Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

As I write this, I hear the boys talking to Grandpa and Grandma N. Now that they are here, our snowman Christmas countdown is counting the days until Christmas rather than Gpa & Gma's arrival. We also look forward to spending time with Jill and her family over Christmas and New Years. What a joy it is to have family around us at the holidays! To the rest of our family members celebrating this season, we will miss you!

I know the traditional Christmas letter includes looking back over the year, but since you are reading this post, you have a pretty good idea of what we have been up to in 2010. In case you don't want to go back over all the entries, here's a quick recap of this year's highlights:

January: basketball coaching for Paul and many games attended by the boys and me; worship symposium in Grand Rapids (yep, I stepped onto Calvin's campus which I admit was beautiful); visit from Gma B. who watched the boys while I was gone

February: more basketball for all of us; a visit from D's sister and nephew

March: visit to the emergency room for Isaac to get a staple in his head; visit from Gpa and Vicki

April: nothing too exciting to report besides regular life

May: birthdays for both boys; playing violin in the high school musical for D

June: basketball camp for P; quick midwest trip for D to deliver the boys for their extended stay with the grandparents; Hawaii for D & P with friends

July: quick midwest trip for P to pick up the boys; Camp Dunamis and Hollywood Bowl for D; camping with friends; and a road trip to the midwest to vacation

August: vacation with family; B & W's wedding; study skills class for D; preparing for and starting school for P

September: the start of preschool for Isaac

October: youth workers' convention for D; visit from Beav & Denise; Ephesians life group (through December)

November: Thanksgiving with D's cousin and family; baking holiday goodies with the boys

December: a weekend with the girls; learning about Jesus' birth and what that means for our lives today through Bible readings, picture books, and reviewing the story of the first Christmas with our Advent calendar each day with the boys; visit from Gpa & Gma N.; Christmas with Jill and all

Once again it is a joy to see the evidence of God's working in our lives this past year. We are blessed to have wonderful families whom we love, and we have been blessed richly with good friends in our lives. We pray that God will be foremost in our hearts this Christmas season and that we will continue to grow in him on a daily basis in 2011.

Girls--3, Boys--3

Maddie and Mackenzie spent a weekend with us while Mark and Jill got a couple days away as our thanks for the great pix Mark took of the boys around their birthdays. (Thanks, Mark, for doing such a great job--I smile every time I pass their smiling mugs hanging on our wall.) It was chaotic at times, but it was so fun to have all of them under one roof and an even number of boys and girls as well!

If you look at the date on this, you will see that I did start writing this while they were still here, but I must have been needed since I never got back to this post until more than a week later.

A few things learned:
1. Four kids really are not that much louder than two. (Notice only two kids looking quite crazy in the picture below...this was the end of the week, and they were showing how much fun they had.)

2. I do a better job of making my boys' hair look nice than two little girls with fine longer hair!!! (As you can see from the pix, that last one deserved three exclamation points since the bow from my wrapping box improved the look of Mac's hair!)

3. I'm glad the boys are old enough to feed themselves and use the toilet. I had to remind myself to check the li'l one's diaper (no worries, Mark and Jill--I don't think she got a diaper rash on my watch).

4. Have all the food on plates and drinks in cups with plenty of napkins handy before even letting the kids know that food is coming.

5. Even boys like playing with a princess or Barbie-type doll--though she turned into quite the superhero in the boys' hands.

Like father, like son

When I picked up Isaac from preschool this past week, his teacher greeted me with, "So, the other teachers and I were talking about Isaac today."

As a former teacher and now parent, that is not usually music to one's ears so I asked, "Is that good or bad?" And this is how our conversation continued from there:

Mrs. Michelle: "Oh, no, it's good. We were just saying that Isaac is quite the ladies' man." (Again not necessarily something a mother wants to hear though a dad might be proud of that one. ;-)

Me: "Oh?!?"

Mrs. Michelle: "Yeah, at recess all the girls yell for him to come and play with them. He just kinda looks at them with that 'silly girls' look on his face, ignores them and goes back to playing with the other boys."

