Saturday, April 30, 2011

Trackpad

Noah has become a pro at using the trackpad on the computer.  His favorite website is www.pbskids.org.  He loves the games there, and that's how he discovered Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.  He has been watching Mr. Roger's factory tours, and has learned how guitars, wagons, crayons, and shoes are made.  It's all very intriguing to him, and it's made him think about how all the things in our house were made.  He's always asking about how things were made, or creating a pretend factory to make toys or chalk or playdoh, or whatever is interesting to him at the moment.

Car Seats

We had taken the car seats out of the car for a day, and I found the boys sitting in their car seats on the porch, holding hands.

Then Noah gave Isaac an unprompted kiss.

Oh!

Pancake Restaurant

Noah still loves to make pancakes every Saturday morning.  Daddy gets out all the ingredients and Noah does all the measuring and mixing by himself.  

The batter has become easy for Noah to make, so Daddy decided that it's time for Noah to learn how to put the batter in the pan and then flip the pancakes (with close supervision, of course).

Noah was very excited about learning this new skill, and he decided to turn our kitchen into a pancake restaurant.

Checking the pancake to see if it's ready to flip.

Isaac, the first customer of the day, said that the pancakes were delicious.  He ordered a short stack.

Daddy helps flip the pancake as the student chef watches.

The chef and his customer.

It's great to have a pancake restaurant in our kitchen on Saturday mornings.  All I need to do is take pictures and eat pancakes!

Friday, April 29, 2011

What a difference 2.5 years makes

This is what Isaac looks like after eating spaghetti.  Noah used to look like this too after a spaghetti dinner when he was 18 months old.

This is Noah after eating a spaghetti dinner now.  What a difference 2.5 years makes!

The Easy Life

Noah's got it all figured out.  He loves riding in the red car (he barely fits in it!), and Isaac loves pushing it.  It's a win-win situation for them both, but Isaac has to do the hard work and Noah has the easy ride!

Cheeks

Oh my.  Isaac's cheeks are very kissable.  It takes a lot of self-control to not kiss them all the time.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Mail!



Noah gets so excited about the mail everyday.  It's the highlight of his afternoon.  As soon as we finish lunch he says. "When is Miss Shirley going to be here?"  We have a mailbox right next to our front door now, so Miss Shirley parks the mail truck on the road and walks up to our house.  Noah loves to run to meet her and get our mail. 

Next, we sort our mail into two categories:  important and junk.  I get to keep the important letters after Noah carefully opens the envelopes, but the junk mail is his.  All his.  He opens every envelope and looks through the letters to see if anything interesting is inside.  His favorite finds are pretend credit cards, stickers, calendars, coupons (he cuts them out), and the occasional map or magnet.  He keeps all of it in his office and looks through it often.

Occasionally, Isaac will be allowed to look through some of the junk mail that Noah no longer wants.  Isaac doesn't mind.  He thinks it's just wonderful too.  Isaac pretends to read the mail out loud (see the second picture), and he says "row row row row" in a deep voice as he pretends to read.

Free entertainment, delivered to our front door six times a week.  Thanks, Miss Shirley!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Boy Band

Isaac frequently joins in when Noah plays his guitar and sings.  As you can see, Isaac is quite the enthusiastic drummer!

Banana Boys

Noah always eats an apple or banana as he reads stories with Daddy before bed.  One night, Isaac decided he wanted to join in the fun, and they giggled together as they ate their bananas.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Table for Two



The boys have been getting a lot of use out of their little table lately.  They love it when they can eat outside on a nice day (look at Emma looking through the window on the middle picture!), and Isaac gets such a kick out of sitting at the table like a big boy.

Lunch Break

The last time Noah was running a fever, Matt came home on his lunch break to snuggle on the couch.  Now that's a good way to spend a lunch break.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Bird's eye view

This is my new favorite picture of the boys.  

No one needs to know that they were fighting over the green chalk.

Sidewalk Chalk

Nothing is more fun than an afternoon of drawing with sidewalk chalk...

...and taking pictures of your children...

...watching them have fun with each other...

...thank you God for our boys...

Wrestling


Noah and Isaac wrestle a lot, and it's hard for me to get a picture when it happens because laughter turns to tears and/or screaming very quickly.  Isaac likes to climb on top of Noah, and he lays on top of Noah while he screams and Isaac laughs.  Sometimes Noah sees Isaac running towards him and he yells out, "No wrestling!" as a precautionary maneuver.  Isaac is proving to be a brute force to be reckoned with, while Noah tends to be more cautious when confronted with a wrestling match.  It's going to be interesting watching these guys grow up together.

Showered by Sunlight

One afternoon, the boys were playing in Noah's office (a secretary desk in the kitchen area), and the sun light was pouring on Isaac.  I got out my camera and proceed to take lots (and lots) of pictures of Isaac, trying different angles and trying to capture how the sun was falling on his hair as he was watching Noah play with stickers.

Like this picture, doesn't it look like Isaac is being showered by sunlight?

Then, as I was looking through the many many shots of Isaac, I found this one of Noah.  

Hello big brother!  

He noticed that he wasn't the focus of my camera and made sure that I at least took one shot of him!

Bean Soup

One of Noah's all-time favorite meals is bean soup.  His preschool teachers gave each student a bean soup mix before Christmas break.  Noah loved the process of soaking the beans overnight and cooking the soup the next day.  Since then, he occasionally asks me out of the blue, "When are we going to have bean soup again?"

Isaac likes bean soup just as much as his brother!

