Two new blog readers

Around Drew's birthday last month I pulled up this blog to show Drew how we had recorded pictures and the story of his birth on a website.  Both Drew and Kate were fascinated by the stories and the pictures about Drew's birth and they immediately asked for more.  We moved ahead to the story of Kate's birth, as told on the blog, and the kids were hooked.  Every night now for our reading time before bed we get a request for reading the blog.  We've been working our way through all the posts, skipping around from month to month and year to year.  It has been so much fun!

When I first started writing the blog, I mainly wrote it as an update for other adults (like grandparents and so on) that we know.  It didn't occur to me that at ages 7 and 4 Drew and Kate would start getting into it.  Thankfully, I did a pretty good job of keeping things general enough for appropriateness at any age! 

Above is a picture of Jana with the Drew and Kate.  Jana has been both sick and extremely busy with work the past couple days.  That's meant a lot of time for me with Drew and Kate.  It's been fun, but we are all excited about having Jana's schedule back to normal and her at full strength.  For Drew and Kate, they show it by clamoring for hugs and snuggles with mom.  Those are hard to resist!

"the blog" . . . is back

We have recently been looking over old blog posts with much joy and amusement.  Jana and I were looking for some old photos of Drew and Kate when they were babies to make into black and white copies, and as we sat down and looked over the blog we realized it was getting later and later, yet we couldn't stop looking through the memories!  After such a positive experience and a pang of nostalgia for "the blog," I decided to take it up again.

 

I can in no way even begin to catch up on what has happened since I last posted on here.  You can be assured, we have been up to a lot: vacations, school, church, events, fun at home, projects, activities, sports, reading, general goofiness.  We have been busy!

 

The picture above is from Kate and Drew's first day of school this past fall.  Kate started 4-year-old preschool two days a week and Drew entered the first grade.  As we took this picture both kids stood on the front porch with their umbrellas while Jana and I stood in the rain and took pictures.  I think this image fairly accurately encapsulates life as a parent!

Kate continues to be a joyful challenge.  She keeps our parenting muscles in excellent shape and seems to excel at testing us.  Lately, she's been incredibly difficult to capture in a nice photograph, which is so much fun. Here she managed a real-looking smile for me during our hike on Christmas Day. 

Drew is loving first grade and is slowly gaining momentum in athletics and academics.  When reading the blog the other night we noted that from an early age Drew needed to be properly motivated to do something, and once motivated, he caught on quickly.  That continues to be the case!  Drew's latest foray into sports has been basketball through school.  As he is predicted to be 6'9", we were thrilled by how quickly he has taken to organized basketball and how much he enjoys it.  Coach Izzo, keep an eye on this kid!

Station 5 . . . with cousins!

We recently made a trip to Battle Creek to visit Uncle Todd at the fire station.  I'll start with a picture of Drew because I didn't get many of him on this trip.  He was all over the place!  The last time we visited Battle Creek Kate was sick and had to stay home, so this time I got lots of pictures of her around the fire engine.

After some initial reluctance to sit in the fire engine, Kate began to warm up and we were able to coax a smile from her.  It either wasn't the day for it or Drew is getting older, as he didn't want to wear a fire helmet for the visit.  Kate, on the other hand, proudly wore her fire helmet the whole time.  It was kinda adorable (in my opinion).

We were thrilled that Shannon and her sons Joe and Ryan were able to join us at the fire station.  I was realizing as I started this post that I probably haven't put news of Todd and Shannon's engagement on the blog yet.  This is old news, but Congratulations!  They are getting married this summer.  Our whole family is involved in the wedding (Mark=best man, Jana=matron of honor, Drew=ring bearer, Kate=flower girl) and we're looking forward to it.  In the picture below, Shannon and Kate are lying on top of the fire engine.

At times Shannon had to work to get a smile out of Kate, but she had some giggles in her.

On the way home I always ask Drew and Kate what their favorite part of the fire station was.  You may recall that the last time Drew and I went to Battle Creek, the favorite part for Drew was the workout room at the fire station.  This time, it was unanimous for Drew and Kate: seeing Ryan and Joe was their favorite part of the trip.  Drew and Kate are very excited about having cousins!

Todd will be glad that I cropped him out of the picture below.  He was making the water noise while Kate directed the nozzle.  It's heavy!

At first Kate was shy around the fire station and the fire engine.  By the end of our visit she was having a great time and particularly enjoyed this seat in the back of the fire engine.

