alter egos

Ah, it is a week for Seth stories...

He has given us new superhero names: Nathan is "Fix-It Boy" and I am "Clean-Up Girl". Sounds glamorous, huh?

This morning Sid was talking about his best friend on TV. I asked Seth who his best friend was, and his reply? "Amelia" (which sounds like Ah-myua) Do I hear a collective "Ahhh?"

His teacher told me today that she thinks Seth has his first crush. Her name is Veronica, and she does not like being the object of Seth's affection. To be continued...

the next Imelda Marcos

She is her momma's daughter...between hand-me-downs from Blair and her mommy finding deals, Amelia is going to have some cute kicks! (Hopefully I'll be able to get her to keep shoes on, she loves to be barefoot...)
Picture by Seth... What do you mean you want a picture of my teeth? (she cut her two bottom choppers this week)
Amelia is very close to motoring about. She rolled under her crib earlier in the week. If she's sitting on the hardwoods, she scoots a little bit on her butt. She loves to flop around on our bed in the morning before Nathan gets ready for work. Today she started "crawling" backwards during the Panthers game.

I'm hoping she'll be a happier girl this week now that the teeth are in and she can kind of get where she wants to go. Her new favorite toy is the Little People preschool Seth is reluctantly sharing.

Sending smiles to Pops

Most of you already know, but my Grandpa B has been very ill for the past week. My parents were already in Minnesota and have had a horribly stressful week, as you can imagine. I caught Seth singing Dad's favorite Laurie Berkner song tonight. Hope it makes you smile, Dad.

more Seth-isms

I need to get some of this down before I forget...

Tuesday, when I asked Seth if he smiled nice for his school pictures: "No. I hide under a chair." (can't wait to see the proofs for those!)

Wednesday morning he asked for eggs for breakfast. I put Amelia down for her morning nap and started paying bills online and remembered the eggs...20 minutes after they were supposed to be done. This is what I found on the stove:

When I showed Seth: "Mommy, you sorry you broke my eggs?" He ate Eggo pancakes with Kraft singles on top instead. (His idea, not mine!)

Wednesday, as we're getting ready to leave Mary's house: "Mom, Linny, not Tuck, not Ming Ming in a washing machine." (repeat repeat repeat). As I'm loading the car, I think maybe Mary has gotten a guinea pig, and go upstairs to check it out. I find Seth standing on Alden's bed next to a hampster cage; there are woodchips on the bed and the floor and no hampster in sight. "Seth, did you let the hampster out?" "Uh-huh" "Where'd it go?" "I don't know. A washing machine?" He points to a spinning orb at the top of the cage. There are a bunch of chips in that, too. I give it a spin, realizing that's what Seth is calling a washing machine. Finally, I see one little black paw poking out. I went to check with Mary...only one hampster in the cage. Whew!

The "Daddy you a boy? And Michael? And Pops?" etcetcetc until he names every person he knows game has been revamped. The September version of the game is what color car all the family members drive. He does pretty well, he still gets Marie's van and Elise's car wrong, but he's got the rest of them down pat!

Great-Granddaughters A-Z

My grandma has just reached a personal best of four new great-grandchildren in 2008. (A record of three was set in 2006, and she was very disappointed not to have any in 2007.) We started the year off with Amelia on Grandma's birthday, February 28th. Claudia arrived in April, Violet in August, and yesterday Zoe made her entrance into the world. They join Noelle, Samuel (pronounced Sam-well, however he goes by Sam), Riley, Seth, Zander, Nuria, Paige, and Weston and make Grandma's #9, 10, 11, and 12, and not a plain name in the bunch! We love it! I wonder how long Grandma will have to wait for #13...

more wedding pics

My cousin Ryan's wife, Kristin, has had her hand in the wedding biz for years. She's been tinkering with photography ever since God gave her two incredibly photogenic children, and very recently she officially turned pro. She took pics just for fun on the big day. Here are some of my favorites.

those eyes were a-twinklin'...
Raspberries from Pops...

Who wrote on my baby?.................................................. (I did.)

Poor Riley, always has a camera shoved in his face...

