Halloween 2005

Roman's new buddy, Matthew Jennsch, from soccer and his mom, Kary, met us at our house for trick-or-treating this year. The kids had a blast and boy did they rack in some loot this year!

Bethany 2 year Stats

Bethany had her well-baby checkup today. She is 25 lbs (25% - woohoo! First time above the 15% since birth!) and 33 1/2 inches long (50%). She is "perfect" to quote the doctor! She found Bethany to be very well spoken for her age and advanced in nearly all areas. Of course we've always known this! She even commented on how well she can hold a tune as she broke out into her rendition of "Old MacFarmer" in the middle of the checkup. We discussed the hair pulling and she does not feel it is a problem, just a stage, but we will continue to keep close watch over her. She has been eating us out of house and home, so I suspect we're in for, yet another growth spurt this coming month. She has already maxed the 18 and 24 month pants in length and is wearing 2T's now with a few 3T's even. Her foot size is up to a 7 1/2, but quickly approaching 8's. Boy, is she taking after her brother with those feet! Roman also has shot up drastically on us and is maxing length in the size 6's we just bought him at the beginning of the school year - 2 months ago - and will be needing all new clothes again before winter even arrives!

Bethany's Birthday Party

Bethany's party was Saturday and we had a blast! It was so much fun! We went to the pumpkin patch at Chesterfield Berry Farm. Jon, Alicia, Steven and Garrett; Kari, Kermit, Abigail, and Megan; and Barbara all met us there. Hadn't been there in 2 years and boy has it grown! We started off with a barrel tractor pull ride that the kids just loved. Then to the bounce house. It was so cute watching her in the bounce house with all her friends and family. Her chicken legs kept sliding down and she'd just fall over and lay there being bounced around. Such a little goof! Then it was onto the haywagon ride out to the fields to pick out our pumpkins. We got some good pictures in the pumpkin patch. Finally a stop in the corn pit - literally a pit filled with feed corn nearly knee deep on me. The kids LOVED this. And ended with a quick run through "Pirates Cove" a cheesy kid-friendly haunted house. Then it was back to our house for some yummy chili and grub - I made an entire, large crock pot full of chili and I barely had enough left to cover 2 chili dogs, so someone must of have liked it! LOL Jon and Alicia couldn't make it back to the house for dinner as they already had plans, but Mike, Adrienned and Joshua were able to make it over for dinner, so that was fun. A round of pin the tail on the donkey then cake/ice cream and presents. It was a wonderful time! Bethany looked adorable in her chicken costume! Check out all the pics:

Bethany's Birthday Cake

Bethany's Birthday Cake

I saw this cake (okay, similar) on the Wilton website and just loved it. Of course they had icing animals and a silo and everything, I simplified it, but still, the results came out great! My first attempt at cake decorated started with Bethany's 1st birthday last year. Let's just say I've come a long way in the last 12 months!

(in case you can't tell, her party theme for this year was Fisher Price Little People Farm.)

More party details to come....

Roman's 1st Real Play Date

Roman had his first play-date today with Matthew Jennsch. Matthew is a little boy from his Fall soccer team. James and I like his mother, Kary, a lot and felt comfortable enough for Roman to go over to their house for an afternoon of fun. He ended up staying for dinner and I think would have spent the night if we'd let him. Baby steps... mommy's still catching up with this letting go stuff!

Balding B Update 2 - We Chopped it Off!

Bethany's hair is GONE! We took her tonight to chop it off. They actually left more than I had expected, but the hairstylist was one of their best and said it should start filling in fine from there as long as she stays off it. I've busted her twice trying to pull on it since then and it's only been 3 hours! ARGH!!! Hopefully she will not find enough left to really bother and will soon give up. That's the plan at least. Actually it looks so much cuter than I ever imagined!

Balding B Update

Bethany continues to lose hair by the fistful. We correct her when we catch her, but come on, she's a very active toddler, we can not possible keep our eyes glued on her hands 24x7! I also have been sticking a glove on her hand when I notice her getting sleepy-eyed. That seems to be when it's at it's worse. I just don't know what else to do! She sucks on 2 fingers on her left hand, so it's only her right hand causing problems... which makes it all the worse imo. She has always carried a Barbie or My Little Pony, or some other baby doll with realish hair texture and has pulled out several wads of hair there, but I don't mind that, she can have ruin all the toys in the world if she'd just leave her own hair alone! So frustrating!

