Birthday Prelude

Jack celebrated his 4th birthday last Saturday.  I decided to do a birthday countdown like I did last year.

It was a big hit once again.  Each night he got to pop one balloon and inside was usually some small candy (Pez or Smarties) to share with Charlie and a piece of paper describing that night's surprise.  One night we played hot and cold to find the present but generally they just said things like "Look where Daddy keeps his shoes for tonight's treat" or "You'll find something in your closet."  Here's a run down of what he got:

#10 - Two new books.  I discovered these Cat in the Hat Learning Library books that are still sing song-y like normal Dr. Seuss, but they're educational too.  We already have one about space and one about maps, so I got him one about the body and the other about money.  The money one is a little disappointing because it talks more about the history of money and less of a quarter = 25 cents, etc like I had hoped.  Regardless, Jack always loves receiving new books.

#9 Spiderman fuzzy coloring page + Angry Birds stationary set (with pencil case, sharpener, eraser, etc).  Small gifts but he had fun with them.

#8 A new USA map puzzle.  He loves finding New York since that's where Aunt Kelly, Uncle Greg and Parker live.  He always finds NY first and then puts it aside so he can put that one in last.

#7 $5 to spend at the toy store.  Of course, he misplaced his $5 by the time we left the house 10 minutes later, but I decided to loan him the money.  Sure enough his money turned up when we got home and he reimbursed me.  He picked out a Chuggington train - Harrison, to be exact.

#6 -Sticker puzzle.  I read about these on a blog somewhere so I thought we'd try it out.  It's basically a sheet of numbered stickers that you put on a grid to make a picture.  One night while Charlie and I ran to the store and Jason was out working on the patio, Jack stayed inside and did almost a whole puzzle on his own.  This will be a great road trip activity for sure!

#5 - Mission Control Table Cover.  I picked this guy up on Zulily.com or one of those sites just to have for a gift for someone someday. Jason and I went back and forth about whether he would like it.  It's basically a tablecloth that fits over your coffee table and has buttons and levers printed on it.  Jason said it would be too boring, so of course I had to give it to him to prove him wrong.  Then unfortunately I got stuck really late at work that night and didn't get to see him open it.  I told my mom "I bet Jason downplayed it so he would be right."  Much to my surprise when I got home and went to check on him in his room, he was sleeping soundly using the cover instead of his sheet!  Guess it was a success after all!

#4  We went to get ice cream!  And he also got a cool Batman belt, which I picked up cheap from veryjane.com.

#3 New costumes!  This package came with a Batman, Super Man and Robin costume.  Lots of fun super hero dress-up.  His favorite is the mask that came with the Batman costume.

#2 His first movie!!  This was the day before his birthday and a Friday, so I took off work to get stuff ready for his party the next day.  I picked Jack up from school around 3:00 and took him to see his first movie - Planes!  He really liked it.  He got a little antsy in the middle and was ready to leave with about 5 minutes left in the movie, but when we got in the car he said "that was really cool Mom!" Aww...

#1 - On his birthday he received new soccer goals for the yard!  We Skyped with Aunt Kelly and Parker so they could watch him pop his balloon and go find his present outside.  When he saw the goals he said "What the?!?"  (We need to teach him something better to say like "What the heck?" or anything that doesn't imply he's going to curse).  He was excited and wanted to play soccer right away.

The other fun tradition we started last year was his annual birthday interview.  I asked him 20 questions and recorded his answers to them.  The video (below) is 7 minutes long, so I'll also just show you his responses.  He was funny this year because most questions are "what's your favorite..." and he kept naming 4-5 things for each question.  So indecisive!!

Birthday party post coming next!