Bryan's head is so big, the whole thing couldn't fit into a picture, haha....

My Uncle Dennis is a great dancer. But there are probably only a handful of women (counting his wife and two daughters) who can follow him. Here he is taking his sister-in-law, Fern, for a spin...
Seth and Riley playing under Grandma's table...

My grandma...

The one and only Swedish Mafia... I call this one "the kids have left the building"...
The bride and groom...
Seth looks like such a little man in this one...
A boy and his Pops...

and the answer is...

We took a one-week vacation to Duck, on the Outer Banks of NC. We have made weekend trips to the beach before, but never actually took a week off to relax. Which we did. And how. We actually didn't do a lot of the stuff the OBX is known for, just because it is very hard to drag two small children around who get tired out just with the beach activities. We said this was our trial run for doing it again next year!

Amelia was ready to leave on Friday...
Testing out the bunk beds. There were actually creepy fibers hanging off the undersides of the mattresses, but they were fun to climb on!The house was pet-friendly, so Colette came too. Every morning we took her for a walk on the beach. Sunday it was HOT, so we stayed inside (football you know), and then went to the soundside pool. Amelia thought the daddy-float was way better than her crab.
Monday it was still hot and Seth took a LONG nap, so we drove up to Corolla to the Currituck lighthouse. Nathan stayed on the ground with Amelia. Seth and I climbed to the top (and his little legs made the 214 steps up and the 214 steps down, I was impressed!) A picture from the top:
The girls swinging while Seth played on a playground in Corolla:

Tuesday it rained. And rained. And rained. And a cold front came through, so we never got a great day at the beach. Wednesday morning's walk required long sleeves! We drove down to Manteo and went to the aquarium. Seth loves them, but he never lingers very long on any one exhibit, I think we were done in under 45 minutes!
Thursday we rented bikes, which was AWESOME. The next time we go, I want to get a bike for the whole week. The kids loved riding in the back. Duck has 7 miles of bike trails and the speed limit is 25mph, so we felt very safe. Our house was about 2 miles from the village, so we rode back and forth a couple of times.
Yeah, she was getting away with something...it's nearly impossible to eat around Amelia right now, because she thinks she is entitled to anything on your plate!
Wednesday and Thursday afternoons we got sand castle time in. It was very windy. This castle is the beginnings of "dragon mountain". It was still standing when we walked Colette Friday morning!

We got home around 6 last night, and now I'm trying to get us settled again. The kids (and Colette) took good naps on the ride back, and all slept well last night.

Where are the Mayses?

Here is a hint...
We have free wireless, so we'll be in touch!

Rainy Days

It has rained a little bit (and sometimes a lotta bit) every day for almost a week now. Seth will decide at random times that he needs his rain jacket (really just a lightweight jacket) and brella to go outside and splash around for a little bit. He'll say, I love puddles. Every day the kids play a little more together. Amelia thinks Seth is the cat's meow. If she's a cranky girl, put her a foot away from her brother. He'll cheer her up. Today they played in Seth's tent before naptime.
Seth's teacher asked me today if he takes a morning nap. What? Evidently there's a major attitude change at 11am. I'm not too surprised, this is the first week of the full three hours, and he's been fighting a bug all week (but not without sharing it with his sister and his mommy!) And to top it off, today he decided to wake up at 5:30. When we got home, he told me how much fun he's been having...he sang two new songs and told me all about the Screech Owl the Creature Teacher brought in. I hope a month from now he will have settled into the new routine.

Motormouth

Ladybug stuff

Will is 1!

Will turned one on Friday, and yesterday we went to Newton to celebrate! We had pizza and yummy jungle cake. Everyone had a great time!

The happy birthday boy.
After cake, Will headed straight to the bathtub.

Seth, Evan, Brenden, and Ryan enjoying pizza. The kids all got shades as party favors. Nathan says this pic is going in Amelia's wedding video!

As a side note, Will and Amelia are very jealous of each other right now. Neither one wanted their mommy playing with the other one, and heaven forbid if Grandma Sarah went anywhere near one or the other! I don't remember Ryan and Seth being like that.