Multi-Lingual Kids

Roman starts a multi-lingual after school class today. I completely forgot all about it, but fortunately James remembered so I called the school at lunch to confirm it starts today and told them to make sure Roman's teacher knows he's not catching the bus home since we didn't tell him about it - since I completely forgot we even signed him up for it. LOL It's supposed to be casual vocabulary in 4 different languages... Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. He can already count to at least 10 pretty fluently in Spanish and knows some of the numbers in all four and a variety of Spanish and German words and phrases already. I personally hated French, so other than counting have steered clear of that one at home. I don't remember too much Japanese, but after years of karate, just couldn't get the counting out of my head. LOL Hopey is speaking more and more Spanish everyday thanks to Dora and LeapFrog. Fortunately it's Latin-based and similar enough to French for me to keep up with her. I keep telling James we're going to have to find a Spanish class soon or we won't be able to communicate with her. LOL I'm not complaining, I think it's important for all the kids to comfortably speak at least one other language.

A Balding B

My little Bmonster not only sucks her fingers and bites her nails, but has recently tossed her matted hair Barbie's and My Little Ponies for hair twirling. Hair twirling in itself isn't bad, Roman does this too and has since he was a baby, but Bethany twirls her hair then yanks it out by the handful! I noticed Friday she seemed thin on one side and thought it was just a bad hair day. Then we dug 2 hairballs out of the child's mouth wrapped tightly around her fingers and I started paying closer attention. Sure enough she's literally pulling all her hair out! She looks like she has a one-sided mullet! It's really short, spikey and you can see the scalp on the side she's pulling on. She's beginning to look like a shaggy haired dog with mange. It's HORRIBLE!!!

Madison Sammon's Birthday Present

Roman was invited to a birthday party this weekend for a little girl in his class named Madison. This is really the first of the "unknown" friends ever. Meaning, every other birthday party we've been to we've known the birthday child and known what he/she likes and whatnot. This time we have NO IDEA. So, what do you buy a 5 year old girl that you don't even know for her birthday? Roman said he'll take care of it... that was a scary thought! But, I took him to Target and he picked out a Barbie Veternarian that was pretty cute. He tells me "This is IT! Madison likes animals I think, and I've never met a girl yet who didn't love Barbies!"

Chicken Boy

Chicken Boy is Roman's self-chosen nickname post Aunt Jennifer's wedding. At the reception the DJ encouraged participation with props, including a feather "chicken" mask for the chicken dance and blow up guitars for a few rock numbers. Someone appropriated one of each and Jennifer past them on to Roman the following morning. The result... Chicken Boy! Roman puts on the mask and turns into a rock'n roll freak.

Bethany Speaks

Bethany's speech has exploded over night. I am finding it difficult to tell her and Hope apart at times. Her favorite words are "NO" and "MINE". Everything is Bethany's these days. She still babbles, but daily more and more of the babbles are turning into whole sentences, whole conversations. I guess since the other 2 were late talkers, our 22 month old seems absolutely amazing with how well she is talking!

Hopey Serenade

During the 9 hours drive home from the lake we spent the majority without modern technology aka no movies, video games, music or any other sorts of distractions. Instead we spent the hours talking, sleeping, and listening to the kids make up games and songs. Hope, loving to sing as it is, spent a good part of the day serenading us all with her rendition of "Aunt Jennifer" which consists of only 2 lyrics and a variety of tunes. The old standby's of "Old MacFarmer" and "ABCD" of course, but out of the blue came "The Sun Comes Up, The Moon Goes Down" to which she made up an entire song about how fun it is to play all day when the sun comes up and the moon goes down and verses for all the places she loves to play. It was very cute and James and I were quite impressed with this impressive impromtu!

Hopey Starts SOCCER!

Hope Elizabeth had her first soccer practice tonight. Her feet were too small from Roman's first pair of cleats and we could only find 1 of his first pair of shin-guards, so we had to sprint to Strictly Soccer before heading over to practice. Wouldn't you know - PINK soccer cleats, matching PINK shin-guards, and a PINK ball were her products of choice! They are the cutest little pink Diadora's ever and she looked adorable wearing big brother's shorts and shirt (way too big on her) and her new soccer stuff. Her team is called the Magics and there are 10 little boys and girls. Much to our delight there are 5 girls on her team, so she is definitely in Hopey heaven! James is coaching her team through the Manchester YMCA and has a real assistant coach this season, Coach Stephanie. So far she seems great! They just look sooooooo cute out there!

