Times sure are a-changin'

We had a very rainy weekend. Eleanor's soccer game on Saturday was rained out. Hayes had his on Sunday but it was freezing cold! After church, I let Eleanor pick out her outfit to wear to the soccer field. See what she picked?She's kickin' it with those boots and gold lame purses. (Yes, she brought two purses with one holding only nail polish.) Instead of watching the Blue Lightning pull through with their first victory, she chose to (1) give her nails about 30 coats of nail polish (nail polishes and one of the gold purses below); (2) gossip with her girlfriends; and (3) plot against the boys chasing after her and her friends. Whatever happened to just watching the game? Times sure are getting more interesting around here!

Why is he jealous?

Have you ever heard of someone being jealous of another who has gotten their teeth pulled? I sure haven't until I heard Hayes today. Eleanor had two bottom teeth pulled to make room for her adult teeth as they begin to come in. There is nothing fun about having teeth pulled, but Hayes does not seem to understand this. What was so appealing to him? First, I let Eleanor pick out a movie to watch when we got home, because I really did not want her talking with a numb lower lip and cotton gauze hanging out of her mouth. Just the movie selection got Hayes fired up. Then, Eleanor let Hayes know that the dentist told her she could only eat soft foods like ice cream, yogurt, pudding, and milkshakes. She shared with him that she was going to have ice cream for dinner. She also was pretty excited about the prospect of the Tooth Fairy coming and taking TWO teeth (double the usual) in one night. She kept talking about what she hoped the Tooth Fairy would bring her (money). Now, do you understand why Hayes was jealous?

Well, I had to wait to post because I wanted to see what the Tooth Fairy did bring . . . a $5 bill AND Skittles! (I'm not sure why a Tooth Fairy would bring Skittles but maybe she's eager for some more teeth to fall out.) Eleanor was thrilled with both discoveries under her pillow. Hayes? He was less than thrilled. He was so sad that Eleanor got the Skittles and he did not. He wanted to hold the Skittles this morning, and Eleanor told him no. That was the final straw for him. He broke down. Finally, Eleanor saw the light and let him "hold" the Skittles until she had to go to the bus stop. Look at those sad eyes. See the Skittles? (He's also holding his new April calendar from school which is definitely worth its own blog entry on another day!)

Back to Eleanor . . . How did the actual teeth extraction go? She was a trooper! She seemed excited about it before school in the morning, and even when I picked her up early from school after lunch. Then, on the drive to the dentist, I think it sunk in. She kept saying, "I'm really nervous. I'm really nervous." When her named was called in the waiting area, tears started to form in her eyes, and I noticed her lower lip start to quiver. Off, though, she went and the first picture above shows the end result. She has a crowded mouth, but a great smile to go with it!

Go Ben, Go Ben, Go Ben

If only you could hear me chant this: "Go Ben, go Ben, go Ben, go Ben, go Ben, go Ben!" and then watch his reaction. He starts to bounce up and down. Its priceless! Why am I cheering him on? He's nine months old today!

I've been working on getting him to hold his own bottle. He absolutely LOVES his bottle. I think this is probably why he's not into self-feeding with food. When he sees his bottle, he starts to bounce, wave his hands and hum. He gets so excited. He would drink all 8 ounces in one breath if I'd let him. We've all also turned into jungle gyms for him. He is climbing everywhere. Today, especially, he seemed very eager to stand. If I sit on the floor, he'll crawl up my body with his hands until he is standing while holding my shoulder. When he accomplishes this, he has a huge smile on his face.

Keep going, Ben! We all share in your joy from your new abilities.

An Afternoon Reading

It really is amazing to see how Eleanor has developed her reading skills this school year. I often forget that she can read now, and then am quickly reminded when I hear her read something over my shoulder. I took this picture one day after school last week. Eleanor read her Fairy books the ENTIRE afternoon. I could not get her to do anything else. I tried convincing her to do something else, but then realized that I had no argument. . . I'd LOVE to curl up with a good book one afternoon!

