"Chained" together, Played together

We had a very productive day today.  Once again we attended RE.  Tomorrow is the last day and the boys are a little disappointed.  They will certainly miss seeing their friends.  I know I've had a wonderful time too and I feel very blessed to have made some new friends.  I will miss spending time with other adults every day, that's for sure!  Max is learning so much, coming home and telling me things about praying and Jesus.  He's even asking me some good questions.  Today he said to me, "You know after Jesus died and he came back at Easter?  Where did he come back to?" I thought he meant where did he come back from so I said, "He came from Heaven."  Max, "No, I mean where did he came back to, like was it Texas or something??"  I tried to explain things to him where he might understand, but he just said "Why not Texas?"  Awesomeness! He also talked to me about his conscience, although he didn't exactly call it that.  It went something more like there are angels trying to tell us the right way to do things and bad angels trying to get us to do things wrong.  I am very impressed with all that he has absorbed from his first year of Religious Ed.  These are only a couple of conversations we've had.   



I personally love the jelly all over his precious smile :)

The boys were having a lot of fun today at lunch.  They got really excited about their sandwiches!  I guess we rarely eat them because yesterday when Max noticed we had only one piece of pepperjack cheese left, he got really excited and made sure to let everyone know that it was his for a sandwich.  He reminded me three times that he was going to have that sandwich for lunch.  On the way home from the church he gasped and asked me "Oh my gosh, did Papa eat my cheese for his lunch today?"  I had to reasure him that it was still there for him.  I made Nico a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  He never eats sandwiches, but I'm trying to get him to eat them so that I can have an easy lunch to make for him sometimes.  The boys are a little spoiled with warm lunches most days.  (Which should explain the green bean Nico is showing the camera.)  I've never been able to get Nico to eat a sandwich, but today he completely polished off his peanut butter and black raspberry jelly sandwich.  Not only did he eat it all, he was jumping up and down because he thought it was so tasty.  I love how they get a kick out of the little things.  They LOVE green beans, so according to them I made the best lunch ever! 

 We spent the afternoon around the house so that Belle could get some rest.  The mornings get really long for her at the nursery.  There are so many kids she just has to watch that she doesn't get the best rest there.  Max spent a considerable amount of time with his slinky today, attaching one end to something or another and attaching the other end to something else.  He created "cages" and "gates" among many other things.  Of course it came complete with "What's the password?" to get by.  He always makes sure that if there is an emergency the password can be bypassed by simply stating "EMERGENCY!".  Another game the boys wanted to play today involved over sized shoe laces (from an activity the boys have to learn to tie shoes) on which they had me make loops at each end of two shoe laces.  Max then had me put my hand through a loop of one shoe lace, then had Nico put his hand through a loop of the other.  After that, Max put his hand through the other end of mine, then the other end of Nico's.  We were "chained" together!  But not only that, we had to stay clear of the monsters and work as a team to get away.  When I informed them that I was going to need to break for just a few minutes to switch out laundry, Max just declared that we were all going to have to go because we were chained together and there was no other way.  I tried to assure him that it would be okay to get out of character for 10 minutes while I took care of unloading, loading, and folding a load of laundry, but he wouldn't hear of it.  So we stayed "chained" together.  We were a sight!  We kept falling all over each other in the tiny laundry room trying to all unload the clothes.  We also kept tangling ourselves up with each other's "chains" and with the laundry.  We finally succeeded in getting the laundry basket of clean clothes into my room by kicking it with my feet.  I couldn't carry it because Max's arms weren't long enough.  Then it was all a circus from there.  We really did look like a bunch of clowns (or possibly stooges??)  Once again I told Max that I could let them play while I quickly folded the clothes and put them away, and then I would join back in.  He did NOT like that idea.  He just said, "I'll either help you or sit and wait."  When I mentioned that playing might be more fun he just said, "I like to sit."  In my head I'm thinking..."Since when???!!"  Nico, on the other hand, did NOT want to sit still.  He wanted to keep moving and taking his hand out of the loop really annoying Max.  I hurried as fast as I could with the folding, but when I started putting the clothes away we were all trying to walk in different directions.  I have to admit that I only put up with the "chain" playing for so long because I was trying to avoid a tantrum (that ended up occuring anyway when Nico just could not take Max's bossiness anymore and removed himself from the "chain" indefinitely.)  It became very clear to me that we would not excel in a three legged (or four legged with the three of us at one time) race, but tug of war...we may be able to take home the gold there!  Finally the boys tired out, mostly from disagreeing about wanting to and not wanting to play "chained" together anymore.  I left the boys to argue with each other for a few minutes and went downstairs to make them a snack.  Max followed shortly afterwards to get his.  I called up the stairs a couple of times for Nico to come down and he never answered.  I thought I better check since I made his favorite snack and he didn't come running.  Turns out the kid had crawled into my bed and fallen asleep!  I guess all of the excitment from our play pooped him out!  While Nico napped, Belle, Max and I stayed downstairs.  Belle sat in her booster seat while Max set up a game of Sequence for Kids (LOVE IT!!!).  We played three rounds of the game taking turns winning.  Max let me clean up the kitchen in between my turns so it was a very productive game of Sequence.  While Belle was sitting in her little chair, she was playing with a book that plays music and nursery rhymes.  When "Hey Diddle Diddle" was playing, Max sang along with it.  Then he started to laugh and laugh.  He said "Oh my gosh, wouldn't that be so funny if one or our dishes ran away with a spoon??"  Most of his best work starts with "Oh my gosh".  He's such a hoot.  About this time the next load of laundry was ready to be folded.  To spice things up I decided to haul the load down stairs.  My thinking was this, I haven't worked out since I posted about joining the gym (like two weeks ago) because my schedule with Max's Religion classes, Fer's birthday, party planning, etc., it just has not worked in my schedule to hit the gym.  I figured that I could fold the clothes down stairs and take piles one at a time upstairs to find their home.  Better than a stairmaster.  Only midway through I went upstairs with a load, forgot what I was doing, got sidetracked, and the piles downstairs lay forgotten for quite some time.  By the time I ran back downstairs for something and noticed I had not finished, I gave in and loaded up the clothes into the laundry basket and brought it all upstairs.  At least I tried!!

Belle's looking a little cross-eyed as she plays with her caterpiller.  All three of the kids LOVED this toy!



Max using his cleverly awesome imagination.

When Fer got home from work, we immediately loaded up and headed out to SAMS to get the last minute supplies for his party.  I've only got a few things to pick up still and I need to bake some homemade cookies tomorrow and we should have what we need.  Our costumes are almost complete too!  We are ready to party like a Rock Star and Rock 'n Roll all niiiiight!  We may be corny, but we are having fun doing it! "Oh my gosh" I LOVE my family!