The following weekend we had our annual trip to the lake with my parents' friends and all of their kids (and now, grandkids). We've been taking this trip every year of my entire life, and it is fun every single time. Of course, the long weekend has changed quite a bit from the pre-kid years when we would head out on the boats mid-morning and spend the entire day on the water relaxing and drinking, get back to the condos around dinnertime, stay up late, sleep in and do it all again the next day. We now spend a lot more time at the pool than we ever used to and we plan our days and nights around naps and bedtimes, but we still have a great time every year!
This year was special because three of my four oldest friends had new babies for us to meet! Laura and Paul brought their 10 month old twins, Tommy and Alex, all the way from San Francisco; Jules and Adam brought their 4 week old baby Lucas (and Evelyn, who is Charlie's age) from Chicago and Steve, who lives in St. Louis, brought his new little guy Collin (and Ryan, who is also Charlie's age). We were missing the 5th from our little group, Angie, who moved back from England a week later, so she missed the lake trip this year.
Charlie fell asleep on his first boat ride...
Tommy & Gretchen:
Alex:
Alex, Jack, Joan, Tommy Eisel (there are two baby Tommys) and Gretchen
Another boat ride:
Hanging out in the condo (and holding hands for a split second):
Charlie wearing Jack's crocs....on the wrong feet. We discovered that weekend that Charlie can say crocodile ("da da dile").
The boys and I were lucky enough to attend another members only event at the Magic House. This one was an Ice Cream Social, and Grandma and Grandpa Lang both went with us. It was a Monday night in June and while it takes a little planning to get there in time for a 6:00 event (I have to leave work early and we grab dinner on the way), it is worth it for those "exclusive" events.
I saw this sign last time we were there and thought "that sounds about right..." This time I had to take a picture of it.
Early in June I saw an advertisement for Creve Coeur Days, which is a local carnival near my work. It started on a Thursday, which is a Grandma & Grandpa Lang day for the boys, so I asked if they'd want to go with us to check it out. Luckily they obliged. We had a really fun time - the boys loved riding rides and playing games! We couldn't get from one thing to the next fast enough!
Charlie got to ride this fun motorcycle ride with Jack - he LOVED it! He wanted to ride it over and over again.
This is Charlie's signature "I'm being shy and you're looking at me" look.... Seriously, this child is a riot:
You can't really tell but we're all three on this ride.
OK, time for an update on our precious little {22-month old} baby boy. Where to start with this guy?? Charlie has developed quite the little personality these days. He is Mr. Silly and loves to entertain us. He will perform the same "trick" over and over again demanding that you "wath" each and every time. He has the best little giggle and loves to use it! His favorite is when Daddy tickles him or Jack acts silly.
Char Char is really talking up a storm these days. He knows a TON of words and is stringing multiple words together ("I see bus" and "Cereal in the bowl," for example). He seems to talk with a lisp when a word ends with the "s" sound. Our favorite new phrase is used when he sees an airplane...he says "plane (which sounds like 'me') in the sky" and then almost always follows it up with "aaaaaalllllll the way over there" complete with a dramatic sweeping hand gesture. Love it!! I'd say we can understand most of what he says, but when we can't understand him, boy does he get frustrated!! He repeats himself until you guess correctly, getting madder and louder each time. Speaking of loud, Charlie seems to somehow have inherited his Uncle Todd's vocal cords - the Child. Is. Loud!
Charlie knows most of his animals, but still refers to many of them by the sound they make rather than their names. For example, he refers to cows as "moos," horses as "neighs" and sheep as "baaas." We've started working on colors, but so far I've only heard him correctly identify blue. Could have something to do with his big brother's obsession with that color... This video doesn't quite show off his animal-naming skills, but you can see his little personality and his stellar dance moves...
Mr. Man is still a great sleeper! He takes about a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, and usually if we're out and about on the weekend mornings, he'll take a little cat nap in the car too. He goes down with no problem - we just walk into his room, give him his pacifier (his "boppy") and his loveys and turn on his music and he instantly puts his head on our shoulder. I generally snuggle him for about 10-15 seconds and then lay him down and we're done. Doesn't get easier than that! I'm not looking forward to the day when we ditch the boppy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (probably pretty soon).
He still pretty regularly insists that he needs to "boop." When we oblige and put him on the potty, he usually demands to use the big boy potty (monkey see, monkey do). In the last couple weeks, he's actually gone pee pee two times on the potty!! Both were still sort of flukes we think, but both were after bath time, so it seems like a good place to start when we get into serious potty training: put the child on the potty after his bath.
Charlie loves his Papa Lang!
Our little guy isn't much of an eater. He usually chows his breakfast, but for other meals, we have to remind him over and over to eat his food. Quite often the bulk of his food goes uneaten. I wouldn't say he's picky - he generally will at least try what we put in front of him, but he's just not interested in eating at all. And one day he will finish his entire plate, but then we serve him the same meal a few days later and he'll barely touch it. He's clearly not starving, so while it's frustrating to waste food sometimes, we know he'll eat when he's hungry.
Another little video - just having fun with Daddy. This captures one of our favorite things Charlie does. When he's playing on our bed, he'll get really still and then say "oooooohhhhhhh" and then dramatically fall down. Too cute:
So that's our little guy - growing up way too fast, but entertaining us every day along the way!
I think it's time for an update on my little men. They are growing up so fast, I just don't want to forget all the great things they are doing at this point in their lives. First, Jack. He will be four in August and is quick to correct you if you say he is three. He is three and a half!