Aunt Jennifer & Uncle Jesse's Wedding

On September 10, 2005 Uncle Jesse officially joined our family. Aunt Jennifer was absolutely gorgeous and looked so happy and relaxed. It was as it should be! Roman was a handsome ring bearer, tux and all, but when the big moment came he froze, freaked, turned and ran for cover! NO WAY was he walking down that aisle with all those people staring at him. I was called back a little too late, so as the most adorable little flower girl - Hope Elizabeth! - began walking down the aisle, Roman and I snuck down the side and joined daddy and Bethany. Hope did AWESOME! She looked like a little princess and smiled and walked all the way down all by herself. We were so proud! After the wedding she told us "My prince ditched me at the door! I didn't know a princess could walk down all by herself, but I did it!" Shortly after the ceremony began I had to bolt with a very restless Bethany. She just wouldn't sit still and was beginning to fuss, so we went down to the church nursery to play. The ceremony was relatively short and when Bethany and I came back up for family pictures and to see the bride and groom off we discovered our adorable little flower girl didn't make it through the wedding. She had fallen asleep sitting up. It was too cute! Bethany was still being restless and wouldn't stand still for anything. Doubt many good pictures of her will come back, but she looked adorable all the same as a little honorary flower girl she wore a matching dress to Hopey's. When they went to make the introductions at the reception, all the men in the wedding party wore sunglasses. Funny how suddenly Roman was willing to strut his stuff hiding behind those shades. Why didn't we think of that earlier? At the reception all 3 kids turned into dancing fools and stole the dance floor! The DJ passed around various blow up toys and masks and silly stuff to get the audience out of the chairs and on the dance floor having fun. Roman quickly fell in love with these blow up guitars, and with his shades on morphed into a rock star, or so he thought. Bethany discovered blow up microphones, but, in true B-monster fashion, chewed holes in everyone that came near her. Hope liked the air vent on the floor as is blew her dress up like a ballerina and she spent quite a bit of time dancing around on top of it. When she wasn't there you were sure to find her dancing it up on the dance floor with anyone and everyone she could find. It was a lot of fun! The kids certainly had a blast and we are all very excited to welcome Jesse into our family!

Who's Day is it?

After putting on her beautiful princess flower girl gown, having her hair done up in a curly bun with a gorgeous tiara, makeup and nails done just like the big girls, upon entering the limo Hope asks, "Who's day is it again? Aunt Jennifer's or mine?"

Bethany's First Haircut

Bethany had her first haircut today! My baby girl is all grown up. She looks so cute! She did really well for the most part, of course she fidgeted as any 22 month old would, but overall she did great and is absolutely adorable! I have, in the past, trimmed her bangs up, but this is her first real haircut and boy, what a difference it makes! We have tons of pics, but as usual, haven't uploaded them yet. One of these days I'll have to go bad and just add pics to all these entries. :)

Roman - School Update

Roman is doing great at school. He just loves his teachers, his fav part of school is recess - 2 times a day!, and has his sites 100% on the treasure chest. This is a program his teacher does. Everyday in his folder he has a chart and gets either a green dot for excellent behaviour, yellow for we had a few issues, but overall good, and red for we didn't do so great today and that one usually comes with a note from the teacher. Well, for every 10 consecutive green dots he gets to go to the treasure chest where she keeps little $1 store toys, character pencils, bubbles, just fun odds and ends that the kids can have as a reward. Apparently they also have corresponding frog charts in class showing their frog jumping to the treasure chest (unless that's just how Roman's imagining it in his head, was hard to tell from his description. LOL) and he is non-stop talking about how good he's gonna be and can't wait to reach that treasure chest. It is too cute! So all good on the school front!

Sheer Determination

James has a bad habit of leaving his Coke lying around the house. Today it was on the fireplace, within easy reach of the Bmonster. Bethany spots it, yells "Coke" in her happiest voice and grabs it up with a grin. James calmly conviscated it and said "Honey, no coke" and put it on the second shelf of the bookcase. Bethany looked at him, reached over grabbed it. So again, he conviscated and this time moved it to the top of the speaker. She looked at him, climbed up onto the arm of the chair, stood up and grabbed it saying "COKE". So this time he said "No", conviscated the can and moved it out of reach on the top of the mantle. Or so he thought.... with an evil laugh, she climbed on the arm of the chair, then to the back of the chair, then proceded to step on the bookcase and climb the shelves until she could reach over and snatch the can off the mantle, took a quick drink before it could be conviscated and began laughing her most evil little laugh.

Only Draw on Paper Given to You by Mommy or Daddy

... This is the rule in our house. So today, being a tough day on everyone with Roman heading to school, James told Hope she could have a special treat outside. Hope got quite excited, "Trweeeet? trweet trweet trweet!" So James brought out the sidewalk chalk which we have had for some time and never actually used. He explained to Hope what it was "... you can draw on the sidewalk with it". And the conversation went something like this.

Hope: OH NO!

James: What?

Hope: I'm not going to draw on the road

James: Why not?

Hope: Because you'll yell at me or spank my butt and make me clean it all up, so I'm not gonna do it and I'm not gonna get in trouble!

Guess her punishment of having to wash down the walls the last time she wrote on them has paid off and committed to memory. Of course she has since washed down nearly every wall in the house. Seems anytime she so much as thinks of writing on the wall, she gets a washcloth and water and washes them instead!