What do you do after a delicious dinner?  Pull your brother around on a magic carpet ride!

Getting Dressed

Once in a while, Noah surprises us by getting dressed all by himself before he comes down for breakfast.  It doesn't happen very often, so when it does, it's a big deal! 

This is how Noah surprised me on a morning before preschool.  Look at the huge smile on his face!

Isaac gave him a huge hug 


I snapped pictures as Noah talked to me.  I love the way he cocks his head to the side when he's explaining something complicated, like the location of the different pockets in his jeans...


Look!  There's a pocket back here...


And there's more pockets in front!  Noah likes to keep change in his front pockets, just in case someone needs to borrow money.


Thursday, April 21, 2011

Rest Time


 Noah officially gave up napping about five months ago, but if we're out in the car or in the stroller in the afternoon, he'll occasionally still catch a little siesta.  Instead of nap time, we do "rest time," where he does activities alone in his room for at least 30 minutes.  He loves doing workbooks, so he'll spread out all his workbooks and various colored pencils, stickers, pens, printout, etc and make a work area for himself on the floor of his room.  Sometimes he turns his rest time bin upside down (like in the above picture) to use as a desk.  Before I leave him alone, we look at his clock and I tell him that he can come downstairs when the big hand reaches the ...  Once in a while, however, a long time goes by and I know he must have fallen asleep.  One day I was smart enough to bring my camera with me to catch what his room looks like during rest time.  I just love seeing Noah surrounded by all his favorite things.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

On a walk

Yep, it's just what it looks like.  Isaac is taking Noah on a walk.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Stickers


Isaac has discoverd Noah's large stash of stickers, and Noah is usually willing to share them. So, we have a new activity that the boys can do together. Isaac can't peel the stickers off yet, so I peel them off and he sticks them. Isaac says "ta ka" for sticker. Noah's current favorite form of sticker is the free return address labels that come in the mail. He likes to stick them all over return envelopes. Noah gets so excited when he gets mail, but on days when there's no mail for him, the junk mail that we don't want is the next best thing!

Anything for a laugh


Isaac has a great sense of humor and great comedic timing. The first hint of this was when he was about a year old he would make a joke while we were riding in the car. He would put his paci in his mouth backwards and just sit and wait until someone would notice and laugh. Once we noticed and were laughing, he would light up and laugh with us. Noah always laughed the hardest.

Lately, at mealtimes he'll do something funny while sitting in his highchair. Something like put his bowl on his head or use the handle of his spoon to eat. He does it quietly and waits for us to notice, and as soon as we do, Noah still laughs the hardest. In this picture, Noah and Isaac were playing with toys when Noah looked up and noticed that Isaac had a lid in his mouth, just waiting. Noah screamed, "Look at Isaac!" and laughed, then chased him around the house.

As you can see, Noah is Isaac's biggest fan.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Mr. Fix It


Noah loves to pretend, and he loves to re-create whatever is going on in our lives at the current time. So, lately he's been various versions of the "fix-it guy." He goes outside and rings the doorbell, and when I answer, he says something like, "Hi! I'm Aaron. I'm the siding guy. I'm here to fix your siding. Tell me what's wrong." Then I take him to wherever the pretend work area is for the day and he starts to work. Here, he's getting the walls ready for the new siding.


The new siding gets nailed up. The new siding is made out of toilet paper, but Aaron promises me that it will stand up to the weather.


Weekdays tend to be for pretend projects, but the real action happens on Saturdays. On Saturdays, "Aaron" takes a break and Noah does the real work with Daddy. On a recent Saturday, Noah worked with Daddy to change out a few door handles and locks. In this picture, he's taking a break from working on a lock to say "hmm..." as he looked around the porch.


and the result of him looking around was... "This pillar looks like it needs some fixing."


Playing with Daddy's tools



Measuring the siding that needs to be "replaced." Look at all the tools that Noah has taken out of Daddy's toolbox! One of the most interesting things that I've noticed about Noah's pretend play is that he's practicing the art of striking up a conversation, just like he overhears when real "fix-it guys" come over. One day, he was pretending to be "Aaron the roofer" and he looked at my Journey Church t-shirt and said, "I see you have a Journey Church shirt on. Do you go to Journey Church?" I said "yes." He said, "Oh! I think I've seen you there!" Also, he starts up conversations by saying something about the weather or asking questions about changes we've made to the house. He cracks me up.

Sunrise


We discovered another silver lining during our first week living in our new house: beautiful sunrises! Thankfully, we're not up to see the sunrise every morning, but it was a great surprise when we realized that our dining room window has a beautiful sunrise view. Thank you God!

Monday, April 4, 2011

The making of a half bath



This was what the downstairs half bath looked like when we moved in.  The sink was functional but in need of updating.  The toilet needed to be replaced immediately.  We decided to redo the sink and toilet at the same time, then paint the room and the half bath would become our first renovated room in the house.



When Matt pulled the sink cabinet out, it damaged some of the drywall, so we decided to install beadboard instead of fixing the drywall.  Also, the area under the old sink vanity needed new hardwood flooring so that we could install a pedestal sink.



Yaya painted the beadboard and the walls.  Thanks Yaya!



Matt and Noah installed the new toilet.



Noah performed the ceremonial first flush.  It worked!



All the boys worked to assemble the pedestal sink.



It turned out to be harder than we thought to install a pedestal sink, but Matt and Yaya succeeded in getting it bolted to the wall and hooking up the plumbing.  Finally, we hung the mirror, and ta-da!  Noah performed the ceremonial first smile ;-)
Posted by Picasa