He has great fashion sense...this is how we played outside the other day.
The biggest new development in Jack's life is that he switched to a new classroom at school on May 20. A few months before that, most of his friends in his last classroom (Cardinals) switched out to a new room and the same day a bunch of new, younger kids started in his class. These are the kids he will be starting school with, since he misses the kindergarten cut-off by a few weeks, but at this age, it seems like there is a big difference developmentally between a new three year-old and an almost four year-old. I started asking about him moving but didn't push too hard until I had his parent/teacher conference in the middle of May. His Cardinal teachers said "Jack is doing really great. The only feedback we have is that you need to see if he can move to the next classroom. He's going to get really bored really soon and that's when kids tend to regress and/or act out." SO, I talked to the administration the next day and the following week Jack became a Blue Jay.
His first couple days of transition were a little difficult for him - he had a blast once he was in the Blue Jay room those days, but it took a lot of coercing to get him to agree to go there. Now he loves it and hasn't looked back. This classroom has weekly lessons and they do circle time and centers to reinforce what they are learning. We love it! They send out (almost) daily sheets describing what they learned that day, and each week it's something that I don't think Jack knew before! For example, the first week they learned all about opposites. I quizzed him that week and he knew ALL the opposites I asked him. Impressive! The last few weeks they've been learning about mixing colors (what do we get if we mix blue and yellow?) and doing lots of different fun experiments. Each day they graph what the weather is that day (sunny or cloudy) and at the end of the week they talk about which days they had the most of and which they had the least of. So much fun learning for our big guy!
Here's an example of a daily update we've received:
Circle:
Calendar
What month are we in?
What is June’s Special Letter?
What day is today? What day was yesterday? What day is tomorrow?
What is the weather?
READING: “Warthogs Paint” (a book about mixing colors) and “Mouse Paint”
-What do you think Red and yellow make when mixed together?
Let’s experiment together!! We took Yellow water and Red water and poured it into the same container and made the color Orange!
*(Book and experiment are on display by classroom door)
*anything Red and Yellow mixed together makes orange…not just colored water: we experimented with crayons, paint, and water too!
Centers:
Art – Paint one hand Red, Paint one hand Yellow, Now, rub your hands together…what color did you make? ORANGE!
Science- Red water in a spray bottle and Yellow water in a spray bottle, two friends spray it into one container and make orange water!
Block Area- Marble Tower
Dramatic Play: Restaurant/Dress Up
Jack's new teachers, Miss Marcie and Miss Erin, have told me several times how happy he is all the time. They also said he's a really quick learner; they said they like to quiz the kids on things they don't expect them to know, and Jack knew the answers to everything they asked. Not exactly sure what the questions were, but if they were impressed, then I'm impressed.
Checking out his new snorkel gear from Grandma Clayton
Jack has a huge vocabulary these days. It seems like weekly he surprises me with a new word or expression that I'm surprised he knows. My favorite is "Aha!" He also picks things up from TV. For example, he often says "Hey! What's the big idea?" which I learned that Donald Duck says. His pronunciation is pretty good for most words. He still replaces most of his "Ls" with the "W" sound, but I think that's somewhat typical at this age. He also says "cake" instead of "take." He sometimes mixes up when to use "tell" vs "ask." He usually says "Mom, I need to tell you a question" and often his questions are statements. Our favorite is at night when he's in bed, he will call one of us in there. When we get in there he says "Mom, I have two more questions to tell you." And his "questions" are always so simple and funny, like "I love you" and "Can I wear my new shoes tomorrow?"
He is definitely a chatterbox, so when I saw this sign at The Magic House I had to take a picture. I have no doubt that this is true of our boy:
Jack LOVES his sports. We have mostly been focused on baseball this time of year. He was still too young to sign up for a team - he had to be 4 by the time the session ended on July 31, so he missed it by a few weeks. We pitch to him all the time and he is really getting good at hitting. Sometimes the ball hits our roof! And other times he hits a line drive back at the pitcher. Ouch! I have a few welts and bruises to show for it.
We play catch sometimes but not nearly as often as we hit. We need to get some more catching practice in before next spring when he joins a team. Here's another demonstration of his hitting skills from a couple months ago:
Jack has started making up songs. He will "sing" in a sort of rambling sentence sort of way for a good 10-15 minutes on the way home from school and then he'll ask me to sing it back to him. Ummm....I'll say "I don't quite remember all the words, can you sing it again so I can remember them?" And he says "Well, I don't remember all the words either." Quite a conundrum.
Our big guy has gotten really good at riding his bike. He has a Cars bike with training wheels and he rides it REALLY fast. Luckily he's pretty good at using the brakes too and ALWAYS wears his helmet. Since the weather has gotten warm, we've spent a lot of time up the street at the Asher/Mincher/Scally court riding bikes with the neighbors.
Jack is still working on his manners. He was really great at saying please and thank you for a long stretch there, but lately it has become less automatic for him. We give him LOTS of reminders. Often when we remind him to say thank you, he responds with "Where have my manners gone?" I think he's heard us say that to him a few times....
Just looking like a big kid eating lunch. I think he looks 6 years old in this picture!
The last few weeks we've been struggling with some rebellion. It seems like EVERY time we tell him not to do something, he automatically does it one more time. Oh man, does that irritate me! He's been having a LOT of timeouts lately because we are so frustrated with that behavior. Hopefully we can nip that in the bud soon and get back to our (mostly) good listener.
Overall Jack is a happy guy. We are having a lot of fun watching him learn to things and his stories and facial expressions are keeping us well entertained!