Spring Has Sprung!

I love it when the weather starts to warm up. We all begin to venture out of our houses and back into the yards to play. Thomas found himself in a mean game of Red Rover Friday night with some of the other kids from the upper part of the street. This game came after some soccer, bike riding, and jump roping. These pics above and below also summarize why we love living on this street . . .
This is our tree. I think its a Yoshino Flowering Cherry tree. It blooms like this every spring and its absolutely stunning. It is one of our first signs that spring is here. This tree is important to us, too, in December, because its the tree that Thomas lights up for Christmas. When you turn onto our street that month, the first thing you see is this tree full of white lights. When the kids see it at night, their eyes literally and figuratively light up. We love this tree!

Blue Lightning Soccer

Spring soccer started this weekend for both Eleanor and Hayes! Hayes is playing soccer for the first time on the Blue Lightning. We all ventured out to his game, and enjoyed watching him and his 14 other teammates chase after ball. Once the game started, we quickly realized that we'll have to remind Hayes that soccer is NOT a contact sport. Elbow-throwing is definitely not appropriate behavior for soccer! We have video to prove that at one point, Hayes ran around the field throwing elbows and pushing innocent opponents down. Luckily, one of the opponents sought some revenge and knocked him down a few minutes later. After the game, when we asked him why he was playing so rough, he responded "I was just trying to get to the ball." Since we've been trying to teach Eleanor to be more aggressive on the soccer field for 3 years, its interesting to watch the boys get so physical right at the get-go.

New Toy

Ben has discovered a new toy . . . Can you guess what it is from this picture? Oops! He's caught in the act . . . Gee, Mom, its really a lot of fun. Do you want to hold some too?

Ben LOVES Baxter's food. Luckily, he has not yet had the desire to put it in his mouth, but he does enjoy holding it in his hands. Any chance he can get, he'll crawl over to Baxter's bowl and grab a big handful.

The Unbirthday Arrived

Hayes has been waiting for this day since the last week of February. As I mentioned in a previous post, it was THE topic of discussion nearly every day this month. Last night, though, I thought he had had a change of heart. He had a very restless night and was up from about 12:30am until I finally got him to fall back asleep around 2:30am. During this time, I kept reminding him that he was going to be the "Star of the Day" at school that morning and that he really needed to get his sleep. Around the 2 o'clock hour, he informed me that he did not want to go to school! I was so exhausted that I chose to just ignore this comment. To finally get him to fall asleep, I moved him to E's bed in her room and slept with him. (She currently likes to sleep in Hayes's room in the other twin.)

When he woke up at 6:30am, he was still very grumpy. He quickly reminded me that he did not want to go to school. I told him that all I wanted to do was to go back to sleep, so he got up and went back into his room. Luckily, his father did something to change his mood because when I saw Hayes again, he was very eager to get to school to celebrate his Unbirthday.

We all made it to chapel. Hayes sat on the Birthday Bench and then stood in front of the crowd when it was his turn to say how old he was. Here he is with Ms. Young showing that he is 3 1/2. Then, here he is standing with two other summer birthday buddies, Laura Cay and Russell Wyatt. For snack, Hayes brought a chocolate chip cookie cake and bananas. For show-and-tell, he brought a Spiderman book and a football Smurf that was lost at some point this morning in the class!

Overall, we are happy to report that the day went off without a hitch!

A Mouthful

See this smile? For two weeks this month, this grin was rare while his top four teeth broke through the skin. The teeth's arrivals made for some trying times around the Carroll household. The poor guy must have been in some major pain - can you imagine what that must have felt like for him?! Luckily, we all persevered, and he has returned to his oh-so-happy self. Now, if only he'd start eating some finger foods . . .

Happy St. Patrick's Day (one day late!)