Cincinnati Trip

The first weekend of August Jason and I headed to Cincinnati for a Cards/Reds game.  I mentioned here that it was my birthday present from him.  We left the kids in good hands (one night with each set of grandparents) and were gone Friday - Sunday.  We had a really nice time!  When we got to our hotel they were out of one bedroom suites, so we were upgraded to a two bedroom penthouse.  This "room" was HUGE!  It was a pretty old hotel and in need of updates, so we basically felt like we were staying in a grandparents' apartment.  The main floor (yes there were two floors) had a full kitchen, living room, 1/2 bathroom and a deck w/patio furniture.  Upstairs there were two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a walk-in closet and a balcony.  A little excessive for our party of two, no?  But it was SO nice to be so spread out!!  I got to sleep in both mornings while my early-rising hubs went downstairs to watch TV.  It was a great set-up.

Friday night we went to a sushi restaurant which happened to be across from a very fancy restaurant.  All night we watched nicely dressed people drop their fancy cars off with the valet.  Then came the Ferrari and some souped up SUVs.  We determined the men who were getting out of most of the cars were Bengals players.  Definitely some good sight seeing while we were having dinner.

After dinner we checked out Hofbrauhaus.  It was beautiful weather so we sat outside in their big beer garden and had a great time.  The beers were yummy and they were BIG!

 Saturday morning we walked around downtown a bit, grabbed some lunch, did some shopping at Macy's, got ice cream and then went back to our hotel so I could work for a bit (I know!!).  In the late afternoon we decided to check out the Goetta Fest.  Goetta is apparently a type of meat that is big in Cincinnati and we happened to catch the annual festival celebrating it.  We decided to walk there since it was a beautiful day which took us at least an hour.

 Turns out they make a LOT of different things out of goetta.  Jason decided on a goetta corndog and it was pretty good.  Not something we would write home about, but good nonetheless.

 After the festival we made our way to the Great American Baseball Stadium for the Cardinals game.

We met Jason's friend from high school, Brian Dowey and his wife Kristen, who live in Cincinnati, for beers beforehand and then went to the game with them.  We unfortunately saw the only loss of the whole weekend, but we had a fun night anyway.  It was nice to see Brian and Kristen.  Jason tapped into his romantic side and bought Kristen and me each a rose from the bathroom attendant at the bar after the game.  Lovely.

 Sunday morning (after sleeping in, of course), we decided to check out the local farmer's market on our way out of town.  We are glad we did; it was about two times the size of Soulard Market, so there was a lot to see.  We bought some uniquely flavored sausages and honey butter to take home and ate a lunch of yummy gyros.

We missed the boys while we were gone but we really enjoyed spending 1:1 time, exploring a new city, seeing a Cards game in a new stadium, and seeing our friends.  We hope to continue these trips for many years to come!

Swim Lessons

This summer, Jack had some semi-private swim lessons.  My friend Rebecca's parents have a nice backyard pool, so Rebecca did some research and found a girl on craigslist that would do lessons for Jack, her daughter Caroline and our friend Christa's son, Evan.  In total there were 6 lessons.  We missed two due to conflicts and the final one this past Saturday got cancelled because Ms Alyssa had the flu.  In the three lessons that we did go to, Jack made some pretty good progress.

Each week we stayed after lessons and ate lunch together, which the kids also enjoyed:

Charlie, Graham Presson, Evan Chancellor, Caroline Presson and Jack

When we were at the lake in June, Jack liked the pool and enjoyed jumping in to us, but even with his life jacket on he was petrified of letting go of us.  In the lessons he didn't wear a life jacket but instead had small noodle to put under his arms.  The first day he would freak out if we let go of him for even a second.  The second day he was much the same way, but the third day he made a breakthrough.  I was out of the pool for much of the lesson because Charlie was having a clingy day and wasn't interested in swimming.  I watched while Ms Alyssa took Jack back and forth across the pool holding him less and less each time.  After awhile he relaxed and didn't seem so nervous.

After the lesson, Rebecca had a pool party, so several more of our friends came over as well.  I put Jack in his life jacket and next thing I knew he was swimming all over the pool on his own.  I was so proud!!

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here is one Rebecca captured at the party:

Caroline and Charlie being silly

Hopefully we can get up to our neighborhood pool a time or two before it closes on Labor Day so we can keep the momentum going!

