Easter in our new house.  And, for the second year in a row, it was warm enough to hunt for eggs outside.  This is pretty amazing for Minnesota.  We even have buds on the trees, flowers coming up, and water (instead of ice) in our lakes.  It's actually spring.

The kids had a great Easter.  Festivities commenced with dyeing eggs.  Marlo--she of the ever-busy hands--pulled a cup of blue dye down on her head.  It was all over the floor, the cabinets, etc.  She's busy to say the least, and messes of this kind are practically a daily occurrence.  The dye incident was the latest of a string of events which included jumping off of her toddler slide set.  Repeatedly.  Sliding, apparently, is not nearly as thrilling.  In any case, we had her in bed by 7pm.

Easter baskets greeted the kids.  Marlo liked her gardening tools.  Hayden liked everything.  We hunted for the real eggs inside the house (the Easter bunny wasn't sure they'd survive the wildlife overnight outside).  Hayden graciously let his sister find a few, but ultimately she was more interested in peeling off the shells.

After breakfast, we searched for plastic eggs outside, and then hung out for a while to enjoy the unseasonably warm morning.  Dinner was at my parents, and the whole crew was there.  More Easter goodies, lots of good food, and a good time.

Spring Fever

Yesterday it hit 64 degrees. The average is 39. Needless to say, we got outside! The kids have been cooped up too long!

We still have some snow in the yard, although it's disappearing fast. It's weird to see the kids in short sleeves with piles of snow all around them.

Marlo especially loved jumping in the puddles and picking up chunks of dirty ice and snow. Needless to say, she needed a bath after playing outside!

Hayden got to dust off the scooter and bike and ride around the cul-de-sac.

Even Dexter got into it, jumping for snowballs.
We know winter's not over, but we'll take what we can get.

Dress Up

Marlo is big into dress-up. Here are a few photos taken in the last month. Needless to say, we laugh a lot in this house!

Late Blogging....Christmas in February

We've been so busy that I have been neglecting the blog. I have a huge backlog of stuff! It's February already and I haven't even talked about Christmas.

One of the most amazing things about Christmas this year was the 3 day snowstorm we got. It was warm (for winter), Ben was off of work, and we all got to play outside and enjoy it. It was up to Hayden's thighs! We went sledding on our little hill in the back and that was a huge hit, but tiring for me to carry Marlo back UP the hill each time. The snow was too deep for her to walk in!

Christmas Eve featured a quick trip to church for me and Hayden, followed by appetizers and make-your-own pizzas for the kids. And, once again...matching pjs for Hayden and Marlo.

On Christmas Day there was more snow removal, and more playing in the snow, and of course...presents from Santa. Marlo knew what to do, but was so interested in the unwrapped toys left by Santa that we had to help open the wrapped ones.


Lots of happiness, all around!

Word Explosion

Right around 18 months, Marlo's language skills really started taking off. Before that point, I had considered posting a list of her words. I never got around to it, and now I'm not sure I could. She is adding vocabulary constantly, the words seemingly coming from nowhere. A lot of her words have to do with food. Her first complete sentence, uttered the other day, was "I want cheese." Today she said "cereal" for the first time, and fairly clearly too. In honor of the holiday goodies everywhere, she tries to say "chocolate." It's a little garbled, but I know what she means. As an aside, she's the only child I know who can become a complete mess by eating a single M&M.

Another fun language trick is announcing the word loudly. And repeatedly. We get a lot of "SNOW!!!!" Around age 2, also during the holiday season, Hayden would shout "IGHTS!!!" every time we drove past a house with Christmas lights, so it seems to be somewhat common. Marlo also says "TREE!!!" and that happens fairly frequently too.

Hayden was an early letter/number learner. I think he knew most of the letters by this age. Marlo gets that there are letters, but they are all apparently "D." She also likes to count, and it goes like this: "Two, Fwee, Two, Fwee, Two, Fwee."

In any case, she's a chatterbug. She talks all the time, sometimes intelligibly, sometimes not, but it's always fun. I'm going to attempt that word list now, even though I'll miss some and it will be long...but it will be fun to look at later.