The obligatory shot of the children in front of the fire engine is below.  It was made a little more difficult by the sun, so Shannon and Todd held something up to provide shade.  This is the best one out of the ones I took.  I think I need a new camera so I can take more rapid pictures!  Getting everyone to "smile" and be looking anywhere near the camera required a minor miracle.

We rolled down the window in the back of the fire engine and the kids had a great time clambering in and out of the fire engine and saying hello to the adults out the window.

In a dramatic change from her first picture, Kate asked to sit in the front seat again and to wear a headset.  Uncle Todd couldn't deny that request, so with the lights on (in the background) Kate talked for a bit over the headset.  Everyone got in on the act and talked on a headset (there are 4).  Kate loved it!

As usual, we had another great visit to station 5.  Drew and Kate talked the whole way home about the things they saw and did.  Drew kept on exclaiming how amazing it was that Joe and Ryan were there:  "Dad, how did they know we would be there?  That was so cool!"  "Drew, I told them we would be there."  "But Dad, how did they KNOW we would be there?" and so on :)

Three year old Kate

Yesterday our big girl Kate turned three years old.  In the few days before her birthday we had fun telling her the story of her birth, about how big brother Drew handled it, and how excited we all were about her arrival.  We can't believe it's already been three years! 

A few weeks ago Kate made the switch to a big girl bed.  For a while, we've had her crib modified toward a bed, but this is a twin mattress and headboard.  Very exciting!  Kate and Drew helped me take down the crib and set up the new bed frame and mattresses.  That part was probably more exciting to Kate than actually sleeping in the bed :)  After putting in a little railing for her (because Kate is a roamer in bed) she was all set to go.  Below is a picture of Kate in her big girl bed for the first night.

Drew has had a stepstool next to his bed and it was so sweet to watch him get it from his room and set it up for Kate so she wouldn't have any trouble getting into her bed.  While she was looking huge in her crib, Kate now looks so little in her big bed!

I should also brag for a moment about Kate and her ability to sleep through the night without wetting a diaper.  Kate just turned three and has been clean and dry 24 hours a day now for 3-4 weeks.  Drew is 5 and he still routinely sleeps so hard his nightime diaper is a little wet in the morning.  While Kate was a little harder to potty train, she's clearly got the hang of it now.  Way to go Kate!  We take no credit for this success, as Kate has done it entirely on her own.  Now if we can just get her to teach her brother :)

First lost tooth

One of the exciting events in our house over the past month has been Drew losing teeth.  Yes, teeth plural!  We noted first that he had a loose tooth in his lower set of teeth and he proceeded to wiggle it with his tongue and his fingers.  Then one morning after being good with breakfast and asking to have a piece of candy, we gave him some Laffy Taffy.  After he finished it, Jana looked closely at Drew and said, "Buddy, where is your tooth?"  Drew looked startled and quickly realized it was gone.  He swallowed it!  Not willing to do any sort of eventual hunt for this momentous first lost tooth, we instead had Drew draw a picture of it.

We've debated participating in myths like Santa Claus and now we had the same debate with the Tooth Fairy.  Drew quickly settled the debate though.  When we asked him if he wanted to put the drawing under his pillow to see if the tooth fairy would bring him something, he replied, "Actually, I don't think the tooth fairy is a real person.  I think it's mom and dad.  I don't BELIEVE in the tooth fairy."  Not wanting to lie to him, we gave in.  Although, Drew did still put the drawing under his pillow and he did still get $1.

Drew's second lost tooth was much less eventful, particularly for Jana and I because it happened while we were out of town and Drew and Kate were staying with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Bill.  That tooth was saved and Drew now keeps it on his dresser (although he still managed to snag $1 for that one too).  Below is a picture of our toothless boy.

While Drew was busy losing teeth, Jana and I were on a fun just-the-two-of-us trip up north.  We went up north to go snowshoeing.  One problem though . . . there was almost no snow.  We made the best of it though and did some great hiking and had a great time enjoying the outdoors.  For this particular hike, it was rather chilly despite there being little snow.

Our hike took us near Lake Michigan and we had fun checking out the ice buildup near the shore.

We did manage to find some snow that hadn't melted and were able to snowshoe one day.  The irony of our trip was that while we were gone, Lansing got hit with a major snowstorm that dumped over 10" of snow!  It missed the area where we were and we arrived home to dig out our driveway. 

One final picture of Drew is below.  When he smiles normally, you can hardly see his missing teeth.  Kate will be prominently featured in the next post.