I tried hard to get some semblance of green on everyone. :-)I joined Eleanor for lunch today at 10:30 (!) at Morris Brandon. It was the first time I've eaten with her in the cafeteria. All of the kindergartners are the first to eat in the school, and once all of the 10 classes are eating, the cafeteria is full. Thomas had warned me that it was crazy and loud. . . Luckily, I did not think that it was nearly that bad. The kids were definitely energized but not out-of-control. I enjoyed the opportunity to see familiar faces as they went through the lunch line or walked to their table.

After lunch, I walked back to Eleanor's classroom. What a surprise when we got there! A leprechaun had messed up the room. Pictures were hanging upside down, the chairs were all stacked in shambles at the back of the room, backpacks were all over the floor, and charts on the board were all turned sideways. The leprechaun left the kids some treats at their desks and a message on the board telling them that they had had a great visit to the classroom. Eleanor had been reminding me about the leprechaun who visited her Pre-k class last year and wrecked havoc at the Preschool so I was thrilled that the leprechaun decided to visit her class again this year!

Fun Times

Though we only had a few hours of sunshine while in Ponte Vedra, we still enjoyed our time there. We hit the beach on Friday for about an hour before it became too cold for us to stay out. Ben loved crawling all around on the sand and he never once tried to put a handful in his mouth. Yeah! Eleanor did her usual work on the beach - filling buckets up with sand and water and then dumping them in a hole. She does this EVERY time we go to the beach. It suits her fancy! Hayes, Uncle Michael and cousin Cate all dug a hole that they could stand in. Here, Hayes is working hard on the digging. The kids all had a great time playing with their cousin over the few days. Here she is in the hole under her dad's watchful eye.

So Sweet!

Ah, the joys of vacation! The kids always love getting away from home to be in the company of grandparents. Eleanor and Hayes know that if grandparents are around, Fruit Loops are not too far behind! They have had them for breakfast both days so far, and I'm sure that they will not pass up on one last opportunity tomorrow morning.

Where is Hayes?

We had a little scare while packing up the car for the drive to Ponte Vedra. Eleanor was at school and Ben was napping. Thomas had run to the grocery store. Hayes, I thought, was upstairs in his room listening to CDs. After I had finished my packing, I went looking for him. I could not find him anywhere. I started to yell for him, telling him to get out of the closet/under the table/out of his hiding spot RIGHT NOW! I still could not find him. I ran out back and yelled his name, but did not see him or hear from him. The car was in the back driveway with the back door wide open so I figured he would have heard me if he was in there. Also, I had seen the car TV still upstairs charging so I knew he could not be in the car watching movies already (though the kids usually do this before trips - get in the car BEFORE we leave to start watching movies). I called Thomas to see if he had taken Hayes with him, and he had not. I started to panic. When he got home, Thomas came running into the house yelling for Hayes. He frantically ran out back and into the garage. Then, suddenly, we heard Hayes crying. He was sitting in his car seat in the back of the car! He had heard Thomas yell his name and got scared by Thomas's tone when he yelled, "Hayes!" He could get out of the car on his own, but he just preferred sitting in there, waiting for us to get in the car to go. Once we found him and our hearts stopped racing, we had to laugh at Hayes already in the car an hour before we were going to hit the road.

Long Car Rides

Well, we survived the road trip with the three kids down to Ponte Vedra for a long weekend. Hayes has had Spring Break all week, and Eleanor had Friday off so off to the beach we went. Eleanor and Hayes were mesmerized by their movies in the back of the car. Thomas and I rotated seats next to Ben for the drive. He was fussy some of the time, but we could not blame him. Who would want to sit backwards for 6 hours and not have any entertainment? (Here he's about to lose it!)As I looked at the pictures, I fondly remembered the times when Hayes would not wear his headphones . .. or the times when we'd get them untangled and placed on his head, and then they would fall to the side to a spot we could NOT reach. We also used to sing to Hayes when he got fussy. I tried that on Ben and had no luck. Eleanor must have been the perfect traveling baby because we don't have any bad memories of car rides with her (though we could have blocked them out of our minds!) I am SO glad those days are over! Now, we'll just need the kids to show Ben the ropes, and the third should be easy.