We continued chatting for a bit, and I was reasurred that he is playing okay with others and is being nice. (I was concerned when she mentioned that he is pretty "popular" since that word conjures up images of kids with power who don't necessarily treat others very well.) Paul and I had a good laugh over this teacher chat and were thankful it was nothing too serious.

Isaac with Mrs. Michelle

We also got his first "report card" which gives a summary of Pre-K things that he can or cannot do. He was able to complete all types of things (i.e. recognizing letters, shapes, colors, etc.) except for one--he has not mastered clapping and marching in rhythm. We really laughed when we saw that since he is so surrounded by music and should have no issues with that. Oh, the things that will keep us on our toes.

Oh, the title to this post refers to Mrs. Michelle's description of Isaac at the beginning...not the marching and clapping in rhythm. (Paul has mastered that!)

Mmmmmm.....

We are starting to get into the holiday spirit. Yesterday, I spent the morning baking cookies with my youth group. When I got home, our boys were disappointed that they could not test any of the cookies so I told them we could make cutout cookies. They proceeded to help me mix the dough with the anticipation of being able to bake them after their rest time.

Rolling out the dough & cutting cookies

After naps we rolled out the dough and cut out a variety of shapes--including a cowboy boot, dinosaur, and a semi-truck (none of which were Christmas-related but ones the boys wanted). Once I relaxed and did not worry about fitting as many possible cookies for each rolling-out of the dough (very, very, very hard for me to do...ask Paul), we all had fun cutting out the cookies.

Decorating our cookies

After "patiently" waiting for the cookies to cool, the boys finally went wild frosting their cookies. Each year it gets a little easier as the boys are more adept at frosting. They both got quite creative with designs and adding faces to their cutouts. I think Caleb licked nearly as much frosting off his fingers as he put on the cookies. (We made a point of separating out the cookies the boys decorated and the ones we did in case we decide to share our cookies with others.)

***After reading this entry to Isaac, he told me to be sure to tell everyone that Caleb was so excited about the cookies that he frosted his first cookie and proceeded to eat it as soon as it was frosted. He just kept nibbling on that cookie the rest of the night.

Preschool Happenings

Isaac is LOVING preschool, and that is an understatement. It has been fun for Paul and me to see his enthusiasm for school each day and the joy he has when sharing about his morning. Most nights before school he picks out his clothes and makes sure his backpack is ready (the study skills teacher in me is trying to make this a habit early on ;-).

He usually wakes up on his own, but one morning when Paul woke him up, Isaac got out of bed and said, "Thanks, Dad, for waking me up." Since that time he usually asks Paul to make sure that he is awake and to not forget to wake him up.

Hanging Isaac's letters

I still have not figured out exactly what a typical day looks like in the preschool, but I do know that each week they focus on a specific letter and its sound. They have a little rhyme that they recite for each letter, and every letter has an animal and a name attached to it (i.e. this week it was "Jaguar Jan"). They also decorate the letter of the week with words that start with its sound. Isaac has been taking these letters home every week, and I have been meaning to post them on the wall somewhere. This past week we finally put them up in the playroom much to Isaac's great joy (as shown below)!

Potty Training...

Check that one off our list. Caleb is officially using the toilet on his own and has been for about a month now. That is a tremendous "praise the Lord!" in this girl's opinion!

For those who could do without the potty information, feel free to scroll down to see the picture and not read this entry. It is too momentous of an occasion for my not including this part of our journey.

I always heard people say that potty training your second child is so much easier than the first so I was really looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the ride this time around. Ha! Ha! Ha! Whoever said that does not have a second child like Caleb. I know that some day I will be thankful for his strong will and fierce independence in doing what he wants when he wants...I mean, this will probably serve him well as a teenager when he faces pressure to do things (good and bad) and is able to stand up for himself. For potty training it translated into a frustration for Paul and me.