Miscellaneous July

We stopped at Trader Joe's one night after work and Jack got the "Shopper in Training" cart, which he of course thought was the cat's meow.

We turned on the jets one night during their bath and the soap we had in there from washing/shampooing them multiplied.  They both loved it but since then Charlie has decided he dislikes bubbles.  Hmm. 

 One night Jack played a matching game where we put the animal magnets next to the letter the animal starts with.  He did pretty good at most, but wasn't sure on a few.  For example, he thought Giraffe started with J, Cow started with K and Lion started with Y (because he still says his L as a W sound).  Not too shabby though for a guy learning his letter sounds.

 We also did the summer reading program at the library this year for the first time.  Jack loved reading all the new books and even earned two prizes: a flashlight after reading the first 15 books and a free book after he read another 15.  Fun!  They have a program for Charlie's age group too, but it seems we do most of our reading after Charlie's in bed so we didn't follow through with it.  He still doesn't like to sit still for more than a short book.  They both love going to the library though because there's a train table, a little house and mailboxes where you can color a sheet of paper and "mail" it.

 Charlie was sick for a lot of July.  He had a 102 degree fever one Sunday so I took him to urgent care.  The nurse practitioner there unconvincingly said he had an ear infection so we started an antibiotic.  That Wednesday day care called and said he had a fever, then he seemed better again.  Saturday he was a little warm and fussy but then seemed better until he got kicked out of day care for a fever again on Monday.  I took him to the doctor Tuesday and he said his ears were so full of wax there's no way the nurse practitioner we saw at the urgent care could have seen whether they were infected.  I knew I didn't have a warm fuzzy feeling there and wish I had trusted my gut instead of doing a senseless round of medicine.  Because once our doctor got his ears cleaned, there was no infection.  He was, however, concerned by a 10-day on-again, off-again fever, so he ran some tests.  Charlie was a total trooper and didn't cry at all when they got a urine sample, drew blood and even did a chest x-ray:

 All of the tests came back negative (testing for pnemonia, mono, etc) and the bloodwork showed signs of a virus.  Then the poor little guy was better after all that, but caught a cough from his brother which turned into and ear infection (for real this time).  After one Sunday of no sleep we went to OUR doctor again that Monday and got him on a new antibiotic.  He seems to be back in full health now, our poor sweet guy.

Charlie also got a hair cut in July, which is nothing new, but the gal asked if she should wash his hair.  I said "um, you can try...."  So she did and he just laid there with his nervous face and let her do it.  I actually thought he might fall asleep for a second there, which is what I usually want to do when I'm getting my hair washed!

One Saturday night we went over to the Minchers' house to play in their blow up water slide.  Jack had a blast - he, Nathan and Reghan were wild going down the slide!  Charlie was more low key and preferred to play in the pool, possibly because at Nathan and Tyson's birthday party in June I forced him down the slide once or twice, as captured here:

He didn't mind it that day, but I can see in this picture why he wasn't too excited to do it again.  Regardless, we all had a nice evening:

 On Sunday, July 21, we went to another Members Only event at the Magic House, this time with Grandma Clayton.  I have certainly gotten my money's worth out of that Groupon membership purchase!

One Saturday we had a late night with our fire pit on the patio, so the "big" kids snuggled up to watch a movie:

The last weekend in July we had a small BBQ and got out our blow-up swimming pool.

Jack being silly with cousins Mia and Lily

From left: Hayden, Addi, Mia, Jack and Lil (watch for a theme of Mia & Lily posing in every picture - funny stuff)

Lily, Mia, Jack, Addison, Hayden and Reghan

And here are some pictures my mom has sent me from the days the boys spend at their house.  They got a blow-up pool for the boys to swim in:

And one day it was really hot, so Grandpa got in with them, much to Jack and Charlie's delight!

 And then here's a picture of sleeping beauty - he was taking LOTS of naps at their house when he wasn't feeling well.  They would just look over and he would be asleep...

Another fun and very busy month!!!