At the bus stop

Monday night, Hayes turned to us and asked, "Mom, Dad, do you know who has never been to the bus stop before?" We had no obvious response so we told him that no, we could not think of anyone. His answer? "Barack Obama. He's never been to the bus stop. Maybe sometime."

Fun with their mouths . . .

Wow! What a day! I bowled with Hayes and played soccer with Eleanor (her first practice this spring). I am wiped out. As I busily downloaded the pics from today, I noticed that both Eleanor and Hayes do funny things with their tongues while concentrating. Hayes appears to stick out his tongue when he's really focused. Here he is after his ball has just been rolled at the bowling alley: Next, you can see his tongue even when he's hanging with his cronies and (obsessively) watching his ball roll down the lane:After I looked at all of the pictures of Eleanor dribbling with the ball at soccer practice, I realized that she must run with her tongue in her cheek. I'm not exactly sure why she does this, and must admit that I deleted all of her pictures showing this habit before I realized that it was similar to Hayes's from earlier in the day! Since she'll probably be mad at me for posting the picture above, I'll post a more "normal" one for her here:
Finally, I did not want to leave out Ben. Lately, he's always had fingers in his mouth so I've finally captured him finger-free! His four top teeth have shown themselves this week so we hope most of the misery is over for him.

Hayes's Unbirthday

Hayes came home from school on February 27 with his March calendar. What is so special about the month of March? Hayes gets to celebrate his "Unbirthday" on March 20! (They celebrate "Unbirthdays" for the children with summer birthdays.) He is SOOOO excited! I cannot begin to convey how thrilled he is about Friday, Mar. 20.

On Friday, Feb. 27, we began the countdown until Fri., Mar. 20. Unfortunately for Hayes, he counts the number of school days until the big day. It was only 6 from that Friday in February (he goes to school MWF and they have a week off for Spring Break) rather than a true 3 weeks. He's had trouble with the countdown since there have been many days that we have not "counted". I've tried to get him to switch over to a daily countdown vs. a school day countdown but he just will not do it.

Everyone he encounters gets to hear about his "Unbirthday" and then they look at me to see what the heck he is talking about! For example, when the cleaning ladies walked in this past Friday afternoon (Mar. 7), he held up his March calendar and told them that "On March 20, its my UNBIRTHDAY!". We went to dinner Friday night with some new friends, and the first thing he told them was that his Unbirthday was on March 20. Every morning when he wakes up, he mentions his Unbirthday and every night before bed, he does the same thing. I hope March 20 lives up to his expectations! Daddy and I will be there to see as we'll go to his Birthday chapel and help him prepare a special snack for that day.

What is wrong with this picture?

Poor Ben. I bet he wishes his mom would dress him a little better! His clothes are too short. His feet always pop out of these sleepers and Mom still dresses him in them daily. (They are so easy and seems so comfortable.) It has been great being able to reuse most of Hayes's baby clothes BUT Ben is longer and a little older, seasonally. I would go out and buy him some new clothes, but the season is about to change and I've got a ton of 12 month warm-weather clothes just waiting for Ben to wear them! Come on Spring!

Reactions to Mom at School

I try to visit Eleanor's and Hayes's schools as much as I can so that I can observe them in their school environments. It is so interesting to see what parts of their personalities are on display in the classroom. When it comes to interacting with me in the school environment, Eleanor and Hayes have completely different responses.

