Out of the mouths of children

The kids have been having a lot of fun lately. Nathaniel has been getting out his costumes and the two of them like to dress up and play pretend.

Here are a few pictures and a couple of fun stories.

Aaron likes to play with Nathaniel’s Iron Man mask. This thing has gotten quite a bit of wear since Halloween!

The other day Nathaniel was dressing up as a fireman and wanted Aaron to be his dog. So, they did that. Then Aaron went down for a nap and Nathaniel decided that he wanted to be a dog.

I think he looks pretty silly.

The other night Nathaniel was playing with a stuffed dog and pretending that he was a dog too. At dinner time he set the table and then got a bowl for “food” for his puppy. I then watched him grab the stuffed dog, put it next to the bowl and whisper in it’s ear, “You can’t eat until we pray, okay?” and then he put the dog’s face in it’s paws so that the dog could pray.

Nathaniel is also talking about how many siblings he wants. He keeps saying he wants another brother and a sister (four kids total in our family). I asked him today if he wanted there to be four kids in our family and he said, “No, I want ten.”

I laughed and told him that when he grew up he could have as many kids as he wanted when he got married as long as his wife agreed. Nathaniel said, “I want to get married.” I asked him who he wanted to marry and he said, “I want to marry Kaatje!” (Kaatje is his buddy).

I asked him some very important questions. 1. Does Kaatje love Jesus? (yes) 2. Is Kaatje your best friend? (yes) 3. Do you and Kaatje have fun playing together and let the other person play too? (yes). I then asked him if he wanted me to call Kaatje’s mommy and ask her if it was okay if they got married. He said yes, I should call her mommy.

I told him he needed a ring first.

Nathaniel is also officially reading. It's crazy how it's clicked with him. This morning he was sitting with a book and he pointed to a word (a small print word on a page with no pictures) and said, "me" which is what the word said. He can read several small words and is also really into rhyming. I can't believe my three year old is reading...yikes!

Aaron is officially only walking. It had gotten to the point where he would sometimes walk but mostly do his funny little bear crawl and scamper away. This morning I noticed that he was walking everywhere, even when he got a little wobbly. It made me sad.

Maybe it’s time to get one of those brothers or sisters Nathaniel’s always talking about.

Maybe not.

The family that runs together…

Yesterday we did a family run.  It was cool that we could do something like this together.  Sam and I ran a 5K while pushing the kids in a double stroller, and then Nathaniel did the 1K fun run.

You might notice the blue sky and puffy clouds.  Doesn’t it look like a perfect morning for a run?

Please also note the wet pavement.  It poured all night long and was still raining (pouring at points) as we drove to the race.  We could have easily decided not to do the run, but I think our thoughts were, “Well, we paid for the run, we might as well do it.”  The rain stopped the minute we pulled into our parking spot and then started up again when we left the race.  It was amazing!

But, because of all of the rain we had to run through some pretty amazing puddles.  There was one puddle that was easily three inches deep.  Needless to say, our shoes were soaked (and are still soaking wet).

Nathaniel was pretty excited to run a race of his own.  At least, he was until we got up to the starting line.  Then he started crying and saying he wanted to go home.  I told him that if he ran the race and didn’t like it we could go home and he would never have to do it again.

The horn blew and the runners were off.

And here is what Nathaniel looked like:

Luckily, he wasn’t the only kid crying (and we didn’t finish last).

Overall, it was a good day.  We got to get some family exercise and Nathaniel got to go home and eat popcorn and watch a movie.  Aaron had a blast, although we realized that he just isn’t in the stroller as much as Nathaniel was at this age.  He started getting fussy about 25 minutes into the run.  When Nathaniel was this age we were training for the half marathon so he was used to sitting in the running stroller for more than an hour at a time.

We’re looking forward to doing this again!

Happy Birthday Aaron!

Today Aaron turns one. I can't believe it! It was a fun couple of days (in between doing work and homework as a family). We celebrated at Disneyland yesterday for a few hours and today we went to the zoo and ended the evening with cake and ice cream with just our family (VERY nice). Currently, Aaron is trying to come down off of his sugar high from the cupcake we gave him. This was after he spent about an hour running around the apartment yelling and growling at the top of his lungs.

Here's a slide show of his day.



And here are a couple of videos of him eating cake and also his crazy "I'm a monster, rarrrr" growl.

Bye Bye Baby

It happened again. Once again I blinked, or sneezed or SOMETHING and suddenly I don't have anymore babies around the apartment.

Aaron has decided that he is a big boy and that means doing big boy things. Things like walking (step-step-step-step-wobble-step-fall-giggle-repeat), talking (mama, dada, bubba), signing (please, more, please in a frantic way whenever someone has food in front of him), and sound effects.

He doesn't have a normal talking voice. Everything is sound effects. He uses a scary monster voice when he's talking to brother and everything else is "gun" sounds (buh-buh-buh-buh as he points whatever he has at you in a weapon form).

And he is all little boy for sure. Today he passed gas on my arm, looked at me and broke out in this funny little belly laugh. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world! He hates vegetables (oh, all of my hard work is for naught, he seriously only ate veggies and fruit as first foods) and will literally take them out of his mouth and throw them on the floor while giving us these "how dare you!?" looks.

And any chance he can get he gets his brother. He hugs him and tackles him and just loves on him as much as he can. It's true hero worship, that's what it is. One night we were getting ready to say prayers (which we say in Nathaniel's bed as a family) and I set Aaron down on Nathaniel's bed. He immediately crawled over to the pillow, laid his head down and said "Ni-ni!!" thinking he was going to get to sleep with his brother.

I can't believe that Aaron will be one on Saturday. He is such a joy and a blessing. He really adds such a great dynamic to the family.

Pictures and more stories are yet to come...