We decided to try to get him to use the potty already at the beginning of the summer (though I did not push it hard since I knew we would be gone and traveling a lot in the weeks to come). We even requested that the grandparents take care of this training while he was visiting them, but, alas, that did not happen. When we hit it hard in August, we pulled out all the stops--stickers and a chart, prizes, candy, voices filled with excitement when talking about using the potty, talking about everybody else who uses it, etc.--and even tried the nearly naked method (no underwear).

This little boy just rose to the occasion and held it. I lamented to my girlfriends that I was not sure how to accomplish his peeing on the toilet when he was able to hold his pee all day--seriously, he would pee twice a day (in his diaper early in the a.m. and usually soaking the bed and again around dinner time)--since it was really hard to find the right time to put him on the pot. Like clockwork I put him on the pot every thirty minutes, and he just sat there and talked to himself for as long as I left him there.

Bless his little heart, though, he always got so excited while sitting there convinced that he had peed and was always so disappointed when he stuck his head into the little potty to try and spot the missing pee (yeah, I was grossed out that he always put his face so close to the toilet but what can you do?). Every once in a while he did put a couple drips in there but always stopped himself. (I actually think he did not quite understand the concept of putting the pee in the toilet since he usually said "uh-oh" when he did drip a bit.)

I think his first sticker chart took nearly a month to fill up. And then one day it just clicked! He went from going twice a day to peeing regularly. We were so excited and took him to Mc Donalds and Red Robin to celebrate!

Now on to #2...grrrrr! Long story short, he did a repeat of the above though this was more of a pain to clean up. For those of you who know the history of potty training Isaac, I just wanted to let you know that we did use the same things (his getting to clean his undies and even using the hose for clean-up), but they did not work as quickly for Caleb as for Isaac. Like with the pee, it just clicked for him one day. I was actually at a conference the first weekend in October and got a message from him that he "poop-ed on the potty," and he was in undies from that point on. He is such a champ that he goes to the bathroom without our even knowing until we hear yelling for help from the bathroom.

Granted, he does have an accident now and then, but to be honest this part of the training has been easier. He has had less accidents and is also in underwear and staying dry through the night. (I think we used a lot of pull-ups for Isaac before he mastered the sleeping through the night and staying dry.)

To celebrate once he was using the potty regularly, he got to stop the ice cream man's truck and buy a treat. He chose a popsicle which is what he is happily holding in this picture. :-) For fun, below is a link to a blog post from two years ago which includes a video show of Isaac eating his Spiderman ice cream potty training treat: http://plapka.blogspot.com/2008/09/sunday-afternoon-snacks.html

Thanks for bearing with me as I relived the past few months. As my mom would say, "TYL that this part of our journey is past!"

Halloween 2010

We started our evening at Aunt Nita and Aunt Pat's house. When we got there, the boys had to get into their costumes and then go to the door. At first they were not too excited about putting on the boxes, but after getting handfuls of candy they decided it was worth it.

Our first stop

After that we headed to our friends' house where we had dinner together before we all went throughout their neighborhood to trick or treat. It was so cute to walk behind the kids--two little Lego bricks, a cheerleader and Cinderella--and then see their excitement after each house.

We walked their entire neighborhood which happened to include a very big hill. Halfway up the hill, Caleb started asking when we were going back to their house. I think his little legs were tired, but he was a trooper and stayed with it to the end.

We had only one mishap during the night. Isaac was trying to keep up with the girls and cut a corner which caused him to trip and fall over on his back. He was fine, but he just couldn't get himself back up. When Paul went to make sure he did not knock his head, Isaac said, "Help, I can't get up!" (Thinking about the image of his lying on his back with his arms and legs wiggling out of the box holes makes me laugh. It reminded me of the little boy in the snowsuit from A Christmas Story when he falls down in the snow and cannot get back up.)

The Lego bricks were a success, and many people commented on how cute they were. The only trouble with the costumes, though, was that the boxes were a little wide for the boys. If the people did not put the candy in the boys' baskets but let the boys pick their own, the boys were unable to reach far enough with both hands to drop it into their own buckets! (We will have to remember that the next time we dress them up in a box!)

Paul with the boys towards the end of the night