Yesterday, I was at Hayes's preschool for a musical performance I had arranged for the upper classes. I stayed to watch the performance for two reasons: (1) I was interested in seeing what it was all about and (2) I REALLY wanted to watch Hayes and gauge his reaction. When his class walked in to the assembly room, you would never have known that I was his mother by his interaction with me. He gave me a quick wave and that was it. I sat in the back of the room for the performance to stay out of the way of the teachers and kids. Hayes never once looked back for me. I kept looking at him and waving to him when I thought he was looking back at me, but kept realizing that he actually watching the big kids, not looking for me! Then, when the performance was over and his class was walking out, I got a "Bye Mom!", a quick wave, and then he was gone!

In direct contrast, if I go to Eleanor's class, she is all over me. I can't get her off of me. She wants to hold my hand, give me a hug, sit in my lap, and/or help me in any way possible. When she sees me walk into her room, she starts jumping up and down chanting "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" It is very cute to be so appreciated, but I must admit that she is a little over-the-top with it. I'm heading to her class tomorrow to help with easel art, and I can only imagine how thrilled she will be.

The Smurfs Have Taken Over!

One day last fall, we introduced Eleanor and Hayes to the "Smurfs" on the Boomerang TV channel. (They've also since watched "The Jetsons", "The Flintstones", "Tom & Jerry", and "Popeye" on this classic cartoon channel.) Hayes has since declared the theme song to be "one of the best songs ever!"

The kids have always eyed my Smurfs collection as I have kept it on display in the kids' bathroom above the moulding on their doors. The kids finally got up the nerve and asked me if they could play with them on Monday, when they were both home from school due to the snow day. Well, Hayes has not put them down since. They go everywhere with him. Yesterday, they watched me and Eleanor roll coins on the dining room table. Last night, I saw them strewn all over his closet floor. I scolded him and told him that that was not a good way to take care of Mom's Smurfs. His reasoning? "I did not want to lose them, Mom." This morning, he must have rounded all of them up because they were present to help Hayes eat his scrambled eggs (made by Dad). I'm sure Hayes has many more adventures in store for them. I just hope they all stay in one piece!

Naps

These are few and far between around here. I captured this shot Saturday afternoon in Eleanor's room. Eleanor had been up late at the church's Square Dance Friday night so she definitely needed a nap. Hayes can always use one though he'd never take one on his own. (He stopped taking naps the day he started sleeping in a big boy bed, almost a year ago!) Thomas will never pass up on any chance to "help" the kids fall asleep. Ben was asleep in his crib. Someone had to hold down the fort; otherwise, I would have joined them!

For the Record . . .

This picture is for Mimi. She starts to wonder about Ben and what we've done with him! :-) This photo is of Ben at the dinner table last night. He had not yet started his dinner, but we were busy eating ours. He was so calm and looked so adult-like in the way he was holding his hands. I did not capture him in any of the snow fun from yesterday, because he was busy taking a long nap. Yeah! For the record, Ben is ALWAYS part of the fun, probably to his dismay. Sometimes, I think he wishes his life wasn't full of such crazy people.

Eleanor and Hayes are both home with me and Ben today. No school! Why? Because it snowed YESTERDAY and people in the ATL cannot drive in melted snow. The thought of school being canceled never crossed our minds. We had Eleanor almost to the bus stop this morning when I got an email about an after-school activity being canceled because schools were closed. The kids are a little too excited to be home . . . Wish me luck!

A Snow Day!

Need I say more? Its the first day of MARCH!
What a day! The snow started while we were in Sunday School and the kids were so eager to get home to play. We did not have the appropriate snow gear but they worked with what we had.
Eleanor enjoyed her snowball.
The kids, with the help of Dad (and his hat) made a snowman in the front yard. They also got into a long snowball fight with a bunch of the Beaverbrook kids and this was "our team". The other side had about 10 kids on it. (I don't know who made the "teams".)Eventually, after rolling around in the snow and getting pelted by numerous snow balls, Eleanor determined that it was time to go inside and warm up! In addition to playing outside, Thomas made cookies, E and I made cini-minis, and the kids had Fresca for the first time. Throughout the afternoon, they kept saying that Fresca was the best drink they had ever had in the whole wide world. What fun!