My Soccer Saturdays

We're done with soccer for the season.  Amazingly, Toby and I spent 6 Saturdays in a row at the park playing soccer.  And it didn't rain on a single one of those days.  The colors last Saturday were brilliant, the sky was bright blue, and the temp hovered around 40 for the whole hour.  But it was his last practice, and it included a lot of game-playing time, so I brought BJ and Norah along to watch Toby play.  He's come a long way in 6 weeks, and BJ was able to grab a video of him scoring a goal.  If you ask Toby how soccer was he'll say, "I scored six goals.  No, wait, I scored 12 goals!"  His math is a little off, but we haven't taken the energy to keep score because the other two kids on his team (they split up and rotated through and played 3-on-3 games for 30 minutes) barely touched the ball.  One kid sat out almost the entire time (and hadn't been there the last 2 sessions), and the other kid just stood around asking any nearby adult, "When are we going to be done?"
Toby has a very strong sense of fairness and I kind of felt for him when he started to throw tantrums after the other teams would score goal after goal on his team.  I would have felt the same way playing one-on-three soccer.  (Actually, the other teams usually had one other kid not wanting to play, but Toby's team had two kids not interested, so it ended up being 1-on-2.)  We tried to convince him that everyone just wanted to have fun and no one was keeping score, and that he should look to other kids that were being good sports.

It was an interesting introduction to organized sports and (I think) we're looking forward to many more seasons of sports to come!

My Translation

I've spent enough time around the little ones to have become their general dictionary and their primary translator with other adults.  This becomes dangerous when I lose track of which words we've taken to pronouncing incorrectly in the house just because we think our kids are cute.
For example, this conversation took place between Norah and Toby when Toby came home from school yesterday.

Me: Norah, tell Toby what we found outside today.
N: We found watipillar, Toby!
T (to me): Does she mean calipitter?
Me:  Um, yes.
N: But it went way.
T: Did it turn into a butterfly?
Me: No, it just went away.

My Kids and Bugs

My kids love all things buggy.  I have worked hard to instill in them the fear of spiders which they have adopted, thankfully, but all other bugs seem to be fair game for handling, collecting, and eventually squishing.
Two weeks ago we were doing some projects in the yard and garden and came across two praying mantises (or is it mantii?).  While disassembling the wood pile we found many large unmentionable bugs along with pill bugs, huge black crickets, and their forever favorite, caterpillars.  There was a week or two where we couldn't stand at the bus stop (next to our mailbox) without a caterpillar dropping by.  We've found little fuzzy gray and black ones and others that are brown and black.
Yesterday when Norah and I found a brown and black caterpillar (we used to call them fuzzy-wuzzies--I don't know what they actually are) I encouraged her to make a little home for it in some leaves, and she went off to dig in the garden.  I went back to clearing some wood but a few minutes later Norah came up crying saying she couldn't find her worm.  I asked her if it crawled away and she put her hand in her jacket pocket and said, "No, I put it in here."  Ut-oh.  Worms in the pockets.  Yuck.  We spent the next few minutes digging through her jacket pockets to clear out all the dirt, and didn't find any worms.  I don't know if it's a good sign that we never found the worm, or a very bad sign.

My Singer

Norah is a big fan of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" at bedtime. Occasionally we can get her to sing it for a crowd.  (Although she knows the first and second verses she sometimes gets a little stuck on the first verse...)

At the end of the video you can hear her say, "Now let I see."  Almost all our videos end this way because she's so excited to see the play-back.  She says it after you take her picture, too.  Every time.

My Happy Meal

We don't take the kids to get fast food very often.  (And I should note, in the interest of full disclosure, that we don't consider Chick-Fil-A to be fast food.)  But last week our kids visited McDonald's twice.  In one day.
It came about on a Friday when I had a sitter over for Norah so I could get a hair cut.  The sitter took Norah on some errands and then got her a Happy Meal.  This month McDonald's has plastic pails with stickers (seen here) as their Happy Meal containers.  When Toby came home from school he was clearly upset that he didn't get a Halloween pail too.  What's a mom to do?  Especially when faced with a Friday night without a cook in the house (BJ was working until late) and long hours until bedtime, with potential fights over the stupid Happy Meal tub to boot?
Well, we went back to McDonald's on our way to another store so Toby could get a Halloween pail too.  I had filled Norah's tub with snacks from home so I handed hers over and gave Toby his while I paid the person at the window.  As I drive away Toby squeals from the back seat (after having just peeled away the sticker-cover from the tub): "HEY!  There's FOOD in here!"
Apparently I had forgotten to mention that when we visit the drive-thru for a Happy Meal Halloween pail that it would come with food, too.  We pulled onto the street and I hear Toby talking to himself, "I don't even believe it.  I don't know what to eat first!"

My P's and Q's

My kids have forgotten to say please or thank you several times this week, especially when manners should be shown off the most: among company! So after one particularly rude demand from Norah (something along the lines of "I want juice Mom" shouted at the top of her lungs) I knelt down and asked "Norah, where are your 'please and thank-you's'?" To which she replied, "In my mouth."

A few weeks ago we went to the Groton Family Farm so the kids could feed the chicken. Lately this kind of trip would be accompanied by a lot of whining and a general lack of sharing, and of course no "please" or "thank you" to be heard. We're working on it...

My Sleepyhead

I noticed the other day that we have a quite a few pictures of Toby sleeping.  One day he'll probably be horribly embarrassed by all of these pictures but until then, enjoy!

My Missed Vacation

I found some pictures this morning from October of last year, when I went to Florida to meet my sisters and BJ had the kids to himself. One afternoon he and our neighbor took them to a museum that was featuring fairy houses made in trees. (You kind of had to see it.) Even though that was a year ago (look how young Norah is!) we still make "fairy houses" in the roots of the trees in our yard. The kids have a great time arranging the sticks and nut shells and other found objects into houses. Lately we've even found caterpillars to go into the houses. It's been one of their favorite creative activites and I'm so thankful that BJ took them there last year! And that I found pictures of their adventures!

My Children's Museum Visit

Yesterday Norah and I met some friends at the nearby Children's Museum. Toby went to the museum this summer with his playground group, but Norah and I had never been. We had the place to ourselves for a half an hour, but since it was a rainy day the place got pretty packed very quickly. Norah had a great time in the play kitchen (she made us a tray of peppers and orange sodas) and she ran around exploring the other themed areas with her little friend Sam. We'll have to go back another time and check out all the activites they have outside too!

My September Pictures

I apologize for completely dropping the ball and not posting more pictures of the kids from this summer.  Honestly, I feel like September just flew by.  I can't believe we're already into October!  Since we've already purchased the kids' Halloween costumes I think we're preparing ourselves to speed through October as well.  For a better view of any of the pictures that scroll at the top of the blog you can click on them and you'll be taken to the full album.  There's also an album of pictures from August that never made it to the blog.  I try to put captions with many of the pictures I post there so you'll know what's going on.  Feel free to copy any that you like!  :o)  

My Play-dough Chefs

We inherited a bunch of play dough equipment last week which, of course, led to all kinds of new creations.
Here's a video of Norah and Toby in all their chef regalia (including Norah's "Feff Hat").

My Two Hams

I bribed the kids with candy yesterday in order to keep them occupied while I snapped a bazillion pictures of them. I'm still learning how to use the new camera, and almost all of them came out blurry. Once Norah started to lose her shirt I decided it was time to quit, but for a little while they were really getting into hamming it up for the camera.  Norah danced the Hokey Pokey.  Toby tried to teach Norah how to walk like a duck (or something like that).  Next time I'll have to stash more candy in my pockets.