Heavy Rain...Breezy

That is what the local weatherman said for our forecast today. We are going to have a wet day as TS Hanna breezes through. It looks like my parents are getting soaked right now! Nothing new here, just wanted to post some pictures.

New umbrella stroller...LOVE IT!!! (note the Panthers colors!)

Look what I found for $4 at Walmart...Also bought Amelia's first sippy cup...Seth likes to try to help her, she doesn't appreciate it.
Early bird playing with her dog in mommy and daddy's bed...
Update: that's what I get for listening to the local weather...yesterday it rained until 8 or 9 in the morning and then was beautiful (okay maybe a little breezy) for the rest of the day. Nathan said he knew it was going to be nice, because he listened to Jim Cantore.

New to the PBS Line-Up

There is a new show on PBS this week. We caught five minutes of it before preschool Thursday. While on the way to preschool, the main character, Sid, sings the following ditty:

I love my mom.

My mom is cool.

But now it's time for fun at school!

(or something like that). Anyways, it was perfect for us. I recorded an episode and let Seth watch it later in the day, and now he keeps asking to watch "the science kid". It's computer-generated Henson, with lots of singing like the Backyardigans. The episode I recorded is about "non-standard measurements." Not even hiding the educational content! I like it! (Of course I am a nerd.)

First Day of (Pre)School

Seth wanted to go to bed at 8pm last night, so he could "eat breakfast and go to school." We thought for sure he'd be up with the chickens, but he slept until a "normal" hour. Amelia had been up EARLY (like 3:30 am), so she stayed in bed until 8, which gave Seth and I time to eat breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, and take pictures before she woke up wanting her rice cereal and pears. Seth's class is the wiggly worms, hence the tag on his backpack

the preschooler and his mommy
the teacher wanted him to have a big backpack, not the toddler size

And of course Seth took a couple dozen pictures himself, but most ended up being of my sandals. My pedicure is still halfway decent, but I'm spare you the Seth-photography this time. (It was his idea to do the above longarm shot.)

When we got to school, Seth jumped out of the car and was ushered away by the director. He waffled a little bit when she handed him off to his teacher's assistant, but decided to be a big boy and headed into the building:
School was only two hours today. By the time we ran three quick errands, we only had about 25 minutes until we had to go pick Seth up. A very quiet boy got into my car, but I think he was just sad that school was done. This is what he told me they did today: "played balls" . "ate cookies and drink" "read books" which books? "the little mermaid and pooh." He told me all about The Little Mermaid at lunch, and as we don't own the movie, I guess he listened to the story. At naptime he asked if he could go back to school after nap. I hope he still wants to go back this much Thursday morning!

Church yesterday...

On our way to church yesterday, we were telling Seth some of the fun stuff we have coming up. His reply: "No. Not yet. Church first, then school." The nursery attendant, who also baby-sits for us, said, "Seth was so funny today. There is a new girl who is very shy and he got really mad that she wouldn't play with him. And I was changing [so-and-so]'s diaper and [so-and-so] was playing with the light switch. Seth yelled at him 'THAT IS NOT A TOY!'" As he's telling me "I not ready yet" (to go to communion) because there are still 4,000 crayons in the box that he has not used yet. All sorts of three.

Amelia SHOULD have napped through the service, but decided to wake up the minute the car stopped. She was good, but we were nervous the whole time that she would lose it. We didn't hand her off to all her surrogate grannies because we wanted to be able to make a quick run for it if she had a meltdown.

Our new interim pastor is from Hickory and we both liked his sermon, and he did a really good job with the children's sermon as well, so hopefully he will be a good fit until we get a new pastor. The second lesson was from Romans, so Nathan and I had to smile when we heard "live peaceably" (if you were at the rehearsal two weeks ago you understand why).

Nineteen hours from now Seth will be in school. He is READY. We have to drive by it at least once a day to make sure it is still there, and he has told me I can't come with him (which is good, because the teacher wants us to drop them off from day one). Amelia and I don't have any big plans, just a quick trip to the post office, which is on the way home.