Dexter, Mama, Dada, no, more, my, Hayden ("Daydee"), milk ("gaulk"), snack ("gack"), cheese, tree, down (which also means up), bottle ("bobble" and it means cup too), bath, book, TV, butt, eyes, belly button ("blah blah"-- said with tongue sticking out), baby, fish, snow, apple, bawk bawk, gobble gobble, ho ho ho, meow, moo, chocolate, cereal, shoes, socks, pants, shirt, hair, cracker, ball, beep, truck, choo choo, diaper, poo poo, potty, two, three, D, E I E I O, blanket (also pronounced "baby"), cold, light, spoon, bowl, all gone, bye bye, various people's names, backpack, coat, boots, hat, toes, owie, turkey, berry, please, thank you, excuse me ("excuse you"), paper, hot, brrrr, towel, door, block, stay, high chair, banana, Stella (all dolls are called "Stella," and she even says it like Marlon Brando), where are you? ("Are you?"), bus...

Happy Birthday Hayden!

Hayden turned 6 on October 18th. This year, he had 2 Saturdays of celebration. The first was cake and presents with family; the second was pizza and fun with friends.

The big gift from us was a real telescope. Hayden has been fascinated with space for almost 2 years, and it seemed like an appropriate gift. We were lucky to have clear skies, decent weather, and Jupiter nice and bright in the sky. Hayden got to see Jupiter's moons! Of course, it has rained pretty much every night since then, so we're waiting for a chance to look at the moon.

This year was the first time I agreed to have a "kid party" at our house. I didn't do anything elaborate. They decorated some cookies, ate some Papa Johns, played a simple game, and beyond that, basically ran around. Hayden said it was a "crazy" party, and that he hoped he could always have crazy parties from now on. Hmmm.

Beyond the festivities, though, it's hard to believe he is 6! I've done my best to document and savor each year, and we certainly have the pictures to prove it. Still, at the risk of being cliched, it has gone really fast! Happy birthday, buddy!

Kicking it

The current sport of the season is soccer. It's about as popular as baseball with Hayden, which is saying something. He's fairly motivated...when he remembers to go after the ball. Sometimes he gets so caught up in the excitement of everything that he forgets to actually play. Here he is playing defense, jumping up and down while he watches the game.


During the most recent game, he was occasionally somewhat aggressive. Perhaps aggressive is not the right word. Maybe competitive? Some of the kids on the other team were a little scarily aggressive. One kid stood in the opposing goal waiting for the ball to come near him so he could score. He did this even when his own team was on the other side of the field. Ah, U6 soccer.
At this point, Hayden is claiming that he would rather play indoor soccer this winter than hockey. Considering he spent at least half of hockey sprawled on the ice, this may be a good thing.

Back to School

This week, Hayden joined the ranks of school-kids. Although he's been in plenty of preschool, it's a whole different experience to get on a bus every morning and go to school without Mom or Dad around.

He's been excited for Kindergarten all summer. Picked out his backpack, got his school supplies, memorized his cafeteria PIN. When I woke him up for the first day of school (and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not thankful for being in a "late start" school), he jumped out of bed saying, "It's school today! My first day of school!" I got him fed and ID'ed with his little laminated tag, and we headed out to the bus stop.


All was well until the bus got there. He's ridden a bus before, but I think he was freaked out by it all the same. He just kind of stood there until I prodded him to climb aboard! Then he just stood by the driver until the driver got him to find a seat.


After school reports were mostly positive. He had a new best friend with whom he shared Knock Knock jokes. He liked his teacher. He colored in rectangles and a picture of himself. He heard a book and sang a song. Lunch, however, was a downer--he misunderstood that he was supposed to get "school lunch" and so only had his snack to eat at lunch. Needless to say he was grouchy until I got some food in him. The rest of the week has gone smoothly. According to Hayden, the only "low" since the lunch debacle was that he dropped and broke a crayon, and in the act of picking up the crayon, ripped his little ID/bus tag.

He's a little tired--it's a big change to be gone all day, every day. But overall he seems to be enjoying it, and he has a lot of stories (and bad jokes) that I love to hear. I have volunteered to help out in the classroom here and there, so I can't wait to see for myself what it's like. Marlo sure misses her brother though! She's been cranky during the day until he gets home!